His One Regret: Sons Of Lost Souls MC Book Four

by Hunter, Ellie R.

  Walking outside myself, JJ is nowhere to be seen but the twins ride out the gates, I assume following their brother. Over on the steps of the main house, Luca has his arm around Victoria as she nuzzles into his neck.

  For fuck sake.

  Please no more fucking drama.

  I can’t take it. Turning my back on the two of them, I ignore everyone as I head back to my office and close the door behind me. Sitting in my chair, I take a beat before unlocking the bottom desk drawer and pick up the blade I haven’t laid eyes on in years. It’s the blade I used on Danny in revenge for Oak and our other lost souls he slaughtered back in those days. I should have got rid of it a long time ago, but something about it had me locking it away. I run my finger over the shiny metal and the excitement for impending violence returns just like it did back then. Killing has never been a problem for me. I kill those that come to kill me or mine and because of that, it’s justified, and I lose no sleep because of it. Just like I won’t lose sleep after Ellis has taken his final breath. Maybe once he’s dead, Harper will come home.

  Leo

  The anger is building and nothing I do is taking it away. The walls are closing in on me as I stumble down the hall. I can see my dad’s office door, or more like three of them, and miraculously make it there without falling on my ass. I use the doorframe for support and find dad alone.

  “How long do you think you can keep him alive and safe from us?” Spittle flows from my mouth and I drag my arm across my mouth to dry it.

  “Sit down, son.”

  “I don’t want to sit down, I want to…”

  “What? You want what? I already hear what you want to do to him, and I get it, I really fucking do.”

  “Then why are we letting him breathe?” I roar and the momentum has falling into the room and landing on my ass in the nearest chair.

  Frustration gnaws at my father, he doesn’t want to repeat himself, but I need to hear his pathetic excuses one more time.

  At one point I was beginning to understand the need for him to be fixed up just so we could bring him down and destroy him, but that point faded hours ago. The need to kill is growing stronger every second and India needs revenge taken on her behalf.

  “Leo,” he says with a sigh, sitting forward and resting his arms on the desk top. “I promise you will have his blood on your soul, but I want you to drain him with a clear head.”

  A clear head? India fills my head, and only her. Everything I do, walking, talking, even breathing, it’s all done through a haze of her face.

  So, my head will never be clear, it just needs to know Ellis isn’t breathing the air India should still be taking in.

  “Have you seen her?” he asks, putting an unlit cigarette to his lips.

  He sucks on the dry butt and blows out nothing, and I suck mine in. I can’t see her. Was it not enough that I saw her collapse? Was it not enough that I held her in my arms as she laid motionless, her eyes blank, her lips turning blue?

  It’s not like she’s alone, she has Kristen with her, and she has her father watching over the man who killed her. She doesn’t need me around her lifeless body, her body that I long to feel against mine. She was never too warm to touch, she was always cold, especially her feet when she would press them against my calves because she said I was her human blanket. She would giggle something fierce when I roared out in shock from her icy toes.

  I never understood how she could be so cold, she’d whack the thermostat up and we had an open fire too, yet she was a human block of ice.

  “Leo? Are you listening?”

  I look up and my father is tired. He’s in his fifties and laced with cancer, and it’s only now he looks tired.

  “What?”

  “The funeral? It’s in three days,” he tells me. “Go and spend time with your daughter, she needs you and you need her. After we lost people, being around you helped me, you reminded me why we carried on.”

  My head moves and the pain in my chest sharpens. “I’m no good for her…”

  “We’ll have none of that shit talk in here. She’s your kid and that’s that. You think I’ve been a star dad all your life? Christ, half your childhood I did things that shouldn’t have allowed me near you, but lucky for you, your mother sees shit a lot different to most. Is it the right way, or the wrong way, who knows, but what I do know, my granddaughter will be raised by her daddy and her grandparents will be around to help and India will never be forgotten…”

  He means well, I know that, but I can’t listen to him. Not when it comes to her.

  Rising from the chair, there’s one place no one will bother me. Dad doesn’t call after me as I leave his office, and no one says a word but they all stare as I help myself to an unopened bottle of tequila from behind the bar.

  I feel their eyes on my back as I walk away. They probably blame me too; I know I do.

  I’m about to head up to my room when Kristen’s sobs float down and stop me. Slade’s deep voice is smooth, he’s trying to soothe her. I can’t listen to her.

  Backtracking, I walk down the hall and stand outside the door India lays behind and lean my forehead against the wood. If they’re upstairs, it means she’s on her own in there.

  My hand falls on the cold metal door knob and I twist until the door swings open. She’s not here. A table where she laid, I’m guessing by the blood stain at one end, lies bare and a fucking freezer hums away in the corner. I stumble my way to the corner and lean my hands on the top of the freezer. I should have known her parents wouldn’t have left her alone, not even in death. My legs buckle and I fall to my knees, twisting so my back hits the side of the freezer. Sliding down on my ass, I use my teeth to uncap the tequila and take a long gulp.

  I’ve never been a fan of the stuff, I never cared for the bitter burn but it’s all I want now. I want to feel something.

  “Ahhhh-hhhh-urghhhhh.”

