Claimed By My Father’s Outlaw

Chapter15

Raine's POV

I couldn't stop watching him. My eyes followed his every move as he walked toward the front of the room, and I didn't realize how obvious I was being until Isla nudged me.

"Is that him?" she whispered, leaning in close.

I blinked rapidly, snapping out of it. "What?"

"The guy from your garage," she clarified. "The one Dad beat up. Is that him?"

I turned to her in utter surprise. "How did you know about that? I don't remember telling you anything."

She shrugged, looking way too pleased with herself. "Nothing happens without me knowing, Raine. You should know that by now."

I groaned. "Jesus Christ."

"Yeah, yeah." She waved me off, then pointed toward the front. "That man is Cole Maddox, by the way."

"Wait. What?"

"Cole Maddox," she repeated slowly, like I was dense. "Vice President of the Revenants. Ring any bells?"

Cole Maddox was the name that had been on the alert that I received about a week ago. That was the guy who sent me ten thousand dollars? The same guy who walked into my garage with a busted bike and that annoying attitude?

"Are you serious?" I hissed.

Isla nodded. "Dead serious."

I looked back at him just as he passed by our row. And then, like he could feel me staring, he turned his head and looked right at me.

Our eyes locked, and I immediately looked away as heat flooded my face. Beside me, Isla was sniggering like a child.

"Stop it, Isla." I muttered, slapping her arm.

"You're blushing!" she whispered, barely containing her laughter.

"I am not."

"You so are."

"Isla, I swear to God, behave."

She bit her lip, trying to hold back another laugh, and I forced myself to look back at the front. Cole Maddox had already taken his seat at the table, settling in beside the other VPs. I studied his face, trying to figure him out.

He looked different today than the two times I had seen him at my garage. He looked more put-together, but also distant and cold. The last time I saw him, he'd been grinning, teasing me, acting like he didn't have a care in the world. Now his face was as hard as stone. No expression and no warmth.

What's wrong with him?

Before I could think too much about it, Ambrose stood up and the room went death silent.

I'd seen Ambrose before, a handful of times over the years in different Conclaves. But every time I saw him, it was like seeing him for the first time again. He was terrifying!

He had dark skin covered in tattoos that crawled up his neck and over his bald head. His hands were inked too, patterns twisting around his fingers like chains. And that eyepatch over his left eye made him look like something out of a nightmare I would have had as a kid.

I had heard all the utterly terrible and disgusting things this man had done, some from Isla's mouth herself. And I wondered if Cole Maddox was just as terrible as his master; Maddox didn't look like he was made of the same wicked material as Ambrose.

Ambrose grinned as he regarded the entire room.

"Welcome, brothers!" he started. "It's good to see so many familiar faces, and some new ones too." His eye roamed over the crowd, lingering on the women. "Especially the pretty ones."

A few men laughed.

"Now, I know we've got business to handle," Ambrose continued. "But before we get to all that boring s**t, let's talk about the real highlight of this gathering." He gestured toward the women scattered throughout the room. "These lovely ladies who decided to grace us with their presence."

More laughter.

"I mean, look at them," Ambrose went on, and there was something about his voice that grated on my nerves. "We've got the Mercer girls right there in the middle. Raine and Isla, isn't it?"

His eye landed on us. "Now that's what I call a sight. Two beautiful women in a room full of men. It makes a man think, doesn't it?"

The room erupted in laughter at this. I turned to Dad, waiting for him to stand up or to say something to put Ambrose in his place. But he didn't. He just sat there, laughing along with everyone else.

What the hell?

I stared at Ambrose as he finished his speech, and something clicked in my head. The women being loaded into vans, it all happened in Baton Rouge, which was Revenant territory. And now here he was, making crude jokes about women.

He knew. He had to know, after all he was the President of that bike club. Hell, he was probably the one ordering it.

I forced myself to look away from him before my anger made me do something stupid.

Ambrose sat down, still grinning like he'd just told the funniest joke in the world, and another man stood up, popularly called Blackjack. Blackjack was the leader of the Reapers.

"All right, all right!" Blackjack announced, pulling out a piece of paper. "Let's get down to business. I'll start with a quick recap of the past year."

He started reading off events, including territory disputes and some club expansions. A few arrests by the NOPD. Nothing that mattered to me. But then he got to the part I was dreading.

"And of course," Blackjack added, "we can't forget the little scuffle between the Revenants and the Iron Serpents last year. It cost us a good man: Santos. Iron Serpents' VP. And he was gone because someone couldn't keep their mouth shut."

The room went quiet for a second, and I felt every muscle in my body tense up. I turned to Isla, and she was already looking at me with wide eyes. We both knew exactly what he was talking about. Dahlia, my best friend who sold us out to the Revenants and got Santos killed in the process.

I looked at Dad. His hands were gripping the edge of the table, and his jaw was clenched tightly as he glared at Ambrose. But Ambrose just sat there puffing on his pipe like he didn't have a care in the world. Ambrose, who had attacked us after getting the rat-out from Dahlia.

"Dad still hates him," I whispered to Isla, leaning closer so no one else could hear.

She nodded. "Yeah. I can see that."

"Then why the hell is he pretending to be friendly with him?"

Isla pursed her lips. "Maybe he's trying to set up some business deals. You know how Dad is. He'll smile at his worst enemy if it means making money."

I didn't like it. None of this felt right, but I didn't have time to think about it because Blackjack kept talking.

He droned on about rules and regulations and things I didn't care about, but then toward the end of his speech, he changed gears and I felt my stomach drop.

"Now, before I sit down," Blackjack spoke out, "I gotta give a shout-out to Raine Mercer, the only female bike mechanic in New Orleans. Maybe, probably the only one in the whole state of Louisiana."

People were openly staring at me now. I didn't like this, not one bit. I hated the attention.

"She's good too, from what I have heard from a few of our Serpents brothers." He went on. His tone was mockingly impressed like he was talking about a trained dog. "But let's be real here."

He paused and looked around the room with that stupid smile still plastered on his face. "No matter how good she is, she's never gonna take over from her old man. Why? Because she's a woman. And this world of bikers belong to men."

The room erupted in laughter, all loud and ugly and everywhere at once.

"I mean, what's she even doing here?" Blackjack continued, gesturing toward me and Isla. "Her and her sister sitting in a room full of men, acting like they belong here. It's cute, really. But let's not kid ourselves."

More laughter rolled through the room, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming at all of them. My chest was warming up with a familiar anger.

This was what I had to deal with, every single day of my life. This dismissal from the men in my dad's club who refused to pay me for fixing their automobiles. The same ridicule and laughter when they heard I even fixed automobiles in the first place.

My eyes stayed on my father, expecting some kind of support from him. But that was a far stretch because like the first time when I was mocked by Ambrose, my father was laughing with them too.

My eyes traveled across the table, at the presidents and vices all laughing at the unfunny joke, and eventually stopped at Cole Maddox.

He was looking at me from his seat at the front table, and in his eyes I saw both apology and pity. Like he felt bad for me but wasn't going to do a damn thing about it.

That was even worse than the laughter. I didn't need his pity. I didn't need anyone's.

"I'll be right back," I muttered to Isla, standing up from my chair

"Raine, wait—"

I didn't wait. I pushed past the chairs and weaved through the crowd as laughter followed me out. I was going to lose my mind, I knew it.