Graves Lost Daughter Book 1 Devils Creek MC

Stories

### Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Cleo Hart came to Creek Wood for one reason—to start over.

Widowed at twenty-eight and left with two children and more debt than she can handle, all Cleo wants is a fresh start. A new town. A new job. A chance to rebuild the life she lost when her husband died.

The last thing she needs is the attention of Devils Creek MC.

Especially Rick "Graves" Carter, the President of Devils Creek MC, who looks at her like he's seen a ghost.

And Gabriel "Chains" Mercer, the club's loyal Vice President, whose quiet strength and watchful eyes make her feel safe in ways she can't explain.

Cleo has spent her entire life with questions she'll never have answers to. Raised in foster care, she knows only one thing about the woman who gave birth to her.

Her name was Maria.

She never knew her father.

Never knew where she came from.

Never knew someone had been searching for her all along.

As old wounds collide with new beginnings, Cleo discovers that sometimes the family you've been missing your whole life is closer than you think.

And sometimes home is waiting where you least expect to find it.

But from the moment she walks into the town diner, the bikers can't stop staring.

Complete Chapters 26

Rating 4.9 ( 197 reviews ) Age Rating mature

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Chapter 1

Cleo POV

I blinked a few times and forced myself to focus on the endless, rain-soaked highway ahead.

Tommy’s sleepy voice drifted from the backseat. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, my chest tightening. His dark hair was messy from sleeping against the car door, and his face was still puffy from his nap.

Sometimes, looking at Tommy hurt so much, I could barely breathe.

“Almost,” I lied gently. “Another thirty minutes.”

Beside him, Skylar snorted quietly.

“You said that like an hour ago.”

I smiled despite myself. “Did not.”

Tommy groaned dramatically. “I’m starving.”

“There’s a diner coming up soon,” I promised. “We’ll stop there.”

That seemed to satisfy him for a few more minutes.

Rain tapped steadily on the windshield, and the wipers had squeaked for the last two hours, making me restless. I gripped the steering wheel tighter as another sign appeared through the fog.

That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway.

The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing.

Four months ago, I had a house, a husband, and stability. Bills were paid on time, and the future felt safe, even if life had never been perfect.

Now, everything we owned was crammed into my old Honda. I owed ten thousand dollars, and my kids were counting on me to keep us together, even when most days I could barely breathe.

Life could fall apart so quickly.

I swallowed hard against the sudden burn in my throat.

Wade had been gone for four months, and some mornings I still woke up reaching for him. I still expected him beside me. I still heard his laugh in my head.

People acted like grief got easier once you learned someone wasn’t perfect. Like finding out Wade had a gambling problem could erase fifteen years of love.

It just made everything messier, because Wade wasn’t a bad person.

We met when we were fourteen. I’d just been dumped into my sixth foster home, carrying everything I owned in two trash bags and pretending I wasn’t scared all the time.

Wade was the quiet boy who sat behind the auto shop with a split lip and bruised ribs. He said he got them from “falling off his bike.”

Kids like us always knew the truth.

Wade had an abusive drunk for a father.

I had nobody. No parents. No family. Just one name.

Maria. That was all I knew about the woman who gave birth to me and then disappeared forever. No last name, no photo, no answers.

Wade used to joke that we were two strays who found each other first.

By sixteen, he was sneaking through my foster bedroom window almost every night. By eighteen, we stood in front of a judge, getting married with forty-three dollars in our shared bank account and no idea what we were doing.

A few months later, I got pregnant with Skylar.

Everyone expected us to fail. Maybe, by the numbers, we should have. But we loved each other enough to keep fighting.

Wade worked long hours as a mechanic while I finished school. We scraped by, struggled, and somehow built a life from nothing.

When Tommy was born four years later, Wade cried harder than I did, holding him for the first time.

He loved our children fiercely.

That’s why some of this still didn’t make sense. How could the man who kissed me goodbye every morning gamble away our mortgage payments? How could he hold me at night and hide debt collectors from me during the day?

I didn’t know about any of it until after the accident, the funeral, and the bank notices, when strangers started calling my phone demanding money I didn’t have.

The house was gone within weeks.

Everything we built disappeared right along with him.

A soft rustling sound pulled me from my thoughts.

Skylar sat curled against the window in Wade’s old grey sweater, sleeves hanging past her hands. Headphones covered her ears, and an old iPod rested in her lap like something precious.

At ten, she’d become too quiet lately, too watchful, and it broke my heart because she looked just like me.

Sometimes, when she looked at me, it felt like seeing my younger self—the lonely foster kid who pretended she wasn’t scared of the world.

“You okay, bug?” I asked gently.

Skylar glanced at me before shrugging one shoulder. “You’re doing the worried thing again.”

