Torched: Afterburn (Iron Serpents Motorcycle Club Book 2) (28 page)

“Breathe easy, baby,” I whispered. “He’s got a chance now.”

: 24 :

| LIVIA |

Being nosy had served me extremely well over the years, both personally and professionally. Hackers were inquisitive by nature—a job requirement, really—and women on the run had to stay informed to stay ahead. Hell, if it hadn’t been for me butting my nose in a client’s business and uncovering a plot against the club, I probably never would have seen Torch again.

So, true to character, I’d instantly become curious about the little girl who needed my stem cells. As soon as Torch took off to pay Buddha a visit, I headed back to his clubhouse room, got comfortable on the bed, and flipped open my laptop.

Over the next hour and a half, I followed a trail of information. From medical records to social media, looking at pictures and watching videos, I found myself wandering straight into what eventually turned out to be a fucking wormhole. And not the kind where you found yourself on a better side. No, this particular vortex didn’t send me forward into a happier time, it sent me hurling back to the darkest period I’d ever experienced.

For once, I wished I hadn’t let my curiosity get the best of me.

Hearing boots stomping my way, I wiped my wet cheeks and glanced up from my screen just as Torch came tearing in with Zed on his heels.

“When’s the last time you talked to her?” he demanded.

“What? Who?” I asked.

“Nadia, she’s gone.” Getting a closer look at my face, he frowned. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, not wanting to talk about it in front of Zed. “Nothing. What do you mean she’s gone?”

He paused and eyed me with a look of concern, but got back to the topic at hand. “Her phone’s off, her car’s gone from the motel, and Beanie says she took off the last two days of work. I knew she was gonna pull some shit like this.”

“We don’t know if she’s pulled anything, man,” Zed argued. “Her clothes are still there, what little she’s got anyway. The manager let us in.”

“I love how you guys can just ask and get in, so much for privacy.” I switched screens on my laptop. “Hold on, I’ll check the GPS on her car.” I was pretty sure he was freaking out about nothing, but it was understandable with her being Buddha’s last hope. Fuck, I
hoped
it was nothing or I’d kick her ass myself.

“You tagged it?” Torch asked.

“Of course I did. I have faith in her but I’m not a moron either.”

He snickered. “What’s that you were saying about privacy?”

“Shut up, I was protecting an investment,” I shot back. “Did you go tell Buddha?”

“Yeah, he didn’t believe me. I thought I was gonna have to call an ambulance when he got ahold of the doctor and heard it from the horse’s mouth.”

“I bet he’ll be getting the best sleep he’s had in a while tonight.” Finally logged into the GPS software, I immediately spotted Nadia’s car on the map. Though I’d had no reason to think she wasn’t still on the up and up, a sense of relief came over me. “Found it. She’s at the Denver Art Museum, that’s probably why her phone’s off.”

“Why the hell would she be at a
museum
?” Torch asked.

“She’s taking art classes at the community college at night,” Zed chimed in.

Torch raised a brow and glanced over his shoulder. “There something else you wanna tell me?”

“Yeah. Mind your own fucking business.”

“It was part of our deal,” I spoke up, bringing Torch’s attention back to me. “I hate to say ‘I told you so’, but I fucking told you so. She’s been doing great, I think it’s time to get over your grudge.”

“Yeah… I guess,” he conceded.

“You guess? Babe, if she hadn’t swallowed her pride and come back to town, she wouldn’t have been around to get tested and Buddha would be as good as dead right now. Jesus, just admit defeat already.”

Torch looked back over at Zed. “Go get Nad, the last thing we need is her wrecking in that piece of shit car on the way back.”

“Trying to get rid of the witness, huh?” Zed smirked. “Alrighty then, I’ll be on my way.”

“Later, asshole.” As soon as Zed closed the door, Torch walked over to the bed and sat down in front of me. “Okay, I’ll admit defeat this once. I’m glad you trusted you gut about Nadia and didn’t back down. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, all I did was take up her cause. She’s the one who’s hopefully about to save Buddha’s life, I just hope his body doesn’t reject it.”

