Chapter Twenty-One

Coyote

Iwatched Bethany head out the clubhouse with Nessa in her arms feeling conflicted. I really wasn't happy about her going home by herself, even if she had three prospects shadowing her. Cyclops' antics this morning made me fucking mad. I don't know what he was playing at, we'd had a truce with Twisted Metal for a while now, though while my prez seemed to think they were heading on the straight and narrow, I wasn't quite as charitable. Once a fucking outlaw club, always a fucking outlaw club. There are some stains that can't be washed out.

I turned to my brother-in-law, "What the fuck was that all about? You know someone tried to run my woman off the road this morning."

"The fuck?" Breaker said.

Okay maybe I was exaggerating, but I didn't like that shady fucker anywhere near Bethany. I shook my head, "One of the Twisted Metal bastards was being an ass. The fucker with one eye and the Dixie swastika bandana. I chased him off."

"Wouldn't want any of them near my woman," Breaker scowled. I noticed he was holding a piece of paper, and once more I wondered what was so urgent that he needed me to stay back.

"I gotta skedaddle," I said, "You wanna make this snappy?"

"In here," he said gesturing to Hacker's office. I followed him in, our IT guru was out back, so his space was empty.

I sat down in one of the chairs, "Well?"

He got right down to it, "I know you and Bethany have been getting close recently, especially after the fire." I nodded, "I saw you playing happy families earlier."

"Is that a crime? I like Bethany, I like her daughter, they're a package."

"Her daughter," Breaker said darkly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I take it she's not told you who the baby daddy is yet?" my brother-in-law said as he glanced at the piece of paper between his thumb and forefinger.

"No, and I'm not rushing her, she'll tell me when she's good and ready," I ran my fingers through my hair in exasperation. Breaker didn't realize that Bethany had a lot of trauma from what happened to her before she took off. I hadn't told anyone about the rape, as I figured that was her business. They only knew that she upped and left me.

"Surely you aren't that fucking blind, brother?" he said as he paced across the floor.

"Are you on about that again? I told you, she got pregnant after she left here. I think she hooked up with a guy in LA, she told me she worked as a live-in housekeeper at a motel, I wondered if maybe it was the owner, and she was embarrassed—"

"Fucking bullshit!" he exclaimed, and threw the piece of paper down on the desk in front of me.

"What's this?" I asked, my eyes glanced over the page, it looked like a printout of some sort.

"Read the last fucking line," Breaker said.

"The probability of Mr. Reyes being the biological father of Vanessa Marks is greater than 99.9%."

"DNA don't lie."

"What?" I said, my heart felt like it was racing in my chest, and nothing was making any sense.

"She lied to you," Breaker spat out.

"But she—"

"She fucking lied to you, she's been keeping your kid from you all these years. You ever wonder why the bitch crawled back into your life now you're opening your own business? She's wanting fucking child support."

"No," I protested. "No, Bethany isn't like that. Besides that, don't you remember? Callie and her boss cooked up the idea to get us back together."

"Maybe he was in on it too, or he wanted rid of her, maybe he even set the fire as a way to get her out of his place?"

My brother-in-law had lost the plot, "That's just crazy. He wouldn't set his own fucking house on fire just to get rid of the woman who lives in his fucking pool house," I growled.

"Are you defending her? After what she did to you?"

I shrugged, now the adrenaline was wearing off, my head was clearing slightly. I was a father, I was a fucking father. That sweet little girl was mine.

"She must have had her reasons," I countered, then I had another thought. "Anyway, how did you get this?"

"Does it matter?" Breaker asked.

"Of course it fucking does!"

"The morning we cleared out her place at her boss' pool house, I got Mace to go ahead and snag anything he could find that might have the kid's DNA on it. Got her hairbrush and sent it off to the lab with a sample from you," he said. At least he had the good grace to look embarrassed at getting a sample from me, though I dreaded to think what they'd sent.

"Fucking hell, I'm really not sure what to think about this, it's totally blindsided me."

"I can well imagine it, brother," Breaker said patting me on the shoulder.

I sat there shaking my head, staring at the piece of paper in disbelief.

"How do you feel about it?" he asked.

"About that little girl being mine? Fucking over the fucking moon," I said as my face involuntarily split into a shit eating grin.

"You're not pissed that Bethany kept it from you?"

Was I pissed? I really wanted to be angry, because she knew that I would do anything for her. Surely, she knew that if she'd told me I would have been overjoyed?

But then a thought came into my mind and my world came crashing down.

The timing… the attack…

Oh fuck no.

My poor Bethany must have thought the baby might be her rapist's, and that was why she couldn't tell me. I wanted to tear that bastard—whoever he was—limb from limb. Because of what he'd done, he'd not only violated my woman, but he'd resulted in us parting for all those years and had kept me from my daughter.

"I need to go home," I said as I got to my feet.