"So? They listened?"
"Hell, yeah, they listened. You remember my mom. She wasn't a woman to be messed with."
I tipped my head to the side, butting up once more with that strange wistfulness in her tone. Because we were talking without sniping at each other, I felt like I could ask, "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Talk like that about your mom. I can tell you're grieving, that you miss her, but equally, it's almost like—"
"I have a lot of regrets where she was concerned. I told you already that we argued before she died."
"Kids and parents argue. A lot."
"True. But this was a bad argument, one after another bad argument we'd had a few weeks before that. We weren't close at the end, and I think that might be what you're picking up on. I can't change shit now. I've run out of time. She's run out of time. I regret that."
Because that did fit with what I'd heard in her voice, I asked, "Why didn't you get on well? Were you too alike?"
Her lips curved, and a glint appeared in her eye. "You asking if I'm as ornery as she was?"
"I'm not asking that," I scoffed. "I already know you are."
She snickered, shoving me in the arm and pushing me away. She packed some punch, so I shifted a little in my seat, smirking as I reached for the bottle and took a sip.
"Lance, her new husband, didn't like me. We didn't get on, and because she took his side all the fucking time, I stopped getting on with her too." She shrugged, her smile fading. "Simple."
"Nothing that you just said is simple."
Her lips twisted. "True dat."
Because I'd made her somber, when that hadn't been my intention, I muttered, "I don't do the extreme sports thing that much now."
"But you did it before?" I could practically feel her clinging onto the change in conversation with both hands.
"Yeah. When I could. I prospected as soon as I fucking could, and when you have all the shit to do to become a full brother, and then when you're patched in, it's not like you have time for hobbies.
"But I did some stuff. The best shit I did was in Bali, actually. There are a lot of waterfalls there, a lot of extreme sports, and things where you're pitted against nature." I pulled a face. "It was something I wanted to do, so I did. That trip is probably what Dog was talking about. It's all anyone was talking about for a while."
"Why?"
I grunted. "Most brothers don't even have a passport."
Her eyes widened. "Oh. They thought you were risking it by leaving the States?"
What she was really asking was if I had a warrant out for my arrest.
I just cocked a brow at her. "I had no problems getting in and out of the country."
Curiosity throbbed through her. To the point where she started fidgeting. If it hadn't been so fun to watch, I'd undoubtedly have told her what she wanted to know, instead, amusement firing me, I watched her suffer in silence.
After a while, the peace settled between us, and fuck, if it didn't make me feel rested. I wasn't sure that had ever happened, outside of the moments where I'd just killed a cunt, and, I'd admit, it was fucking nice.
Only, nice felt too lackluster a word for what I was feeling.
There was a serenity inside me that I wanted more than I needed my next breath, and the best part? As I felt all this, I could watch her.
And she could watch me.
What was it about her?
What was it about us when we were together?
Sniping and snarling like two pissed off cats sharing the same bag, and yet, when it boiled down to it, capable of sitting here in silence and just being.
I wasn't surprised, a few minutes later, when she released a shaky breath and muttered, "I'm going to bed."
"You do that," I informed her, watching her brow pucker.
"You going to leave?"
I kicked my feet out and crossed them at the ankle. "Nope."
And so it went. That was how I spent the night in the bunkhouse with her, but without her too. It was why I was happy—fucking happy—enough to whistle when, the following morning, I walked into the council meeting, and happier still to laugh at the state of my brothers when I caught sight of them. Only Mav didn’t have a hangover, and that was because the bastard never left his fucking room unless it was for council.
Jingle always took food up to him, and I hoped for his sake that he slaked off some of his bitterness inside her pussy too. Though I doubted it. Rex had told me once that Mav refused to have sex. Why? I didn’t know, but if he couldn’t get a hard-on thanks to what had gone down overseas, I wasn’t sure why he asked Jingle to bring his dinner.
Talk about punishing yourself.
