Page 99 of Devastate Me
I remembered what Jeremy had said about who he thought my father was and what he had done to my mother all those years ago. I’d managed to get him to admit his theory to me after the first month of us being hold up in the beautiful mountain town together.
“Clark Anderson?” Tripp asked.
“No,” Jeremey said at the same time I said, “Malcolm Larson.”
“What the fuck?” Both father and son yelled at the exact same time.
“Are you telling me that Mal, the President of the Violent Order, is your father?” Tripp asked me.
“Did you just say that my wife was meeting with Mal?” Kip asked Jeremy at the same time.
Jeremy nodded and I shook my head. “I don’t know if he’s my father. There hasn’t been a test done, but Jeremy had a theory.”
“He is,” Jeremy said quietly. “I got a sample from him. I paid a waitress five hundred dollars to pretend to trip and yank his hairs out of his head. That’s what was taking so long for me to come back, initially.” Dad sighed. “I’m so sorry, kiddo. Wish I could have given you better news, but it’s true. He’s the one who got your mother pregnant.”
“You’re saying that Mal Larson is truly Nova’s father?” Tripp asked again. When Jeremy agreed, Tripp threw something across the room, and we all watched it shatter. “Mal is the asshole behind trying to kidnap Nova. He has videos of her in compromising positions and he isn’t afraid to hand them out. If he wants her, it’s most likely because he has an interested party on the hook waiting to buy her.”
“Sounds about right, considering he did the same thing with my wife before we met.”
“You bought your wife?” Tripp asked, disgust obvious in his voice.
“No, but before she managed to sink her fangs into me, he had been pimping her out in his stable. I didn’t find out until about a decade after the fact, but Clark knew all along. He was the one who tried to buy her.”
“Can we get back to the part where you said you saw my wife meeting with the asshole?”
Jeremy nodded and winced as the movement pulled at one of his wounds. He reached up to dab away fresh blood from somewhere behind his ear. “I followed her to that restaurant where I paid the woman to get me his hair sample. She sat down and had a meal with the man before leaving again. When she left I followed Mal instead, so I’d know where he was headed and could come back for him.”
“That was the day we decided that we needed to pick you up before you stirred up the fucking hornet’s nest and either got Nova killed or handed her over to the asshole,” Mack said. Again, Jeremy nodded, but he was more hesitant with his movements that time. “We weren’t sure what your angle was, so we followed you for a couple days in the hopes that you would lead us to Nova.”
“I got the DNA results back a few minutes before you picked me up. That’s why I was at the hospital that day,” Jeremy agreed.
I was obviously missing something, considering my dad hadn’t kept me up to date on his whereabouts while he was away. The two days he told me he would be gone had turned into a week before he stopped contacting me at all. That was when I knew something was wrong.
I sighed as I started thinking out loud. “My mother was in league with a man who sex trafficked women, who paid for videos of girls in the shower, on the toilet, and everywhere in their homes. He paid to see them killed and I’m guessing he knew about what happened to them after they died, too. My mother was a part of that. Even if she didn’t know what happened to me, she was a part of it from the beginning and she kept going back when she didn’t need to. You were already married to her when she got pregnant with me.”
Jeremy nodded his head again after I recapped exactly how horrible both of my biological parents were. A knock on the door made all of us turn to look. Tripp cracked the door to see who was there and then opened it wide for whoever was on the other side. A doctor came in with his bag at the ready. He took one look at my father and sighed before turning back to Tripp.
“I can already tell you he’s going to need x-rays and probably a little reconstructive surgery on his face. This isn’t something I’ll be able to handle here.”
“I have a private physician whose offices we can use. You just need to get me there,” Jeremy informed them. “My daughter is coming with me.”
“Of course, I am.”
“Would you mind if I come along?” Kip asked. “We have some things to discuss.”
“I don’t mind.”
My father seemed to go along with my answer and nodded to the man who had saved me from an early death at the hands of a serial killer. The doctor and Tripp both worked to get my father out of the clubhouse and loaded into the special transport van he had arrived in. Kip asked me to wait a minute once we were in the main room of the clubhouse.
“Knox is upstairs. I’m going to grab him and then we’ll follow behind them. I meant what I said earlier, if I need to keep my club brother from seeing you, so that my son has you in his life, I will. That is a promise.”
“You’re not really promising her that, are you?” Breakneck’s voice cut in from the couch in the corner where I’d once set up a playpen he brought me for Knox. I remembered how quickly he left me there with the baby to go back to the two whores he had waiting for him. I knew better than to get involved with him then. Unfortunately, I thought he was upfront with what he did and therefore I’d never have to worry about him cheating on me.
Kip stared at his friend for a minute before he finally answered him. “You’re damn right, I am. Whatever she decides to do about you, even if that means she’s cutting you completely out of her life, then that’s what I’m going to abide by. She deserves that much after everything this club put her through.”
Breakneck nodded and then his eyes moved to meet mine. Our gazes held for a full minute before my feet unglued themselves from the floor. I turned and walked out of the clubhouse to go be there for my father. He might not have been mine by biology, but he was the man who raised me and set out to protect me from the evils of the world – even at great cost to himself.
Chapter 39