The Biker Who Pretended To Be Her Grandson
Chapter 4 - The Man Who Took A Family
Daniel Maddox lived in a glass house on the hill outside town.
Ethan had been there once as a teenager, after tracking him down through old repair shop records. Daniel had opened the door, looked at his own son, and said, “Whatever she told you, I owe you nothing.”
Ethan left that day with a split lip and a lesson.
Some men were not fathers.
They were just evidence.
This time, Ethan did not go alone.
Margaret stayed in the car with two Riders watching over her. She insisted on coming, clutching Lucy’s pendant against her chest.
Daniel opened the door in a silk robe, older now but still smug.
His eyes moved from Ethan’s face to the men behind him.
“What is this?”
Ethan held up the eviction notice.
“Your company bought Margaret Ellis’s building.”
Daniel’s expression flickered.
Then he shrugged.
“Business.”
“She’s Lucy’s mother.”
Daniel smiled.
“I know.”
Ethan stepped forward.
“You knew.”
“Of course I knew.” Daniel leaned against the doorframe. “That old woman was a loose thread. Loose threads get cut.”
One of the Riders cursed under his breath.
Ethan kept his voice low.
“You told Margaret that Lucy wanted nothing to do with her.”
“Lucy was weak. Always crying about family and love and forgiveness. I did her a favor.”
“You destroyed her.”
Daniel’s smile sharpened.
“No. She destroyed herself when she refused to give me the boy.”
Ethan felt ice move through his veins.
“What?”
Daniel looked at him with disgust.
“My father wanted a grandson in the Maddox bloodline. Lucy was supposed to hand you over after birth and disappear quietly. She changed her mind. Poor girls always get sentimental.”
Ethan could hear his own heartbeat.
“You tried to take me?”
“I did take you once,” Daniel said. “For three days. But she ran. Hid you in cheap rooms, diners, shelters. By the time I found her again, you were old enough to scream.”
Ethan remembered flashes.
A motel hallway.
His mother crying with her hand over his mouth.
A man pounding on the door.
Daniel continued, enjoying the wound.
“So I made sure she had no one. No mother. No legal help. No money. That way she would come crawling back.”
“She never did.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“No. She died stubborn.”
Ethan hit him.
Daniel crashed into the hallway wall and fell to the floor.
The Riders stepped in only when Daniel reached for a drawer. Inside was a gun and a folder full of property documents. One document showed Hale Development Group was a shell company. Another showed Daniel had targeted several buildings connected to people from Lucy’s past.
He had been cleaning up evidence.
Ethan’s phone was recording the whole time.
Daniel saw it too late.
“You can’t use that.”
Ethan crouched beside him.
“You really still think money decides what truth gets heard.”
Police arrived twenty minutes later.
Margaret watched as Daniel was led out in handcuffs.
For a moment, he looked at her.
“Your daughter was nothing,” he spat.
Margaret stepped forward, leaning heavily on her walker.
“No,” she said, her voice trembling but clear. “My daughter was brave enough to love her child more than she feared you.”
Daniel looked away first.
And Ethan, standing beside the grandmother he had been asked to pretend for, realized something strange.
For the first time in his life, he was not standing alone against his father.
He was standing with family.