Jingle had the biggest titties among the clubwhores, and she had these little bells on her nipples. When she was naked—which she was, a lot—they always jingled. Hence the name.
With everyone else groaning, and the room in the semi-dark again, it was, I’d admit, quite nice not to wake up with cotton mouth. I rarely drank, but even a couple of shots of tequila made your breath stink worse than dragon piss, but not today. Not for me. Why? Because I’d had water after I’d returned to Giulia’s place, and watched her drink hot milk.
Hot milk.
What the hell was she? Ten?
I’d half thought she’d done it as a joke, but when I’d watched her swallow down the drink and hum as she did so, I realized she liked that shit.
Actually liked it.
There was plenty of other shit that was weird about her too. Shit that wasn’t as disturbing as a preference for hot fucking milk. But that was the most concerning in my opinion.
Back before she’d left, Lizzie had been as much of a Sinner as Dog, and Giulia’s twin brothers looked to be just as bad—or good, depending on your inclination—as the people who had spawned them. So, the question was, where the fuck had she come from? And why did she both irritate the shit out of me, and make me want her harder than any of the other bitches at the clubhouse?
“Okay, everyone, let’s get our shit in line,” Rex declared, his tone just an edge over strident, which had everyone groaning.
Of course, he did it on purpose.
He and I, as well as Mav—but I didn’t include him in the mix—were pretty much the only ones who never let themselves get totally fucked every evening. Rex mostly because he’d never forgive himself if something went down and he was pissed out of his skull.
In our world, that wasn’t an impossibility, and to be fair, it was one of the major reasons I didn’t drink every night too. But after I purged a sick motherfucker off this Earth? I partied. Hard. I partied, and I reveled in the life I had that could never be normal, thanks to my own demons in my closet. Demons who’d torn Carly from me way too early. Demons who wanted to kill again and again, even though I knew from experience that spilling any amount of cunt blood would never make up for losing my older sister.
My heart began to pound as the ever present need to make someone pay throbbed through my veins. It was all the stronger for those feelings of happiness I’d just felt. It was like I wasn’t allowed to be content without having to pay for it with the guilt that tore at me. Sometimes, it was to the point where I felt like I was goddamn possessed. Like that need inside me belonged to someone else, and I was only along for the ride. But the only thing that made me recognize it as bullshit was the delight I took in hurting those who hurt the innocent.
I might be sick.
I might be twisted.
But I wasn’t as sick or as twisted as they were, which had to count for something.
“Fuck’s sake. If you’re not listening either, Nyx, then I might as well talk to the goddamn wall.”
Rex’s complaint had me blinking as I realized he’d started the meeting, but at his words, I shifted my focus to him. “Sorry.”
“Yeah. You sound it.” He sniffed, looked at the others, then rolled his eyes. “We have shit to discuss. I need you to bring your A game.”
“Can
’t that Giulia girl bring some food in?” Maverick whined, scratching his belly like he hadn’t been fed in a week. “I’m hungry.”
I scowled at him. “She ain’t your slave.”
“She is.” He sniffed. “I’ve gained six pounds because of her.”
“Is that a complaint or praise?” Storm said wryly.
Glowering at him, I muttered, “Considering Mav is skin and fucking bone, dipshit, I’d say it’s a positive.” Didn’t mean I liked the idea of him calling on Giulia for food all the fucking time. Even if I was glad— Shit.
What the fuck was happening to me?
Not only was Giulia not mine, she was here to feed everyone. Even if I thought she needed help for that mammoth task, her job was pretty much to make sure anyone who wanted something to eat had something in their bellies, so it wasn’t like I could bitch at Mav for being hungry.
“You know how often we’ve been talking about food in these meetings because Giulia started cooking for us?” Rex grunted.
“We’ve only had two since she arrived,” I muttered. Nine days she’d been here. Nine.
What would I be like when she’d been here ninety?
I really fucking hoped I’d be bored of the sight and sound of her, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Knew it like I knew my name was Nyx.