He reached over and stroked my cheek. “One thing at a time. Now, you wanna tell me what’s going on? Why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t cry—”

“Baby, stop. It’s just us here, this shit’s gotta start working both ways. You don’t have to pretend something’s not bothering you just so you don’t look weak. I’ll
never
see you as anything but the strongest fucking woman I know. You trust me, don’t you?”

I glanced down, my eyes starting to burn again. “With my life.”

“Then talk to me. What happened?”

I let out a deep sigh and pulled up one of the pictures I’d been staring at on my laptop. “That’s the little girl Doc was talking about.”

“The one you matched for a stem cell transplant?”

I kept staring at the beautiful, strawberry blonde child and nodded. “Yeah, I hacked the registry and followed the trail to a Facebook page. Her name’s Nicole, she has leukemia.”

He frowned. “She can’t be older than ten.”

“She’s nine.”

“Shit,” he sighed. “Cancer’s such a fucking bitch, no kid should have to deal with something like that.” He leaned down to get a closer look at something. “Her eyes are green like yours,” he muttered, “like the exact same shade. That’s weird, right?”

I looked down. “It’s not weird… It’s DNA.”

His head whipped back up. “What do you mean?”

I just kept staring at my hands.

“Babe,” he pressed, “Ohio was nine years ago, did you have a kid I don’t know about right before we met?”

“No.” The tears couldn’t be contained anymore, I felt one roll down my cheek. Then another. “She’s my half-sister. That’s my father, Graham, standing next to her. He goes by Townsend instead of Belman now.”

“What? I thought he was dead.” Torch took turns looking at the picture, back at me, then back at the picture again. His confusion was understandable, aside from the eyes and pale skin, I looked nothing like the freckled, red-haired man in the image. My mother’s ancestors had come from Spain, and those Mediterranean genes overshadowed my father’s Irish ones.

I wiped my face and sniffed. “Yeah, I thought he was too. I never bothered looking for him after he dumped me with Mitch and Vince. All these years I just figured his drinking and gambling and fucking with the wrong people caught up to him at some point. Maybe I just didn’t wanna know. Turns out, he not only somehow shaped up, he got himself a nice, new family complete with a replacement daughter.” I snickered through the bittersweet pain. “He even gave her my name, I used to be Chloe
Nicole
Belman. I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a tribute or some sick fucking joke.”

“Jesus Christ, come here.” He pulled me into his arms.

I let myself sink into his embrace. “You know what’s crazy? She was born the day I met you the first time, when I finally made it out and ended up in Ohio.” My voice started to crack. “You… you can’t make this shit up.”

He kissed the top of my head and tucked it under his chin. Combing his fingers through my hair as my body began to tremble, he sighed, “It’s okay, baby, let it out.”

I didn’t have a choice by that point, I couldn’t have held the emotions back if I’d tried. Whimpers turned into soft cries, which only intensified until I was clinging to his cut and sobbing uncontrollably in his chest.

I had no idea why I was falling apart. Was it sadness? Rage? Jealousy maybe? There was no way to sort through it all, no way to compartmentalize any of it; my brain felt like it was about to short circuit from everything coming together in one big fiesta of fuckery. I clung to Torch, wishing I’d had someone like him to cling to as a kid and letting myself be rocked and soothed until the tears ran dry on their own.

It was only when my brain’s defense mechanisms kicked in and replaced the recollection of where I’d come from with an awareness of where I was now, that my wounded psyche ran out of steam.

Eventually, my senses returned and I managed to regain my composure, leaving a symbolic wet spot on Torch’s gray t-shirt where my tears had soaked in.

“I’m gonna take care of him,” he promised.

“I don’t get a say?” I asked, not quite sure what my say was yet.

