2
DECOY
Decoy
Present Day
My solicitor was younger than me. She was cleverer too. But sitting in her stuffy office, surrounded by legal texts and documents crammed with big words, it wasn’t hard to feel thick as shit regardless.
“Don’t swear, Daddy.”
A daily battle, and sometimes the mess my life had somehow become got the better of me and it was all I could do not to shout obscenities to the moon. “Can you say all that again?”
The solicitor’s name was Jeanette. She was patient and kind. But her personality was brisk and didn’t fit the anxious, needy human I became whenever I walked through her door.
“All I’m saying is that it would be better if the person taking Ivy to school when you have to work was someone closer to you than a work colleague. And preferably someone without a criminal record.”
“Ivy likes going to school with Liliana. And Mateo’s record is clean.”
“His husband is a convicted murderer.”
I flinched. Couldn’t help it. For Embry’s sake more than mine. “That was years ago. Lauren wouldn’t know that.”
“The conviction was years ago. He was still in prison when Ivy was born. And what if Lauren finds out? Is it worth the risk?”
Nothing was worth the risk of losing my daughter, but guilt ate at me all the same. I took Liliana to school because it helped her feel like a normal kid. Mateo returned the favour because it helped him feel like a normal parent, despite the fact he tailed me both ways each and every time. “Okay. I won’t let her go with Mateo anymore.”
“Is there anyone else who could take her when you’re working?”
“No. I just won’t work. My boss will take the hit if Lauren switches on me at the last minute.”
Jeanette nodded, making a note on her pad. “I know it’s not fair, but your commitment to being flexible looks good to a judge. The stability you’ve found in the last few years. The only thing that would make it better at this point would be if you had a partner. Or a family member close by to support you when you need help.”
I nursed the plastic cup of tepid water I’d been clinging to since I got here. “I don’t have any family. And I’m single. I have to be. Can you imagine Lauren if I had a girlfriend?”
Jeanette winced. “Actually, I can. But it’s not uncommon for either side to react badly to a potential step-parent. You don’t like Lauren’s boyfriends and you’ve never met most of them.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her that Ivy didn’t like my ex-wife’s parade of mystery men either, but I swallowed it. My baby girl wasn’t in the room, but I’d fought hard to make hiding my feelings about her mum second nature. A bland smile. An easy chuckle that ripped a fresh wound every time I forced it out.
My sweet kid didn’t deserve an ounce of hate in her heart.
The meeting wrapped up with another cycle of paperwork destined to go nowhere and a four-figure bill I could only afford because of the brotherhood that had saved my life. I jammed my abused debit card into the machine and tapped in my PIN, tense until the payment went through, despite knowing my bank account had the bones to front it.
I wasn’t used to having money. Or security. Hell, I wasn’t used to having friends. Or a boss who’d arrange his entire schedule around my ex-wife’s pathological need to be difficult. Sometimes I had to pinch myself, and tapping my card for a couple of grand without breaking a sweat was one of those moments.
One eye on the time, I left Jeanette’s office. The other eye was hazy as stress manifested with the kind of deep thought that could drown a man. I met with Jeanette once a month and I always came away with hopelessness seeping from my pores. But it felt different today.
Thicker.
Heavier.
The idea of bringing another person into this wreck was ridiculous, but I understood the heart of the message. Normality. Two parents. One house. A routine that didn’t involve abandoning contact with my stepson for the sake of another man caught up in this mess. Stand-offs at the side of the road multiple times a week. Or the feds hauling me off the motorway and interrogating me long enough to make me miss Ivy’s first dance exam.
Rubi asked me once if I’d go back to Lauren for the sake of being with my kid.
I’d said no.
Then yes. Then I’d left the bar to bang my head against the wall outside, because there was no right answer to that question. Lauren was a bad person. I knew that now, after years of coercive abuse and control. But . . . she was the mother of my child. Ivy loved her. Damn, I’d loved her once, and it was a tough fact to ignore that she was the only person on this planet who’d ever chosen to have me in their life.
I reached my car and jammed my phone onto the bracket attached to the windscreen. It had been on silent while I’d been with Jeanette, but it was alight with messages now.
Rubi: Ahoy. Route for next week is in the cloud. I’m going home tonight, but come over later if you want to hash it out better xxx
Orla: Do you need my nail kit for tonight? Mateo said something about it, but he called it my “claw box thingy” so I told him to sit on a screwdriver.
Mateo: how do u mak popcorn pink?
Mateo: MAKE
I fired out replies.
Decoy: we can talk tomorrow. it’s sleepover night. i’m sure it’s fine.
Decoy: not for my benefit, but I’ll ask ivy when she gets out of school.
Decoy: no idea. ask someone clever.
Then I started the engine of the automatic SUV that technically belonged to the club. Cam had condemned my old Focus a few months back, and I wasn’t sad about it. It was nice not to worry about stalling at the school gates or walking home from the supermarket because the alternator had conked out again.
Or worse, being late to get Ivy from school. It had only happened once, but Lauren had beaten me over the head with it ever since.
Irresponsible. Unreliable. Lazy.
I swear, I heard those words in my sleep sometimes, and the only cure for the ache in my soul was my sweet baby girl.
Her school was fifteen minutes away. I navigated the traffic through the centre of Whitness and parked outside ten minutes early for kick-out time. Another message from Mateo waited for me.
Mateo: every1’s cleverer than me. apart from nash—he said ketchup, but thats not pink. folk said sumth abt raspberry pwder but he was underwater at the time so idk
A smile played on my lips as I absorbed how seriously the MC’s deadly enforcer was taking our daughters’ repeated requests for a Friday night sleepover. But despite sharing his commitment to the cause, something else in his message caught my attention.
Folk.
Goosebumps rose on my skin and my pulse thudded a disjointed rhythm that should, by now, have been as familiar to me as the sight of his tawny-brown hair as he walked his pet vixen across the yard. The scent of him as he brushed by me in the clubhouse bar, and the yearning I carried for him, even after all this time.
But he didn’t have a pet vixen anymore. He’d taken her to a forest sanctuary. And the only familiarity was the flail in my soul, because half a decade after I’d first laid eyes on him, I still didn’t know what to do with the mess he made of my insides. Alone in the car, picturing what might’ve been, pushed me into a low-key anxiety attack. Around other people, I was better at hiding it. Had to be, considering Folk Whitlock had barely glanced my way since he’d arrived with the other stray Dog Crows more than a year ago. He talked to Ivy more than me, but most people did. My kid was somewhat of an expert at forcing people into conversation.