* * *

“Everything go down okay?” Scott asked when I entered his office an hour later.

“Yeah. J said it felt too easy and I have to agree with him,” I replied as I sat opposite him.

“It helped that we knew his schedule so well; knew his area of weakness.”

“True. How did your end go?”

He grinned, and it was the first time I’d seen a smile on his face for weeks. “It’s been too long since Storm has had some fun, brother.”

Brother.

Thank fuck.

“You think it worked?”

To give Storm an alibi for the time of the murder, for when Ricky’s guys went digging, we’d set up a distraction. Scott, Nash and every other member we could round up had headed over to the busiest bar in The Valley where we’d arranged for about ten chicks to be at, including Velvet. She’d staged an impromptu wet t-shirt competition and when the boys had turned up, Nash had revved them up to get involved and cause a scene, dragging as many of the bar’s customers into.

“Yeah, it worked. So many guys got into it that the bar owners called the cops who had to come and settle everyone down. The girls did a great job getting it all going, and it was fuckin’ funny watching the cops try to do their job while all the drunks ignored them. And it must have been a slow news day because Channel Ten arrived and filmed it all.”

“So now we wait and see where the dust settles,” I said.

“Yeah. I figure we’ve got eyes everywhere, watching all members’ families. We can’t do much more than that.”

I was silent for a moment, while I tried to get my thoughts in order so I could say what I needed to say. Eventually, I went with simple. “Thank you, brother.”

He knew what I meant and nodded. “I’m sorry about your family.”

“Yeah. My father was a prick, but my mother and brother didn’t deserve what happened to them.” It was odd to talk about the part of me I’d kept locked away from him for so long now.

“Fucking fathers,” he muttered. “We wouldn’t be here without the sons of bitches, but we’re sure as hell better off without ours, Griff.”

No truer words had been spoken about my father. And after all these years, it felt good to be able to talk about this with Scott.

Maybe my faith in family could be restored after all.

19

Sophia

I don’t know what made me do it, but after work that day, I found myself at the hospital my mother was at. Perhaps it was the good day I’d had that began with Griff being amazing this morning and ended with my boss being fired for being inappropriate with a number of the female staff. Regardless of the reason, I stepped through the door of her room at around five thirty and my past collided with my present in a way I could never have predicted.

She knew who I was the instant she saw me. How could she not? I was her spitting image, minus nineteen years. “Sophia,” she said softly, and I sucked in a breath at the sound of her voice. I’d recognise that voice anywhere.

With hesitation, I took the few steps to her bedside. I struggled with what to call her but in the end I went with the only name I knew her by. “Mum.”

She motioned to the chair next to her bed. “Sit, baby.”

I hated that word on her lips, but I silenced that thought. Sitting, I asked, “How are you feeling?”

She shrugged. “I’m okay. The docs are looking after me well.”

“That’s good.” God, this conversation was so stilted.

“I want to know about you, baby. How are you?”

My eyes widened. Did she mean in general? Or how had I been for the last twenty years? Her question threw me and I was lost for words.

“Sophia?” she nudged me.

Without warning, my emotions surged forward and took over, and as the words fell from my mouth, I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. Standing, I threw my words at her as if they were all the hurt she’d ever given me – the hurt I had desperately wanted to throw back at her my whole life. “If you’re asking me how I am today – now – I’m good. Amazing even. But if you, by any chance, want to know how I’ve been for the last twenty years – since you last saw me – I’ve been up and down, to hell and back. All because of you.” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and then continued. “I don’t know why I came here today, but perhaps it was to ask you for one thing. Please tell me how a mother can walk away from her daughter and her husband when he’s on life support, dying? Did you feel any guilt over that? Or did you just carry on with your life and build another family? Another family that you incidentally screwed over, too.”

She sat staring at me, blinking – blinking away the tears that she didn’t deserve to even have. “Baby - ”

“No! Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that!” I yelled at her, my heart beating wildly, and my body pulsing with adrenalin.

“You don’t understand…your father and I were over long before his accident.”

I stared at her. “And what about me? Were we over, too? How does a parent even get to decide something like that? I was nine. Nine!”

“I wasn’t mentally stable. It was better for you that I left. I did it for you.” Her eyes were pleading with me to understand, but this was something I would never understand.

I shook my head. “No. You left for yourself, and even if you left for me, you should have come back. You should have gotten the help you needed, after you made sure I was okay, and then you should have come back. That’s what a mother does. They don’t just abandon their child when shit gets too hard…oh, my God, I can’t even look at you right now.” I turned away from her, my mind and body a mess of emotions and thoughts and hate. The hate was consuming me so much I felt like I would vomit. Clutching my stomach, I focused on my breathing and willed myself not to throw up.