I stared at the glass of whisky I’d just had Kree pour. My hands shook as I contemplated drinking it, and my head pounded with a headache far worse than any I’d had in a long time.

“You want water instead?”

I glanced up to find Kree watching me with a knowing look. “No, I fucking want this.”

She dropped her voice, but the bar was fairly empty at this time of the morning, so no one would have heard her anyway. “How many days has it been?”

“One.” But it felt like a hundred.

“You can do this, Hyde.”

How the fuck did she know what I could do? I didn’t even fucking know what I could do. At this point, I was ready to throw every last drop of whisky I could find down my throat.

Yesterday had been the kind of day I never wanted to relive ever again. After I’d made sure Charlie was okay and that Tenille would stay with her, I’d had to get back to help King. The number plate on the car that dumped Marx outside the clubhouse came from a stolen car, so that had been a dead end. After receiving that news, King decided we’d visit the last two Italians on our list. The night had descended into bloodthirsty mayhem while I carried out King’s orders. Turned out neither of them was the man we were looking for. All it had done was leave a bloody trail that would possibly have the feds crawling all over us. I’d then gone home to a roaring argument with Tenille who still refused to tell me where she’d been when Charlie fell. The way she fought me told me it was nowhere good. All of that without a fucking ounce of whisky in me.

The saving grace had been when I’d ended my shitty day at Monroe’s house. It had been an explosive battle with her to begin with, but she stood up to me and gave me everything I wanted in a woman.

I’d made it through the night without touching the bottle, but this morning was a whole other story.

I stood and shoved the glass back towards Kree. “Throw it away. And don’t pour me any more.”

She arched her brow. “You’re gonna listen to me when I say no?”

“Probably not, but you’re gonna stand your ground.”

“This is the worst plan. Just so you know.”

I was feeling agitated as fuck, so I needed to get out of there before I took it out on her. “Noted,” I threw back over my shoulder as I headed outside.

King came through the front door of the clubhouse just before I reached it. Narrowing his eyes at me, he said, “You look like hell. How’s your daughter?”

“She’s got a broken arm.”

“And your ex? Still fucking you around?” He’d drilled me on my family after I returned from the hospital yesterday, so he knew where I was at with them.

“Yeah.”

“Go home and sort it out, brother. I’m waiting to hear from Bronze today. He thinks he may finally have something on Ryland, which would be good fucking timing if he did. Until then, I’m just gonna lay low. We can do without you for a few hours.”

I nodded. “Call me if that changes.”

As I headed home, I wondered if it was the best move. With Tenille being so damn hard to deal with, and me being this agitated, the situation was just asking for trouble.

* * *

Charlie glanced up from the kitchen counter where she sat eating a bowl of cereal when I arrived home. Frowning, she said, “I thought you had a busy day on today.”

“I thought so, too, but plans changed. Where’s your mother?”

“In the shower.”

I dropped my keys on the counter and sat with her. “How are you feeling?”

She rolled her eyes. “You already asked me that this morning. I’m fine.”

I ignored her attitude. “And I’m gonna keep asking you.”

After finishing her cereal, she placed the bowl on the counter. “Yeah, well I’ll probably start ignoring you.”

“At which point we’ll have an issue.”

Tenille joined us in the kitchen, her hair wrapped in a towel on her head. “What are you doing home?”

“I figured we had some stuff to go over.”

She stiffened. “We don’t.”

I stood. “Tee, let’s start over here. I lost my temper with you yesterday, but I don’t want us to go on like this. I don’t want us to be angry with each other.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t either, but I’m feeling like I’m out in the cold here.”

I frowned. “How?”

“You’ve got your new woman, and you’ll have Charlie here with you. I’m not going to be a part of it all soon. I just don’t want to feel like I have no say.”

I glanced between Tenille and Charlie. “What do you mean that I’ll have Charlie here with me?”

“She hasn’t told you yet?”

I checked my patience, but fuck it was hard with the way she drew this conversation out. “Told me what?”

“I want to come live with you for a while,” Charlie blurted out.

“Here? You want to live here, with me?” I wanted to believe what I thought was being said, but I was sure I’d fucked it up somewhere. Charlie hardly knew me.

Tenille dropped her arms. “Yes, with you,” she snapped. “She wants to come and live here with you and your girlfriend.” I didn’t miss the nasty tone she took when she mentioned Monroe.

“Mum,” Charlie said, “I never said I wanted to live with Monroe. Why are you being like this?”

Tenille turned on her daughter. “Well, what am I supposed to think? You seem to really like her.”

Charlie’s chest puffed out like it did when she was about to go to war with her mother, so I stepped in. “Okay, you two, enough.” I needed to tread carefully if I didn’t want to alienate Tenille. “Look, I’m all for Charlie coming to live here—”

Someone knocked on the front door, interrupting us. Charlie slid off her stool and said, “I’ll get it.”

