Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) (19 page)

The next day, I woke up alone again. I was surprised. Sketch always slept later than I did. There was no warmth left on his side of the bed, so he’d been gone a while.

I flipped over and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. Seeing the time had me flying out of bed. It was half past ten. Emmy never slept that late. Even last time she was sick, she was still up before nine.

With swift motions, I pulled on clothes—something Sketch had not let me do before we went to sleep—and rushed out of my room. Emmy’s door was open, no Emmy inside. I found her in the kitchen with Sketch, both of them looking down into a big bowl.

“That doesn’t look right,” Sketch said.

“It looks icky,” Emmy agreed.

“What are you two doing?” I asked.

They both looked my way. Emmy smiled and said good morning, Sketch gave me an entirely different look. It was worried. I didn’t want his worry. What had happened was long over and it was out in the open between us—and soon the rest of the Disciples, which I was trying not to think about. It was time to move forward.

Getting close to the two of them, I kissed Emmy’s head and hesitated over what to do with Sketch. He didn’t hesitate in the slightest. He grabbed my neck and brought me in close for a kiss.

Emmy had never seen me kiss a man. Even in the weeks we had been sleeping together, Sketch and I had never made that kind of move in front of her. He was around us both more, sure, but there was no touching and kissing. Well, I hadn’t touched him and we hadn’t kissed. He touched me plenty, trying to make his point. Still, it wasn’t the sort of thing Emmy would notice or understand.

He pulled back and looked into my eyes before releasing me. He was checking on me, trying to gauge how I was doing, looking for some shift for the worst. It was sweet, but unnecessary. When he saw I was okay, he gave me a smile that made my knees shake.

“Warrior,” he whispered before letting me go.

Surprisingly, Emmy had no reaction to the kiss at all. She just lifted a whisk caked in some unknown concoction from the bowl, and said again, “Icky.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“Pancake batter,” Sketch answered.

“That is most definitely not pancake batter.”

I took the bowl and whisk from Emmy, attempting to stir it. The poor whisk could barely make it through the slop in the bowl. It was way too lumpy, and the color wasn’t right. I met Sketch’s eyes and lifted an eyebrow.

“I don’t know what happened. I followed the directions on the box.”

Shaking my head, I took the bowl to the sink. “You figure out how to get that mess out,” I told him. “I don’t even know how to fix that. I’ll start from scratch.”

I shelved away the box of pancake mix, because I never used the stuff and worried it might have been part of the problem. Instead, I got the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt from the cabinets, and butter, milk and eggs from the fridge. With everything laid out on the counter, I got to work making my man and daughter breakfast.

It was normal, and it was so perfect.

That night, once Emmy was down for the count, Sketch met me in the hall and grabbed my hand. Without a word, he led me to the bathroom Emmy and I used. In it, he’d drawn a bath in the big tub.

“Thought you could use a chance to relax,” he explained.

I melted. It felt silly, but it was sweet that he set that up for me.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You can thank me buy getting naked and letting me get in with you.”

Well, I could do that.

When we were both naked, a process that took a while because Sketch had wandering hands and no ability to focus, he climbed in first. I got in more slowly. The hot water was jarring at first, but I knew it would feel incredible once I settled in. As I sat, Sketch pulled me to land between his spread legs, my back against his front. He was hard, and he worked his hips against me until his cock was nestled between the cheeks of my ass. I felt myself heat up in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature, but neither of us took it any further.

For a while, we just relaxed. It was as comfortable and calm as I could remember being in years.

“Sketch?” I eventually asked.

“Right here, Firefly.”

He was. He so was.

“What did you mean when you said Dad got the club into the situation with Barton?”

He sighed, then wrapped his arms tighter around me.

When he didn’t answer, I started to say, “I just—”

“No,” he cut in. “You deserve to know. I just know it isn’t going to be all that easy to hear.”

I didn’t say anything. Anything to do with losing my dad was going to be hard to hear, but I needed to understand.

“Indian lied to you, baby,” he started, and I was shocked. “Despite what he told you, he always knew where your mom was. She just wasn’t fit to be around you.”

“What?”

“Your mom was into drugs. Heavily, for years. She stayed clean while she was pregnant with you, and for a while after. But by the time you were one, she was off the wagon. He tried for years to get her clean. He paid for her to go to one great rehab program after another. Most of the times he would go out of town for a few days when we were kids had nothing to do with club business. The club always tried to keep him home as much as possible for you. When he left, he was usually trying to find her after she started using again and was on a bender.

“He kept trying to get her to stay clean so she could become part of your life. He wanted that for you. Apparently, he decided he wouldn’t open that door until she was out of rehab and clean for two years. She never made it that long.”

I’d never known my mother. I’d never even seen a picture of her. I had some of Dad’s features, but I’d known for a long time I must largely resemble her, but that was everything I knew. I couldn’t say I was surprised she was an addict, mostly because I had no frame of reference in which to place that knowledge. Until Sketch told me that, she could have been anything.

