Greatest MC Romance Box Set

by Blair Grey

  Maybe it came from not being allowed to ask my mother for things or help of any kind. Whatever it was, I hated to bother other people. And here I was, bothering the shit out of Lyle and all the men in his MC. What was worse, I couldn’t even stop doing it now.

  “You can’t ever take the blame for anything. Whatever happens to you – for the rest of your life – you can’t ever tell a soul what really happened.” With a huff, he went on, “We’ll have to come up with something. Whatever we come up with, you will have to learn so well that it becomes a memory to you that really happened. You’ll have to mentally erase the real memory that you have of that event.”

  “And how do I do that?” He made it sound so easy. Like I could just tell myself – nope, that didn’t happen. I did not kill a man. What I did do was this. “That would take some brainwashing shit. And I don’t want my brainwashed.”

  Although, there is a lot of crap in there that I would do better without.

  “It’s not brainwashing.” He laughed. “It’s just like acting. You tell yourself the story over and over again until you know it by heart. All the while, you push the other memory out of your head. Every time you find yourself thinking about that, you will stop your mind and think of the thing we come up with to replace that.”

  “How do you know about this kind of thing?” I had to wonder what sort of things he’d done that he had to retrain his brain about. “Have you used this method? Or have you just heard about it?”

  “I’ve used it. And frankly, it works great.” He grinned at me. “And no, I can’t tell you why I’ve used it, so don’t ask.”

  Rolling my eyes, I said, “You probably wouldn’t tell me the true story anyway even if I did ask.”

  “You’re right. Because the true stories were erased long ago. I haven’t gotten myself into any shit lately where I had to use that technique to fix what I’d done. But it does work. Once we come up with the story of what happened to you both that night, you will recite it over and over until you know it by heart.”

  “So, let’s brainstorm about what we can say.” I thought about it for a while before a good idea came to me. “What if I say that he didn’t go to my cousin’s house with me? What if I say that he and I got into an argument and he dropped me off at the house, then he took off – didn’t even come inside?”

  Nodding, Lyle asked, “And when did you leave the house and how did you leave it if he took the car? His mafia friends will certainly ask you about that. And they’ll also ask you why you didn’t call one of them.” His brow furrowed. “Have you gotten any calls from any of his people, Avia?”

  “I turned my phone off before I left the house. I wasn’t sure if there was a tracking program on it or not. And when I got onto the Brooklyn Bridge, I got paranoid that the phone might still be trackable even without being on. I tossed it out the window and over the railing so it would fall into the East River.” He had me second-guessing my actions. “Was that a smart thing to do or not?”

  With a shrug, he answered me honestly, “I don’t know. Did you do anything with Jerome’s phone?”

  “I left it on him.” I wasn’t about to dig through his pockets. “At least I think that I left it on him. He always carried it in his pants pocket. I think he had it on him. Things from that moment are getting so grainy in my mind that I can’t really see them right anymore. But I didn’t take his phone. I know that for sure.” The wheels moved slowly, then clicked in my head. “What if the phone is still at the house and that’s how they found where we were supposed to have stayed?”

  Holding up one finger, he used his phone and made a call. “Hey, did you guys recover a cell phone from the NY job?” He nodded. “Cool. I just wanted to know about that. Thanks.”

  “Well?” I asked as I felt my chest tighten. “Did they see his phone?”

  “Yeah, it was in his pants pocket like you said. It’s no more. You know, destroyed. No one will be tracking it down now.” He drug his hand down his long, dark beard. “But they might’ve been able to ping it to that location. From there though, there would be nothing. The guys disabled it before moving the body. So, no worries there. But do you see how if you go to them and tell them that story and they had pinged the phone, then they would know you were lying to them? And what would they do to you then, do you suspect?”

  “Torture me until they got the truth out of me, then kill me.” Looking down, I had no idea what to do. “How come there seems to be nothing that I can do or say to make things right with the fucking mafia?”

