Chapter Four

BISHOP

In just a few days, I'd be saying goodbye to Calli again, the week having moved much quicker than I anticipated.

Watching her leave for college had almost fucking killed me, but she'd only just come home, and now I was going to have to sit back as she went on her next adventure, even if it was just for a few months.

I don't think I'd ever stop worrying about Calli. She was my everything. My world. And the only thing I had left of her mom.

The thing was, though, I'd also raised Calli. I taught her how to protect herself and fight. She was strong as hell, so I needed to have faith in that.

In her.

"We're heading out," Calli announced loudly from across the bar.

Backroad was the club's sports bar. It had only just opened for the night, so it was still reasonably quiet, hence why I was sitting at a booth in the far corner, attempting to go through a pile of supply orders.

Calli practically danced across the floor toward me, but my eyes were drawn directly to Shay, who reluctantly followed her. My gaze lingered a little too long on the skintight, emerald green dress she was wearing, and it didn't go unnoticed.

"Not a word," Shay warned, eyes narrowed as she pulled at the hem.

I couldn't help the smirk that curled at the corner of my mouth, knowing that Calli had forced this on her, probably with some sweet talk and fluttering lashes. I taught my daughter to be strong-willed, but I didn't plan for how she would use that strong will against me and my brothers as she got older. "It's different," I said with a shrug.

Calli threw her hands in the air, cursing under her breath.

"That's it, I'm changing out of this. I'll wear jeans or something," Shay insisted, turning on her heel, ready to make a speedy escape, but Calli was too quick, wrapping her arm around Shay's waist and smoothly directing her back to the table.

"You're not changing because you look fucking sexy," Calli enunciated very slowly and sternly before hitting me with a hard glare. "Right?"

Gritting my teeth, I once again took Shay in, admiring how the dress hugged her curves. It was so smooth, sleek, and rounded in the right areas. And the color complemented her rich, auburn hair.

Jesus Christ.

"Different doesn't mean bad," I explained with a casual nod. "It looks real good on you."

Calli was satisfied with my answer and turned to Shay with a wide smile. "See? You look hot. Okay? I'm just gonna run to Dad's office and grab my coat."

Shay watched Calli walk away before she finally let out a heavy sigh. "We all know I tend to aim for comfort, like my scrubs or an old pair of jeans. This just makes me feel so strange and awkward," Shay explained, once again tugging at different parts of the dress. "Thanks for humoring her and saying I looked good."

She did look good.

She looked so fucking good that I was actually considering being a total asshole and feeding into her insecurity in the hopes she would go and change. That way, I didn't have to think about the bastards who were surely going to be trying to get that dress off her later in the night and wonder why the idea of one of them touching her made me so damn irritable.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring Shay down just because my self-control when it came to the damn woman was almost nonexistent.

"I wasn't humoring anyone," I answered, folding my arms across my chest and leaning back into the seat. "Believe it or not, I don't spend my time lying to keep people's precious feelings from being hurt. If I said it, I meant it."

A blush raced across her cheeks, and she swallowed hard, drawing my attention to her throat. "Than—"

"Ready?" Calli called, waving her toward the exit. Shay backed away, pressing her lips together for a moment as if she wanted to say something. "Shay, come on!"

Instead, all I got was a slight shake of the head, and soon, she was rushing out the door with Calli, both laughing out into the parking lot.

"Thought you might want this," Missy said with a soft chuckle as she placed a beer on the table. "I'm sure she'll be fine."

"Mm," I hummed as Missy walked away, knowing she assumed I was sitting here worrying about Calli going to New York City on her own in just a few days. And honestly, she wasn't completely wrong.

But Calli wasn't the only thing occupying my thoughts. There was something else.

Someone else.

Just as I started to gather up the pile of papers scattered across the table, ready to focus on anything but that damn green dress and the woman wearing it, a body slipped into the booth opposite me, and I glanced up, expecting to see one of my men.

Instead, an older man in a sharp navy suit stared back at me from across the table. His pure gray hair was slicked back, and he was clean-shaven, the type of man I would expect to see wandering Wall Street, not in my Detroit bar.

I waited for a few seconds.

Expecting him to say something.

