to come up for a meet,” Czar said. “Anything else?”
“There’s the mandatory run with the Diamondbacks coming up. We can’t forget we have that,” Preacher said. “It’s a couple of weeks away, so no worries yet, but if we don’t find Steele’s boy in that time period …”
“We have to,” Steele said. “He can’t be left with Bridges, you all know what he’s like. He’ll hurt him. He likes hurting anything smaller than him.” Bridges was Breezy’s father, and he was the type of man to kick a sleeping dog just to hear it yelp. He’d done so numerous times and laughed as the dog had turned tail and run away from him.
“You want to tell us what happened, Steele?” Czar invited.
He’d known the question was coming. These were his brothers—and sisters. They would risk their lives for him. For his son. They were silent. Patient. Just waiting for him to give them any kind of explanation. If he didn’t, they’d still help him. He knew that.
“She’s my Anya. My Blythe. She always was. It wasn’t some bullshit white knight, rescue her thing. You know my … appetites. The women in that club were always up for anything.” He stopped and shook his head. “Let’s just say, I thought having them would be a way to get through rubbing shoulders with those sickening men. They weren’t anything I really wanted, but they were bodies and they were willing. Then I saw her. The first time I laid eyes on her I was a prospect and she was the daughter of a fully patched club member. There was no going there.”
He couldn’t help shoving his hands through his hair, betraying his agitation. “I watched her, though. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t have to tell my body to react. It was there. One fucking look at her. She was it for me. I thought it was just sex. I just wanted her because she looked like an innocent angel among all those she-devils, but …” he broke off.
“She was different,” Lana agreed.
He shot her a grateful look. That was Lana, always ready to back one of her brothers.
“She was very different. I watched her closely over that first year and the next. Talked to her every chance I got. Her father used her to cement deals with the scum they did business with. She’d come back battered and bruised and he didn’t seem to mind. I minded. I started figuring out ways to kill the bastard and I should have done it. Eventually, I made it known I wanted her. I made certain her father knew. He wanted in with you, Czar, so he offered her to me.”
Czar nodded. “I thought you took her to keep her from having to do any more drug runs or be given to Bridges’s friends.”
“That too, but it really was for me. I just didn’t want Bridges to know how much she mattered to me. It wasn’t safe for any of them to know. I had her for a year. Best fucking year of my life.” He looked down at the table, the pain in his chest that had been there since that car had driven away, taking her from him, increased in strength. “What I didn’t know was her age.”
He dropped that bomb right on them. He had to get it out fast. They hunted pedophiles. They weren’t men to tolerate any kind of sexual predator.
“What are you saying?” Code asked.
“She was fourteen years old when her old man gave her to one of his friends. She was fifteen when I was a prospect perving on her. She was barely seventeen when her father gave her to me.”
There was a stunned silence. It was Czar who broke it. “That’s impossible.”
“She was just shy of seventeen by a few days,” Steele repeated. “I didn’t think to ask her age. Her eyes said thirty, but I should have asked. I should have fucking asked her. I still would have taken her, claimed her for my old lady, but I wouldn’t have touched her.”
He hoped that was the truth. He doubted it though. A part of him was certain he wouldn’t have been that strong, not with her sleeping in his bed, and she would have had to out of necessity, in order to keep her safe from everyone else. He cleared his throat. These were his brothers and sisters. Men and women ready to lay down their lives to help him. “That’s not true. No way