What I was having trouble processing was everything Dad had done. I couldn’t believe he tried for so long. I knew he would do anything for me, but the time and money he’d put into getting a woman clean was insane. She may have been my mother by blood, but she was also a stranger. Had he thought he alone wasn’t enough for all those years? God, I hoped not. Dad had been an amazing parent, that was why it hurt so much to lose him.

“I’ve gotten all this information second-hand only recently,” Sketch went on, “so I don’t know a lot of details. But, when you were sixteen or seventeen-ish, he lost track of her for a while. When he found her, she was connected to Barton.”

Something about the way he said that was odd. “Connected?”

“She was turning tricks. Became a part of his stable.”

Holy crap. “She was a prostitute?”

“Yeah, baby. Indian would give her money from time to time if she was struggling, but only if she was clean. He even had Doc do a couple drug tests to be sure. He wasn’t going to support her habit. Eventually, she needed a way to finance it. By that time, Barton was her supplier. He offered her a way to get as much of that shit as she wanted.”

I was starting to think I didn’t want him to keep going, but I knew this was something I needed to understand.

“No one really knows why. A couple of the guys think he might have had real feelings for her, either before she got pregnant with you or maybe they developed over the years. I don’t know. But he flipped out when he found out what Barton had her doing. He tried to buy her out of her debt, but it was crazy by that time. And anyway, Barton liked her. Apparently, she was a looker, so she was popular for his customers. Rumor was she was popular with him, too. He was the kind of man who took freebies from his girls, offered or not.”

The thought of that, of what she might have gone through, made me sick. She had an illness and it drove her into the darkest parts of the world.

“When Barton wouldn’t let her go, Indian got the club involved. The Disciples had been keeping an eye on Barton. He was selling close to Hoffman and you know we shut that shit down. His dealers were getting too close to our turf, so they were already poised to strike. If Indian had beef, they were going to back him.

“It started out with just trying to cause an annoyance—rough up dealers, stalk them and get them popped by the cops, interfere with transports. I think Indian was hoping Barton would offer your mom in payment to get them to stop. Barton, though…that fucker is sick. Instead of offering deals or making threats, he killed her.”

My heart stopped.

“He…he…what?” I stuttered.

“I’m sorry, baby. He killed her. I hate to say it, but she didn’t go easy, either. I don’t want to tell you those details. I don’t think you need that in your head—”

“No. I need to know,”

“Ash,” he urged.

I turned in the tub to face him. “Please, Gabe.”

His eyes got dark, like storm clouds consuming the sky. He pulled me to him so I was straddling his lap.

“Barton locked her up, waited until the withdrawal symptoms started. Only then did he set his goons loose on her.”

I felt the bile in my throat. “You mean…”

“Yeah, babe. They took her. Don’t know how many or for how long, all the while her body was shutting down from the drugs leaving her system so suddenly. She died during it.”

I could read the horrible reality behind his words. They’d raped her until she died, and they probably didn’t even realize she was gone right away.

Sketch kept going, like he knew I needed it to be over. “Barton sent a picture of her afterward to the club, addressed to Indian. It had a note describing all of it to him. That was what really broke him. He wanted Barton dead, but he wanted to make the fucker watch as his little empire was dismantled first.

“Indian was out for blood. The club was picking apart the foot soldiers and he was personally meeting with powerful people that were supporting Barton to get them to pull back. I don’t know how he did it, he managed to pull a lot of them, but Barton didn’t want to go down.”

I knew we were there, but I wasn’t ready. Hearing what had happened to my mother had me too weak to take it.

“Barton knew it was Indian leading the club to go after him. He order hits on him, but no one could ever finish the job. Then, Barton took it into his own hands. Indian got a threat, one he couldn’t ignore.”

“What?” I asked, my voice trembling and hoarse.

“He threatened you. Said he’d get a hold of you, use you to replace your mother…” Sketch trailed off and then cursed. “I can’t, Ash. I can’t fucking talk about that shit. I can’t think about that fucker threatening you. Then or now.”

“It’s okay,” I told him, unsure if anything really was.

He pushed on. “Indian, he lost it. He went after Barton himself, but the fucker set him up. Managed to leak fake info about a meet Barton had. When Indian got there, Barton was waiting for him.”

I lifted a trembling hand to make him stop. I couldn’t hear any more. I knew the rest. Dad took five rounds to the chest. He was dead before they fired the final shot, execution style.

It all broke out of me. I’d held it together the entire time Sketch was talking, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I sobbed, huge, choking sobs. I cried for my mom, for how sick she was and for the horrible things that had happened to her. But mostly, I cried for my dad. He’d done it all, all the fighting to get mom clean, the money, hours, and worry. He’d gone to war with Barton because of it.

He died because they threatened me.

I cried because he hadn’t deserved that life. I cried because I didn’t deserve to lose him.

I cried for so long, the tears went dry and all that was left were the empty sobs coming from my aching lungs.

All the time, Sketch held me close. He was my anchor, like he’d been when I first lost Dad.

Without him, I couldn’t have done it.