  My cries go unheard by the one person I want to hear me. I deserve it, I deserve to spend the rest of eternity shackled to this pain, to the emptiness taking root inside me.

  Another gulp of tequila and I’m starting to see stars once again. Through the thickening haze, Rayna’s cries hit me, Kristen’s sobs rack through my body, Slade’s roar of inner peace rumbles the walls. Everywhere is pain because she’s gone.

  She’s gone because of me. Ellis chose to pull the trigger, but he wouldn’t have gone after her if I didn’t kill his brother.

  My dad told me there would be consequences for my actions and now I have to live with the image of her brain splattering everywhere and falling to the floor before I could catch her.

  Instead of being tucked up at home with our girl in her crib, and India pressing her cold feet against me, she’s in a fucking freezer.

  “Leo, come on, brother.”

  Through the tears I don’t bother wiping away, I down more tequila and Luca ducks into the room and kneels in front of me.

  “It’s not good for you to be in here, she’s not here anymore, not her soul.”

  “What do you know about souls?”

  “I know I liked hers, and it wouldn’t be trapped in a fucking freezer with her lifeless body.”

  His jaw tenses and anger radiates from him.

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “She’s not here anymore, but your daughter still is. Mom and dad want you focused on Ellis so you can channel your rage and pain, but that’s not what you have to do, do what you want to do, for you and for your daughter.”

  “I want…”

  I stop because I don’t have the first idea what I fucking want apart from wanting the impossible.

  “What? Tell me?”

  “I want to be alone, I want to sit next to my frozen fucking fiancé and finish this bottle. You want to help me, pass me your smokes I know you hide from dad on account of his cancer.”

  He chucks over his smokes and the lighter bangs on the floor by my leg. Putting the bottle down, I light my first smoke all day and inhale so fucking dee
ply, it burns my entire chest.

  “When you were younger, you’d try to follow me everywhere. These days, I struggle to remember the last conversation we shared.”

  “That’s because your head is so far up your own ass, and mine is just as far up mine. You had India and I had…my own distractions.”

  “Victoria? She’s your distraction, isn’t she?”

  He never talks to me, but I’ve seen them a couple of times together and I saw her name flashing up on his phone a few times when we were in Mercy.

  “She…distracts me from certain things. She makes these plans though, I don’t mean to hurt her, but she doesn’t listen.”

  That sounds like a lot more is going on than he’s letting on.

  “I tell her we can’t be together, and she hears we’re together.”

  “I’d say she’s young, but I don’t know anything anymore. But I’ll tell you now, if you don’t want to be with her, don’t mess her around. Being with one of us will get them killed in the end.”

  “That’s the thing, I don’t want her being with anyone else and trust me, I know I’m a prick.”

  “There you go, little brother, you’re together, you just need to stop fighting it.”

  The cigarette burns down drastically as I inhale hard and the ash drops off and to the floor.

  “He shot her, Luca. He killed her without so much as a thought for her.”

  “I know, and to be honest, I don’t know how you’ll get through this, I just know you will somehow.”

  He stands from his bent legs. He’s grown so much lately; I feel bad I haven’t been around for him.

  “I’m going to check on Tor, she’s still shaken up from it all. Did you know he poured a bottle of whiskey over her and held a lighter near her, she thought she was going to burn alive and after what he did to India, the fucker was more than capable of doing it.”

  A chill snakes down my spine and I push out the images trying to fill my head of Victoria in that position. So many more people could have been hurt because of me, because I chose to put down Roman. It made sense to me at the time, he was in my way of something extraordinary and it was simple. Yet, now, all I see is recklessness and misguidance.

  “At least she’s still alive, little brother.”

  “Are you going to be okay if I leave you here?”

  Nodding my head, I don’t have any more energy to speak. I shut my eyes and the door clicks softly after he leaves, and the humming of the freezer takes over. I can’t sit here listening to it. It’s driving me mad already.

  I drag my ass up and grab the bottle of drink and tear my eyes away from the huge white appliance. So fucking wrong. I debate whether to go back into the bar but opt to go up to my old room. I lock the door behind me and the first thing I see is our bags from the trip, open and her sweater hanging out. I collect it on my way to the bed and I’m immediately assaulted with her perfume clinging to the sheets.

  Bringing my legs up to my chest, I curl up and use her sweater as a pillow. I want to drown in her smell until I can’t breathe myself.

  Cas

  “Wherever she is, she isn’t leaving me anything to follow.”

  Are not the words I want to hear. Dex stands before me and the tiredness hangs heavy on him.

  “Nothing at all?” I ask just to be sure.

  “Nothing. I’ve been everywhere in a twenty-mile radius and it’s like she’s a ghost.”

  I flinch at his choice of wording and sigh long and hard, thinking of what to do next. The hour is late and wherever she is, she’s going to be behind closed doors somewhere for the night. Or she better be, somewhere safe.

  “Get some sleep and then head out again, I’ll sort you out some cash, pay whoever you need to check camera footage at bus stations and the like. I want her found.”