“Are you having an attack of empathy here? The piece of shit deserves a slow and painful death for what he did to you. And I’m more than happy to make it happen. Fuck him.”

“Nothing happens until after the transplant.”

“Babe—”

“Torch, I’m not talking about this right now,” I cut him off. “It’s not that little girl’s fault she got the same shitty half of our genetics. Like you said, one thing at a time. I know there’s an honor thing in play, but what my father did happened long before you were ever in the picture. I think that gives me a right to decide for myself.”

“The only decision you should be making is whether he dies by bullet, knife, or rope,” he argued. “The motherfucker gave away his fifteen-year-old daughter in a goddamn poker game.”

“I know what he did, Torch,” I snapped. “And you have a right to your opinion, but it should be
my
choice. How many times are we gonna keep having the same argument? If it doesn’t affect you or the club, let me figure it out for myself. I thought we were past this with everything that’s happened the past few weeks. What are you worried about? That I’ll go running back to him like a child desperate for a family? Thanks to you, I
have
a family, that’s not even on the table. No matter what, I want nothing to do with Graham.”

“Alright,” he conceded. “You’re right, it’s your call. I just hope you use your head instead of your heart, we both know there’s a big one behind that cold wall and I don’t want you wasting it on a man who’s not worthy of so much as breathing the same air as you. I’m not trying to take anything away from you, Liv, for once I just want you to let me help carry the load. Killing your blood isn’t easy, no matter how much you hate them. Can you just give me that inch? Can you let me take care of it if that’s what you decide?”

I touched his cheek and gave him a kiss. “Yeah, I can do that. You know, sometimes I have these dreams of my time on the run and I wake up in a panic thinking I’m still on my own—”

“Sweetheart, you’ll
never
be on your own again, that’s the only reason I keep caving on things no other man in my position would. I’m not just trying to keep you around because I’m a selfish motherfucker who’d rather die than give you up, I’m trying to make sure your stubborn ass doesn’t walk away from the people who love you almost as much as I do. If anything happens to me, I can rest in peace knowing my brothers are gonna be there to step up for my old lady. Nobody’s ever gonna abandon you again. You hear me?”

“I hear you.” Pausing, I couldn’t help but smirk. “Look at us and our daddy issues. What the fuck?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Right? This is why it’s better to choose your own damn family.”

: 25 :

| LIVIA |

I sat on the roof of the clubhouse and watched over the cookout below. The place was packed with Serpents—over forty with our guests—and the mood was somewhat light considering the circumstances under which we’d gathered. The out-of-towners had been nothing but cordial and respectful, but I was the only female to be seen. Sometimes a girl needed a breather when drowning in endless waves of pure testosterone.

Hearing boots clanking up the ladder, I looked over my shoulder and saw Torch’s head pop up over the roof line.

“Hey, what are you doing up here?” he asked.

“I just had to get away from the crowd for a minute.”

He scowled. “Did one of these assholes make a pass or something? Tell me who, I’ll fuck him up.”

I laughed and shook my head. “No, relax. They’ve all been on their best behavior around me.”

“Good.” He sauntered over and took a seat next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “You thinking about him?”

I let myself relax into his chest. “Who?”

“Your old man.”

“I don’t think about things I can’t change, babe,” I sighed. “What’s the point?”

“You never wonder how life would’ve turned out if he hadn’t done what he did?”

I stroked his muscular thigh and sighed. “No. I have
you
, don’t I? My life couldn’t have turned out any better, there’s nothing in the past worth looking back on… Is that something you think about? How different things would be if you hadn’t had to run away from home?”

He shrugged and took a drink of the beer he’d brought up. “Only to think about what my sister could’ve become if I’d gotten her out too. Emily had a good heart, I wish she’d had more time to leave a mark on the world and that I could’ve at least seen her one last time. I was working on trying to make things right after our old man spent years poisoning her brain to turn on me. Turned out, I didn’t have as much time as I thought I did.”