Gabriel - Jessie Cooke Page 0,10

and all it says was that she ‘passed away’ at the tender age of twenty-three...then it goes on to talk about the family, how successful my grandfather was and everything my grandmother did for the church and the community. Sickening,” she said, tears forming in her pretty eyes. She focused them on Gabe then and said, “I didn’t know any of this, up until a few weeks ago. All I knew about Kasey was what little they’d told me. The woman claiming to be my mother told me Kasey was her younger sister and she’d died when I was a baby. There were a few pictures of her around my grandmother’s house, but other than that, no one talked about her. I believed the people who raised me were my parents, biologically. Then one day this young guy is transferred to my floor after surgery and I felt this really strong connection to him, to you. I liked you, Gabriel, right away. For me, that was strange and unusual. I’ve always been kind of hard on people, it’s why I’m still single, my mama...my aunt, she always said I was born suspicious.” Blackheart chuckled at that; he himself was one of the most suspicious people on earth. He didn’t trust anyone until they proved to him they were worthy of it.

Patrice kept her eyes on Gabe and said, “I set really high standards for myself, and I always have for the people I surround myself with as well. So anyway, this one day a few weeks ago when I was visiting my mother, I was telling her about you. She was genuinely happy for me, at first. She’d always told me I was too hard on people. But when I told her you were in a motorcycle club, things changed, and quickly. She wanted to know the name of the club, which I thought was odd because I doubted that my middle-class mother would know anything about any clubs other than what she might have read. When I told her the Jokers, I could literally watch the color drain out of her face. She told me I should stay away from you, but no matter how much I pushed, she wouldn’t tell me why...other than that she’d ‘heard’ things about your club. I was determined to find out for myself though, so the next day I went to that party with you at the club...it was the first time I saw him...” She glanced at Blackheart again then and after several long minutes she turned back to Gabe.

“I know you can see it. I have his face. I told myself it was just a weird coincidence at first. But I saw my mother another week or so later and she asked me point-blank if I was still seeing you. When I said yes, she started acting so weird again and I’m not even sure where it came from, but I heard myself asking her if she had an affair with Blackheart. I had been trying to figure things out, why she was so freaked out about me dating you, and why I looked so much like him, and I thought maybe that’s what it was. Maybe she’d cheated on my dad and that’s why I looked so much like this guy and not like my dad at all. The sound of his name though, when I said Blackheart, that sent her into a torrent of tears. It was bizarre and when she finally calmed down and I insisted she tell me the truth, about everything. Imagine my surprise when she began with, ‘You’re not really our daughter.’”

Gabe felt ashamed of himself at that moment because he could see the pain in Patrice’s eyes, but knowing she was interested in him before she found out about Blackheart and not because she was using him to meet his president was like a hundred-pound weight being lifted off his shoulders. “Why didn’t she ever tell you before?” Gabe asked.

She sighed and said, “They both, she and my...” another quick look at Blackheart and she swallowed hard and said, “my father. She called him and he came home and they told me the story together. They said that Grandma made them promise not to ever tell me. Then once she passed away, I was a teenager and they were afraid of how I’d take it. It was like the more time that passed, the harder it got. They knew I would be angry. I