I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  With a sigh, I fall back into the pillows and stare up at the canopy above my head, dressed in rich red velvet curtains interspersed with this flimsy cream silk that feels like the fine filaments of a spider’s web. That’s what this place is, a web, one that Grey and I have been cocooned inside of, just waiting for the final bite.

  For the first few weeks, I was virtually useless. I could barely sit up on my own, and I limited my bathroom trips to once a day, crying and sweating as I dragged my broken body to the toilet. The doctor—this horrible man named Tommaso Setola—offered something to me that looked essentially like a puppy pad. As if Gidget, daughter of the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club, and outlaw even among outlaws would actually deign to soil herself.

  I’d rather bleed and suffer for dignity’s sake.

  Anyway, as soon as I started to feel better, I began canvassing the place for escape. Once, I asked about the stained-glass windows high above our heads, the decorative mosaic slits that beam a kaleidoscope of colors into the room during late evening. Specifically, I asked Grey what was on the other side of them, like if we found some way to scale the stone walls and get out while somehow not being seen on camera, where would we be going?

  His reply? A cemetery.

  Euphemistic or not, I got the point: we’re not getting out that way.

  I roll over to my side and revert back to my favorite activity of late: a nap.

  Because the more I sleep, the faster I’ll heal. The stronger I am, the more hale, the easier it’ll be to make my move when the time comes.

  Another week passes with little change in activity level.

  “I thought I hated my life before …” I start, as Grey and I lie on our backs in bed, staring at the ceiling together. I’m not sure I’ve ever allowed myself to get to know another human being the way I now know Grey Wolfe. He has no middle name, by the way. Like, in most cases, I might find his name hilarious. But here, in this place, with the Don for a father? It actually terrifies me. There’s a level of confidence in naming one’s son ‘Grey Wolfe’ that shows that the Don isn’t afraid of anyone or anything. “But this is worse.”

  Grey turns his head slowly to look at me, studying my healing features with interest. He likes me, I think. Or else he’s just grateful to me for risking my whole world to rescue him, I’m not sure.

  “You should’ve left me behind,” he says, and not for the first time. But what good would that have done? I ran right into the arms of the enemy. Grey, at least, has provided me some sort of protection here. Without him, I’d be in a rape dungeon or I’d be dead already. No doubts about that. I know how the underworld works, and it isn’t cackling villains and second chances. The mafia doesn’t leave you in a room with one inept guard, and wait for a great escape.

  They shoot first and ask questions later.

  “Yeah, well,” I start, grabbing a biscotti off the tray beside me and munching on the chocolate covered tip. The food here is bomb, I’ll at least admit to that. We eat like kings. Like kings, because of course, we’re nothing but prisoners here. Even Grey, the last remaining heir to the Grey Wolfe Mafia throne is worth little more than a cozy jail cell. His dad is as likely to feed him to the Irish wolfhounds he keeps as he is to train his youngest son in the business. “Let’s talk about something else. Can’t rewind time.”

  And I’m sick and tired of being trapped in memories. Being stuck here has given me more time to think than I ever dared dream of—than I ever had nightmares about. I think about my sisters constantly, and when I’m not thinking about them, I’m thinking of the four horse-fucks of the apocalypse.

  It occurs to me that I was sixteen when I had sex with them all. That they’re much older. That it should be wrong. Yet, whenever I close my eyes and fall back into that moment, all I want to do is relive it. See, told ya I was fucked up.

  “What was Kian like?” I ask, because as much time as Grey and I have spent getting to know each other, we don’t really talk about Queenie or Kian. It’s too painful, I think, to look at one another and know that the people we loved the most were both lost because of underworld politics and bullshit. “My sister must’ve really loved him. I found some … writing that she left behind. She likened their relationship to Romeo and Juliet.”

  Technically, it wasn’t writing that I found, but words scratched into the baseboards of the old party house in town, a crumbling manor known to locals as The Artefact. Just semantics.