  “Because they’re not stupid individuals,” he said. “They’ve dealt with death a lot more than others and they know just about every way a person can be killed and just about every reason behind it. They had to have known about the physical abuse you endured at the hands of their president. Right?”

  “Yeah, they all knew.” Heat rose inside of me as I recalled how many times he’d smacked me around in front of his men. And the driver had seen it get much worse than the smacking around. Even when he chose to ignore it, he knew it was going on and he never said a fucking word to Jerome. None of them did.

  “If they all know about how bad you were being abused, then you have to know that you are their first thought in the disappearance of Jerome Conti. You cannot ever talk to any of them. I don’t care what kind of story you think you can come up with, you cannot talk to any of them.”

  “I wonder what his mother is thinking right now?” She had to know they thought he was missing. “He’s her world. She treats him like a kid. She dotes on him like someone would do a small child.” I felt bad about how upset and hurt she must feel. She was the nicest person to me in that house.

  Jerome’s father barely spoke to me. His mother had cared for me – in her way – after my beatings. We weren’t close though. And I had the idea that she too would think that I was behind the disappearance.

  It was highly doubtful that any of them worried at all about me. I was sure all the concern was for Jerome. If I wasn’t being talked about as the person behind it all, I just wasn’t talked about at all.

  “She should’ve taught him not to hit girls, is what she should’ve done,” Lyle said. “If she’d done that, then he’d be alive today.”

  “But he’s not. And that’s because of me.” Putting my face into my hands, I whimpered, “Why did I have to hit him in the side of the head with the fucking lamp? Why did it fall into my hand the way it did? Why did he come at me while I held something that I could hit him with? The whole thing makes no sense at all.”

  “Call it karma,” Lyle said. “Karma stepped in and put a lamp in your hand. That man wasn’t going to stop coming at you, even if you held a gun in your hand. He would’ve had the balls to grab it right out of your hand. The bravado of men like him is unreal. But in them, it is very real.”

  “He had balls of steel; I will agree with that. He thought he was invincible. But he was very wrong. If anyone would’ve told him that they foresaw him getting knocked out by a lamp that a woman hit him with, he would’ve laughed. If they would’ve told him he’d be killed by it, he would’ve probably shot them in the face for saying anything so profoundly stupid.”

  “Tell me why you liked him, Avia.” He looked at me with wonder. “You hated me, and I didn’t ever hurt you. I scared you. I picked on you. But I never hurt you.”

  “You yanked my ponytail one time and that hurt,” I thought he needed reminding. “And you tripped me too. That hurt.”

  His lips formed a thin line. “You know what I mean. I didn’t hit you. I was a total jackass; I agree with you there. The hair-pulling was immature, but it isn’t anything that young boys don’t do, to young girls who they like. And the tripping is the same thing. I liked you. I was just really bad at showing that.”

  “Yeah, you were really bad at showing it. That is for sure.” I thought about it for a moment, wondering if I would’ve like Lyle if he’d been nice to me, instead of a complete bully. “This might make you upset with your former s
elf, but I might have found you cute if you hadn’t always been so mean.”

  “Might’ve found me cute?” He laughed. “I’m sure that if I would’ve acted like a normal guy, you would’ve liked me. You like me now. Well, sometimes. Anyway, let’s talk about something else. I don’t like to think too much about the past. Mostly because I was a dick in it.”

  I had to snicker at that. “Yes, you were.”

  “Do you know what I really liked about you, Avia?” he asked as he cocked his head to one side. “The thing that made you stand out to me was how you would shoot right back every time I fired an insult at you. No one else did that. You were the only one who did that. Others would tattle or ignore me completely.”

  “But I always had to say something back to you.” I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut even way back then. “What you liked about me - Jerome wanted to beat out of me. My smart mouth was the thing that got me into trouble every time.”

