A Secret Vow: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (7 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“Grady. He’s going to find out about this and then he’ll kill me.”

“No, Kendra. Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Yes, it is. He’s going to find out!” She throws my arm from around her and starts to climb out of the bed. I drag her back down by the hips, but she is fighting, wriggling out of my grasp, clawing at my hands as she tries to get away.

“He’s going to kill me!” she keeps saying over and over again. “I have to go.”

“You can’t go! Stay here. You’re better off here than anywhere else right now.”

“Let go of me!” she shrieks. Her bare breasts are bouncing as she struggles to push me away from her. I let go and she retreats to the other side of the bed. The open, trusting eyes I saw earlier are completely vanished. Instead, her whole face is painted with fear.

“You don’t know what he can do. He’s insane. He finds out everything, and as soon as he does, I’m as good as dead. I have to go back.” Her pupils are dilated and roaming.

I feel like I’m talking to a wild animal. I keep my tone calm, soothing. “Kendra, listen to me. You can’t go anywhere. You’re safest here.” Every word is slow. “If you’re here, he can’t hurt you. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”

I watch her chest rise and fall as she starts to breathe deeper. My words are working a little bit at a time to calm her down.

“Breathe, Kendra. Think about what I’m telling you. I’m here. You’re safe with me.” I see the fight go out of her. Her whole body softens. “Come here,” I tell her, patting the bed next to me. Gradually, she slinks over to me and huddles against my torso. I can feel her trembling.

I wrap my arm around her to pull her close. I need her to feel the physical truth of what I’m saying. That’s the only way I’ll get through to her. “Trust me,” I say. “I made you a promise. I don’t care what the rest of the world wants. This is my promise to you: you’re safe here. As long as you’re with me, you’ll always be safe.”

Kendra burrows deeper against me. Her body is so light and tiny. There’s part of me that wants to break it, ravage it, but there’s another part that wants to keep anyone else from ever laying a finger on her. I’ve never had two voices saying such different things to me at once. My head is swirling.

But I push away the thoughts. For now, that doesn’t matter. Nothing does. We fall asleep, my arm around her, with nothing but a promise between us and the world.

* * *

The morning sun stabs through the curtains. It’s early, but my bedroom window faces east. I always liked it that way. There’s always work to be done.

Well, there is usually work to be done. For the first time since I can remember, I’m content just lying in bed. There’s a beautiful girl curled under my arm. I feel her stir and see that she’s awake, too. The yawn that rips across her face is nothing short of adorable.

It’s a shame that I have to tell her what’s coming.

Not yet, though. There will be plenty of time for that later.

Kendra traces a wandering fingertip over the outline of a fresh tattoo on my ribcage. “What’s this one?” she asks. Her voice is still thick with sleep.

“It’s a Penrose triangle,” I answer. “A twisted triangle that can only exist as a drawing on paper. You can’t make it in real life.”

“What does it mean?”

“Shows that some things aren’t meant to be real.”

She falls silent, not sure what to think of what I’ve just told her. “That’s a sad thing to have on your body forever,” she says after a while.

“I guess you could think of it like that.”

She looks up at me, eyes searching my face for an explanation. “Is there a reason you got it?”

I wonder what I can tell this girl. If I can trust her. Not just with the reasons, but with what it meant to me..

Hell, I still can’t say for sure what it meant to me. I don’t even want to think about it.

“For my brother,” I answer eventually. “He’s dead.” I leave it at that.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs instantly. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s nice of you to commemorate him, though. It’s good to be remembered by family.”

What is it with this girl’s ability to say just the right thing that triggers all the thoughts I’d rather not think? Family, memory…she harps on it without even knowing that it’s something that’s been gnawing at me for so long.

“I’m the only one he had to remember him.” I don’t want to look at her while I say this. I keep my eyes on the ceiling. Inside my head, thoughts are spiraling out of control. It’s the same broken record that is has been for weeks:
Who will remember you? Who will remember you?
Over and over, endless, fucking incessant.

I’ve been trying not to think about my scheme, too. It feels almost wrong to be planning how I’ll use Kendra at the same time that she’s curled up in my arms. But I can’t worry about things like that. I need what I need, and this is a golden opportunity. I’m not going to let these silly conflicts of emotion get in the way.

“He didn’t have any kids?” she asks me. “Or a wife?”

“Just me. Only family we had left was each other.”

Kendra kisses my neck. She’s gorgeous, caring, intelligent—everything I could ever want in the mother of my son. I wonder if she’ll run away when I tell her what I want. Then I remember she doesn’t have a choice. I can’t decide if that’s sick of me to think that thought with satisfaction. I just don’t know.

She says, “What about you? Any little ones running out there I should know about?”

I take a breath. I’m icy cool. There is only one way forward. “There weren’t, up until now.” I feel her shift against me. She’s curious.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I made you a promise. And I want something in return.”

Kendra sits up. What an incredible body she has, what soft and fragrant skin. I can’t wait to see her heavy with my baby.