I watched her leave before pulling Tenille close. “We need to discuss this without Charlie in the room. Can you hold off until later?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“We also need to discuss our divorce,” I said quietly. Her jealousy over Monroe led me to believe this would be a touchy subject, but it was one I had to bring up. I felt like a complete bastard doing it to her, though.

She blinked rapidly a few times before pulling out of my hold. “I was wondering how long it would take you to mention that.”

I raked my fingers through my hair. “Fuck, Tee, this whole situation is screwed up. Have you heard from Craig?”

“He keeps calling me, but he’s back driving in Western Australia, so he can’t get here.”

“Gibson keeps sending him over there?”

A strange look crossed her face at the sound of Gibson’s name. I would almost have labelled it as fear. I wondered if I’d caused her to feel that way towards him. Not a bad thing if I had. I wanted her to understand how dangerous he was.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Have you decided to leave him?”

I fucking hoped she’d say yes, but Charlie came back into the kitchen before she could answer me. And with her was Shane Gibson.

My body tensed, and a murderous urge came over me. I fought hard to contain it. If Charlie hadn’t been in the house, I doubt I would have been able to control it.

I reached for Charlie and pulled her behind me. No fucking way was I allowing her near him again. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

He kept coming towards me. “Hello, Aiden.”

“Stop fucking walking,” I barked. “Turn the fuck around and go out the way you came in.” I balled my fists by my side.

“That’s no way to greet me after all these years, son.”

I clenched my jaw. All I wanted to do was take the last few steps to where he stood and take to him with my fists. I wanted to kill the motherfucker, but not while my daughter was in the house. “I’m not your fucking son, Gibson.”

He finally came to a stop, not far from where I stood. “You never did understand how I felt about you, did you?”

I’d thought I had. I’d thought he was the best man I could find to be a substitute father when mine had never been there for me. When his son, Brad, had asked me to go away with them on a camping trip when we were twelve, I’d thought all my fucking Christmases had come at once. Not once in my life had I experienced anything like that weekend. And that had just been the beginning. By the time I began working for Gibson, we’d spent five years bonding, and yeah, I’d thought of him like a father. But a few years later, he’d fucking annihilated me worse than my own father ever had. Because giving love and then killing it the way Gibson had was far worse than never giving it in the first place.

“I understand you perfectly, Gibson. You’re a twisted motherfucker who uses every person he comes across. You take what’s not yours to take and—”

His nostrils flared in anger. He never did like being told truths about himself. “You were a son to me, Aiden. And after Brad died, you were the only son I had.”

Rage fuelled me to the point of insanity. How dare he say that shit to me. After everything he’d taken from me…. I wanted to rip those fucking words from the air and shove them down his throat, and then I wanted to slit that fucking throat so he could never spew lies like that again.

My chest pumped furiously while I tried to suck air in. Everything he said only made this harder while my anger ratcheted up. “Why the fuck did you threaten to kill me, then?” I roared. “Fathers don’t fucking kill their children.”

“I had to make you leave, so I could keep you safe from the shit going on with the cops. You would have gone to prison, Aiden.”

I jabbed my finger at him. “No! You would have gone to prison!”

He nodded. “Yes, but you would have too. I didn’t want that for you. I knew you wouldn’t leave unless I gave you good reason to, so I threatened your girls. It was all I had.”

“Fuck that,” I spat. “I don’t fucking believe you!” The fury rolled through me, building in my shoulders and demanding an escape through my fists. I inhaled sharply and tried to keep every emotion I felt trapped inside. No fucking way could I allow it to escape while Charlie stood behind me.

“Why do you think you’re still breathing? Why do you think our girls are—”

I took a step toward him, unable to hold myself back. The air stilled, and a violent calm came over me. The kind of calm that descended whenever I was about to kill. It was the side of me that craved brutality—the side he’d instilled in me when I was a teenager. Back when he taught me how to hunt and kill. “What did you just call them?” I asked, my voice deathly demanding.

Before he could answer, Tee jumped in, fear splashed all over her. “Stop it! You need to leave, Shane!”

My attention was completely on Gibson, but there was an urgency to Tenille’s voice that fractured my focus. She sounded off. Glancing her way, I found her eyes wide and pleading silently with him.

“Tenille, you can’t control this,” he warned, confusing the hell out of me.

“Control what?” I barked. “What’s going on, Tee?”

Everything about her screamed panic as her gaze shifted swiftly between Gibson and me. Ignoring me, she begged him, “Please!”

I finally lost my shit then. I couldn’t control it any longer. Picking up the first thing I found on the kitchen counter—a glass—I threw it at the wall. “Somebody better start fucking talking, or else that glass is gonna be a head against the fucking wall!”

I barely heard the gasps that came from Tenille and Charlie. My target was Gibson. All I saw and heard was him.

“Bradley would have loved our girls,” Gibson said.

Bradley was his son who had died just before Charlie was born. I had no fucking idea what he had to do with any of this.

My fists clenched repeatedly. “Stop fucking calling them that. They aren’t yours.”

