They probably had.
I didn’t know how the two of us were supposed to sit there and have a meeting of the minds. We had nothing in common, no shared history, similarities in past or plans for the future.
Yet, there was something about the way he’d been with his daughter, so obviously overjoyed to see her, so comfortably doting, more like a typical suburban dad than a biker outlaw. Something too in the way he sat there, relaxed, but coiled, casual but cunning that made me want to gift him my respect, even after years of being told bikers and Zeus Garro most of all, were filth.
“Great man, maybe he calls the cops, makes sure the kids get placed in a good home or pushes for a distant relative to take ’em in. Good man, he drops ’em off at their mum’s house and drives away, feelin’ like he did his good Samaritan work for the day or the month or the fuckin’ year. A bad man never even notices Harleigh Rose run outta a building at the sound of gunshots and chases after ’er so he wouldn’t be sittin’ ’ere like this with me now.”
He paused, his eyes drilling into me until he seemed to find the gold he was looking for. “Nah, got the feelin’ that despite you bein’ that son of a bitch Harold Danner’s son, you’re something altogether different than any’a those kinds’a men. You got heart and morals the like I’ve never seen, doin’ what you’re doin’ with my kids. You want my thanks or not, you got it.”
“Don’t need it,” I agreed. “But I’m happy to accept it.”
“Things’ll change when I’m out,” he said over the rattle of chains as he steepled his fingertips together.
I shrugged. “Of course, they’ll go live with you, but I don’t see why I can’t be in their lives.”
“It’s the rookie in you sayin’ that. You know somewhere deep that this isn’t their life and it isn’t yours. You don’t go to prisons to visit cons, you put ’em there in the fuckin’ first place. They want to see you after, hey, I’m not stoppin’ ’em because God fuckin’ knows those kids need some good and some lovin’ in their life. I plan to give it to’em. I also plan to raise ’em like Garros, like bikers, and your people got a pretty big fuckin’ problem with that.”
He shifted forward to stare at me, his pale silver eyes intense. “Right now, you’re the kind of guy who saves kids from the other side of the tracks just ’cause they’re in need even though it’s none’a your business. Doesn’t mean few years down the line, doin’ more work for your daddy, you don’t turn different. Don’t want that kind of bigot ’round my kids, you get me?”
“Got you,” I gritted through my teeth, hating that he would think that was even a possibility and hating even more that it probably was.
“Harold’s had a big, fuckin’ fat red target on my back for years, on the club for even longer. There’s a chance you stayin’ friends with ’em after will put them in an uncomfortable position, maybe even a criminal one. You want that?”
“Fuck no,” I cursed. “Why do you think I took them away from Farrah in the first place?”
Garro raised his hands in a gesture of goodwill. “I’m not sayin’ this as your future enemy, Danner. I’m sayin’ this as a man who loves his kids more than life an’ I still put ’em in danger by givin’ ’em a shit mum. You get where I’m comin’ from?”
Fuck me, but I did.
My moral compass couldn’t find it’s true north around the Garros, first Harleigh Rose and King and now even with Zeus. The guy was smart, clearly loved his kids, and was the sort of man to save an unknown child’s life by risking his own.
In strange, uncomfortable ways, I noticed a kind of parallel between the two of us.
I ignored it.
“Listen, it’s Rosie’s birthday and we have to pick up her present before we grab King from school and pick up dinner so, we done?” I asked, already standing up to leave.
Garro tipped his head back to maintain eye contact with me and nodded. “Rosie? Can’t believe my biker princess lets you call her that.”
“Told you, the sort of things we’ve been through you form a bond that never withers.”
“Yeah,” Garro said, scratching his beard as he looked away into the far distance at a thought I could see. “Yeah, sure fuckin’ does.”
I rapped my knuckles on the table and turned on my heel, leaving the uncertainty Zeus had sown in my head behind with him.
“Oh my God, oh my fucking God,” Harleigh Rose repeated, dropping to her knees as soon as the breeder opened the gate to the backyard where the puppies were playing in the snow. “Oh my god.”