  He nods and slips upstairs before I can change my mind. He’s followed by Slade, who doesn’t even look this way and then the bar is empty. If brothers aren’t out hunting down the remaining Crows, they’re getting their heads down and catching up on sleep.

  I find my wife in the kitchen preparing food for the wake tomorrow and I fall into a chair at the table.

  She takes a quick look over her shoulder to see who’s joined her and offers a sad smile when she sees it’s me.

  She carries on with her task and I sit here content to watch her work. This has to be the longest day of my life and I’m glad to take the weight off for a beat.

  She starts to put trays of food in the fridge and then cleans up after herself. Once she’s finished, she stands beside me and offers her hand. She doesn’t question if we’re going home tonight, we head upstairs and quietly undress before climbing into bed.

  “I wish we weren’t waking up to go to her funeral tomorrow,” she whispers in the darkness.

  “So do I.”

  With nothing else to be said, she lies beside me, draping her arm over me and I stroke her hair long after she’s fallen asleep.

  I’m so fucking tired I should be out for the count, but my mind is busy preparing for tomorrow, wondering where the fuck my daughter is and how I’m going to mend this club. I roll Alannah gently onto her side of the bed and she stays asleep as I climb out of bed and slip my jeans back on. I sit back down and catch my breath. I can’t let this disease take me, I’ve never even thought about handing the gavel down to anyone else but Leo and he’s in no position to sit at the head of the table. Not yet.

  I’ve been keeping him close since my diagnosis, training him up but after India, he’s not in the right head space to put anyone else first and make club calls.

  Pulling myself up, I leave the room quietly and take the side stairwell down and push the door open to walk outside.

  The night is warm out and I pull up a chair. The corner of the club catches my eye and it takes me back to when I first showed up here trying to lift a car. Not for one second did I think my life would turn out this way. Back then, before I wore the prospect patch, I was content to keep my ass out of jail and make enough cash in my own way so I didn’t have to work for some pompous prick dictating what hours I worked and how little he could get away paying me to make himself more money.

  There was only ever going to be one kind of life I led, and it was far from acceptable. Fuck acceptable and normal but fuck this life too if innocent women are used to further a fight. In my pocket, I pull out a single smoke and roll it over my lips. The urge to light it grows stronger every day and if it wasn’t for the fact I could still be dying, I would smoke it and enjoy the fucker like Alannah enjoying her chocolate fucking cake. “You should smoke it, you’ll die, and you won’t be able to steal Harper from me, if she ever comes back.”

  Fuck sake. Does this woman never sleep? She’s everywhere I fucking go and now she’s making herself comfortable beside me and lighting her own cigarette.

  “I don’t need to steal her from you, Lily, she’ll come to me on her own accord.”

  I’m being cruel and not two fucks are given if it hurts her.

  “That’s probably true but no matter how many years you have with her now, I’ll still have her childhood.”

  Huh. Okay, so we’re taking it in turns with the cruel remarks. Unfortunately we both speak the truth and the truth has never hurt so much.

  “You don’t have memories of her taking her first step and or when she said her first word, it was milk by the way, you didn’t see how excited she was to start her first day at school or how happy she was when she came first at the science fair.”

  “Oh yeah, what was her project?”

  Her face falls and she looks away, inhaling hard on the cigarette. “If you’re going to try and hurt me with these memories of yours, use ones that you fucking remember rightly. And you’re forgetting, I wasn’t there for all that shit because of me staying away, I wasn’t there because of you. You’re the one who played God with my kid because you were being petty and a jealous bitch. You think you’d be the only one who I would remember fucking back then
, get over yourself. Your brother didn’t warn you away from me for shits and giggles, it was because he knew I would fuck you and drop you faster than a used-up lump of coal. You can’t hurt me, Lily, because I honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck what you say, what you think or what you do.”

  Her mouth open and closes but fuck all comes out and she hates it. “But, if you want to tell me real shit, I’ll sit and listen. I’m going to find her, and she will be coming home. Plus, it’ll be nice to know some things about her childhood, I think you fucking owe me that.”

  She shocks the shit out of me when she nods and puts her cigarette out in the bucket everyone uses as an ashtray.

  “As soon as she was born all I could see was you. She had the darkest hair and the brownest eyes. I nearly caved when I called Slade, I was going to tell him everything but when I heard his voice on the phone, once he got over the shock of me having a baby, he asked about the dad and I froze. I wondered what it would be like if you knew, of course I did, sometimes I imagined you being happy to meet her but most of the time, you were pissed and walked away. It was when my mom came to meet her, she promised she would help me with her and that if the father wasn’t around, it didn’t matter, we were raised without ours and my mom handled us.”

  Rolling my eyes, this is bullshit.

  “She might have handled you, but do you forget she worked two jobs just to put food on the table and clothes on your back? Have you forgotten it was Slade who got himself a job to help her, and then joined a motorcycle club with promises of making more money to help her? You’re very good at twisting shit for your own sense of peace, Lily. If you’re going to tell me about her, talk about her, not you. I’m not interested in hearing that shit because you brought it on yourself.”

  Again, her mouth open and closes with nothing coming out. She wants to snap at me, fight with me, but the anger subsides, and she leans back in her seat.