“What do you want in return?” she asks cautiously, guarded.

“I want you to have my child.” I let the words hang in the air. There is no other sound to dilute them, not even the hum of the air conditioning or the whirr of a fan. The sentence is stark against the silence.

“What?”

“I want you to have my child,” I repeat. “I want you to get pregnant with my son.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she says. “That’s not a funny joke, Mortar.” She wants me to be kidding, but it takes one look at my face to know that I’m deadly serious. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

She scoots away, holding a sheet over her naked body. “Don’t fucking say that to me,” she says. I can tell she’s scared, or angry, or some of both. More likely is that she doesn’t know what to make of this. I can empathize. After all, I’ve had weeks and months to think of this, whereas she’s only had a few seconds. It will take time. I get that. But she doesn’t have a choice.

“I don’t have any family left,” I explain. “My brother died with only me to remember him. What happens if I get gunned down? You know what I do for a living. Men in my business are not exactly known for their long life expectancies. I have a name that I’ve worked hard to make into something worthy of admiration. I don’t want it to die just because some fucker decides to take a cheap shot at me one night.”

My words are barely registering with her. She’s opening and closing her mouth like a fish, fluttering her eyes, just trying to process the weight of what I’m saying. It’s hard to blame her. My heart is twisting. She’s beautiful, she deserves to be protected. I do mean what I’ve promised her. I’ll protect her for as long as I’m able. But I was raised on the streets, and a man with my background never makes a promise without extracting something in return.

“This is the deal,” I tell her. “I’ll give you time to think about it.”

I stand up and go to the shower. When I come back out, dressed, I see that she hasn’t moved. Her eyes are blank and staring straight ahead. I’m not sure what to think. There’s something to her that is different from any other girl I’ve ever met. I’m still struggling to process that myself. Part of me feels bad.

But the other part has to get to work.

I pause in the doorway. “I’ll be back this evening,” I say over my shoulder. I don’t make eye contact with her. “We can talk tonight.”

* * *

The clubhouse is buzzing when I walk in. I’m confused. There’s never this many men here for a casual meeting. It’s usually just the core guys who head up the businesses we run. But I look around and see that everyone is present, from the most scarred-up old bastard to the newest prospect we have. Something is going on.

I walk over to Steezy. “What’s going on, man? Why’s everyone here?”

He looks up at me. “Some big announcement. Prez called an all-hands, but no one is sure what’s up. He’s been cooped up in his office all morning with the lieutenants. Matter of fact, why weren’t you in there?”

“Had to pick up my bike from the shop,” I lied. I’m not ready for everyone to know what happened with Kendra yet. It could cause some serious shit to hit the fan. Losing Grady will be a major blow to the cash flow from the races, and I don’t have a good Plan B to present to Croak and the gang yet.

“Hm,” Steezy grunts. He starts to say something else, but then Croak limps up to the front of the room, swinging that bad foot of his like a dead weight. He raises a palm and everyone falls silent.

“The news I’ve got to share ain’t good, men,” he rumbles. “Grady Freeman is trying to fuck us.”

I make sure to keep my face still. One thing you learn when you grow up like me is that betraying an emotion is the quickest way to get you killed. But on the inside, my blood turns cold. This is not how I wanted things to go down.

“The bastard is tripling his price.”

Angry murmurs ripple out amongst the Inked Angels in attendance. I hear the word “cocksucker” float up more than once.

Croak slaps the bar top to get everyone’s attention back. “That means he wants one hundred and twenty grand a month to keep our little arrangement alive and thriving. You don’t have to be as smart as me to know that we can’t afford that.”

Croak’s right. I’m familiar enough with the club’s finances to realize that one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a month will wipe out whatever profit we make from the drug running and the races combined. We’d be sunk within six months. More to the point, I know that Grady knows this, too. This is a revenge ploy.

The question is, who else besides me knows the reason? I haven’t heard anything from the rumor mill. I can’t imagine that Grady wants everyone to know his wife got snatched from under his nose, and on their wedding day of all days. But that kind of shit is hard to keep a lid on. Sooner or later, everyone will find out.

“But even though we can’t afford that much, we can’t afford not to pay him, either. The feds are getting itchy to investigate the races. Seeing as how it ain’t exactly an undercover thing to have a couple morons racing two hundred miles an hour down the street while we swap drugs on the sidelines, it’s gonna be impossible to keep operating if the feds come lurking around.” Some of the men chuckle, but Croak doesn’t smile. This is our livelihood at risk.

He went on, “Freeman implied that if we don’t pay him, he’ll have no problem getting the feds to pull the trigger on the investigation. That means, for now, everyone needs to lay low until we can get this bullshit sorted out. Don’t do nothing at all that has any risk of drawing unnecessary attention to us. Don’t get in any fights, don’t shoot any guns, and don’t go fucking anybody’s mother.” No one dares to laugh this time around.