  “Kian was … ruthless,” Grey admits, reaching up to rub at the side of his face. His fingernails are coming in nicely, taking up about a third of the normal nailbed. “He was the perfect person to take over this nightmare.” He waves a hand loosely to indicate … well, his father’s entire crime syndicate, I think. “But when he met your sister, something changed. He started sneaking out and disobeying orders, stopped sleeping with other girls, started lying.”

  I look back up at the ceiling.

  “Do you know how they met?”

  Grey shakes his head in response to my question.

  “I can only guess that it was at the casino?” he queries, and there it is again, mention of the casino. It’s what kept him from dying that day, and the only reason Cat took that gun out of my hand.

  “What’s up with the casino anyway?” I reply, wondering how much we can say without getting into trouble. I assume Grey knows our limits here better than I do, and decide that if he’s not worried about our conversation, then I won’t be either. It’s not as if the mafia’s going to let us go regardless of what we do or don’t know.

  “I have no idea,” he admits, and I can sense that even though that’s the truth, he has his theories, theories that he won’t be mentioning in the presence of the cameras. “All I do know is that Kian loved your sister; they wanted to run away together and start a family.” He exhales sharply and when I glance over, I see that his eyes are squeezed shut. “The day he died, I was supposed to be helping them. But I went to the casino with my friends instead. I figured he’d gone through his entire life without asking for my help, so why did he need it that day?”

  I think about my last words to Posey—fuck off. That’s the last thing I said to my sister before she was tortured and killed. I understand the regret and longing in Grey’s words. You never really know how much a single moment matters until you find out it’s the last.

  “Where did he die? How did he die?” I ask, because I’m trying to understand. There are so many things here that don’t make sense. Queenie was in love with Kian. Even if Cat was going to forbid them from being together—which he most certainly would have—why go after the guy and kill him? He would’ve known that was a guaranteed way to start a very personal war with an immensely powerful group.

  What was the point?

  And why, on that day of all days, were we home without any of those dickhead officers around to help us?

  That’s the part that confuses me the most of all, the piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit into any of my theories. Killing Kian was enough to start a war all on its own, so it wasn’t for the excuse. Cat just told his boys that a mafia brat raped his daughter and bam, gauntlets were thrown.

  “He was waiting at a park for your sister. My father’s men found him hanging from a tree.” Grey’s voice breaks, like the conversation is just too much for him. I don’t blame him. I feel that way too sometimes, like talking about the pain is akin to summoning it, casting a spell of melancholy that makes you wish you’d died right alongside your loved one. “He wasn’t just hanging though. There were … he’d been tortured.”

  We both stop talking for a while.

  Did Crown do that? Sin? Grainger? Beast must’ve been involved. If they believed what Cat told them about the rape, they’d feel justified. But how much of my father’s lies went through his officers first? How much did they really know?

  That’s a question I’m not likely to get an answer to.

  Stealing an officer’s bike is enough to garner a death sentence. Stealing a host
age along with it? I just better hope that Cat never finds me. The mafia would be kinder at this point.

  “Your father’s men killed my pregnant sister while I hid in the pantry and fumbled with a gun I’ve shot dozens of times. The rest of them found time to rape my other sister before putting a bullet through her head.”

  After a minute, Grey reaches down and takes my hand, curling his fingers through mine.

  I squeeze his right back.

  It occurs to me a few weeks later that it’s actually my eighteenth birthday.

  I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom and just stare at myself, at the sheet of raven-black waves down my back, at my rust-red eyes and resting bitch face. My mouth is permanently downturned, and I’ve got a few new scars from the motorcycle accident. My legs … well, they’re not the pretty, smooth things they used to be. My skin is shiny and pink, rippled and carved up from skidding across the pavement.

  I put my right palm against the mirror’s glass and close my eyes.

