“It’s Gidget,” I retort as Grainger tenses and coils like an animal preparing to strike. My hand drops down and I cup his crotch, causing that disturbing level of focus to swing my way. Nobody can see us, what with the tablecloth and all, as I carefully stroke the seam in his jeans, keeping his violence contained. “And four. I’ve got four on rotation.”
It’s a flippant comment, so flippant that Gaz takes it as satire.
He sits back in his chair and sneers at me. There’s a look to him that I don’t like, as if he knows so much more than he should. I think about that girl, about Rhea Bundy or whatever her name was, and how much she looked like me.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Nellie asks suddenly, lifting her gaze to stare at Cade. She briefly flicks her attention my way, asking questions that I obviously can’t answer at the moment. Also, I’m pretty sure she’s pleading with me to keep the mark on her wrist to myself. My mother loves her son, even if he hates her.
“Why the hell not?” Grainger replies, leaning back in his own chair. He can’t seem to resist the challenge of placing his arm across the back of mine, teasing my hair with his fingers. I snatch a plate and start filling it with food. Then I shove it in front of Cade.
“Eat,” I growl out under my breath, hoping the food will distract him.
Grainger does as I asked, using his left hand to pick up a piece of bacon. His right arm remains where he put it.
Nellie—Mom, I want to try calling her Mom, I think—sets two mugs of coffee down on the table in front of us. Grainger actually surprises me by thanking her, and then goes about adding cream and sugar in generous amounts.
It annoys me that I like my coffee the same way.
Breakfast becomes this silent dance of glances and glares, of clinking silverware and the gentle clatter of porcelain as mugs are picked up and set back down. It’s pure hell. It’s also a very telling sort of moment.
Gaz doesn’t come over for breakfast. Ever. Yesterday morning, we interviewed his favorite hooker.
He knows. Grainger knows he knows. Also, as soon as he finishes his bacon, Cade slides his phone from his pocket and starts sending messages.
Eventually, Nellie gets up and leaves, taking some of the dishes with her.
“Does Cat know you spend your time looking into the girls I fuck?” Gaz queries, trying to sound casual. In reality, his voice is thick with anger and his eyes keep darting to me.
“Oh, you know,” Grainger says, using a fork to poke at the eggs on his plate. “It’s not unusual. You have poor taste, and we need to be ready to clean up your messes at a moment’s notice.” He lifts those umber eyes of his up to stare at my brother, his pupils dilated, fingers twitching against my shoulder.
“What about her messes, huh?” Gaz questions, cocking his head to one side and crossing his arms over his broad chest. He looks formidable. He can throw a hell of a punch, that’s for sure. But my brother is nothing up against the power of the four men I’ve welcomed into my confidence. Nothing. He must know that.
If he does, then he might feel cornered. Cornered animals can be very dangerous things.
“Her messes?” Grainger asks with a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been cleaning up her messes for years.”
I turn a look on him, but he still isn’t paying much attention to me. At least, it seems that way. His entire focus is on Gaz, but as he strokes his fingertips along my shoulder, I realize that I’m his primary and only concern right now. Gaz is just an obstacle getting in our way.
“Like her mafia mess?” Gaz says, but even though my insides turn to ice, Grainger is unfazed.
It’s just hit me, but Cade hasn’t figured it out.
My eyes meet my brother’s.
He knows.
Somehow, someway, he knows.
“Wouldn’t exactly call that her mess,” Cade supplies, his voice getting lower, darker. “None of that was her fault.”
I stand up suddenly, my heart contracting in my chest as I stare across the table. My mind is twisted up in knots, ideas and theories spinning wildly.
“Cade,” I say, and I think it’s because I use his first name out loud that actually captures his full attention. He stands up suddenly and grabs my arm in a punishing grip. “It hurts,” I add, reaching up to rub at my shoulder. “I think I need to go and lie down.”
Considering I almost died last week, it’s a valid excuse.
Gaz doesn’t buy it, of course, but he can’t exactly say or do much as Grainger leads me away and takes me back upstairs.
As soon as the door is closed and locked behind us, I’m stumbling over to the gramophone and fiddling with it until the damn thing starts making music. That ridiculous ‘midnight crew’ song starts to play, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.
I turn back to Cade, his face wary as he studies me. He runs a hand over his red-brown hair, tousling it enough that I can see that eclipse tattoo hiding under his hairline.
“You jumped like something bit you,” he offers up, and it’s likely one of the most civilized things he’s ever said to me. His voice is even, almost disinterested. But since we both know that isn’t true at all, I take it for what it is: he’s holding himself back. “What the fuck is it now?” Oh, and there we go, back to normal.
