I give Reba’s hand a quick squeeze.
“I’ll be back soon,” I promise, and she nods.
“I’ll just stay with Nellie for now,” she tells me, and I take off, striding along to catch up with Cat. He hasn’t gone very far, but as soon as he sees that I’m with him, he continues deeper into the garden with me following behind.
At any moment, he could turn and blow my brains out. It’s that easy for him, isn’t it? To put a gun to another person’s head. Yet somehow, I don’t think that’s what he’s up to. If he wanted me dead, he’d have killed me either before or after he shot my brother.
Cat strays from the brick path, ignoring the crackle in the sky that says a storm is coming. Looking up, I can see the gray clouds rolling in, but the thought of rain doesn’t do a damn thing to calm my fears about the nearby wildfires. As I said before, rain can be a blessing, but it can also bring lightning and start new fires. That’s a real fear, and I have an ominous feeling about it all.
It’s not magic; I’m not psychic. I’m just someone who’s grown up watching bad things happen over and over again; there’s a pattern to the way events unfold. A pressure in the air that you can feel. I knew it the day of the wedding, didn’t I? Well, I know it now.
This storm will bring nothing but pain to everyone that’s caught within it.
My father leads me over to the base of a tree. Not the same one I spoke to Crown beneath, but a different one. It’s a cottonwood, I think. A garbage tree to most people, but I like it because it spreads everywhere and grows big fast.
I feel a prickle on the back of my neck like I’m being watched, and the sensation soothes me. They’re here, even if I can’t see them. Cat might be able to quickdraw a weapon, but I trust the boys to save my ass.
I move up beside my father, mimicking his pose by crossing my arms under my breasts. They are sore; Nellie was right. Damn her for that.
“Where are you getting your information?” he asks, and he must be confident that we’re alone—he’ll know his officers are watching, I’m sure, but we’re safe from other Daybreakers—or else he wouldn’t be talking like this. Cat turns rust-red eyes down to mine, and I glance his way, our gazes crashing together.
“Are you going to kill me?” I ask, and he snorts, turning back to look at the tree. There’s something in his face that I’ve never really seen before. Either because he didn’t allow me to see it or because the burden of grief has just grown so heavy that he can’t possibly deny it anymore—not to me, not even to himself.
“If I wanted you dead,” he starts, still staring at me, but with that odd sort of regretful darkness etched into his features, “you wouldn’t have the chance to ask. You’d just be gone. But you know that already, don’t you? You’re a smart girl.” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up as he stares at the tree. “This is your brother’s grave,” he tells me, and the blood drains from my face.
I turn back to the tree and try not to think bad thoughts about Gaz. He was a horrible man who did horrible things. He killed a prostitute to keep her quiet. He was more than willing to kill me, his baby sister. His only remaining sister.
I drop my hands to my sides as I struggle to keep my anger from showing so obviously. Cat can read body language like he’s got a doctorate in it. He’ll know every emotion I’m feeling the moment I feel it.
“Where are you getting your information from?” he repeats, referring to last night. Because I was there. Because I knew there was a surprise assassination attempt on the books. It was a pretty good one, too, I’ll admit. Sending in a bunch of hitmen, guns blazing, would never work on Cat. But a weepy, slightly overweight middle-aged woman inside a police station? Having her pop out of the women’s restroom like that was brilliant, too.
Whoever planned that was meticulous.
The only thing they didn’t plan on was that I was smart enough to figure it out. I might not have, if I hadn’t seen Ms. Briggs enter the station. That was pure luck. Or, maybe, more of that strange dark intuition of mine.
“Grey Wolfe,” I reply, because I can’t pretend it’s anyone else. Cat will know if I’m lying. Besides, he already saw that photo. It’s out there, the truth of the situation. “He wants to take over the mafia and end this war; it makes sense, if you think about it.”
“I’m supposed to believe that shit?” Cat snorts, and then he shakes his head, moving forward and pointing at the disturbed earth beneath his feet. “Your brother is dead beneath my boots, Gidget. Do you know what he was doing?”