  I might be eighteen today, but I’ve been an adult for a long, long time. Since my sisters died. Since before that. I wasn’t allowed a real childhood, not with Nellie and Cat for parents. I never had to have the sex talk because I’d seen people fucking for as long as I could remember. I never needed the anti-drug lectures at school because I’d seen people taking them and ruining their lives for as long as I could remember. Nobody ever taught me how to cook or do my own laundry or take my ass to school.

  Queenie, Posey, and I just did those things because we had little other choice.

  I’ve seen things that war veterans could scarcely imagine.

  I open my eyes again and drop my hand to my side.

  Should I mention to Grey that it’s my birthday? He’s sort of a ham. He might do something to make me feel better. Roll candles out of paper and stick them into whatever dessert we get with dinner. He might sing to me. At the very least, he’d smile softly and tell me happy birthday.

  I decide it’s better not to say anything at all.

  With a sigh, I head back into the room to find the mafia’s Underboss, Ivan Wolfe, waiting with a small cadre of servants beside him. Grey is smiling tightly, hands clasped together behind his back. He turns to look at me and motions me over with a nod of his chin.

  I approach Ivan the way a grizzly bear might approach a wolf, two distinct predators that should never be in one another’s territory. And yeah, I am the bear. Ivan needs a pack to hunt with, but I have been and always will be on my own.

  “Apparently it’s your birthday today?” Grey says, raising a scarred brow. He’s got some fun new scars on him, too. There’s one on his dick that’s particularly funny. And yeah, I have seen it. We’ve sort of given up on the idea of privacy during the last few months. “You didn’t tell me.” He sounds a bit hurt, but I pretend not to notice. Ivan is still watching me with his pinched, ugly face.

  His eyes are olive green, his complexion swarthy, hair dark and thick. He should be handsome, but the aura of wrongness about his person makes me prickle with warning.

  “How did you know it was my birthday?” I query back, and Ivan inclines his head, lifting a hand up toward the servants. They scramble to follow his unspoken order, unzipping a pair of garment bags and revealing a very fine-looking white tux and a gown of purple silk.

  “Alvise and Giulia thought it might be nice if the family came together to celebrate such a momentous occasion.” Ivan does not bother to answer my question; instead, he gives a not-so-subtle order.

  The edge of my lip curls up of its own accord, but I resist the urge to full on scowl here. We’re getting out of the room for the first time in … Jesus Christ, how long has it been? More than two months. I’ve been here for more than two goddamn months.

  I wonder what Reba thinks? I wonder how Fem is doing without me. What about Nellie? Does she wish she’d stood up for her kids when she had the chance, taken us and run from the long arms of the club? And how about Cat? Has he given up looking for me, or is the chance at vengeance too sweet a cherry for him to pass up plucking from the tree?

  “We’ll give you an hour to get ready,” Ivan continues when neither Grey nor I answers. He snaps his fingers and the servants lay out several black velvet boxes on the dressing table beside the bedroom door. When they open them, I’m greeted to a scene of glittering diamonds, sparkling from their blue silk interiors. “Make sure you both look presentable.”

  That last part is a warning shot, fired off before Ivan sweeps from the room and the servants follow, leaving behind shoes and cosmetics along with the diamonds.

  Grey curses under his breath, ruffling up his sandy hair as he stares at the garments, now hanging from the open door of the armoire.

  “Is this a good thing or … are we going to die tonight?” I ask, wondering how I can say such a phrase so calmly on the birthday that’s supposed to mark my passage into adulthood, not into an early grave.

  “I’m … not sure,” Grey hazards, rubbing his hand up and down his left arm. It’s been hurting him a lot since the accident. He broke it, but the cast came off last week. Phantom pain maybe. Or just bad memories. He lifts his gray eyes up to meet mine. “But you’re right: this is either the start of something new or the end to it all.”

  I look back at the dress, stepping forward to finger the fine silk. Purple is the color of royalty; I feel like it wasn’t given to me on accident.

  Nothing the Grey Wolfe mafia does is accidental.

