Tirone (The Night Skulls MC #2)(51)

“Then what?” he growled.

“Then she started to play my men against me to take my president patch away. She even tried to offer herself to one of them as a prize if he did it.”

“You’re one fucking son of a bitch. Don’t you dare say another word about my mom.”

“You think it’s fucking easy for me to say this shit? To you? Even to myself? I won’t tell you which man so you’ll ask around yourself and find out if I’m lying.”

“I will ask around just to prove you are.”

“After you do, FaceTime Delilah, or whatever app y’all use to talk to someone face to face. Mention the name Eugene Flores to her and see her reaction. By the way, she never knew I found out about the affair she had with him when my men refused to be a part of her game. She thought his club was stronger than us and he’d snatch her out to give her the life she deserved.

“He gave her a broken hip and a bruised face instead, which she pinned on me. She’d figured Flores was a lost cause, and she needed an out so she could find someone else to give her the life she wanted. She threw me in the slammer, ran away to Frisco and scored with McNamara, another fucker that beat her, but it doesn’t matter to her because she’s married to the mayor’s nephew.”

“You’re lying.”

“Well, do you have a phone on you?”

He stared at me, clenching his teeth, wheezing with rage. Then he dug his phone out of his pocket and stormed out.

Jo stood and walked slowly toward me. Then she sat next to me. “I’m sorry about what you had to go through with your father and your ex.”

“I don’t care about them. All I care about is you, baby girl. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Madeline. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some serious stupid shit. When the Lanzas showed me the photo of you when you were a little girl, I felt so protective over you, like I’d felt for her. But when I fucked my hand in the cell, thinking about you, you didn’t have blond hair and blue eyes. I didn’t even know for sure you were her daughter until the end of that visit, when I’d already fallen for the hazel eyes and brown ponytail. You know that.”

“Then why did you keep it from me all this time?”

“Because, after what happened to Madeline, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t hate myself for letting her go.” Tears triumphed over me. “I couldn’t protect your mother, Jo. I wanted to prove to you and myself I could protect you first before I told you the truth.”

Crying with me, she nodded, and then she nestled in my arms. I held her tight, filling my nostrils with her scent. Then I kissed her tears on her eyelashes and her lips. “Forgive me?”

“Yesterday, I thought we were over.”

“You can’t say that. I won’t let you leave me, Jo. Never. I’d been betrayed by women all my life, starting with my own mama. I stayed away from them for fifteen fucking years. But the way I feel about you is nothing like anything I’d felt before. I won’t let you go.”

“But you can’t trust me. When you came here you were looking for Ty in my bed, Laius.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first time a woman cheated on me, but it’d have hurt the most. Would you believe me if I said if I’d found him, though, I still wouldn’t have let you go?”

“I don’t. You’re one of the most jealous men I’ve ever met.”

“I am murderously jealous over you, and only you, baby girl. I’d have probably killed someone…but I wouldn’t have let you go. That’s how much I love you, Jo. That’s how much I’m willing to sacrifice just to be with you.”

She pulled away and stared at me, her face as pale as the dead. I held her hands because I couldn’t bear not to touch her. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. “That someone you’d have murdered, would it have been Ty?”

The only answer I could give her was a long sigh. “What did you want to tell me last night before Rex cut you off?





CHAPTER 27


Tirone



May never glorious sun reflex his beams upon the country where you make abode, but darkness and the gloomy shade of death environ you till mischief and despair drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves.

All my life, all my entire fucking life, I thought my mom was a saint that fell prey to that devil. I thought she did the right, brave thing leaving the monster she was married to. I thought she was just unlucky to have married another. I thought she’d been sacrificing everything just to give me a better home. It was all bullshit. Furore was right about Flores. Talk about living a lie… I’d been living two.

The irony was my father told me the truth so I’d start loving him—like the probability of that was above a fraction—but all it did was making me hate the one parent I thought was worthy of love. Thanks to him, I ended up hating both my mother and father. Because how could I ever love that man?

I’d thought he was a mean guy who didn’t deserve to be a father in the first place, but it turned out he had a good side. He could have been a good parent and yet he’d abandoned me. He’d left me with a gold-digger, lying, whore of a mother, thinking it was best for me, thinking I’d have never forgiven him if he’d taken me from her because I adored her. Well, I adored her because I had no other option. She was the only parent that showed any sign of love for me. Had he taken me to live with him where he could have raised me, where he could have told me the truth, where he could have showed me all that love he’d said he had for me, things would have been different.