Tenille sniffed, and I realised she had tears falling down her cheeks. What the fuck was going on?

An evil smile lit his face. “That’s where you’d be wrong, son. They are mine.”

Tenille gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Her eyes met mine, and what I saw there punched me in the gut.

She took a step away from me, but I snapped my fingers around her wrist, preventing her from going any further. “What did you do, Tee?”

Tears still streaming, she looked at Charlie before looking back at me. “It was a mistake. It meant nothing t—”

“What the fuck did you do?” I roared. The room closed in on me, and I struggled for breath again. I knew that when she uttered her next words, my life would never be the same, but I fucking needed to know.

“Charlie is yours,” she managed to get out in between sobs. “Not Brad’s.”

Everything spun out of control as those words fell from her lips. I’d thought my life had been ripped apart fourteen years ago. That had nothing on this. I existed for my child. She’d kept me going all these years. If I didn’t have her, I fucking had nothing.

“Bradley is her father,” Gibson said, continuing to tilt my world on its axis.

Charlie gasped again. I turned to her, but it was like time slowed, preventing me from catching her before she ran from the room. If my world hadn’t been crumbling around me, and if I was thinking straight, I would have gone after her, but I wasn’t. My thoughts weren’t even thoughts. The only thing filling my head was a fucking train wreck of memories and questions. And after years of locking it up tight, my heart trampled my mind, taking over with too many fucking emotions.

Gibson’s declaration that his son was my daughter’s real father sliced right through me, taking all the air from my lungs. I was disoriented as fuck as disbelief and confusion replaced my rage. I stared at Tenille. “You slept with Brad?”

She nodded through her tears. “Yes, but it was over before Charlie was born. I promise.”

She promised? As if that made all the difference. “You think I care when it fucking started and when it ended?” I slammed my hand down on the kitchen counter, my anger building again. “All I fucking care about is whether Charlie is mine!”

She flinched. “Aiden, she’s yours. I know it!”

My mind connected dots. “That’s where you went yesterday? To see Gibson?”

The guilt that flashed in her eyes confirmed it, but she didn’t answer me. “She looks like you!”

I towered over her. “Get the fuck out of my sight,” I snarled. “I can’t look at you right now.”

If I had to look at her for a minute fucking longer, I would do serious damage to her. Everything inside screamed for me to get her the fuck out of the room. She’d taken every good thing I’d ever given her and trashed it to pieces. Everything I thought I knew, I didn’t. I knew fucking nothing. And it turned out, I could trust fucking no one.

Gripping my shirt, she begged, “Aiden, ple—”

“Now, Tenille!” I roared. “I can’t guarantee your safety if you don’t leave.”

She played the smart move and exited the kitchen without another word, which left me alone with the man I’d dreamt of killing for over a decade. I wouldn’t do it in my house while Charlie was here, but he sure as fuck wouldn’t leave without me delivering a fuckload of pain to him.

My fist connected with his face before he saw it coming. He fell, hitting his head on the chair near him. My boot thudded loudly as I took a step to yank him back up. Holding him by the shirt, I punched him again, sending him flying backwards into the wall. He slumped to the ground, still trying to get his bearings.

I stood over him. “You are going to fucking bleed,” I spat at him. “For every-fucking-thing you’ve ever done to me and my family!”

He kicked his leg out, trying to fight me so he could stand, but I didn’t allow the pain his kicks caused to break my determination. I punched him over and over until the skin on his face couldn’t be seen through the blood covering it. He kicked and punched at me, too, leaving my face with cuts and bruises. I moved like a machine, though. One he would never beat again.

He fought unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head. I gripped his shirt and shook him. “Don’t you fucking pass out yet, motherfucker. We’ve got a long fucking way to go still.” I wouldn’t be done with him anytime soon.

He looked at me through thin slits as his lip curled into a sneer. “You kill me, your club will have to live with the consequences,” he managed to get out while coughing blood.

“You think I give a fuck about that at this point?” I didn’t care. Storm would find a way to deal with any shit that my actions caused.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but I jammed my foot against his face, pushing it sideways against the wall. “Stop fucking talking!”

My phone rang, but I ignored it. I was dealing with something that couldn’t fucking wait. However, it kept ringing over and over. It wouldn’t fucking stop.

Yanking it from my back pocket, I barked, “I’m in the middle of something! What the fuck do you want?”

“Hyde.” It was King. He sounded less than impressed, but I ignored that.

“What?” I snapped, staring down at Gibson.

“You care to alter that?” Still unimpressed.

“Fuck, King, I’m dealing with Gibson.”

Silence for a beat. “Where are you?”

“My place.”

“Your kid there?”

Fuck.

I dropped my head. “Yeah.”

“I’m sending Nitro. Don’t fucking kill that motherfucker before he gets there.”

He was right, but I wasn’t sure I could stop myself. “Make it fucking quick.”

I looked down at Gibson after King made the call. He was barely breathing, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet. He would be, though. By the time this day ended, he’d take his last breath. I’d fucking make sure of it.