Boris? Is that what this was about?
“Who told you that?” Yury asked. The man coughed then started to laugh. Yury repeated his question. The man’s laughter filled the night. Yury pulled him closer and yelled, “Who the hell told you that?” No one outside of the Soldiers and Con’s men should know about what happened to Boris.
“Boris was a friend to the Royal Riders…”
“More like a bitch who gambled his money there and was selling drugs for your leader to pay him back.”
“He was loyal to us,” the biker continued defending Boris. “We’d never turn our back on him the way you all did.”
“He was your lackey. He was the reason your club was profiting. He was stealing from the Soldiers and giving it to your leader. He was taking from his family’s mouth and providing for yours. He wasn’t loyal. He was a coward. Constantine hadn’t wanted the leader of the Royal Riders to know that we’d figured out what was going on. Neither did he want the Soldiers to know. That’s the only way we could protect his family…”
“Get the fuck out of here. You were just trying to protect Boris’ wife.” The man burst out laughing. “Boris told me all about her and her past. I know who she really is. I know what she’s really done. I know…”
Yury saw red. He released the whip and tightened his grip on the man’s collar. “Who all knows?”
The biker’s only response was more laughter. Fucking Boris. He just hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut. Not only had he gambled and cheated, but he’d also revealed his family’s secrets to outsiders, placing both his wife and daughter in danger. The roars of the motorcycle were closer.
“You can do what you want to me,” the biker told him. “But that won’t change anything. My boss will never sell to you. He’ll never do business with you. And he’ll never let what happened to Boris slide. You will pay. Your boss will pay. And that bitch ass wife of his…”
Yury slammed the biker’s head into the ground. The man’s eyes widened and a dazed look appeared in them. He slammed the man’s head into the ground again. Finally, the biker’s body went limp and his eyes slid shut.
“She’s not a bitch,” Yury growled down at the unconscious man. “And she’s not his wife. She’s his widow.”
How dare Boris reveal Delilah’s true identity to these bastards. Yury couldn’t recall the last time he’d been this angry. He stood up, just as six more bikes circled him. He was in a rush. He had shit to do.
Before he did it, he needed a chance to get rid of some of this anger. Staying behind to fight these fools would give him a chance to flex his muscles and release that anger he was feeling towards Boris right now.
Since coming to Chicago with Constantine and working as his bodyguard at Private Property gentleman’s club, he’d gotten used to simply being a driver and a guard. Tonight, these idiots were giving him a chance to put his other skills to use.
He turned in a circle, sizing up the newcomers as they got off their bikes. Six. He could handle six. With a roar, they all raced in his direction. Had no one ever shown them how to fight quietly?
Stealth was not an ability they possessed. He remained silent as he fought. Not one sound escaped his lips, even when he was punched in the stomach or the jaw. He kept his mouth shut as he fought.
Not even a grunt emerged from him. He ducked and dodged attacks aimed at him. The Royal Riders were sloppy fighters. Unlike him, they hadn’t spent their teenage years and early twenties in a fight ring.
They hadn’t become a hitman for hire at the young age of seventeen. They hadn’t had to kill to eat, kill to have a place to sleep, kill to simply survive. They were just bikers. They were men who put on vests to announced to the world that they were part of a gang.
But in the morning, they donned their work attire and went to their regular jobs. At the end of the day, they returned home to their wives and children. They returned home to their hot homecooked meals and their comfortable beds.
Then when it was time for a meeting, they put their vests on again and instantly became badass gangsters. In truth, they just bikers. Bikers who had no idea they were currently going up against a monster.
A monster who hadn’t been born in the land of the free. A monster whose family sold him the former leader of the Soldiers so that he could work as a runner for them. He’d only been nine at the time. He’d never forget that night.
He’d never forget the tears streaming down his mother’s cheeks as his dad ripped him from his mother’s arms and shoved him to the ground at the former leader’s feet. But it was his dad’s words that spoke louder than his actions.
“I’ve lost my arm in a fight. I can’t work for the leader anymore. With all that I know about the organization, death is the only way out for me. But I have to support your mother and younger siblings. So, I came up with another way to survive. My life in exchange for yours. Fifteen years of servitude. That’s all you have to do. You’re young. It’ll be over in no time for you. And then you can come home. And we can be a family again.”
Home. Such a small word that holds such a big meaning. After that day, he’d never experienced a real home again. The former leader was much more ruthless than his son, the new leader, Xander.
The former leader didn’t give away anything for free. To eat, Yury had to complete missions. If he failed, he went to bed hungry. If he failed twice in a row, he went to bed hungry and bruised.
He’d nearly starved to death before he completed his first mission. It had taken him fifteen attempts. Each time, he’d given up because he hadn’t had the heart to hurt someone. He definitely hadn’t had the heart to kill them.
Regular people didn’t know what it felt like to starve. They didn’t know what true hunger felt like. It’s not the feeling you get when you miss a couple of meals and your stomach starts to growl. That’s nothing.