  Grey and I are blindfolded for the duration of our walk to the dining room, but as soon as the wispy silk is removed from my eyes, I’m greeted to a scene that looks straight out of a magazine. The dining hall has soaring stone walls with a stained-glass ceiling, impressive stone columns and buttresses along the roof that I can see through the upper windows. There’s a chandelier that’s bigger than I am, with golden crystals that cast a warm, cozy glow over the huge dining table and the mountain of food down its middle.

  Fresh fruits spilling from their crystal bowls like citrines and amethysts, wineglasses shimmering like rubies as diamond-encrusted hands reach out to take their fine stems, and the smiles of wolves, their sharp teeth bared.

  Giulia greets us first, gesturing to a pair of seats on her left while Alvise lords over everything from the throne-like chair at the head of the table.

  Tonight, we’re dining with the Don.

  What an honor.

  I resist the urge to scowl, sliding into the seat beside Grey and taking note of the way his shoulders stiffen when his mother lays her hand across his. To anyone watching from a distance, it might seem like an affectionate gesture. This close up, however, I see it for what it is: a warning.

  Her long, purple painted nails dig into the back of Grey’s hand, leaving marks that he refuses to acknowledge. Instead, he smiles, and I know for a fact that we’re firmly entrenched in the middle of a very complicated chess game.

  There’s still some, small naïve part of me that refuses to believe this is real, that keeps trying to think up ways that my father will save me, that the club will come riding in like the cavalry that I used to believe them to be. But then I remember that one day—I can’t remember when—I woke up and realized they were nothing but monsters.

  So, if they do come, if a fight does break out, it won’t be heroes versus villains. Instead, it’s just the darkness battling itself.

  “Happy birthday, Gidget,” Giulia says, leaning forward to smile at me. Her dark hair is coiffed atop her head like a shiny snake, the pearl barrette she’s accented it with appears to be the creature’s fangs. No part of me thinks that choice was unintentional. “You’re eighteen today, I understand. Such a monumental birthday.”

  I smile back at her, and she falters. Not much, but enough that I can see I have the power to rankle her. Interesting.

  “Tonight, we celebrate,” the Don says, giving his son a look that’s brimming with warmth and affection. Master thespian, I guess. Because it’s all bullshit. I’m sure Al
vise loves his son about as much as Cat loves me. That is to say, not much at all. To some people, children are gifts of the heart, a piece of their soul that they find great joy in imparting happiness and love to. For others, they are pawns and property, meant to be moved around the game of life with the soul intent to crush and kill.

  That’s Cat. That’s Alvise.

  The Don rises from his seat and lifts his glass, clearly intending to propose a toast. The rest of the table follows suit, as if we’re at a real dinner party, one that isn’t surrounded by goons with guns. A quick flick of my gaze to the back of the room shows me how many of them there really are—and how much heat they’re packing.

  I’m not used to playing slow, careful games. Shit, I’m a club daughter. This is pretty much the opposite of what we do: our parties are not quiet, elegant affairs but ragers with drugs and fighting and fucking and drinking.

  Grey lifts his glass and then flashes me a warning look. Play along, Gidge, please. Somehow, someway, over the last two months I’ve allowed him to start calling me Gidge. Even if he isn’t speaking aloud, I can hear it, can see it in the tightening of his skin around his fog gray eyes.

  “To my son, whose return is a blessing from God. And to Gidget.” The Don turns to look at me, cocking his head slightly to one side, his smooth-shaven face just creased enough to give him character, but without doing a damn thing to detract from his looks. Calculated, engineered perfection.

  He is truly and utterly terrifying.

  “May your birthday be a time of reflection and celebration.”

  “To Grey and Gidget,” Giulia purrs, tapping her glass against her son’s.

  Because I’m a barbarian among the genteel, I reach out and snatch a wine bottle by the neck, clacking it up against Grey’s glass before chugging hungrily and slamming it back on the table. I smile at the Don with red-stained teeth. Like a bear with bloodied fangs. Like a Daybreaker.