Unbeloved (4 page)

The wrapping pa
per safely removed, I was left staring down at a small velvet box. Surprised, I glanced up into Christopher’s smiling face.

“
Jewelry?” I asked, confused. My accessorizing amounted to a small pair of gold hoop earrings that had once belonged to my grandmother. I had always been simple in that sense, not someone who’d ever cared much for flashy clothing or adornments.

Christopher shrugged.
“Dad said you’d like it.”

Tentatively, I lifted the silky
-smooth lid and, upon seeing the contents, felt my eyes prick with tears.

Of course Hawk had known I would like it. Hawk had always known me better than anyone. He
’d seen me at my best, at my absolute worst, and all the moments in between.

Whereas no other man, not my ex-husband, not
even Jase, had ever taken the time to truly pay attention to the little things, Hawk had always been watching. Whether we were secreted away together in the shadows, lying beside each other in bed, or when we were apart, from across the room, he always had his eyes focused directly on me.

Using only the tip of my index finger, I
gently brushed over the delicate silver chain until reaching the tiny silver heart that hung from it. “Mom” had been engraved in softly swirling letters in the center of the charm. It was beautiful, yet simple. It was perfect.

“
You like it?” Christopher asked.

Clearing my throat, I set the box
in my lap and reached forward, drawing my son into my arms. “I love it,” I whispered hoarsely.

As was typical
at his age, our hug was short-lived, and after only seconds he was pulling away from me, his attention once again on his gifts.

Tucking my legs beneath me, I leaned comfortably against
the large throw pillow beside me, content for the time being just to watch him enjoy his Christmas.

He might not appreciate it
now, but someday he would look back and remember that his mom had always been there for him, was always armed with a hug and a smile. He would remember those times and in turn, he would smile.

Tegen hadn
’t had that as a child, and after repeatedly disappointing my parents, neither had I. But Christopher always would. I would make sure of it.

Glancing over at the cell phone lying beside me, I felt my chest uncomfortably tighten
as my anxiety returned. I just hoped he would be able to remember the same from his father.

Good
God, why wouldn’t someone tell me what was going on?

• • •

It was early afternoon when my phone finally rang, the screen signaling that Tegen was calling.

“
Mom,” she said softly, too softly. My daughter did not speak softly, not unless something was wrong.

Gripping
my phone tightly, I swallowed back a wave of fear. “What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Where’s Hawk?”

“
Mom,” she repeated. “This isn’t a secure line. You need to come home.”

Two days earlier

With the highway stretched out in front of him and nothing but more highway behind him, James
“Hawk” Young could finally breathe again.

Whatever
craphole town he’d been holed up in for nearly a month now had early on begun to wear on him. So when Deuce had called and told him to get his ass to Vegas, he was more than happy to oblige and leave behind the obscenely clingy bartender he’d been trying to shake since day fucking one. Young and hot didn’t necessarily make the ideal companion, and after a few rounds of sex, he’d been more than done with her.

But he was finally free of her, finally back on the road, the only place he
’d ever felt he could just . . . breathe.

No, that was a lie. There been one other place, or rather
one person, who’d given him that same feeling. Who’d taken away the stifling emptiness with just a simple fucking smile.

It wasn
’t the case anymore but way back when, when he still had the woman he loved within his reach, that damn smile . . . it was fucking magic.

Usually w
hen he was on the road this late at night, mostly empty aside from him and the occasional car, he would think about that smile, those eyes, that tiny little nose all covered in freckles. And for just a moment, the emptiness would begin to ease.

He’d think about
his favorite memory, the one and only morning he’d ever been able to wake up beside her . . .

• • •

“Good morning,” Dorothy had said, stretching her body.

Hawk had already been
awake, he was always up with the sun, and had spent the last two hours just staring down at her naked body, watching her sleep.

It
had been the first time they’d ever spent the night together. Between taking care of her daughter and her ridiculous relationship with Jase, spending time together wasn’t an easy feat for Dorothy. But for once it was just the two of them; the clubhouse was empty. For the first time what he felt for her, how fucking deep those feelings went, felt real.

“
Did you hear me?” She laughed and he loved it. Just hearing her laugh. He fucking loved it. “I said good morning.”

Instead of answering her
, he pushed her over and onto her back, looking his fill at her tight little body covered in all that soft, creamy skin. Dorothy immediately tried to cover herself, but he pinned her arms down and quickly rolled on top of her.

Then he
had tickled her.

A
nd as she’d squirmed beneath him, howling with laughter, he’d whispered, “Good morning.”

