Revolution (The Lone Riders MC Series Book 1) (29 page)

‘Enough. But not everything.’ He took out another cigarette, lighting it up and offering the packet to Coby, who declined this time.

‘This is so fucked-up,’ Coby said quietly, hanging his head, clasping his hands even tighter together.

‘He just needs to know who calls the shots. Who’s really in charge.’

‘Am I putting myself in danger here?’ Coby looked back up. ‘Because we all know the kind of man
Tay
is, Charlie. Revenge and retribution, they’re his speciality.’

‘And I know him better than anyone, Coby. Do you really think I’d put you in any kind of danger now? Do you think I’d do that to my daughter? To my grandson? Like you, I want what’s best for them.
And
what’s best for this club. And what’s best for everyone is
you
. You’ll look after my girl, and your boy, and you’ll look after this club. That’s all that matters to me.’

‘That, and making sure
Tay
pays, huh?’

‘Oh, I think he’s already paid, in lots of ways. He’s spent his life looking over his shoulder to some extent. Because I know he’s never really been able to trust me. Not after what he did. He’s always known I’ve been there, watching him.’

‘And you don’t think he’s gonna be suspicious that you were the one to bring Ozzie over to
California
?’

‘I’m Lexi’s father. Ozzie’s my grandchild. What’s strange about that?’

Coby sighed, pushing a hand through his hair.

‘Things are gonna start moving quickly now, Coby. Do you understand? No point in hanging around.’

Coby gave a small nod. ‘I’d better get back inside. Lexi needs me.’ He jumped down from the table and headed towards the clubhouse.

‘Coby?’

He turned to look back at Charlie.

‘Don’t ever forget that. Okay?’

Coby held Charlie’s gaze for a few seconds longer before heading back into the clubhouse. The sooner the next few days were over with, the better.

Twenty-Nine

‘We need to talk,’ Angie said, sitting down beside Charlie at the bar inside the clubhouse.

‘About what?’ Charlie asked, taking a sip from his bottle of beer.

Angie let out a heavy sigh, dropping her head into her hands before pushing both hands through her hair. ‘How long are you staying here, Charlie?’

‘As long as my daughter needs me.’

‘
Our
daughter… Jesus…’

‘I wasn’t the one who sent her away, Angie.’

Angie turned on her stool to face her ex-husband head on. ‘What she did…’

‘You could have dealt with it all here, in
Paradise
. You didn’t need to run her out of town, make her feel like some cheap, dirty whore.’

Their eyes locked, a million memories from decades gone all rushing forward. ‘Like you did me, you mean?’

Charlie chuckled quietly, taking another sip of beer. ‘Lexi was never a whore, Angie. She was just mixed-up, messed-up…’ His eyes met hers again, boring deep, still holding her gaze. ‘She thought she was in love.’

‘Love didn’t cause all of this, Charlie.’

Charlie drained his beer, slamming the bottle down on to the bar and standing up.

‘We need to talk,’ Angie repeated.

‘We don’t.’

She stood up, too, following him out of the clubhouse. ‘No, you don’t get to walk away from me, you don’t get to do that. You keep my daughter’s pregnancy a secret, you…’

He swung around to face her. ‘
Our
daughter.’

‘Jesus… you keep that a secret, you don’t tell me she’s had a son, you don’t tell me she’s been sleeping with Coby Walker…’

He narrowed his eyes as he continued to stare at her. ‘Because that is none of your business.’

‘He got her pregnant, Charlie.’

‘I know. It all went on under my roof, remember?’

‘And you shouldn’t have let it happen.’ Angie’s voice was quiet, but there was an underlying tone of desperation there, of regret.

‘It had al
ready
happened, Angie.’

She stared at him, frowning slightly. ‘I don’t…’

‘Long before he got her pregnant.’

Angie’s frown deepened, her eyes searching Charlie’s for some kind of explanation. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘What happened between her and Shane, Angie… this affair she was supposed to have had with him. Shane he… he had nothing to do with anything. She wasn’t sleeping with him. She never was. Not back then, anyway.’

Angie’s head was spinning now. She didn’t understand any of this, none of it was making sense. She sat down on a bench by one of the tables outside, still staring at Charlie.

He leant back against the wall, his expression calm, a strange kind of relief almost taking over. ‘She was sleeping with Coby.’

