Cress seemed to sense my anxiety and turned fully into me, ignorin’ the goons and the villains to focus her fuckin’ gorgeous brown graze on me. She cupped my face, traced my cheekbones with her thumbs, and breathed in deep and shaky, just to smell me.
“I love you,” she said fiercely, eyes brimmin’ with diamond tears. “I meant what I said, I would fall from grace a thousand times over if it meant living in sin and beauty with you. Need you to get back to me, okay, honey? I need you to live, so don’t do anything crazy, okay? Nothing gallant or brave. This isn’t a storybook, and you don’t need to be some valiant king who sacrificed himself for his country, okay?”
When I didn’t say anythin’, too busy memorizin’ every single inch of her face, she shook me, voice sharp as a threatening knife at my throat as she repeated, “Okay?!”
“Okay, babe, okay,” I soothed.
Then I drowned the lie with a kiss like a tidal wave, a kiss to crush her fears and replace them with the power of all the love I felt for her. I poured it between her lips, hopin’ it would sow some eternal seed in her hear that would bloom forever no matter what.
“Love you, Cress,” I mumbled against her lips. “Love you enough to tear the world apart for my girl with the whiskey eyes.”
“Promise me you’re coming back,” she urged as I pulled away. “Promise me, King. Swear it to me, or I won’t let you go without me.”
I tucked a long curl behind her ear and gave her my cocky grin. “I swear it, babe. We’ll have our honeymoon in Alaska if it’s the last thing I do. Now let me go, yeah?”
“Okay,” she whispered, hands tremblin’ as she let go.
“Bone of my bone,” I reminded her as I stepped toward Javier. “Of me, meant for me.”
“Bone of my bone,” she echoed, and then I turned my back on her because I couldn’t stand to watch her cry.
“Touching,” Javier said with a slow clap. “Really touching.”
“It’s our fuckin’ wedding day,” I bit out. “And you’re forcin’ me to leave my wife behind.”
“She could come,” he said slyly.
“He’s not goin’ alone,” Nova called out, pushin’ against a thug to step forward only to be hit over the head with the butt of a gun so he crumpled to the ground.
“Ah, it’s you.” Javier’s mask slipped for a moment, and the true, demonic face of him showed through as he glared at Nova. “If I were you, I’d stay silent so I don’t turn my attention on you. Now.” He turned back to me with his smooth grin. “Pick one person.”
“Wrath,” I called immediately, ignorin’ the murmur of shock that pulsed through the brothers at the fact I hadn’t chosen one of them.
He was behind me somewhere, and I knew the moment he stepped forward because Javier’s eyes narrowed as they travelled the length and size of the man.
“A big boy,” he said with a laugh. “Though I doubt Danner will be intimidated.”
“Not about that.” And it wasn’t.
It was about the fact that Wrath was the only man there to know what it felt like to lose the love of your life, and therefore the only one who could begin to understand my plan.
“Whatever the reason, shall we go? Who knows, maybe you’ll even be back in time to cut the cake!” He laughed warmly as if we were best friends and this was his party, then turned abruptly and stalked toward the GMC SUVs parked in a line at the mouth of the driveway.
Wrath moved into place behind me and followed him.
The Fallen touched me as I went if they could, called out to me when they couldn’t just my name, until a soft echo of it lingered in the air.
King, King, King.
“Where to, Mr. Garro?” Javier called over his shoulder.
“The bluffs off Back Bay road, turn right onto Wildwood.”
“Oh,” he said with a cherry laugh. “How atmospheric.”
We got into the back of one’a those SUVs, the door held open by Javier himself who grinned and then slammed the door in our faces as soon as we were seated.
I acted quickly, whipping out the phone they hadn’t bothered to take because the police were in on the scheme. The man I needed was at the wedding so I could only pray he’d get out of there like a bat outta hell and find a way to help me.
“You knew this was gonna happen,” Wrath muttered, his dead eyes the colour of lead as he stared at me. “You’re gonna do somethin’ I’m not gonna like.”