No, I didn’t want to claim her. No, I didn’t want to make her my woman. But that didn’t make me feel any less possessive about her.
No one deserved the fate of me claiming them. No one deserved to be tied to a sick fuck like me forever. And if that killed the small part of my soul that was still alive and kicking? Well, that was just tough shit. Protecting women and kids was what I tried to do, even if it meant protecting them from myself.
“Yeah, well, all we do is talk about food. The steaks she made, that whore pasta she—”
I scowled. “Puttanesca,” I corrected. “Not whore pasta.” I almost tutted at the sacrilegious label, because my experience with eating that dish had been close to holy.
“Since when were you Gordon goddamn Ramsay?” Storm sniped.
Link elbowed him in the side. “I think Nyxy is in wuv.”
Because that made my heart pound again, I kept my face expressionless and flipped him the bird. “Nyxy is going to ram this up your ass if you’re not careful.” Goddamn Kendra and that fucking nickname.
“That wouldn’t be a punishment,” Steel remarked dryly. “Not when he likes things up there.”
Link laughed, smacking his hand down on the table as he chuckled like a fucking hyena.
“Wasn’t that funny,” I retorted.
“Your face was a fucking picture!” Link hooted, then he made a big show of wiping down his face from tears of laughter.
Rex grunted. “How did shit derail more than it already had?” he mused, more to himself than anyone else, I figured.
I cut him a look. “I think you were intending on talking about our diversification plans.”
“So you were listening.” He hummed. “Good.”
We’d been earning a little too much of late, and while that wasn’t a complaint, it sure as shit wasn’t as great as it sounded.
The more we earned, the more we had to launder, and until recently, that had never been an issue, but we’d opened up some channels for distribution that had been quite profitable.
One of our newer Old Ladies was related to a Five Pointer over in Hell’s Kitchen, and because to the Irish, blood was everything, and because Mary Catherine was one of the upper ranks’ daughters, that meant they put us on probation.
It had only been thirteen weeks since we’d been approached, but ever since, we’d had six runs and fuck, the money? We could use it to wipe our asses, that was how much was coming in.
“Okay, so for the boring shit. The bar is almost finished, so’s the diner and the strip club. We have the garage kitted out, and the doors are due to open within the next few weeks, and then that microbrewery idea of yours, Mav, worked out perfectly. I’m sloughing off a couple mil into that project.”
Mav, ever sober, slipped him the ‘peace’ sign. “If only you always listened to me,” he intoned, and though he didn’t grin, most of the council did. Hell, even the corners of my mouth twitched.
“If he did that, then we’d be really fucked,” I commented, “considering you won’t leave the clubhouse and haven’t had your cock sucked in only fuck knows how long.”
Mav, used to my digs and knowing that they came from a good place, merely stated, “If you’re that interested in my cock, you can suck it yourself.”
Because Mav swung both ways, the threat wasn’t idle, but I still snorted. “I’ll send Cammie up. She’s better than me.”
A certain stillness overtook my brothers, but I didn’t know why. Mav either didn’t notice it, or just sandblasted through it, as usual. “If you do, make sure she brings some food. I’m more interested in that than the black hole between her thighs.” He sniffed as though bored with the subject which, as per fucking usual, blew all our goddamn minds.
Mav, before Iraq, had been like a stallion in perpetual heat.
Seriously, the dude couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, and now? It was like he wore some kind of fucking chastity belt or something. It was weird. Disconcerting as fuck to have the old Mav back, while still missing half of the man we’d known for so long.
Rex, clearing his throat, his desire to change the subject evident, muttered, “Anyway, I’m going to need you all to take these places under your wing.” He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “All of this has come about quickly, too quickly, I know, but I see no reason the money won’t keep rolling in, so long as we don’t fuck up.”
“And we won’t,” I reassured him.
The Satan’s Sinners MC had been on the up and up for a while, but getting the connections we had was a stroke of luck.
