Page 18 of Ours

Walking down the hall, men were shouting at each other, it was chaos. I saw Chief standing back letting it unfold.

“You want to step in?” I said, and he smirked at me.

“Last time I checked, I hadn’t kept the woman in charge of this mornings breakfast, up all night.”

I gritted my teeth. “You like ya ceiling?” he frowned and I pulled my gun shooting at the roof, causing most men to go to the ground. “Get ya asses on those bikes you love so fucking much and sort ya self out some fucking food. Till further notice, kitchens closed.”

Chief chuckled as men grumbled, getting themselves off the ground and storming out. They knew better than to say shit to me.

“So kitchens closed ey? You bedding the women that run it during the week as well?” Chief takes the cigarette from above his ear.

“Shouldn’t speak about ya daughter like that.” I then remembered I’m out of smokes.

Chief was staring at me. “Never made sense why you went for the national president patch.” Hetilted his head. “You knew, you’d get the president patch here. But you fucking left anyway.” He then shook his head.

“Chief.” I didn’t know if this was a conversation I should be having with Gabriella or him. But I knew, if I brought it up with Gabriella, she wouldn’t give me a straight answer. “What happened to Gabriella’s heart?”

His eyes widened slightly. “She told you about that?”

“What happened?”

“Come on boy, something you should see.” He said, and walked past me. I followed him to his study. “You’ll probably want to sit down.” I didn’t question him on why. Out of all people Chief knew my reactions the best, he pulled out a folder. “Had this set aside for you, for when you came back wanting answers.”

He dropped the folder in front of me. I opened it, and it’s Gabriella’s handwriting. I looked at Chief “Should I be looking at this?” Didn’t want to invade Gabriella’s personal records.

“Gabriella didn’t take you leaving well. At first I thought she was dealing with it as expected. Then her problem got bigger.” He explained but I wasn’t following. “She got addicted to drugs Son. She just wanted to numb herself. She went through her own prescriptions quickly, then turned to the club stock. When we capped out, she turned to addicts.”

I couldn’t form a word. I just watched his expressions darken with sadness. “Overdose, rehab. It was a pattern. I thought she was clean, then another overdose. Over and over, it happened.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you take the drugs off her!”

“She kept up a good front.” He said like I couldn’t judge him. “Finally one overdose, she went too far, massive heart attack. She died. Heart failure. Only to get a heart transplant that same night.” He moved the letter and pointed to a picture. “Took that the next day, she was in a coma for five days following her open heart transplant.”

I stared at the photo.

“She got clean. But it took her dying before she did it. Nearly losing her life, wasn’t enough. She had to lose it.” He added. “It was the day before she was coming home, I cleaned her dorm room. Found that.” He shoved a piece of paper at me, “She can’t remember those days. And I never showed her the letter.”

My eyes went to Gabriella’s neat and tidy handwriting.

Hudson,

I lost our baby.

I bet I have your attention now. Or perhaps not. If not, then I guessed that says enough and you can finish reading here.

I lost my purpose and heart when I lost you and our son. Yes I was that far along.

I—

The writing stopped there. Nothing more was written. I saw the tear stains on the piece of ripped out piece of paper.

“Attempted suicide.” I muttered, and looked up seeing the confliction in his eyes.

“She doesn’t remember much of those days leading up to her last heart attack. Maddox and I decided it was best to keep it from her.”

“Does she remember the baby?”

He scoffed. “She doesn’t remember days Hudson. Not years. Of course she recalls ya kid. But doesn’t mention those days.”

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