Page 78 of Blackout-

I’m about to reach into my kutte and grab my phone when someone flicks the lights on. Instead of my phone, I pull out my gun and aim it at the intruder.

Pipe holds up his hands in mock surrender as he narrows his eyes. His gaze switches from my face to the mound of coke on the desk and he drops his hands.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he grinds out.

Lowering my gun, I sigh and divert my attention to the drugs. For a second I forgot I was a washed up junkie looking to snort my life away.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I mutter. “I didn’t do any.”

Flitting my gaze back to him, I watch as he crosses his arms against his chest and laughs sadistically. It shouldn’t bother me and yet, I can’t help but grind my teeth as he takes another step closer. Disdain alive in his eyes.

“I swear on my unborn child’s life I didn’t fucking snort it. I was going to but…” I stop myself from continuing, pocketing my gun.

“But what? What were you going to say, Blackie? What lie were you going to spin this time? You gonna tell me you just wanted to test your strength, huh? You wanted to see if you were stronger than your demons, is that it?”

Standing, I swipe my hand across the line of coke, sending the particles flying into the air.

“Yeah, Pipe, that’s it,” I sneer. “You got me all figured out.”

“You know, Jack did us all a favor by handing his patch to Wolf. God knows if you were the one holding the gavel, you’d drag us all to Hell. It’s just too bad your wife has to go along with you for the ride.”

Nodding, I round the desk and pause when I reach him. Meeting his gaze, I level him with a look. If he can read me as good as he thinks he can, he’ll know I’m fucking a straight as a pin.

“Yeah, it’s a fucking shame.”

His hard gaze softens a fraction as he studies me. Swiping a hand over his face, he mutters a curse as I brush past him.

Choke on that, Pipe.

Chapter Thirty

Lacey

The first timemy father went to jail, I was just a kid. Come to think of it, I was probably around Danny’s age. When he left, he told me he was going away for work and he’d be back in less than a year. Once a month my mom would take me to visit him. We’d go through the metal detectors and a series of fireproof doors until we finally settled in the visitor’s room. A guard would stand close by watching our every move and my father would be dressed in his‘work uniform’. It never dawned on me that it was all a lie until I was a teenager and he got locked up again.

His second sentence he did at a federal penitentiary eight hours away. My mother was remarried by then and my stepdad didn’t like the idea of her making long trips to see her ex-husband, which left Blackie as my chauffeur. He didn’t take me as often as he went to visit and that was partly because of my age. It was more of one and done thing because I broke down when the buzzer rang, signaling my time with my father was up. The guard came over to the table and I was forced to say goodbye, not knowing when I’d see him again.

I watched him walk away and stared at the numbers on the back of his prison blues until he was out of sight. I silently recited those numbers the whole ride home.

Eight, eight, zero, six, four, one, six, two.

Recalling that day is the very reason I couldn’t bring myself to go to my father’s house this morning. I didn’t want my last memory of him to be his back as he walked out the door yet again. When Blackie left the house, I wished I was still the young girl everyone sheltered. The girl who believed the lies and didn’t care her daddy was away because she knew he’d always come back.

There was no coming back this time.

Not for thirteen years.

I’ll be forty years old by the time he’s released.

Danny will be a man and my baby almost a teenager.

The more I thought about all of that, the more I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep. If life had a do not disturb feature, I’d flip the switch and ask to be woken up in thirteen years. Unfortunately, I was shit out of luck.

But I wasn’t the only one.

Reina was feeling everything I was, and she was feeling it tenfold.

Before Blackie left this morning, he told me my dad didn’t want her accompanying him to the district attorney’s office. Apparently, I was more like my old man than I realized because he didn’t want Reina’s last memory of him to be in cuffs. Instead of taking Danny to school and surrendering with her at his side like they had planned, he said his goodbyes at the house and rode to the office with the club.

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