Page 57 of Love is Blind

Ink fires back and soon they’re both slurring insults back and forth. Maverick slams the gavel repeatedly until the dueling bitches shut the fuck up. We go over the club’s finances and Maverick shares that Holly is throwing Tara a birthday dinner at Sally’s next week. It’s the big one-seven and we all better be there.

Then he adjourns church.

I push back my chair and go to stand but he points to me and orders me to sit. Figuring this is about me sending Wiz on a personal favor, I sit my ass back in the chair and watch as everyone but Shady exits the chapel. When it’s just the three of us, I cross my arms against my chest.

“If this is about me sending Wiz—”

Maverick cuts me off.

“It’s about Bianca.”

At the mention of my ex, I pull in a deep breath. I wasn’t expecting to hear her name come from his mouth, but Maverick isn’t like Leftie, he’s not gonna try to sway me to be a better man or tell me my daughter is watching over me. Like me, he’s all about revenge and since I’ve taken on the whole Vivi problem, he’s probably looking to repay the favor and take out Bianca for me. Make sure she never darkens my doorstep again.

“If this is a gesture of loyalty, Mav, I appreciate it, but I can handle my own business.” And the way I plan on doing that is by pretending the bitch don’t exist. It took a lot for me to come to that conclusion seeing as my first instinct was to bury the bitch and add another Casper tattoo to my ribcage.

Yeah, that’s right.

Some men tattoo teardrops to left side of their face, one for every murder they’ve committed, but that wasn’t my style. I wanted something more original. I was eighteen and still a prospect, sitting in Ink’s chair with blood splattered across my face when I told him I wanted him to tattoo Casper to my ribcage. I ripped the innocence from my favorite cartoon character and marked my first kill. Casper was no longer a friendly ghost, he was Satan’s baddest knight.

There are over two dozen little Caspers, all the size of a nickel, covering the left side of my ribcage these days, but the next one won’t mark Bianca’s death.

To be honest, after hearing Birdie call me Casper, I may never mark another kill to my skin again. I know there is no way she could’ve known, that it was just coincidence, but still that was just too ironic for me. It didn’t hit me until last night, when I got undressed to take a shower. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I remembered her asking if she could call me Casper. It was like some higher power was sending me a sign, calling me out on my evil ways.

“That’s not what this is,” Maverick replies, forcing my attention back to him. “Shady took Bianca out of here like you asked.”

Not sure where the hell they’re going with this, I tear my eyes from him and look down the table at Shady. Angling his head to the side, he meets my gaze with an agonized one of his own.

“Did you know where Bianca was getting her drugs from?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes and stare at him wordlessly for a minute. Bianca and I didn’t have some crazy love story. She was just a girl who hung around the club that I decided to fuck. She got knocked up and I did the right thing by her because I wanted to be a part of my daughter’s life. But I didn’t love her, and I showed her that much by not paying attention.

“I don’t even know when she started using heroin, much less where she got her shit from.”

I lean back in my chair. She was clean during her whole pregnancy, that much I know. But after Abigail was born, she would rip a line here and there claiming she needed a little pick me up. Abigail was a fussy baby and kept her up all night. She was exhausted—couldn’t function. I was out all night with my club and not much help either. But I had no idea she was shooting heroin until I found her with that needle in her arm.

I close my eyes.

I’m not doing this again. This is not a conversation I want to be having right now. Birdie’s outside waiting for me and I’m not gonna let Bianca fuck with that again. She’s already caused enough fucking anguish, no need for more.

“Shady thinks King was supplying her,” Maverick reveals.

My eyes spring open at that and I try to process his words. King was a piece of shit, yeah, and if he wasn’t dead, I’d probably kill him simply for sport. But I don’t even recall him and Bianca ever exchanging more than a few words to one another. To pin him as her dealer is a stretch.

My blue eyes narrow and harden on Shady.

“Why the fuck would you think that?”

Anger knots inside of me as he takes his time in choosing his words. I’m about to tell them both to forget it, that this conversation is over, but he finally responds.

“When I took her home she was upset, said she thought King had told you everything. I asked her what she meant by that and she told me that he had visited her in the hospital.” He pauses, glancing down at his hands. “He That he was the one that told her Abigail died.”

Like everything else, I didn’t give much thought to how Bianca found out. I figured the cops might have told her or the hospital staff. I never suspected a brother was the one to tell her she killed our daughter and back then, King was still a brother. How he could tell her and not kill her is kind of beyond me.

Shady lifts his head and his gaze locks with mine.

“She stopped talking after that, seemed to me like she got spooked. By what—I don’t know. She got out of the car and hurried into the shelter.” He reaches into his kutte and pulls out a piece of paper. “This is where she’s staying. It’s a non-profit that helps women get back on their feet. The rehab got her a place there when she told her counselor she had nowhere to go.”

I stare at the scrap of paper in his outstretched hand but make no attempt to take it from him. He folds it in half and places it on top of the table. Tipping my chin to the paper, I shake my head.

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