She cleared her throat and my eyes fell to her long hair which she was twisting in her hand. It was a lot longer than it was in my memory, touching her waist, and the almost black was now streaked with white. The wrinkles around her eyes were more prominent, her signature red lipstick was gone, her lips bare as well as the rest of her face.

“I signed in with a different name. Plus, after I leave here today, I’m disappearing. For good. I just…I just needed to come, I guess. I had to see you first before I was really gone for good this time.” She picked at her nails.

I no longer had to hide my smile because it had disappeared as quick as it had come. “What do you expect from me? A big hug and an ‘I missed you, Mommy’?” I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest.

She ran her fingers over a long faded scar on her forehead that ran into her hairline. She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I was looking for by coming here. It was selfish of me to come, but I had to. I had to tell you what he’d done do me. You needed to hear what kind of man your father is.”

“I know all to well what kind of man he is.” I said, leaning forward.

Sadie shuffled in her seat. “I think he did it. Kept me alive I mean because he thought I told on the club, but I didn’t. Maybe he thought death wasn’t good enough a punishment. It wasn’t good enough to end my life, he wanted to take it and make me suffer more instead of putting me out of my misery.” Sadie sniffled and that’s when I noticed her glassy eyes. “You know? I hope to Christ I never do remember what really happened. I pray that it always stays a mystery.” She pushed her chair back from the table, scraping it along the linoleum, but remained seated. “Because something tells me there is nothing he did to me I’d want to remember.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and suddenly the void look from earlier was back. The sniffling stopped.

“Why the getup?” I asked, gesturing to the light blue scrubs she was wearing.

She glanced down and pinched the hem of the top. “If anyone questions who your visitor was, or if Chop gets wind, hopefully they will be looking for a nurse.”

“Why even risk it at all?”

Sadie ignored my question. She sighed and looked up at my face like she was observing me. “You have his eyes,” she said, staring right into my eyes. I shifted uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair. “You look so much like him, when you first came out I thought you were him.”

“I’m nothing like him,” I barked.

“You’re in here,” she argued.

“I’m here because I chose to be here. Don’t get it twisted in that doped-up mind of yours. You don’t know me. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s bad, and it’s worse than you could ever imagine. You don’t know the shit I’ve done that’s good either, and it’s better than you could ever know.”

“It’s for a girl,” she said. It wasn’t a question. The corner of her lip turned up in a half smile.

“So what if it is?”

“It means you might just be human after all.” She pointed out. She seemed to relax, satisfied with her new discovery. “You got that from my side of the family, no doubt.”

“Family?” I asked, scoffing at her casual use of a word she knew nothing about.

“I AM your family,” she argued, “I just wanted to be—”

“I’ve got family,” I interrupted. “You don’t gotta be nothing.”

“Andria? Is that who you’re talking about?” she asked, I hated the way she said my half-sister’s name, like it disgusted her. Andria was family, even though I hadn’t seen her in many years. She was the product of a brief affair Chop had with a waitress in Georgia. Andria should thank her lucky fucking stars she wasn’t born a boy because I had a feeling that if she would have been born with a dick she would’ve been wearing a cut just like me. “Yeah, but she’s not who I was talking about.”

She again looked down at her lap. “My Abel. My boy. I think that you and I should—”

“McAdams!” a deep voice bellowed. “Time’s up. Stand,” the guard ordered. By pulling on the back of my chair, he forced me to obey.

“You should know I’m not a Bastard anymore,” I said to the ghost of my mother. “I took off my cut and laid it at that motherfucker’s feet. I might not be a monster, but I am a dead man, so I guess it’s good you came to see me, even if you don’t know why you came.” I stood up, sliding the plastic chair against the concrete, startling Sadie who looked up at me with big hazel eyes filled with sadness and naivety, as if she was still the teenager who gave birth to me almost thirty years before. “Get a good look at me now while you can, Mom,” I said, emphasizing “Mom” and holding my arms as wide open as the cuffs attached to my wrists would allow. “’Cause it might just be the last chance you’re ever gonna get.” The officer yanked on the chains connecting my cuffs, dragging me away from Sadie.

From my mother. Even thinking of her as my mother didn’t feel right.

Because, I realized. I already had a mother, even if I didn’t address her as mom she was someone who’d earned the title.

“Oh,” I said, shouting back to Sadie over my shoulder, “And you can go wherever you need to go and disappear to because I already have a mom. Her name is Grace.”

“Grace?” Sadie asked, sounding as confused as I was when she’d showed up. The guard buzzed me out of the room and lead me back to my cell. I don’t know why I felt the need to be hateful toward her, but maybe it was because she’d come back from wherever she’d been and her first instinct was to run away. Maybe it was because no matter what had happened to her the fact was that she’d let Chop break her.

One thing was for fucking sure, it didn’t matter what that motherfucker ever did to me.

I would never fucking break.

CHAPTER THREE

Bear

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER the visit with Sadie, I was out in the yard thinking about our conversation about family when it occurred to me.

Dead men don’t have families.

Suddenly, the thought of never having one with Ti, never seeing her grow round with my kid, hit me in the chest like I’d caught a fucking bullet.

A feeling I’d been familiar with a time or two.

Dizzy with the unwanted thought, I slipped up and hadn’t been scanning the yard for potential threats like I should’ve been. The only bastard I’d seen since I’d been locked up was Corp, and considering the condition I left him in I knew at least he wouldn’t be a threat again any time soon.

Or eating without the aid of a straw.

But they were coming. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I could practically smell it in the air.

“You look like you could use one of these,” a voice said. I snapped out of my Ti induced thoughts to find a black guy around my height, but double my body weight, his jumpsuit ripped at the collar and arms to make room for his protruding muscles.

“Thanks,” I said tentatively, reaching for the smoke he extended out to me from the open pack. I figured if this guy was sent to kill me he’d already done it, probably by flexing my head between his forearm and bicep. The stranger lit a match and cupped his hand around the flame, lighting my smoke and then his own before waving out the match and tossing it into the grass. He set the pack on the table. “Keep ’em,” he said.