That Digger had fallen for a Five Pointer bitch was fortuitous as fuck, and we were all reaping the benefits of their deal with the Russians—even if those Bratva cunts did make our blood boil with how they kept swaggering over into our territory. We just had to make sure that Digger treated Mary Catherine well, because if he didn’t, he’d fuck everything over for all of us.
In fact… would Giulia like Mary Catherine? I’d only met the Irish-American girl twice, but she hadn’t been as bland as I’d imagined. Being raised in Families like the Five Points tended to make dull bitches who were scared of saying boo to a fucking goose. Probably because their fathers whipped them or some shit straight after confession. Goddamn Catholics.
Giulia, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of dull and obedient, but was she too much for Mary Catherine? Or would she help ease the other woman into the life? MCs and the Mob were two different entities entirely. Just because you came from one didn’t mean you could adapt well in the other. Plus, Giulia had been born and raised in the Sinners. Even if she’d left for a small while, she knew the score. That was how she knew how to treat the whores.
I rubbed my chin at the thought of introducing her to Mary Catherine, and decided it wouldn’t altogether be too terrible an idea.
“I’m going to assign you each to one of the businesses, and you can take control over how many men you need from then on out,” Rex was saying, dragging me from my thoughts with a bang. Even knowing this had been the direction we’d been heading down for the past few months, didn’t make the notion any less annoying. And I wasn’t the only one. All the councilors were bitching under their breaths, and Rex, ignoring their mutters, forged on, “I have enough shit of my own to be handling, so I need you to pull up your big boy pants, stop getting fucking wasted every goddamn night, and do your jobs. You hear me?”
When everyone just squinted at him, he growled under his breath. Though this was the last thing I wanted, instead of siding with them, I sided with the club and slammed my hand against the table. Rex didn’t need my backup, he was as much of a crazy motherfucker as the rest of us, but I had his back.
; Always.
And the council knew that.
With a couple of faux yawns, they all began a circle of nods that had Rex grunting. I knew he didn’t like it when I pulled shit like that, but if they were scared of Rex, then they were terrified of me. Even Maverick, and the fuck only knew what he’d seen overseas. But that was just my level of crazy.
When you saw a man smile as he sliced another fucker’s throat and pulled out his tongue through the gaping hole, you knew something was wrong with them. That was the least of my crimes, and all my brothers knew it.
That they’d all started joking around me the past few days, wasn’t a development I appreciated, but fuck, I’d been acting differently, and I didn’t even know why or how. The only change in my life was that Giulia and her siblings had returned to the clubhouse, but there was no way in fuck I could see any causality in her being here, and my brothers suddenly deciding to make me the butt of their shitty jokes.
“I’ll take the diner.” If I had to do this shit, then fuck, I might as well have a nice view as I did it.
Rex’s eyes widened. “You? You can’t cook for shit.”
My lips curved. “I know. But I reckon Giulia might come in handy on that score.”
Rex grunted. “Leave that snatch alone. The last thing I need is Dog and you duking it out over her.”
I shrugged, even if a part of me was surprised Rex hadn’t seen how Giulia and Dog had barely interacted since their arrival. Rex usually noticed everything that went down around here… that he was distracted was a point of concern that had me eying him carefully as I said, “Already happened last night. He went to slap her.” As my brothers grew tense around me, I reassured them, “I just hit him a few times.”
“Thank fuck for that. I thought I was going to have to arrange a funeral,” Steel muttered, making a show of wiping the sweat off his brow in relief.
Hitting women wasn’t allowed on my watch, and everyone knew it. Dog had forgotten last night, but he wouldn’t again. Not if he valued his kneecaps. Even if a lot of the guys got handsy with the women, I overlooked it, so long as they never came to me and complained about any ill treatment. I wasn’t about to gut a man for spanking his bitch during sex, after all. They had to come to me or be sporting bruises for me to get involved in something that wasn’t my business.
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 11