I’m not sure if it’s a hypothetical question or not.
“He was giving packages to a hooker by the name of Rhea Bundy,” I continue, trying not to get too excited that I’m finally able to share my story. What I did last night, saving my father’s life—maybe, or maybe Beast would’ve done it for me anyway—has granted me the tiniest little scrap of goodwill. It won’t last. And if I don’t give answers that Cat likes, I’ll run through it even more quickly. “She was leaving those packages at an old church—Santuario di Santa Gemma Galgani. We figured that out, but we didn’t know why he was having her do that, what the point of it was.”
I scratch at the side of my face, staring at the ground and trying not to imagine the grim reality of my brother’s body decomposing down there. It’s just not something I want to let my imagination dig into.
Cat continues to stare at me, analyzing me … no, more like dissecting me. He’s cutting me apart with his eyes, shredding me to pieces. The thing is, I don’t crumple easily. I look up and meet his gaze unflinchingly.
Will my baby have these same accursed eyes? I wonder, thinking how odd it is that Posey and Queenie had blue eyes like Nellie while Gaz and I ended up with these red-brown ones. Blue is a recessive gene, so … Cat must have a recessive blue-eyed gene in there somewhere. I mean, shit, even this high school dropout knows there’s more than one gene that controls eye color, but the gist is the same.
I suddenly can’t decide if I want my baby to have these eyes or if the sight of them on another person’s face would make me sick. My palm slides across my belly as I exhale.
“I’ll tell you what was in those packages,” Cat says, smoking his cigarette and staring at the dirt beneath his feet. His gaze is darker than I’ve ever seen it, laced with violence. “Anything your brother could sell to the mafia: maps of the compound, employee files, copies of receipts from our suppliers.” Cat lets out a dark laugh. “He was smart enough to know we keep everything on a closed system, that we’d notice a digital trail. Guess he figured he could print it all out and get things done that way.”
“How long have you known about Gaz?” I ask, and Cat lifts his face up to stare at me.
I am not the one who’s supposed to be asking questions here. It’s all there in that sharp look on his face. Shut your fucking mouth. I do, my hand still resting absently on my lower belly. Cat notices and quirks up the edge of his lip in a snarl.
“You, pregnant. Never thought I’d see the day. You sure you want to bring another person into this fucked-up world?” Cat finishes his cigarette and then drops the butt to the ground, crushing out the embers with his boot. Even he’s smart enough not to start yet another fire around here.
“It feels like my entire family is dead,” I say, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “I guess I just wanted to see if I couldn’t make a new one.” Cat just keeps looking at me like he can’t figure me out. But he can. He knows. He understands me because we’re exactly the same on the inside. “Anyway, Queenie didn’t get to have her baby, so maybe I’m having one for her?”
Cat says nothing in response to that, and I feel myself getting frustrated.
“I am on the club’s side,” I plead with him, stepping forward, my hand still over my stomach. Somehow, I can sense that I’m just a little bit safer this way. “Your officers, they’ve been sickeningly loyal to you from the get-go. The only thing they ever did was cover up my mistake. I took Grey and then I crashed into a mafia roadblock;
they were here for him anyway, Cat. They would’ve attacked the compound that day regardless.”
“You should be dead,” he tells me, but his tone of voice neither raises nor lowers. It’s thick and dark and poisonous, the voice of the devil. One of Reba’s Bible quotes flickers in my brain like hellfire: You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Fuck.
Me and Cat, we are unholy nightmares.
“But I’m not dead. You killed Gaz to keep me here.”
Cat ignores me.
“How are you contacting the mafia boy?” he asks instead, reverting back to business. He hasn’t once mentioned if he’s excited by the idea of a grandchild or not, if he even cares at all.
“Video calls mostly,” I say as thunder rolls through the sky, shaking the world with its grumble, and a similar sound breaks from Cat’s throat. He hates himself right now; I can see it. He hates himself because he knows that he should kill me—club law would demand it—but he can’t do it.