Angie’s eyes widened. ‘I… I don’t… I don’t understand…’

‘Right here, under
this
roof, Angie.
Your
clubhouse. Our daughter, and the one man you would never have picked for her.
That’s
who she was cheating on Jesse with. Not Shane. She was fucking Coby. So if anyone should have made sure all of this hadn’t happened it was you. And
Tay
.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Angie whispered, a state of confusion she’d never felt before filling her head. ‘Jesus!’

Charlie sat down next to her, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he stared out at the compound at work, the noise from the garage, the sound of chatter and good natured banter filling the yard; the thud of heavy rock music coming from inside the clubhouse.

‘I still… I can’t get my head around this,’ Angie whispered, her eyes fixed on her hands that were balled-up into fists on her lap.

‘She was going through all that shit with Jesse. She was questioning the club, it’s morals; trying to cope with the fact Jesse was pushing her away and fighting the reasons why. She was confused, she was trying to get her head around crap she couldn’t work out.’

‘And, what? Coby just happened to be the shoulder offered up to lean on?’

‘I think it was a bit more complicated than that,’ Charlie sighed. ‘Coby was the older man, someone she’d known since she’d been a kid; her stepfather’s VP – somebody who Lexi may have seen, at the time, as being out of bounds, almost. Dangerous. She wanted to rebel, hit out…’

‘Are you saying she threw herself at him? Just to prove a point?’

‘That’s what it sounds like, from what I can gather. A stupid game, something that probably should have been nothing more than a one-off. But our daughter was playing that game hard, and he wasn’t thinking straight, and if she’s standing there practically begging him to sleep with her, what the hell was the guy supposed to do?’

‘Walk away,’ Angie said quietly, still staring down at her balled-up fists. ‘He should have walked away.’

‘Oh, he tried. Believe me, he tried. He assured me he did all he could to ignore her. He tried telling her to stop, tried pushing her away, but you were there, Angie. You saw what she was like back then, the way she was acting…’

‘You saying it’s
my
fault? That
I
should have reined her in? Jesus, Charlie, she was twenty-six years old, she wasn’t some wayward teenager.’

‘She was acting like one.’

‘I am not responsible for Coby Walker’s inability to keep his dick under control. He should have walked away.’

‘And he was never gonna do that. Not really. She could have chosen any one of those guys and none of them would have walked away from that. Not if she’s putting it out there on a plate for them. They’re gonna take it. Aren’t they?’

‘That’s our daughter you’re talking about, and you’re making her sound like some cheap porn star.’

‘Like you said, Angie, she was twenty-six years old. She was beautiful, and young, and by all accounts she was flaunting everything the good Lord up there had given her. Coby was a forty year old man. There was only ever one way that was gonna end.’

Angie closed her eyes, balling her fists even tighter, her nails digging deep into the palms of her hands. ‘It wasn’t just the once, was it?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘It went on for a while, a good few months.’

‘And you
knew
this was happening?’

Charlie shook his head again. ‘The first I heard about it was when I got a call from Lexi. She was scared, Angie. Scared people were starting to suspect something was going on. So she had to tell me. She had to tell someone.’

‘You should have called me,’ Angie said quietly.

‘She was panicking, crying, she didn’t know what to do. She just knew that if people found out about her and Coby… I had to do something, Angie. She’s our daughter, and I love her so much, no matter what she’s done. So we… we set the whole thing with her and Shane up. Made it look like she’d been having some kind of affair with him, not Coby. Made sure someone caught them, so there was no doubt as to who it was she’d been with.’

‘You should have called me,’ Angie repeated.

‘You would have told
Tay
. And even though Coby was
Tay
’s closest friend, his biggest ally, you know as well as I do… you know what he would’ve done. Coby would have lost everything – his VP patch, his place at the table… he would’ve been cast out, Angie. The club would have banished him. And he didn’t deserve that.’

‘But Shane did?’ She looked at her ex-husband. ‘So, what was he, huh? Shane? What was he? A scapegoat? Some poor, innocent bastard you used to cover Coby’s tracks?’

It was Charlie’s turn to look down. ‘Shane had no problem with helping me out, Angie. He was a willing participant. And somebody had to do it because I wasn’t willing to let Coby take the fall.’

‘Jesus Christ…’ Angie sighed, an almost maniacal laugh pushing its way to the surface. ‘I don’t believe you… You stood there and let Shane take the blame for something he didn’t even do… Coby messed with our daughter, Charlie!’

