Chapter 4
PART 4
Leon did not deny the watch.
He stood inside the empty repair bay while rain began tapping the metal roof and looked at the second Polaroid on Curtis’s workbench.
“I drove her to Mobile,” he said.
Curtis stayed on the other side of the bench.
“Why?”
“Darius said you wanted her gone.”
“You believed him?”
Leon looked toward the closed station doors.
“I believed what kept all of us alive back then.”
Leon explained that Simone cried the entire drive. At a motel outside Mobile, she asked him to give Curtis the first Polaroid. Leon brought it back to the clubhouse. Darius took it before Curtis arrived and told Leon the issue was settled.
“You never asked me?” Curtis said.
“You were drinking, fighting, getting arrested every other month. I told myself the kid was safer without you.”
Evelyn scheduled an emergency custody hearing for the following afternoon. Curtis could petition for temporary placement only if he established a safe residence, disclosed his criminal history, and provided evidence of paternity or a credible family relationship.
The station apartment no longer qualified because Darius had filed foreclosure papers and reported a security dispute on the property.
Darius’s countermove arrived through his attorney.
He offered to withdraw the foreclosure, restore the fuel account, and provide a sworn statement supporting Curtis as Ava’s possible father.
In exchange, Curtis had to surrender Simone’s records, the storage photographs, and any claim that Darius had coerced her.
The offer would give Ava a roof connected to Curtis by the next evening.
It would also return the evidence to the man Simone had feared.
Darius added one more condition.
Curtis had to say publicly that Simone acted alone and that Leon had no role in her disappearance.
He was using Curtis’s relationship with Leon as leverage. If Curtis refused, Leon could face charges for transporting Simone under false pretenses and helping conceal the paternity waiver. If Curtis accepted, Darius’s version of the family would become official again.
Leon read the offer.
“Take it.”
Curtis looked at him.
“You know what it costs.”
“It costs me nothing I didn’t earn.”
“It costs Ava the truth.”
“It gives her you.”
At the hearing, Darius arrived in a dark suit. He sat behind his attorney with the posture of a respectable creditor rather than a club president who had controlled people through debt and fear.
Ava entered with Evelyn and the foster mother. She carried the teddy bear. She did not run to Curtis.
The judge asked whether Curtis had a residence suitable for a child.
“Not today,” Curtis said.
Darius’s attorney placed the foreclosure papers into the record.
The judge asked whether Curtis had ever signed a paternity waiver.
“My name is on one.”
“Did you sign it?”
Curtis thought of the stack of club papers, his blind trust, and the ease with which he had let Darius handle consequences.
“I signed paper without reading it. I did not knowingly waive this child. But I made it possible for somebody to use my signature.”
Darius’s attorney attacked immediately.
“Mr. Bell admits he signed documents recklessly, participated in criminal activity, and has no stable home. He now asks the court to place a child with him based on photographs and regret.”
Curtis looked at Ava.
“That’s fair,” he said.
“I was not safe thirteen years ago,” Curtis continued. “Simone had reasons to fear my life. But Darius used those reasons to control her, forged the purpose of my signature, intercepted her letters, and kept me ignorant because my loyalty made his business easier.”
The attorney objected.
The judge asked for evidence.
Curtis placed both Polaroids, the returned letters, and the storage receipt into the record. He did not submit Simone’s full confession letter. He submitted only the page in which she described the coercion and asked that Ava be protected.
Darius stood when called and said Simone had embezzled money, fabricated threats, and manipulated multiple men. He claimed he had helped her escape Curtis’s violence and that the letters were returned because Simone requested no contact.
Then he looked at Ava.
“Your mother was scared of him.”
Curtis’s hands tightened at his sides.
Ava looked from Darius to the bear.
“She was scared of both of you,” she said.
Ava opened the zipper and removed the first Polaroid. The foster mother had found another line written beneath the fold of the receipt, one nobody had noticed because it was hidden under old tape.
Ask Leon who drove me. Ask Tank why he trusted Darius more than me.
Leon entered the courtroom before Curtis called him.
He testified that he transported Simone on Darius’s order, surrendered the photograph, and stayed silent for thirteen years. He also testified that Darius controlled the club’s mail, legal papers, and towing accounts.
Darius’s attorney warned that Leon was admitting crimes.
“I know,” Leon said.
The judge ordered the records preserved and prohibited Darius from contacting Ava, Curtis, or Leon pending investigation. She did not give Curtis custody.
Instead, she authorized supervised visits and ordered an expedited paternity test, a home assessment, and a search for Simone.
Outside the courtroom, Darius passed close enough to speak without raising his voice.
“You burned your station for a girl who may not even be yours.”
Curtis looked through the glass doors at Ava holding the bear.
“That’s the difference between us,” he said. “She asked for protection before I got proof.”
The gas station locks were changed under the foreclosure order. Curtis, Leon, and the other men lost their jobs and the apartment above the store. The motorcycles remained inside the fenced property because Darius claimed them as collateral.
Curtis slept in a borrowed room at a church shelter approved for supervised family visits.
The next morning, the paternity laboratory called.
The test confirmed Curtis was Ava’s biological father.
Then Evelyn delivered the harder news.
Police had located Simone in a county hospital under another name.
She was alive.
May you like
And she had refused to see either Curtis or Ava.
It was why her mother, after sending the child to him, was still too afraid to return.
