Dark Secret - Avelyn Paige Page 0,5
she doesn’t really roll in any other social circles, which is partly my fault. Her dad and stepmom hate my association with the club, and as her dad has put it more times than I can count: I’m putting his little girl in danger. Let’s just say that anytime she wants to spend time with me, she has to come up with an excuse to leave the house. It hasn’t been easy.
“Fuck!” I scream, punching my fist against the door, leaving a dent in the gray metal. Heading back down to my bike, I fire her up and head to the one place I never wanted to cross the threshold of again—her dad’s.
After about a fifteen-minute drive, I arrive at one of the largest homes on the block, nestled into an old money neighborhood on the city’s northeast side. Driving right through the open metal gate, I ride straight for the front entrance where her father stands staunchly on the large front porch, his arms folded across his chest. The security system I helped to install for him is doing its job a little too well for my liking.
“Get off my property, boy! You’re trespassing!” he shouts, his thick Southern accent biting out every word.
Dismounting my bike, I stalk toward him, every muscle in my body coiled with tension. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone.”
His words hit me like a freight train. “What do you mean she’s gone?”
Charging down the steps, he stops a few feet away from me in the driveway. “My daughter is no longer your concern.”
I snap. Lunging, I grab him by the lapels and draw him closer to me. “You’d like it that way, wouldn’t you, asshole? But she loves me. She wouldn’t just fucking leave like that. What have you done to her?” I growl. “Tell me where she went.”
Shelby’s dad shoves me back, hard, and with one swing of his arm, he slams his fist into my jaw. Shocked, I fall back, landing on my ass in the gravel driveway.
“My daughter wants nothing more to do with you. She’s finally going to live her life without you.” His eyes are wide and his chest heaves as he stares me down. “You stay the hell away from her.”
“Honey, is everything okay?” Shelby’s stepmother, Lorna, calls out to us. Looking up, I see her standing at the edge of the porch, shaking. “Do I need to call the police?”
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Go on inside. He was just leaving.” He smiles back at her with a wave, but she doesn’t move. Turning his attention back to me, he kneels down, close to my ear, and whispers, “You step foot on my property again, not even your club will be able to protect you from me.”
Without another word, he rights himself, turning his back to me. He trudges back up the steps to his wife and they disappear into their house, dismissing me one final time. Dismissing the life I’d had planned for his daughter, just like she had.
With a hole in my chest where my heart should be, I pick myself up off the ground and walk to my bike, but not without taking one last look at the house of the girl I love before riding away from the property.
On my trip back to the clubhouse, I think about Shelby and what I could have done wrong. She’s been my everything. Even as I was getting my patch this morning, my mind was on her and the commitment I had hoped to make to her tonight. The commitment that’s burning a hole in my pocket, nestled inside its velvet box.
Shelby
Present Day
I slam my fist down on the detective’s desk, sending office supplies scattering onto the floor. “She’s not late! Somebody has taken her!”
Detective Fischer leans back in his seat, scanning the debris left from my outburst. “Miss Dawson, I’m simply trying to look at all available avenues. Most cases of a missing teen is the result of them wanting to spread their wings, stepping out on the rules put in place by their parents. They take off, have some fun, then return home with a hangover and needing to sleep it off.”
It’s all I can do not to reach across his desk, take his smug face into my hands, and shake some sense into him. “My daughter is twelve years old. She’s not a teenager. She’s not ‘spreading her wings’.” I lean forward, getting in his face, and pin him to his seat with a glare. “I’m telling