True starvation makes you feel like your body is eating itself. It’s a pain that’s indescribable. You end up hallucinating. You end up willing to eat anything to stop the pain. Even parts of yourself.
He’d seen kids gnaw on their fingers in an attempt to stop the hunger pangs. And the pain isn’t just in your stomach. No, it’s your entire body, inside and out. And then there’s the fear that accompanies it.
The fear of dying. The fear of not knowing what awaited you on the other side when you die. The fear of not dying and instead, being forced to continue living the miserable life you’d been born into. That fear was almost as painful as the hunger pangs.
Because of that fear, because of that hunger, he’d learned early on to steel his heart against the pleas of his victims. It was either his life or theirs. After his first kill, he started to understand the last words his father had spoken to him.
He started to understand why a man would kill to live. Yet, one thing he’d never been able to understand was how a father could do that to his child. He’d never been able to understand how that kind of bond could be broken.
He’d gladly give his life so that his mother and brothers could live. He’d gladly suffer the pains of starvation so that his family could thrive. Even if he had to go back and do it all over again, he’d do it if it meant protecting his family.
Yet, his father hadn’t had that mindset. He’d said he was giving Yury up so that he could protect the family. If that had truly been his reason, Yury would’ve been able to understand why he’d done what he did.
However, a few years later, when Yury went back to check on his family, he learned that his father had left his mother. She’d gotten sick soon after Yury was sold to the Soldiers. Cancer to be exact.
Yury’s father hadn’t wanted to work harder to pay for the medicine she needed to try to beat cancer. So, he’d left the entire family behind, wife and kids. From their neighbors, Yury learned that his mother had died of pneumonia because she hadn’t been able to fight it off due to the cancer.
His younger brother and sister had been taken in by another family. A good family. And they were
well taken care of. His father had started panhandling for money and was living on the streets. He was the neighborhood drunk.
Yury couldn’t help but wonder why hadn’t his dad sold one of his siblings to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment. That wasn’t something Yury wanted to have happened. Yet, if his dad loved his family unit so much, why hadn’t he done the same thing to them as he’d done to Yury.
Truth was, his father hadn’t sold him off so that he could live and take care of his family. He hadn’t sold him off because he loved his family. He’d done it to protect himself. He’d done it for himself, not the ones he was supposed to love.
He’d done it for selfish reasons. Which made him a coward. Yes, Yury was a monster. But his father was a different kind of monster. He was born a monster. Yury was made a monster. There was a difference.
But these bikers were nothing like him or his father. They weren’t monsters. They weren’t beasts. They were pretenders. And that was why he wouldn’t kill them. That was why he was only staring down at their bruised bodies, not their dead bodies.
The bikers groaned as they rolled around on the ground. He’d dropped them all. Blood covered his bruised knuckles and was splattered all over his suit. He was going to get blood in the car. Shit. He’d have to listen to Con’s complaints until he got the car cleaned.
Yury stared around at the bikers one last time before turning around and leaving. He stepped over bodies on his way to the car. When he reached the vehicle, he stared at his hands then at the door handle. The back window of the car rolled down.
“Just get in,” Conn called out from the back seat. “We can clean the car later.”
“We? You mean me.”
“It’s not my fault you got blood everywhere. Get in. The kids want ice cream. I guess I’ll have to go in and get it since you’re covered in blood.” Conn shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m paying you for.”
“This is what you pay me for. You don’t pay me to get ice cream.” Yury used the clean part of his shirt to open the car door. Once he was behind the wheel, he started the vehicle and put the car in reverse.
“Are you okay?” Con asked once they were on the highway.
“If you were worried about me, you should’ve gotten out and helped.”
“If we both got blood on us, who would go into the ice cream shop.”
Eyes on the road, Yury shook his head.
“I saw you talking to them. What did they say?”
“Not much of anything. But one guy did say something about Delilah.”
That got Con’s attention. “What did he say about her?”
“He said that he was close to Boris and Boris told him all about Delilah’s past.”
“Fuck. Even I don’t know the secrets of Delilah’s past. No one other than the Leader and Boris was supposed to know. That was one of the stipulations set forth when the Leader allowed Boris to bring Delilah into our world.”
“I know. I remember hearing Boris say that if her secret got out, her life would be in danger.”
“And yet, his bitch ass was the one who let her secret out. Shit. I need to tell the Leader about this.”
“You don’t know anything at all about her past?”
“I don’t. I only know that Boris saved her life and asked for permission to marry her so he could continue protecting her. From who, I don’t know. With him gone, I guess I need to let the Leader know that I’ll be the one protecting her from now on.”
Yury stared into the rearview mirror. His eyes connected with Con’s. He didn’t like the slick grin on his friend’s face.
“Unless,” Con said. “There’s someone else out there who wants to protect her.”
Yury returned his gaze to the road.
“I have my hands full with Cristal,” Con continued. “Then there’s her niece, Shy. And her Granny. I also have to keep an eye on my sister, Angelina. Then I have the club to manage for the Leader. I mean, my hands are full. If only there was someone else who could watch over Delilah and her daughter for me.”
