She again looked down at her lap. “My Abel. My boy. I think that you and I should—”

“McAdams!” a deep voice bellowed. “Time’s up. Stand,” the guard ordered. By pulling on the back of my chair, he forced me to obey.

“You should know I’m not a Bastard anymore,” I said to the ghost of my mother. “I took off my cut and laid it at that motherfucker’s feet. I might not be a monster, but I am a dead man, so I guess it’s good you came to see me, even if you don’t know why you came.” I stood up, sliding the plastic chair against the concrete, startling Sadie who looked up at me with big hazel eyes filled with sadness and naivety, as if she was still the teenager who gave birth to me almost thirty years before. “Get a good look at me now while you can, Mom,” I said, emphasizing “Mom” and holding my arms as wide open as the cuffs attached to my wrists would allow. “’Cause it might just be the last chance you’re ever gonna get.” The officer yanked on the chains connecting my cuffs, dragging me away from Sadie.

From my mother. Even thinking of her as my mother didn’t feel right.

Because, I realized. I already had a mother, even if I didn’t address her as mom she was someone who’d earned the title.

“Oh,” I said, shouting back to Sadie over my shoulder, “And you can go wherever you need to go and disappear to because I already have a mom. Her name is Grace.”

“Grace?” Sadie asked, sounding as confused as I was when she’d showed up. The guard buzzed me out of the room and lead me back to my cell. I don’t know why I felt the need to be hateful toward her, but maybe it was because she’d come back from wherever she’d been and her first instinct was to run away. Maybe it was because no matter what had happened to her the fact was that she’d let Chop break her.

One thing was for fucking sure, it didn’t matter what that motherfucker ever did to me.

I would never fucking break.

CHAPTER THREE

Bear

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER the visit with Sadie, I was out in the yard thinking about our conversation about family when it occurred to me.

Dead men don’t have families.

Suddenly, the thought of never having one with Ti, never seeing her grow round with my kid, hit me in the chest like I’d caught a fucking bullet.

A feeling I’d been familiar with a time or two.

Dizzy with the unwanted thought, I slipped up and hadn’t been scanning the yard for potential threats like I should’ve been. The only bastard I’d seen since I’d been locked up was Corp, and considering the condition I left him in I knew at least he wouldn’t be a threat again any time soon.

Or eating without the aid of a straw.

But they were coming. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I could practically smell it in the air.

“You look like you could use one of these,” a voice said. I snapped out of my Ti induced thoughts to find a black guy around my height, but double my body weight, his jumpsuit ripped at the collar and arms to make room for his protruding muscles.

“Thanks,” I said tentatively, reaching for the smoke he extended out to me from the open pack. I figured if this guy was sent to kill me he’d already done it, probably by flexing my head between his forearm and bicep. The stranger lit a match and cupped his hand around the flame, lighting my smoke and then his own before waving out the match and tossing it into the grass. He set the pack on the table. “Keep ’em,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, and although I was pretty sure he didn’t want to kill me, I was still skeptical of anyone who was willing to do you favors in jail. Favors never came without a price.

“I’m Miller,” the stranger said. “A mutual friend asked me to look out for you.”

“Friend? Well that narrows it down then, because it seems like I don’t got much of those these days,” I admitted.

Miller straddled the bench of the plastic table and it bowed under his weight.

“It’s important to have friends in a place like this. Word is a bunch of bikers caught a bullshit misdemeanor case and are on their way in. Our friend figures that reason is you.” His voice was so deep it almost echoed when he spoke. He took a long drag of his cigarette. “Our mutual friend helped me out when I was in Georgia State, and I owe him one. Shit, I owe that motherfucker twenty at the very least. Figured that preventing a bunch of white boy Beach Bunnies, or whatever the fuck ya’ll call yourselves, from carving you up ain’t shit compared to what he did for me.”

“I don’t think I gotta guess who this friend of ours is anymore,” I said taking one last drag of my cigarette and putting it out on the tabletop. King had done his three years up at Georgia State. He stood up and the bench kept the Miller shaped indent.

He stubbed his smoke out on the table. “He gave me a message for you.”

“What would that be?”

Miller shielded his eyes from the sun. “He said not to get yourself killed and that the girl is safe.”

Thank fuck. That meant King had her at the grove and that the protection I’d set up was with her. Ti staying at King’s was not an option. Even though I was the easier target in jail, Ti could still be at risk and without me there to protect her, King’s family was more at risk then ever. Although I told King he was taking her back home because it didn’t look good for my confession if the DA could link us in any way. If King recognized differently I knew he’d insist that she stay, and I couldn’t do that to him after he’d done so much for me.

“Guess I’m just in time,” Miller said, tipping his chin to the fence on the other side of the yard. I stood and turned around just in time to see the gate slide open and three men enter the yard.

Three of my former brothers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Thia

Ten years old…

IT TOOK ME two whole hours to convince Bucky to bike with me the twelve miles to the pawnshop. After kicking rocks around with his shoe for five minutes, I told him I’d give him my best rod and reel, and he finally agreed.

“How much will you give me for it?” I asked the tall scraggly man with ears that stuck out sideways. I stood on my tippy-toes so I could lean across the scratched glass display case that doubled as a counter and gave the man my best “I mean serious business” face. The man behind the cage on top of the counter wore a nametag that said TROY. Troy looked down at me with one eyebrow cocked like he’d never seen a ten-year-old walk into a pawnshop and try to negotiate before.