‘And
she
messed with
him
. But he was – he
is
– too important to this club, and he needs this place just as much as we need him. Yes, he was weak, he was thinking with his dick…’ Charlie pushed a hand through his hair, sitting back and sighing heavily. ‘Just before the set-up with Shane, Coby told Lexi it was over. That it couldn’t go on. Because that’s what I told him to do. I thought it was for the best. I was never sure it could’ve worked, never certain he could make her happy. So, you see, I
did
try to put an end to it. But, you know, maybe nobody could have prevented it from starting. Lexi wanted him, for whatever reason. And she wasn’t gonna stop until she got him.’

Angie’s expression was still confused. ‘All this… all that stuff about Shane threatening to bring you down, take over the
Newcastle
chapter, was that… was that true?’

Charlie looked down again. ‘No.’

‘But you… we
killed
him! Coby went over there and he…’ She stood up, pacing the floor, raking a hand backwards and forwards through her hair as she tried to get her head around things she could never have thought possible. ‘He… he’s dead, Charlie. And we…’

‘He’s very much alive.’

Angie stopped in her tracks, standing perfectly still as she stared at Charlie. ‘He’s
alive
? Jesus Christ! I don’t believe this is happening.’ She sat back down, her breathing growing heavier, faster, as a kind of panic started to take hold. ‘What the hell is going on here, Charlie?’

‘
Tay
needed to believe all the bullshit I was feeding him. He needed to believe that the club was in danger, that we had a traitor in the ranks. And he needed to believe that that traitor had to be dealt with.’

‘Why – why did you ask for Coby specifically?’

‘Because I can trust him.’

‘Even after what he did to Lexi.?’

‘She was as much to blame for that as he was, Angie, we’ve been through this. She gave him no choice.’

Angie couldn’t help a small, cynical laugh from escaping. ‘Always the woman’s fault, huh?’

‘That isn’t what I meant.’

‘By asking for Coby, didn’t you even stop to think about the consequences his being over there could create? After what happened with Lexi?’

‘She wasn’t supposed to be there, Angie. Was she? And give Coby his due, he stayed away for as long as he could, he tried. He really did. But, just like before,
she
ran to
him
. He didn’t go to her.’

‘And once again, he could have –
should
have walked away.’

‘It wasn’t that easy.’

‘It
was
that easy.
You
could’ve
made
it that easy.’

Charlie sat forward again, clasping his hands together, but he said nothing.

‘So, you set everything up, staged it all, made us all think Shane was a traitor as well as a man who’d betrayed another brother. You made us believe that he deserved to die – for something he never did? What kind of man does that make you, Charlie?’

Charlie turned his head to look at her, his eyes hard, cold. ‘A man who doesn’t forget what his best friend did to him. A man who remembers betrayal like it was yesterday.’

‘I can’t get my head around this shit.’

‘Shane has been well compensated for everything he’s had to go through. Because he’s a good man. And I think he’ll be an asset to this chapter.’

‘He’s coming back
here
?’

Charlie nodded. ‘It’s his home, Angie. A place he should never really have left.’

Angie closed her eyes for a second, taking several deep breaths. ‘Does everybody back in
Newcastle
…?’

‘They know now,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘It wasn’t an easy thing to do, to keep it all from them like that, but we couldn’t risk telling them at the time.’

‘And what about everyone here? Do
they
need to know, too?’

‘
Everyone
will need to know, Angie.’

‘What is this gonna do to Lexi? Have you thought about that?’

Charlie looked down again, breaking the stare. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to forgive me, to forgive Coby. Hopefully she’ll love us both enough to do that.’

Angie felt her stomach turn over, a succession of nausea-inducing somersaults she couldn’t control. ‘This is… this is fucking crazy. It’s crazy! I still don’t… What is all this
for
, Charlie? Why get Coby involved, why make up all that shit about Shane?’

‘Coby is gonna be running this chapter from now on, Angie. With Shane as his VP.’

Angie stared at her ex-husband again, blinking quickly as she tried to take in what he was telling her. More shit she couldn’t get her head around. ‘Since… since when?’

‘Since I found out how he felt about our daughter. How he
really
felt about her. This club, what
Tay
was doing to it; the direction he was sending it in, that wasn’t where I wanted it to go, Angie. And now that Lexi is back here, in
California
, with our grandson, I need security for them both. Surely you understand that? I want them safe – or as safe as they
can
be. I want them to be looked after. And right now, the only man I can trust to do that is Coby Walker. He wants the same things for this club as I do, he always has done. And that’s very important to me.
Tay
was moving further and further away from that, he was losing his grip, losing focus. Coby can pull this chapter back to where it needs to be.’