  “It’s probably called a smart mouth because you have to be smart to think of what to say when you’re being bothered. I like to have someone I can spur with. And I thought one day you would see that was what I was doing. But you never did see it for what it really was. Not that I blame you. Teenage girls are the most insecure creatures on the planet. I didn’t figure that out until I was well out of my teens. But at least I did figure it out.”

  “I wish I could’ve figured some things out about myself earlier on as well. Like the fact that I would put up with things I never should have. I had no idea that I would stay with a man who hit me. Not one clue in my head, that I would wake up from a fucking coma that he’d beat me into, to eventually think I was to blame for getting the beating.”

  “See, that’s what makes me the maddest about people who do that shit.” He threw his hands into the air. “Not only do they hurt you physically but then they turn around and hurt you mentally. My father would do some horrendous shit to me then make me apologize to him for making him do that to me because it was so fucking hard to teach me how to act.”

  “I guess that’s what people who do that sort of thing have to do to alleviate them from any guilty feelings over being so brutal and horrible. And you were a little kid when that happened to you.”

  “Yeah, well, little kid or not, I was never beaten into an unconscious state. That’ some hard shit right there, Avia. I’ve got to hand it to you. Most people would’ve killed the man who’d done that to them and meant to do it. The fact you did it on accident just says how good a person you really are. You’ve got a good heart even though horrible things have happened to you.”

  And this is coming from a man I’ve hurt recently.

  “Well, I like to think that I do have a good heart. But it seems that I can be pretty brutal myself. At least when I speak to some people. So, what are we going to do about this situation and the fact that the people we went to senior year with and their families might get hurt by what I’ve done?”

  The present is always more important than the past.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lyle

  The last day of the reunion festivities was going to be the biggest. People who didn’t come for the shared meals and the big dance would be coming for the all-day picnic that would be held on the football field.

  “We need the mafia to think you and Jerome were kidnapped.” I knew we had to get that going ASAP. “That way, they won’t be looking for you in Baltimore.” I ran my hand over my beard as I tried to think about what could be done. “I’ll have to get Carl to talk to Lucius about the idea. That would mean they would have to step up their game and take credit for the missing mafia boss and his fiancé.”

  “Are they ready to do that?” she asked as she slowly sat down on the stool at the bar. Her pale skin had gone even whiter and she shook all over.

  “They have to get ready to do that or some innocent people might get hurt or even worse. We can’t have that.” I pulled out my cell and called Carl.

  “Yeah?” he answered my call.

  “We’ve got a problem and need Lucius to move a hell of a lot quicker than anticipated,” I let him know. “The mafia knows about Avia’s high school reunion here in Baltimore. We have every reason to believe that Jerome’s mafia buddies will come here next to look for their boss. And things might not go so well for some of our old classmates.”

  “Shit,” he hissed. “This isn’t good. I thought we’d have more time since they went to look at the house and didn’t find them there. I thought it would take them more time to think about where their boss might be.”

  “They might not think about coming here. But why wouldn’t they?” I asked. “It’s become clear that whatever Jerome knew, he let someone in his organization know too. Avia thought he hadn’t told anyone exactly where they would be staying the night. She’d been wrong about that. She did tell him about the reunion. Wouldn’t that make sense that he told someone about that too and that they’d send a few of their men to search for them at that? Today’s the last day – the biggest day. The picnic at the football field.”

  “It’ll be packed with families too. Kids.” Carl hated to see kids get hurt just as much as the next guy did. “Let me make a call. I’ll get back with you as soon as I know something solid.”

  “K.” I ended the call with a swipe of my finger. “He’ll get back to me.”

  Avia nervously chewed her lower lip. I worried that she might try to take off and turn herself in even though I’d told her what that would cause. So, I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight.

  Since we were in the kitchen anyway, I grabbed a bottle of soda out of the fridge and bottle of Jack I had in the cupboard. She watched me make the drink, then I placed it in front of her.

  Shaking her head, she asked, “Do you know what time it is, Lyle? It’s not even ten in the morning yet and here you are, trying to get me drunk.”

