Read Online Shadow & Soul by Susan Fanetti - Free Book Online Page B

visit. It was how Demon and Muse—and the whole club, really—had met her.
     
    “He didn’t get that with me. Kota doesn’t smoke cigars. So she let some bastard she was boning do that to my kid. You have any idea how a burn like that feels? Who the fuck knows what else my boy saw or felt with her. He wakes up screaming four or five nights a week. He’s not even three. So I’m going to kill her if I ever see her again. I’m not looking to go back inside, and that sure as fuck won’t help Tucker, so we’re all better off if she stays the fuck away.”
     
    Finn closed the open file in front of him and sighed again. “Michael, I respect your passion. I know you love your boy. I believe one-hundred percent that he should be with you, and that you were treated unfairly at nearly every turn. But I need you to let me be your lawyer and give you counsel you’ll take. You look better the worse she looks. Let’s find Dakota and see what she’s up to. Let’s just see. If she can be useful to your case, then let’s use her. If she can’t, we’ll leave her alone. I think you can control yourself for that, don’t you?”
     
    Demon laughed a little. Finn had no idea. The most control over himself Demon ever felt was maybe half. And that was on a good day, when everything was chill. Put him in eyeshot of the woman who’d fucked up his child, and no, he didn’t think he’d be able to control himself. Especially since the cunt got off on sending him over.
     
    He’d liked her a lot at first, and he was fairly sure she’d honestly liked him at the beginning. He didn’t ‘date’ much at all. Usually he stuck to club girls, because that was simple. But sometimes he got lonely for more than just a fuck. He’d had somebody once, only for a brief time, but long enough to know the peace in a bond like that. So sometimes, he was lonely.
     
    In the year or so after he’d been allowed to come back home, he’d had trouble adjusting. The club moved—and became a different club—and he’d been struggling with staying in one place after the years riding Nomad. He’d started thinking about what he’d almost had before, and he’d felt even lonelier. So when Kota came up to him at a bar and started talking, he’d been open to listening.
     
    They’d been okay for a while. Just hanging out, steady but not really serious. It never occurred to him to put his ink on her; that wasn’t what they’d been. She was a stripper, and he was fine with that. He’d gotten between her and a few overly excited customers who’d been lurking after hours, and she got to calling him her bodyguard. She’d given very enthusiastic head on those nights.
     
    But he’d been a moron, because he hadn’t known she was using, all that time. He didn’t figure it out until it had taken her over completely. She’d robbed him blind. Then she’d started whoring herself out for her fixes. He’d ended it and left her to her vices.
     
    And then she’d tried to use the club to blackmail him. She didn’t know anything about the club; he never talked about that shit. But he’d opened up to her, during their good times, and told her about his childhood. Things he’d never said to anyone, not even Faith. Secrets and shames he’d harbored. And Kota had said terrible things that night, promising to twist old pains into lies that would hurt him now, make his club, his family, see his wrongness, make him lose what he’d only just gotten back.
     
    All to squeeze more money out of him to get her next fix. He barely remembered what had happened after that. Except he remembered her laughing in the middle of it, her mouth full of blood, and he remembered thinking that she didn’t even care if she got her next fix. She’d been high on tearing him down.
     
    In the ER that night, while he was in lockup, she’d found out she was pregnant.
     
    She’d declined to press charges. They’d let him go, and he’d gone to see her in the hospital, to