Fucking anything.

And when he didn't, I finally raised my brow. "I think you've got the wrong table," I announced, matter-of-factly, still waiting for some excuse, reason, or any damn explanation as to why this rich motherfucker thought he could just pull up a chair like we were old buddies. "Are you fucking lost?"

"Sir, can I help you find another table?" Missy questioned loudly as she approached the table, her eyes shifting between the man and me, just as confused as I was about what the hell was happening. "If you just come this way..."

"I'm looking for Bishop," he finally stated, completely ignoring Missy, rolling his shoulders back and tugging at his lapels.

Without looking away from the bastard, I flicked my head, indicating to Missy to get away from the table. The air in the bar shifted dramatically within seconds, the relaxed atmosphere quickly filling with tension so thick I was already preparing for the worst.

As Missy stepped away, several of my men stepped closer, surrounding the booth, poised and prepared to step in.

Not that I needed them to.

I wasn't rattled.

If anything, I was annoyed and a little fucking curious as to just what the hell kind of twilight zone I had slipped into where the rich and stuck-up thought they could just show up at my business and get in my face without me breaking theirs.

In the end, that curiosity got the better of me.

"You found him," I finally answered, leaning back and tapping my finger on the table. "Now, it'd be a good idea if you started explaining what the hell it is you want before I let my boys dirty up that expensive-looking suit when they drag you out of here."

Without warning, he reached into his suit jacket, slipping his hand into the front left side. He didn't even flinch when there were suddenly four guns pointed directly at his head, prepared to fire if he pulled out anything that even resembled a weapon.

But as he removed his hand from inside, there was no gun, no knife, no weapon clutched in his fingers. Instead, he slipped out a photo and slowly placed it down on the table, sliding it toward me. "I was told you were the man to see if I needed someone found."

Knowing my men were surrounding me, I allowed my guard to fall just for a moment, lowering my gaze to the photo. A young girl, a teenager probably, lying in a hospital bed with the blankets pulled down to her waist.

Her body was slim—unhealthily so—and covered in a smattering of bruises and a couple of messy-looking tattoos that definitely hadn't been done by a professional.

"That was my daughter about three weeks ago. Alice Hersh. She'd been missing for almost a month when I finally found her high and working a street corner downtown," the man rasped, his nostrils flared and hands clenched into fists. He pounded them down on the table, the force behind it rattling the walls. "She's only eighteen. Eighteen!"

I sat a little taller, rolling my shoulders back. "You need to calm the hell down."

His entire demeanor had changed.

The put-together man who walked in here a few minutes ago was no longer present, and in his place was a father wanting answers and justice. And the fact that I was a father myself and knew just how devastating it would be to see my child like that was the only reason I didn't immediately throw him out on his ass.

His breathing eased slightly, and he swept his hand through his hair, the perfectly-styled do quickly becoming a disheveled mess. "I want… I need you to find her."

I scoffed at the demand. There was no doubt in my mind that a man like this would have gone to the police thinking they would give a fuck about some teenage girl whoring herself out on a street corner. Truth is, though, in a city with murder and crime rates ranking in the top five in the country, they didn't give a damn.

I pressed my finger to the photo and pushed it back across the table toward him. "I don't know who told you—"

"I know you can find her," he asserted, snatching the photo from beneath my finger and holding it up so I couldn't help but look directly at the bruised and tortured teenage girl. Calli was older now, but I remembered her teen years like they were yesterday—worrying about her every time she went to some party or caught a bus to the mall, hoping like hell I'd done everything I could to make sure this never happened to her.

But at that moment, for a second—just a blink—when I looked at that photo, I saw my own daughter's face on that beaten body.

No.

I couldn't make this personal. The club members weren't vigilantes, saving young women from the streets and returning them to their rich and powerful parents.

"Listen, we don't—"

"I will pay you."

Frustrated that he wasn't hearing me, my fingers curled into a tight fist, and I leaned in. "We. Don't. Do—"

"You bring her home to me," he cut in again, but before I could rip him a new asshole, he pulled an envelope from inside his jacket and dropped it with a hard thud onto the table. "I'll pay you fifty thousand dollars."

Well, fuck.