He can’t do it because he loves me. Just like I love him. We love and hate each other in equal measures. We consider each other to be monsters.
“And what do you give him in return, huh? You expect me to believe this boy’s helpin’ ya outta the kindness of his heart.” Cat laughs at that, but not like he’s happy about it, obviously. More like he’s going crazy on the inside, coming apart at the seams. “You fuckin’ him, too? Or just my officers?”
“I never slept with Grey; I don’t love him,” I reply, and Cat howls at that.
“Oh, that’s rich. And you’re in love with four grown-ass men you have no business being with?” He points at me. “I never should’ve let you marry Beast; you’re getting full of yourself. You think he can protect you from everything? He might be strong, Gidge, but he’s one man. Just one.”
That’s a threat if I’ve ever heard one.
“Which is why I have three other lovers—” I start, and Cat cuts me off with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, it’s Gidget, not Gidge.”
Cat ignores that last bit, but I had to say it. It’s a part of who I am at this point.
“What are you giving him in exchange, Gidget? Information like that doesn’t come cheap.”
I’m already shaking my head. God, how do I make someone like Leroy Kesselring—a man who could shoot his own son in cold-blood—understand something as impossible as friendship?
How?
“I gave him his life, Cat. I traded mine for his. I don’t tell him anything about DBD. Nothing.” I reach up and scrub at my face with both hands. When I drop them down, I see that Cat is staring at the canopy of the tree, his face a strange mask, one that I thought I understood with perfect clarity.
I see now that it’s all bullshit.
There are so many layers to this man, layers that I may never be able to peel back and see beneath. He’s evil, but there’s good in there, good that manifests in the fact that my heart is still beating, that I’m still standing here.
“You can get more information for me?” he asks, and I hesitate briefly before nodding. “Next time he calls you, record it. I want to see the whole damn thing.” Cat moves over to stand in front of me, and there’s nothing about his pose that’s fatherly or friendly. “If I see any one of the five of you make a move without me, that will be the end of everything. You hear me, girl? We have three more chapters on the way.” He scowls at me, like I’m the biggest pain in the ass that ever lived. “I can’t protect you against a literal army.”
He turns and takes off, and even though this move backfired on me bad back at the house, I can’t stop myself. Told ya I had one more in me. Even after last night. Even after seeing him kill an innocent woman.
Yep. I am fucked-up beyond all reason.
“Daddy, wait,” I say, and my voice cracks in just such a way that he stops walking. He doesn’t turn back to me, but he does pause. The wind whips around me, sending chills skittering down my spine. Now, the air not only tastes like ash, but it’s tainted with the violent, impossible energy of a storm. It’s charged, the wind is, like it’s been electrified, like every molecule carries the possibility of a zing or a zap.
Tonight, even more of the world is going to catch on fire.
“I’ve hated you for as long as I can remember. I mean, really hated you. You were a shitty father; Nellie was a shitty mother. I saw things I never should’ve seen, and I grew up way too fucking fast, so fast that I’ve got whiplash, so fast that I can’t remember anything except being a teenager and then being a woman. There isn’t anything before that.” I swallow hard, and I sort of hate that the guys are listening in on me, and yet I can’t stop myself. Because if I don’t say this now, when am I going to say it? What if, like with Gaz, I never get the chance to say it? So here it goes. Here goes fucking nothing.
I take a deep breath.
“I wondered all this time why you changed so suddenly, why you sat me down that day beside the pool and banned me from this compound. Why you started to control me when you’d never cared before.” I watch his back muscles as I talk, but he was already tense, and that stance doesn’t change, even as the words spill out of me. “Was it because you made a mistake with Queenie?”
I stop talking, realizing only after I go silent that I’m holding my breath. Waiting. Hoping. Why, I’m not sure. I have no idea why I let myself fall into this trap. It’s those goddamn men, tearing me apart, opening up a heart that I thought was dead and shriveled.