I flashed him a smile. “Might not come down to that, but listen good and don’t interrupt. Don’t know how much time we got.”
King
* * *
“Wanted to talk to you man to man,” Staff Sergeant Harold Danner’s voice came from behind me, but I didn’t turn around.
I was looking out on the ocean tryin’ to brand the sight of the Pacific rolled out like black velvet tossed with silver fragments from an over full moon into my memory banks.
Because I had a feelin’ I might not survive the night. And if that was the case, I wanted every last moment spent breathin’ to be as full’a beauty as it could be, even while in the presence of pure evil incarnate in SS Danner.
I’d been out on the cliff for thirty minutes already, Wrath waitin’ with Ventura’s thugs off to one side long after Javier had departed himself. It was clever of him to leave, and I got the sense he never stuck around for long, especially when somethin’ bad could go down. It no doubt lent itself to his longevity as a crime boss.
“Yeah? Want to confess your sins, Danner?” I asked mildly even though I was filled with anger.
It wasn’t hot and volatile, rushin’ through me like a drug the way it had before.
No.
Like a volcano after the eruption, my lava had cooled to dark, impenetrable rock.
I would not be moved or shaken off the course I’d set by petty anger, not when the lives of the ones I loved were in danger and the man threatenin’ them was so close at hand.
“If we’re talking about sins, boy, it’s you who should repent,” Danner called out, deliberately keepin’ a decent distance between us. “You want the chance to come clean, I’m sure I can work with the prosecutor to cut you a deal. Maybe we could even put you in the same house as your daddy.”
“You ever worry about heaven or hell?” I asked, stickin’ my hands in my pockets and tippin’ my chin to the star-strewn sky. “Worry about what level of hell they might put you in when you meet your maker?”
Danner’s laugh was cold. “No. I don’t. I’m the one on the right side of the law.”
“Can’t hide behind your shades of blue in death. Can’t even do it well in life, Harold. You think you’ve got justice on your side just because you’re a cop, and you think I have sin on my side just because I wear a leather cut. Goodness is in action, not position.”
“Pretty speech,” he bit out, clearly frustrated by my philosophizing. “But I came to make a deal with you so you won’t see any more of your family punished for their crimes or the crimes of the ones they love.”
I dragged a deep breath of that sweet fuckin’ clean and salty air through my mouth and then expelled it in a gusty sigh, bracin’ for what might happen next.
Because I’d found an answer to my question of what price I was willin’ to pay to stave off war.
And like any good leader, I’d chosen to fall on my sword rather than slip in the blood of my Fallen brothers and our families.
When I turned to finally face Danner, it was with my hands wrapped steadily around the cold weight of a gun.
He stepped back, eyes blown wide with shock, hands up in benediction. “Whoa, whoa, son, no need for the gun.”
One of the reasons I’d asked Wrath to come with me.
The man was always carryin’ concealed weapons, even to my fuckin’ wedding.
“There’s a need,” I said calmly as Danner held up a staying hand to Officer Ormand and the lingering Ventura goons. “You’ve been holdin’ a gun to my head and the head of the club for years. Wanted you to
see how it felt.”
“You used to be a good kid. I’m learning that there is no escaping criminal genes, though. You’ve got anarchist written in your blood.”
“I have Garro blood and, yeah, a little chaos in my heart, but I’m a rebel with a cause. And right now? That cause is gettin’ you to back the fuck off from my family.”
There was a thin line between sacrifice and sheer martyrdom, but I hoped this was it, drawn in black beneath my feet. At that moment, I understood Joan of Arc and Socrates, Dumbledore from Harry Potter and Winston from 1984.
I understood that there was nothing in death so fearsome as the thought of livin’ without those you loved because fear and love were two sides of the coin of every man’s existence. And the chance I was taking, the choice I was making, was love over fear.
So I held my gun steady even when Danner whipped his Glock out from the holster and took a threatening step toward me.
“Drop the gun, King, and let’s talk about this like civilized men.”