• • •

Closing in on his destination, Hawk hit his blinker and turned his bike onto the exit headed for downtown Las Vegas. The memory evaporated and just as quickly the emptiness returned.

Another fifteen minutes later
, he pulled up behind an old abandoned shipping warehouse. Hawk shut off his engine and glanced around anxiously at his old stomping grounds. It wasn’t that he disliked coming to Las Vegas; quite the opposite, actually. Whenever Deuce needed one of the boys to make a run to Sin City, he always volunteered. He might look very different from the kid he’d once been, and sound different, but Vegas would always feel like home.

Because technically Vegas
was
home, and he wasn’t truly who he’d spent the past two and a half decades pretending to be.

Yeah, he was a
biker. Just another patch on a totem pole full of patched, leather-wearing bikers living as criminals, not for the money or even for enjoyment but because that was all they knew. It was how they survived, how they paid the bills and cared for their families. It wasn’t about greed or excess, it was about living a certain way, being a certain kind of man who didn’t have to bow down to laws and the government who enforced them. It was a brotherhood, a camaraderie. It was about really, truly living your life the way you wanted to live it.

It was
about . . .

Freedom.

But Hawk didn’t have that same freedom. It wasn’t the same for him. And it never would be.

Like a lot of his brothers, Hawk was just another piece of shit Deuce had fished from the gutter
. But unlike Cox or Dirty, Hawk hadn’t had a hard life spent living on the streets. At least, not at first. But neither did his upbringing resemble Ripper’s, who’d lived a good, solid life, the American dream, until he’d lost his parents at the age of seventeen.

No, Hawk had been born a
spoiled and privileged son of a bitch, his mother a cocaine-addicted burlesque dancer who’d fatally overdosed when he was only three years old, his father an infamous member of the Bratva, a Russian mob boss, the one and only Avgust Polachev of the Polachev cartel.

For eighteen years he
’d been a gluttonous whore, reveling in a life of overindulgence, seduction, and sin. Spoiled was putting it mildly. He’d had more money than he could have spent in ten lifetimes, as well as cars, drugs, booze, and women, all at his self-destructive disposal. He’d had it all.

Until he
’d lost it all.

The summer he turned eighteen
, his father was gunned down inside the man’s own home during an FBI raid. His father had gotten greedy and that greed had made him careless, and that carelessness had landed his father with an undercover federal agent on his crew. Actually, several undercover agents.

After the FBI, fitted in bulletproof vests
and armed to the teeth, had broken down their door and stormed their home, they’d informed Hawk’s father of the stack of evidence they had against him. They told him he’d never again see the light of day, and that a lethal injection would be his last memory of life.

Hawk would never forget what happened next. His father, his only family, had turned to him and mouthed one single, solitary word.

Begi.

Run.

Turning back to the agents, his father had reached for his gun, as had every other man in the room. A flurry of bullets had cracked through the air, and Hawk hadn’t waited around to see what was going to happen next. After pulling his own piece, he’d run from the house as fast as he could.

He ran
, and because he was a wanted man, not one of his father’s former associates would take him in. He was deadweight. His picture was all over the news and there was a price on his head. So he kept running, living in the shadows for two years until Deuce found him hiding out and digging for his dinner inside a casino dumpster.

Hawk had recognized Deuce and Deuce him, having met each other several times in the past. The Hell
’s Horsemen motorcycle club president hadn’t been a friend of his father’s, but a loyal buyer, and because Deuce knew what had transpired in the wake of his father’s greed, he’d taken pity on Hawk and took him in.

Deuce
’s connections provided Hawk with a fake birth certificate and driver’s license, giving him a new identity. He’d become James Alexander Young, a New York native who for all intents and purposes was a big, fat nobody. Deuce burned off his fingerprints, gave him a Harley and a haircut, nicknamed him “Hawk,” then took him home to Miles City, Montana, where he’d begun the second chapter of his life.

His Russian accent
had been the first thing to go. Luckily it was slight compared to the heavy Slavic intonations of his father and friends, developed only because he’d grown up around it. But even so, his transition from mob prince to homeless grifter had been easy in comparison to his transition from homeless grifter to biker.

Learning to ride
a motorcycle hadn’t been the hard part; the most difficult transformation had been learning to live and breathe leather and chrome, to talk the talk and walk the walk. The Hell’s Horsemen, while still a highly profitably criminal organization, were the underbelly of the world Hawk had come from. Whereas his father had once been at the top of the food chain and considered men like Deuce and his boys necessary trash, Hawk was now at the mercy of them. Funny how life worked out sometimes.

