Page 13 of Angel

In the reception chair, Bree was up higher but not as stable as she would be in her wheelchair. She needed to get in her chair and, somehow, do it while hiding her phone. That was her goal.

“Prospect, get the door!”

Bree’s head snapped up at the order. Prospect? She looked between the three men again. None of them were wearing cuts. She hadn’t heard the roar of pipes approaching the shop. Her heart started beating faster. If there weren’t unknown bikes in Mount Grove, a passerby might not suspect something out of place was happening inside the shop. She needed to send that SOS message sooner than later.

As the man who’d shot Angel with the Taser dragged her towards the back rooms and the boy went to lock the front door, the third man with the eyepatch turned towards Bree.

“Ain’t you a little young to be workin’ at a tattoo shop?”

Bree swallowed nervously. Should she admit she was Angel’s daughter? Despite that her brain was working overtime as Uncle Bulldog had taught her, her tongue felt like lead and her mouth was completely dry. She barely managed to get out the words, “Summer job,” to answer the man’s inquiry.

The man scowled. “Unfortunate. No one else shoulda been here.” He held up some more rope. “Hands.”

Bree baulked. If they took her hands away from her, she was completely helpless. No phone, no chair. She would be stuck. “Please!” she begged. “I need my hands.”

The man’s single eye landed on Bree’s empty wheelchair for the first time. For a moment, Bree thought he looked pissed—then he burst out laughing.

The prospect came running up to them. “What is it?” Bree’s eyes landed on him and noticed for the first time how nervous he appeared. The cocky attitude was a façade. His hands were shaking, his eyes kept flitting about the room, and his breathing was a little short. Bree would bet money this was the first time he’d done something so hardcore for his club.

Bree didn’t know who their club was, but the fact that the men had called the boy a prospect was telling enough. Also, those sort of specifics didn’t matter.

“Concentrate on your objective.” Uncle Steel’s voice rang through her head like he was standing behind her whispering in her ear. “What matters is your survival. Everything else is just background noise.”

The man with the eyepatch was laughing so hard, he could only point at Bree’s chair. Bree felt herself stiffen through her fear. She loved her chair. It had been one of the first things Angel had bought her upon announcing she was adopting Bree. Even before knowing that Bree would survive her surgery, Angel had bought it. At first, Bree had hated looking at it, knowing it was a symbol of how she’d never use her legs again. Slowly, though, it became a goal. She’d hated her hospital bed so much that the wheelchair had been her objective. She needed to get herself strong enough to get into that chair.

Bree knew there were people who thought wheelchair users were less or that she was broken, a cripple. No one in her family had ever made her feel so. No one talked down to her like her brain was as useless as her legs. Uncle Steel had even bought her a special harness so she could be included on club runs.

Cage had bought her an accessible car.

Bree’s eyes landed on Angel’s feet just as they disappeared as she was dragged from the room. A new fear arose. What would happen to Bree if something happened to Angel? The thought made Bree want to cry as a new fear presented itself.

She’d survived so much only to end up here? A hostage once more?

Her hand automatically went to her side where the scars from her kidney surgery remained. Cage had saved her life. He hadn’t had to donate a kidney to her, but he’d done it so readily and selflessly. If Bree died today, he’d have done it for nothing.

Bree saw how Angel looked at Cage. It hadn’t taken her long to piece together that Cage and Angel had feelings for each other. At first, Bree had been upset about it. She’d had a crush on Cage upon first meeting the handsome man. However, after many sessions with her therapist, she’d helped Bree realize that Bree’s attraction towards Cage had been led by admiration rather than lust. Cage had saved her life and what she was feeling was hero-worship, not love.

Once that realization had been discovered, Bree had been able to move past seeing Cage as a man to desire. He’d become her fun-loving uncle, but she’d never used that title with him. A part of her, one that grew larger every time she saw Cage and Angel together, hoped to one day give him a different title. A paternal title.

Bree didn’t remember her birth father. She had flashes of her birth mom, but nothing with specifics. Bree had been in foster care since she was four years old. Her seventh foster mom had been nice, but she wasn’t permanent. Then Bree had been kidnapped and raped by a pedophile who insisted he be called her ‘Daddy’.

Christ, Bree hated that word. Even after a year of therapy and the progress she’d made, she still flinched every time she heard the word. Scotty and Lila were great kids and she loved having cousins within the club, but there were times when she had to step away from them because they referred to their fathers as ‘Daddy’.

Likely, that word would always have a negative effect on Bree. She had to continuously remind herself that Scotty and Lila used the literal meaning of that word, versus when she’d had to use it to complete a man’s sick fantasy.

Despite her aversion to that word, though, Bree did want to have a father. Angel had become her mom in every sense, but she could see how lonely and stressed Angel was. Bree’s condition and needs only added to that. She felt bad that she couldn’t lend a hand more, which was why she loved coming to the tattoo shop with Angel. At least here, she could help answer the phones and talk to clients to free Katie up to help in the back rooms.

Cage came around their house and helped out when he could. She wondered if Angel even realized how much Cage helped or if she was too busy to put it together. Bree saw it though. The groceries, the home repairs… Hell, Bree’s accessible car!

Whatever was about to happen, even if Bree and Angel survived it, it would kill Cage. More than once, Bree had heard him refer to them as “my girls”.

Her chin trembled at the fear that she might never know if Cage was meant to be her father.

The prospect went over to Bree’s chair and gave the left wheel a kick. “What the fuck is that?”

Anger replaced fear. Bree stiffened. “It’s my wheelchair. I’m a paraplegic.”

The boy blinked like she’d spoken Greek to him.

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