“You put my father in prison out of sheer fuckin’ hatred, so I think the time for talking is done.”
“There’s a way out of this for you. I came today to make a deal. You and three of your crew confess to charges of racketeering, money laundering, and drug possession and distribution, while the rest of you disband your criminal enterprises, and we don’t have to do this anymore.”
“Why the fuck would I agree to that?” I asked, steppin’ a little closer to the edge of the cliff at my back.
“Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you know you’re putting your family at risk, running that club the way you have. You don’t want to see your new wife put away for being associated with your crimes, do you? You don’t want to see anything bad happen to Loulou Garro or her babies because you got tangled up in the wrong crime syndicate.”
“Not turnin’ my back on my family the way you have, Harold,” I told him, voice like an open trap. I needed his anger, needed him foolish and reckless and filled with so much hatred for me that he wouldn’t care about the witnesses at his back. “Susan’s mind is deterioratin’, and you still treat her like shit. Lion Danner’s the most decent copper I know, and you still spent his entire life beratin’ him.”
“I love Susan,” he barked, his gun rising up, trained right on my chest. “I loved her, and she left me because she’s got a soft heart, and she couldn’t take my passion for justice, for my carer anymore.”
“This is not justice. What you got is a vendetta that’s corroded you to your core. You don’t even see the man behind the cut now; you just see a demon straight outta hell.”
“Maybe I should send you back where you came from?” he suggested, takin’ another step toward me, just a handful of yards between us.
I laughed. “Be my guest. I’d rather die on my feet fighting you than live on my knees in fear of you.”
There was a distant rumble like the roll of thunder before a storm. Harleys were comin’.
Danner looked over his shoulder at the tree obscurin’ the road and then cursed. “Jesus Christ, King, drop the fuckin’ gun.”
“Not gonna drop it, Danner, unless you confess you murdered Riley Gibson. How’d it happen? I know he was goin’ to the station to make a call down to Van PD about corruption in the force here…Did you catch him? Seize an opportunity when you saw it to kill a cop who wanted you locked up and also put away the man you’ve hated for decades for that very crime?”
“Shut. Up.” Danner grounded out; his eyes wet, dark pools in the low light under the bright super moon.
“Was it an accident?” I asked, mild curiosity somehow an insult in my tone. “Did you see him informing on you and lose it?”
“I said drop the goddamn gun and shut up, Garro,” Danner shouted, so crazed he didn’t notice the roar of pipes and stopped, didn’t turn to see Cyclops and Axe-Man appear out of the dark, their weapons raised and trained on him as they drew closer, obscured in the shadows from Ventura’s goon squad.
“You don’t drop the gun, I’ll shoot you. You’re directly threatening the life of an officer. I’m well within my rights to end you!” he yelled, a crazed edge to his voice as the situation frayed out beyond his control.
If he didn’t deliver me and mine to the Venturas, he was dead. Maybe, I could almost hear him thinkin’, if he killed me now, it’d be enough to appease them and garner that extra percentage of payout money.
I laughed, filled with the giddiness of rebellion, high on the fumes of the looming tragedy, surprised by how hyper I felt at the end.
Maybe it was because I’d lived a good life, the best life, with near on five years beside a woman I’d dreamed of my entire life.
Maybe it was because I knew if I died, that I’d do it with our love like celestial dust in my veins so even when my body went, our story would be immortalized in the stars.
This was my one chance to get Danner put away. The one solution I’d come up with, and the only one I could live with.
If Danner went down for my murder, he’d go down for it. With the witnesses in place, it was as sure a thing as it could be.
And if Danner went to prison, with the rookie cop and Paula to testify against his other crimes, Zeus would be free.
