“She was fourteen years old when her old man gave her to one of his friends. She was fifteen when I was a prospect perving on her. She was barely seventeen when her father gave her to me.”
There was a stunned silence. It was Czar who broke it. “That’s impossible.”
“She was just shy of seventeen by a few days,” Steele repeated. “I didn’t think to ask her age. Her eyes said thirty, but I should have asked. I should have fucking asked her. I still would have taken her, claimed her for my old lady, but I wouldn’t have touched her.”
He hoped that was the truth. He doubted it though. A part of him was certain he wouldn’t have been that strong, not with her sleeping in his bed, and she would have had to out of necessity, in order to keep her safe from everyone else. He cleared his throat. These were his brothers and sisters. Men and women ready to lay down their lives to help him. “That’s not true. No way could I have had her in my bed and not touched her. I lived for that woman.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Czar asked.
Steele knew why. Every man at the table knew why. Without Czar, none of them would be alive—at least none of the original eighteen. He had to make certain Czar lived through the coming war with the Swords.
“You would have sent me away with her,” he admitted, making the truth more about Breezy and less about Czar.
Czar sighed and pressed his fingers to his eyes, looking weary. “What tipped you off to her age?”
“There was a younger girl there, she was about fourteen or fifteen. She had a mop of red hair, freckles and bright green eyes. I think they called her Candy. Do you remember her? Bree was worried about her, worried the club would start using her the way they used Breezy. She said it had started for her around the same age. That made me wonder how old she was. I didn’t think she was a kid. She never acted like a kid. Not how she talked. Not the way she thought. Not the way she took care of everyone. Not the work she did. Not in or out of bed. I didn’t have one inkling, so when she told me how old she was, I nearly fell through the fucking floor.”
He would never forget that moment of complete shock. He was guilty of statutory rape. Worse, he was everything he hated most. He was in a relationship with a teenager, and it was a very sexual one. He was demanding of all sorts of things, and she gave him whatever he wanted. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead.
He’d felt sick, bile rising. “I couldn’t look at her and I knew I had to send her away immediately. I’d planned to, to keep her safe from the Swords when war broke out, but now, I needed to keep her safe from me. I was also extremely angry. Angry at everyone for not knowing. Mostly at myself for not even asking, but her as well, for not telling me. A part of me knew she wasn’t to blame, she probably didn’t think anything of it since her own father had turned her over to his friends at fourteen, but I couldn’t get past the rage.”
Steele wanted to hit something. Hard. Smash Bridges’s face in. He detested the man. He should have been looking out for his daughter, but instead, he’d used her ruthlessly. “I didn’t even ask her when her birthday was. I was so fucking glad to have her, I just didn’t take care the way I should have. I was so angry that I was losing her—that the fucking universe had tricked me again, robbed me of the one decent thing I had in this world.”
There was a small silence and Steele realized that fury was in his voice. No matter how much he breathed it away, it came back to choke him whenever he thought about the injustice of that. He’d never had one single thing for himself. Never asked for anything. He’d had her and then she was gone—and he’d done that.
“Why didn’t she contact you when she realized she was pregnant?” Lana asked. “Breezy doesn’t seem the kind of woman to keep that information from a man, even if she was hurt.”
Steele didn’t want to answer her. Shame didn’t sit well on his shoulders. He deserved to feel it. He knew they were blaming Breezy, not him. Like Lana, everyone thought Bree should have contacted him. He couldn’t let them think that about her. He’d told them the worst, admitted that he’d slept with a girl, not a woman, and that he would have done so no matter what.
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly. “I told her I didn’t want her, that she’d been nothing more than a warm body to use. I made it very clear I didn’t love her and that she was absolutely nothing to me. I had her banned from the club so she couldn’t even go to another chapter. I told her she was nothing and I never wanted to look at her face again.”
“Steele,” Alena whispered. “You didn’t. She was so young. That must have annihilated her. You had her for a year and you just scraped her off?”
He winced at the pain in Alena’s voice. She was putting herself in Bree’s shoes and she felt that pain—the twisted agony on Breezy’s face when he’d coldly told her to get the hell away from him.
“I gave her money. Lots of it, and I did it in an ugly way, implying I was paying for a year’s service. I was as harsh, as brutal, as I could possibly be. I made it clear I was going to be with other women. I didn’t want her to stay in the hopes that we’d get back together. I wanted her so far away from there her father and brother—and me—could never find her. If I didn’t make it seem as if she meant nothing to me, she wouldn’t leave, and I knew I wasn’t strong enough not to keep her.”
“Fuck, Steele,” Reaper said. “You’ve always been the smart one. What were you thinking?”
“You dug yourself a hell of a hole,” Maestro said. “Bree thought you walked on water.”
She had. She would have done anything for him. Now she looked at him as if he were the same as her father and brother. He didn’t like that. Maybe he deserved it after the disgusting things he’d said to drive her away, but he didn’t like it.
There was a long silence. Czar shifted in his seat. It was clear even their president didn’t have any advice for him.
“I’m not giving her up,” Steele declared. “Not again. The chemistry is still there between us whether she likes it or not—and she doesn’t like it. I don’t much give a damn. We’re getting my boy back and then she’s going to stay with me.”
“You can’t make her stay,” Keys said. “Women have a way of making up their own minds, bro.”
“Why the hell can’t he make her stay?” Ice demanded. “If there’s chemistry and he uses what we spent a lifetime learning, seducing her into staying shouldn’t be that difficult.”
The others nodded. Lana rolled her eyes. “Ice, you’re an idiot. You already nearly lost Anya for Reaper. Don’t even try to advise Steele.”
“No, wait,” Player said. “Ice actually has something there. She never could resist you, Steele. You know that. Ice has me thinking about when he was
telling Reaper to knock Anya up. You did it once pretty easily with Breezy. A woman might take care of one kid alone, but two?”
“If you keep her in the compound instead of taking her to your house, there’s no way she could leave,” Preacher added. “Especially now that we’ve ‘lost’ her truck.”
Lana narrowed her eyes at her brother. “I can’t believe you’d even think that, let alone say it. We’re not keeping Breezy against her will.”
“I am,” Steele said. “Until she sees reason, I’m keeping her by whatever means I have to. I had to save her from what was coming. You know I did. Bridges would have killed her or sold her into slavery. He’s that sick of a bastard. I had no choice. It was hell and has been every fucking minute she’s been gone. I didn’t go about it the right way, mostly because I was so pissed finding out I’m a fucking pervert, but I’m not giving her up again. I just need time to get her to change her mind about me.”
“Holding her prisoner isn’t going to change her mind,” Lana said. She glared around the table. “Let’s take this to Blythe. See what she thinks.”
“She isn’t going to understand what’s at stake,” Steele said.
“What is at stake?” Czar asked.
“My sanity,” Steele admitted without hesitation. “My fucking life.”
Czar looked around the table. “Your brother just put it on the line. All of it. Breezy’s young. She’s just shy of twenty-one now, and that makes her an adult. She belongs to Steele. She’s got a child. Steele’s son, so that woman and that boy are ours. We do whatever it takes to help him keep her.”
He waited for each person to agree. Lana sighed heavily but she nodded, the same as every other man and Alena. They would do their best to keep Breezy there with Steele.
“Let’s talk about getting Zane back,” Czar said. “We need a plan.”
“Bree says they’re probably moving him every few days, and I agree,” Steele said. They were back on firm ground. He’d felt as if the ground had been shifting out from under him ever since he knew he would have to confess to the others that he had been with this woman even when she was underage. He hadn’t known, but he blamed himself because he should have known. He should have taken an interest in every aspect of her life—especially something as important as her birthday.