Yury knew what his friend was trying to do. He was trying to get him to step it up and admit he had feelings for Delilah. Not happening. Not in this lifetime. Maybe if he was reborn as a better person, a better man, then he’d be worthy of her. At this time, that wasn’t the case.
“Who do you think we should put in place to watch over them?” Con asked.
Yury remained silent. They would be at the ice cream shop in about ten minutes. After they got ice cream for the girls, he could drop Con’s ass off at home.
“It should be someone who likes kids,” Con mused aloud. “It has to be someone we can trust. I can’t place Delilah and Zariah into the care of just anyone.”
That was true. The list of people Con trusted was short. Yury’s list was even shorter. In his mind, there was no one good enough to watch over them. Hell, Boris hadn’t even been good enough to watch over them and they had been his family.
“It should be someone they feel comfortable around,” Con continued.
That scratched Yury’s name off the list. Zariah was comfortable around him. Her mother, Delilah, wasn’t. He hadn’t spent enough time with her for her to be. Yet, he’d watched her from afar for the past five years, yearning for something that he had no right to desire.
“I could get Ramirez to do it,” Con said.
“Ramirez is childish.”
“Which will come in handy since Zariah is a child.”
“He’s needed at the club.”
“I can give him a little time off.”
“That isn’t a long-term solution to the problem.”
“No, it’s not. But it’ll help me out in the short term. Especially after what happened last week.”
Last week, Yury had been ready to kill someone after he learned that their team had found a bomb attached to the inner side of Delilah’s rear passenger-side tire. They wouldn’t have thought to check for it if the cameras outside of her house hadn’t shown someone stopping to tie their shoe near her car.
Delilah rarely parked in her front yard. That day, she’d only done so to run into her home and get something then return to her car. Lewis, the man monitoring the cameras that day, alerted Con after noticing that the mysterious person had taken longer than necessary to tie his shoe.
For the mystery person to attach the bomb during the time when Delilah was briefly going into her home meant whoever was responsible was watching her every move. Luckily, Con had called her before she could get back into her car.
They’d had the car transported to a body shop Con now owned. The team there checked the entire vehicle and found the bomb that had been planted. That incident was proof that someone was trying to kill Delilah. Con was right, they did need someone to watch over both mother and child.
“Do you think that incident was done by someone from her past or do you think it was the Royal Riders?”
“I don’t know,” Con told him. “Until tonight, I had no reason to suspect the Riders. I’d actually thought it was the Soldiers.”
“You thought they were trying to get rid of her because she knew too much about the organization?”
“It was a thought. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d done something like that. Not under Xander’s rule. But his father was known for doing shit like that. And the Elders are pushing Xander to be more like his father. This would be a way for him to show them he can be as ruthless as they want him to be.”
“The bastard is already ruthless. Why add killing women and children to the list of shit he’s guilty of.”
“Because the Elders have no regard for women and children.”
“The Leader may be a lot of things, but he has a code. If he deviates from that, that’ll make him…”
“Something worse than a monster,” Con finished for him.
Yury nodded.
“I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“It’s not like he’s going to tell you the truth. He knows you were close wit
h Boris. He knows you’re Zariah’s Godfather. If he is the one behind the hit, he won’t tell you.”
“He will.”
“Con, he’s not the same person we grew up with. He changed when he became the Leader.” Yury pulled into the parking lot of the ice cream shop.
“True,” Con agreed. “You’re right. Asking him would be pointless. I just have to find someone to watch over them for me. If only there was someone I could trust….”
Indeed. If only there was someone they could trust. Despite what Con may think, Yury wasn’t the man for the job. He could trust himself with Zariah. He already thought of her as his own flesh and blood. She wasn’t the problem. Her mother was.
Yury didn’t trust himself around Delilah.
Chapter Two
No more tears
All she felt was anger.
So much anger.
It’s had been two months since the death of her husband and Delilah Norin was still waiting for the pain to come. Two months. Two long, tiresome months, and still there was no pain, no heartache, no late-night crying that left her with a headache.
No tossing and turning at night while dreaming about the good times she’d shared with the man she loved. No waking up and reaching for him in the middle of the night, only to remember that he was no longer there.
No listening to old voicemails to hear his voice. She wasn’t experiencing any of that. Though she was a widow, she wasn’t experiencing any grief. She should be feeling sad right now. Instead, all she felt was anger.
So much anger. It was slowly consuming her, making her a shell of the woman she used to be. Everyone thought she was okay. Everyone was glad that she was now eating again and had gained back almost all the weight she’d lost.
Everyone was happy that she was now taking calls and even allowing some of her friends to visit her. She continued telling them she was fine to keep them from staring at her with eyes filled with pity.
Thankfully, they were no longer telling her that none of this was her fault. They were no longer telling her that she wasn’t the reason her husband had gambled away all of his money, no, their money. Including the college fund, he’d set aside for Azariah.
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