As a Hell
’s Horsemen prospect he’d kept his head down, stayed quiet, kept to himself, and did what he was told. That diligence and intense survival instinct ensured he acclimated quickly, gained loyal friends among his brothers, and was unanimously voted in a full-fledged Horseman.

No one but Deuce knew who he really was, something that Deuce had told
him was for his own protection from other MCs looking to make a quick buck or weaken another club. Therefore no one, not even Deuce’s top boys, were allowed in on the secret. Which was just fine with Hawk, since even the most loyal of brothers could turn on you.

It was the reason he was in Las Vegas.

Just this morning Deuce had gotten a tip on ZZ’s whereabouts, a former brother of the Hell’s Horsemen who, if Deuce got his way, wasn’t long for this world.

Over the last year ZZ had been spotted repeatedly across the country, part of the underground fighting circuit. He
’d been made a few times in Vegas, only by the time the information had been passed down the line, the fights were over and ZZ had been long gone.

Not this time.

Blowing out a long breath, Hawk toed his kickstand down and dismounted his bike. He didn’t want to be the brother to find Z, he didn’t want to be the man to have to take the guy out. As fucked up as it was that ZZ had shot Deuce’s son, Cage, Cage had freely admitted that ZZ hadn’t drawn first, and had even spoken in his defense.

But Deuce wouldn
’t be swayed. The guy had shot his son point-blank in the chest. Twice. Then he’d taken off, turning his back on what he’d done, and on the club altogether. Now he wasn’t just wanted by the law, but by Deuce. The president of the Horsemen was out for blood, and when Deuce had his mind set on something, you didn’t question him. You did as you were told or you ended up in the same sticky situation ZZ was in. Sticky with your own fucking blood.

Blood that Hawk was going to have to spill. Merry fucking Christmas to him. His only saving grace was
that after this he was headed to San Francisco for the holidays, to see his boy . . . and Dorothy.

As if on cue,
he felt his cell phone vibrate against his chest. Reaching inside his cut, he pulled out his phone and found a text message from Dorothy.

Christopher is wondering when you
’re getting in.

Although he should have been used to
this by now, Dorothy’s refusal to acknowledge that they’d once shared something more than just their child, he found himself frowning.

All her texts, all their phone conversations, even their
face-to-face time, were only ever about Christopher. Even after all this time had passed, she was still going well out of her way to ensure he didn’t get the wrong idea.

What he wouldn
’t give to wrap his hand around her fucking throat and give her a nice, hearty shake. Despite what she thought, he wasn’t a fucking moron clinging to some childish hope that someday she’d realize she still had feelings for him. Maybe way back when, when she’d been coming to him desperate for something Jase could never give her. Freedom. The freedom to let go in a way she never could with Jase, because with him she hadn’t been trying to win a prize, she hadn’t had the same feelings of inadequacy, the constant looming threat that if she wasn’t as good as Chrissy was, as beautiful, as giving and loving, that Jase would leave her.

All that pent
-up misery, all that desperation, all that hidden anger and harbored resentment, he’d gotten the brunt of all of it. Once Dorothy had realized he was her safe place, she’d never held back on the crying and the yelling, and she’d taken it all out on him . . . him and his cock.

But that was then and this was now, and things weren
’t the same. Not even close.

He
’d gotten her message loud and fucking clear about who she really wanted on the day she’d told him the baby inside her was Jase’s, even though they’d both known she was a damn liar.

Yeah, he
’d fucked that all up. Taking what hadn’t been his to take, forcing her hand, essentially blackmailing her into his bed, none of it had been the right way to woo a woman you wanted. But even now, older and wiser, he still couldn’t bring himself to regret not even one fucking second of it. Not when it had resulted in the birth of his son. Hearing that little boy call him Daddy, seeing those big eyes looking up to him for . . . everything. No fucking way would he ever regret a single moment that had led to Christopher. Not a chance in hell.

S
till, he’d always kept his feelings, his yearnings, and his disappointments to himself. Well, other than announcing to all and sundry that Christopher was most certainly his. After finding out Dorothy had been shot, not knowing whether she was going to live or die, there was no way in hell he was going to let a lying, cheating piece of shit like Jase Brady raise
his
kid.

A good thing
, too, seeing as Jase couldn’t seem to do much of anything since then other than lift a bottle to his mouth.

I
’ll be there tomorrow.