  “I’m only trying to help you to soothe those frazzled nerves.” I snapped my mouth shut as I’d almost called her, baby. I didn’t want to use any more terms of endearment with her. For my own wellbeing. “Drink up. I’ll make you some oatmeal while you sip on that.”

  Her hands closed around the tall glass as she looked at it. “I want to become a strong person, Lyle. I think relying on alcohol to calm me down would be a huge mistake this early on in my quest.” She slid it away. “Don’t you?”

  Chuckling, I let her know what I thought. “A strong person wouldn’t even ask what anyone thought about what they did. They would just do it without bothering to tell anyone why they did it. If you want to be strong, practice it. Act like it, is what I’m trying to say.”

  “Fine.” She picked up the glass, walked over to the sink then poured the drink out. Then she sauntered back and took a seat. “I will have that oatmeal you spoke about though.”

  “And that wasn’t a strong act. That was more of an asshole act.” I rubbed my brow as I thought about what all she had to learn about the difference in assholes and strong people. “See, you could’ve said that you weren’t going to drink it. But you could’ve asked me if I would like it before you poured it down the drain. And you also could’ve asked me if I want your help making some breakfast. That’s just being nice.”

  “So, I’m doing it all wrong is what you’re saying,” she pouted so hard her lower lip nearly touched the floor. “I can’t do anything right.”

  “Stop that.” I didn’t mean for her to take it so damn hard. “See, right there. You beat yourself up too much.” I felt that I should coach her a bit. “Whenever you find yourself thinking bad things about yourself, like that you’re weak or stupid, stop your thoughts in their tracks. And don’t ever let those ugly thoughts come out of your mouth. Don’t give them power. Take away their power by refusing to say them.”

  With a heavy sigh, her chest inflated. “Okay. So, I’m going to make some toast to go with that oatmeal you’re making. Can you point me to the bread? I see the toaster on the counter over there.”

  “That’s
more like it.” I loved the way she could rally so quickly. “The bread’s in the fridge. I keep it in there because it takes me an eternity to finish a whole loaf of bread and it keeps longer in the cool fridge. The butter’s in the back in a silver butter dish. And I like grape jelly on my toast. So, if you could grab the jelly out of the door there, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing.” She set to work with a smile on her face. “So, if McGinty agrees to say that the Irish mob kidnapped me and Jerome, what would be next?”

  “He’d set a ransom.” I wasn’t sure how things would work after that. “But it won’t be something easy for the mafia to pay. It won’t be money – most likely. God knows those people can get their hands on tons of it. So, he’ll come up with something. Territory will most likely be what he asks for. Turf is what those organizations are all about. The ability to sell their goods to the people in their designated turf areas. I think that’s how it goes. I’m not mafia or mob, so I’m just going by what I’ve seen in movies.”

  “They do like to have control of certain parts of the city. I know that much.” She plucked two pieces of bread out of the bag then popped them into the toaster. “And they sell all sorts of things too. I’ve gotten so many things that have, quote – fallen off the back of a truck – than I can even count.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know about the Irish mob or what they sell. And I don’t care to know.” I’d heard the less you knew about things, the better they liked that.

  “Good faith.” She smiled as she tapped the side of her head. “Ha! I am smart. I know how I can come back but Jerome can’t. It’s called a good faith act to let one of the ransom victims go. I could be that act of good faith. After I’m set free, then I’m sure they can drum up that they want more and more until the mafia can’t handle anymore and they can say the deal is over and that Jerome is no more.”

  “Sounds a little too easy, Avia. And that will have you being handed back to the mafia. They will question you. And not in an easy way either. They will interrogate the shit out of you. And I mean that quite literally.” She had no idea how shit like that actually worked. “You’ll have to die along with Jerome. You’ll have to say goodbye to Avia Forester, and you’ll have to mean it.” I saw no other way that would be safe for her.