“You get this line right here.” She pointed at her forehead seriously.

I laughed. “Great. I’m aging rapidly at twenty-eight.”

“You’re basically ancient already.”

That earned me the smallest smile.

God, I missed seeing her smile.

For weeks after Wade died, our house felt unbearably quiet. It was as if grief had moved in with us.

New town. New school. New memories. A chance to breathe somewhere Wade wasn’t in every corner, because staying had been slowly destroying me.

Every street reminded me of him. So did every grocery aisle. Every unpaid bill sat on the counter.

I couldn’t keep drowning there.

The teaching job at Creek Wood Elementary felt like fate when I found it online at two in the morning during another money panic.

Small town. Steady paycheck. Temporary teacher housing.

It was a small, fragile hope, but it was enough to keep me going.

As we drove further into town, rain continued to fall. We passed beneath tall pine trees and through thick mountain fog. Creek Wood appeared to be a place that time and people had overlooked.

Old storefronts. Flickering neon signs. Weathered buildings. Quiet.

The kind of quiet that felt heavy.

Tommy stirred awake just as a glowing diner sign appeared through the rain.

I smiled as I pulled into the parking lot. “Yeah, baby,” I whispered. “We can stop.”

Tommy was practically asleep again by the time we climbed out of the car.

Rain drizzled as I hurried around the car and opened the back door. Tommy reached for me with tired arms, and I lifted him onto my hip, even though my back ached from hours of driving.

Skylar climbed out beside us, pulling Wade’s sweater tighter around herself as she slipped the iPod into her pocket.

The diner glowed warmly against the dark, wet evening. Neon lights buzzed in the windows, and for the first time in days, I felt something inside me loosen a little.

Maybe because it looked normal.

“Come on,” I said softly. “Let’s get some food.”

A bell chimed overhead when I pushed open the diner door, and instantly the room went silent.

I hesitated as every head in the diner turned toward us. Heat crept up my neck under the sudden attention. A few older women near the counter stared openly, and a man halfway through lifting his coffee cup froze.

Tommy buried his face against my shoulder while Skylar moved closer to my side.

Three men in leather jackets sat in the back corner near the windows. Large patches covered their backs and shoulders.

The biggest one had dark hair streaked with grey and a face shaped by hard years. Next to him, a younger blond man stared at me like he’d seen a ghost. But the man in the middle caught my attention.

He was calm in a way that felt dangerous.

His gaze locked onto mine with an intensity that should have made me uncomfortable. It should have scared me.

Instead, something strange settled low in my chest.

Somehow, impossibly, I’d just walked into a room full of strangers and the tight knot in my chest loosened for the first time in months.

The dark-haired biker’s expression tightened just a little as his eyes moved over Skylar and Tommy before coming back to me.

The whole diner still felt frozen, and suddenly I had the overwhelming sense that walking into Creek Wood had changed everything.

1 Chapter 1 2 Chapter 2 3 Chapter 3 4 Chapter 4 5 Chapter 5 6 Chapter 6 7 Chapter 7 8 Chapter 8 9 Chapter 9 10 Chapter 10 11 Chapter 11 12 Chapter 12 13 Chapter 13 14 Chapter 14 15 Chapter 15 16 Chapter 16 17 Chapter 17 18 Chapter 18 19 Chapter 19 20 Chapter 20 21 Chapter 21 22 Chapter 22 23 Chapter 23 24 Chapter 24 25 Chapter 25 26 Epilogue

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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2

The moment the diner door opened, all my instincts kicked in. She wasn’t a threat, but she was impossible to ignore.

Rain dripped from her dark, honey-brown hair as she walked in, holding a sleeping boy on her hip. A girl about ten clung to her, lost in a worn-out grey sweater.

The woman looked exhausted. Not just tired, but truly worn out.

Life had taken everything from her and still demanded more.

Something clenched in my chest.

Then the entire diner went silent.

I frowned. The woman stopped near the entrance, uneasy with all the eyes on her. Honestly, I’d feel the same way; everyone in the room was staring. Sally was the first to move.

The diner owner dropped the coffee pot and walked straight toward the woman. When Sally got closer, she stopped in her tracks. Her face went pale. For a moment, she just stared, then her eyes filled with tears.

“What the hell…” Bolt muttered beside me.

I looked back at the woman. I really looked, and then it hit me. Not everything made sense, but enough did.

Nearly thirty years had passed since Maria disappeared from Creek Wood.

I’d seen old photographs, and the woman near the door looked so much like her that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Only one thing didn’t match.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured gently, looking between the woman and the two exhausted kids. “Come on. Let’s get you seated and get some food into those babies.”

Relief flashed across the woman’s face. The little boy buried his face in her shoulder. The girl stayed close.