Never thought much about dyin’. I was still a young man by anyone’s standards, only twenty-three and healthy with it, but my lack of curiosity about death stemmed more from my lifelong exposure to it than anything else. Had a father who killed his uncle in a church parkin’ lot when I was a kid, sent to the clinker for half a dime. There were guns in my house, in the clubhouse that was home to my dad’s motorcycle club, The Fallen, and guns worn on the hips of the men who hung out there. Learned to shoot when I was five, how to defend myself using the stick limbs of a twelve-year-old boy’s body, and how to use a knife like a fuckin’ extension of myself when Priest rolled into my life and taught me his deadly craft. Mostly, I knew death ’cause it stole my best friend, my fuckin’ brother in everything but blood, when we were still kids, still filled with hope and piss and a shit ton of vinegar.
So yeah, I knew death but not for myself. Never thought of it until now, but to be fuckin’ honest, I never could have known I’d be facing down death’s door without a chance to escape it. Suppose some would argue there was a choice; that there was choice to be had in all things.
Only, I’d counter there was no other decision to be made for me. Dyin’ meant my dad would be free, my girl would be safe, and my family would be whole.
How could I do anything else but die for that?
For them?
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
So, I stood on the edge of that cliff that had been my place, a kinda special setting for so many of the greatest moments of my life, and I stared down the craggy wall of rock into the sharp rocks and churning ocean below, and I braced while Danner’s ranting shouts escalated to the point of no return behind me.
There was pure evil at my back, and only a chasm that represented an empty future without any of the people I loved before me.
Should’ve been a sad moment, maybe, something like a tragedy. But as I heard the cock of the gun and the hard spit of the bullet from the chamber somewhere behind me, I couldn’t muster up a tear because I was only filled with hope.
Hope that my sacrifice would ensure the happily ever after I’d once promised my wife.
I’d found what I loved, and I was only too willin’ to let it kill me.
On that beautiful cliff under an all-seeing moon over grass seeped in memories, King Kyle Garro was shot and plunged over the edge to his tragic death.
Cressida
* * *
There was no party after King left. How could you have a wedding reception without the groom?
Instead, everyone but The Fallen and their families went home. The ones left funneled into our small house so that it was packed to the gills, the smell of leather and perfume thick in the air as we chatted quietly and drank the whack ton of booze
left over from the half-finished party. They were doing their best to have fun, to keep the atmosphere light, yet there was still portentousness in the air, like a fantastic last meal before an execution. We were gorging ourselves on good company, good food, and good drink, but I just couldn’t shake the fact that King was with our enemies with only Wrath at his back.
I didn’t understand why he had chosen the ex-Berserker as his second. Wrath was a good man straight down to his bones, but he might as well have been broken at every bone as well because of the trauma of losing his Kylie. He barely functioned and lived in an Airstream at the edge of our five-acre property, not leaving for days at a time.
And he was a good guy, yes, but he wasn’t King’s best friend. No one could ever replace Mute for my man, but there were brothers he considered family and good friends, Bat like an uncle, Priest and Nova two of his closest comrades.
So why?
The question logged under my consciousness like a sliver, casting its pall on the entire night.
I felt better, mildly, when an hour went by, and Eugene, Cyclops, Buck, and Axe-Man went out for a ride, circling around town in case they caught sight of where Ventura and King might have gone.
Still, it was good to watch my family even without the two centers of our wheel, Zeus and King. I spent most of my time holding one of the twins, loving that Angel smiled at everything as if the world existed only for her entertainment, and laughing at how Walker was the yin to her yang, scowling and brooding like the four-month-old was already a Byronic hero. I teased Loulou about it, jokingly calling the grumpy baby a true little Monster, but she wasn’t offended. Instead, like the biker queen she was, Loulou leaned forward to kiss his frowning brow and whispered, “My little Monster.”
Lysander too stayed close in a way I found surprisingly comforting instead of ingratiating after so much time apart. He was stalwart, this hulking presence like a vassal serving his lord. It was a strange relationship, like he was serving penance to me for his mistakes, but I was biker enough to realize that was the only way for him to earn back my trust. At one point, I laid my head on his iron thigh where he sat on the arm of the couch beside me, and he hesitated for one brief, aching moment before he stroked my head.
After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4 Page 24