It’s open now, open and bleeding, and I’m pouring crimson out of a million emotional wounds, but yet … I’m still standing.
“I made mistakes, sure,” he says, and the revelation shocks me to my core. I feel myself start to tremble, but I don’t move from where I’m standing, leaves whipping around my face as it starts to sprinkle, cool droplets spattering my dry, parted lips. “But I didn’t want you coddled and naïve, Gidge.” Cat finally deigns to look back at me, just once. Just that once. “Seems I did too good of a job on that end. The rest of it … that’s all I’ve got. Don’t expect more. You know better than that.”
He takes off, and even though I know I might hate myself for this later, that my father hurts people and hurts dogs and hurts his own kids, I do it anyway. I just do it.
“I love you,” I tell him, and he stops. He actually stops walking. “I don’t want to. I even hate myself for it. But there it is. It’s out there.” I spread my arms wide, opening myself up to the storm, the darkness, the smoke-filled sky. When Cat doesn’t answer, when he just keeps walking, I let my head fall back and my lids droop closed.
I stay that way until I feel them, all four of them, standing nearby. My own horde of demons, granting me the armor that I need to defend myself against the devil.
“Well?” It’s Crown, that one word a demand. I drop my arms by my sides, but I don’t move any more than that.
“He wants me to report back when I hear from Grey,” I whisper, tasting the strange charcoal-tainted raindrops on my mouth. I stick my tongue out to catch more of the stray droplets, and a strange laugh escapes my throat. It’s husky and sardonic, but not entirely displeased.
I should be broken over what happened last night.
Instead, all I can think is how much better I would’ve handled it if I were in charge.
I could’ve saved Ms. Briggs then, couldn’t I?
I open my eyes and lift my head. Sin has a slight smile on his face while Crown is frowning in disturbed consternation; Beast is still and silent, but his eyes simmer, and Grainger, well, he scowls at me just like he always does.
It matches up, those reactions, to what I already know about them all.
Sin is just enough of the boy next door to wake up parts of me that I thought I lost, that really, I thought were dead, that childhood I’m chasing so hard and wat
ching slip further and further away. We can be young together, me and him, but without falling into a trap of complacency or naivety.
With Crown, I feel like a true partner, a queen to his king, someone that can both give and receive advice. He’s the perfect type of man to own a house with, to make a baby with. That’s his forte, a strong pillar, a natural-born leader.
Beast is the one who treats me like something that’s deeply cherished, something to be taken care of, something to treasure. He’s leashed himself to me, and his blood runs on the beat of my heart rather than his own. He will lie down and die for me if that’s what’s needed, and he’ll do it without complaint.
Grainger … oh, fuck Cade Grainger. He’s the one I really wasn’t supposed to want, the toxic passion, the one that makes me burn up on the inside and not care that I’m reduced to ash, that I’ve mixed in with the electricity of the wind and I’m becoming the storm.
There are so many sides of me, and each man matches up perfectly to one of those jagged edges. I look around at them, and then refocus my gaze on the cottonwood tree.
“Just give me some time, and I’ll restore your honor in the club.” I strut off, that statement hanging in the air behind me.
Cat isn’t going to let Reba off the compound just yet. And if I learned anything from this conversation, it’s this: we need to tread very, very carefully. Play by the rules.
At least for now.
I’m bent over the toilet bowl, forearms resting on the seat, and cursing Nellie under my breath. I was fine until she brought up this shit. It’s like, psychosomatic or something, I swear. Fucking pregnancy symptoms.
My stomach muscles contract, and I dry heave over the water, wondering why the hell I would ever choose this path for myself. You really are nuts, Gidge. You’re insane. I can’t even blame the guys for this really; this was a decision made with my own free will.
Sin moves into the bathroom to squat beside me. He’s absurdly handsome in his leather cut, a black t-shirt underneath, criminally snug denim on his strong thighs, and black riding boots. That blue hair of his is styled perfectly, his earrings shimmering in the light. Worst of all, that gleam of pride in his silver eyes.
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