“Gaz is … he knows,” I explain, gesturing with my hands as I try to figure out a way to phrase this. “He knows somehow that I was not just kidnapped.” I drop my hands at my sides and exhale, shoving my fingers into my hair. “And he thinks we know more about him than we do.” I walk a tight circle as Grainger watches me. The sexual tension between us is thick enough to choke, but I ignore it in favor of dealing with our current crisis.
Gaz. Because via Gaz, we have Reba.
I will remain as single-minded as I have to until I get my friend back.
“Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t just threaten us, he would run straight to Cat.” I chew on my thumbnail for a minute, turning in circles, turning, turning. Eventually Grainger puts his hands on my shoulders to stop me from moving.
“You’re making me nuts with that,” he growls, but then his fingers twitch and he’s sliding his palms down my arms with a curl of his lip. “What are you saying here? Gaz is involved with the mafia?” It sounds absurd when he says it aloud, but there it is.
Why else would Grey send me in this direction? What are those packages? Why hasn’t Gaz squealed on me if he knows?
“I need to be alone with him,” I say finally, and Grainger laughs, yanking me close. So close that I can feel his heart. So close that I can feel the hardness of his cock inside his jeans.
“Never. I will never allow you to be alone with him.” He presses his face to the side of my neck, and I grit my teeth in an attempt to remain grounded. My palms come up to press against his chest, and instead of pushing him away, they meet warm leather and then yank him closer.
“You can watch, but he has to think we’re alone. If we are, he’ll be far looser with that big mouth of his. Grainger, we don’t have time to dick around and play detective. We’re working on multiple deadlines here.” I push my face into the hollow of his neck, and he squeezes me even harder.
Hard to believe he gave me cocaine when I was sixteen, huh?
We’re just that fucked up.
“We need him to talk. Now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.” I nuzzle against Grainger, and he makes this … this male sound in his throat. It’s half-growl, half-groan, his arms encircling me and trapping me against him. Possessive.
“You can talk to him out back, but only after Beast gets back.” Grainger releases me slightly and leans down to give me a look. “We have a little agreement of our own, one besides sharing that pretty pussy of yours.” My brow goes up and he smirks. “If Gaz touches you, we get to kill him together.”
It’s as if Gaz has been waiting for this moment his entire life.
As soon as I walk into the backyard and he sees me, his face lights up. But not like he’s happy
to see me. I mean, he is happy to see me, but not because my presence sparks joy. There’s the promise of pain there, of a long-held fantasy that might soon be fulfilled. What that is, precisely, I’m not sure of, but it scares the shit out of me.
I pause about six feet from him.
“Where are your fuckboys now?” he asks with a harsh laugh, looking me over with a level of distaste and disgust that’s hard to fathom. He doesn’t even look at me like I’m human, and I can’t understand why. We never had problems before, when we were younger. It was like one day a switch got flipped in his head, and he became a completely different person.
At the time, I was obsessed with reading these books—Animorphs—where alien slug creatures crawl into people’s ears and take over their bodies. They control them completely. That’s what I used to think happened to my big brother.
“Why are you so damn awful to me?” I ask, my shoulder twinging. I reach up to rub at the wound, the wind stirring the foliage around us. We’re getting these crazy once in a blue moon winds called downslope-offshore winds; they’re stirring all of the wildfires that are blazing across the state. It’s a little scary. Or it would be, if I didn’t have gangs and kidnappings to worry about. “What have I ever done to you?”
Gaz’s face goes so quiet, so cold, that I hardly recognize him. The sneering and the spitting and the scowling, the crude comments, the anti-women brigade, I expect all of that. He’s like a misogynistic peacock, fluffing its feathers and crowing over its conquests. But this? Who even is this person?
“I know what you did, Gidge,” he oozes, swaggering toward me, so close that I can smell him. He smells just like Cat, but—even though I hate them both—he is nothing like our father. Cat can command armies, politick, do business. His son is capable of few things besides getting drunk, shooting up, and screwing hookers. “You took that mafia brat and delivered him right back into the arms of his family. How you did it, I have no idea. But I’m going to figure it out.”
“And then what?” I retort, crossing my arms over my chest and feigning indifference. In reality, I know this is a life-or-death scenario. For me. For the guys. For Reba. Maybe even for Grey. “Can’t make up lies about me when you’re playing around with the mafia yourself, eh?”
I’ve never seen my brother so furious before, this cold, quiet rage that sweeps across him and transforms his entire face. He must sense Beast and Grainger nearby because he doesn’t touch me. This is, after all, a life-or-death scenario for him, too.
“You think you know shit?” he snarls, his spittle flecking my lips. It’s disgusting, but I don’t dare move to brush it off. Instead, I hold my ground, arms still crossed, face neutral, eyes dark. “You don’t know a damn thing, baby sister.”
The back door opens and Crown steps out with Sin behind him. Not sure if they planned that, or if it was accidental. Either way, it serves the same purpose.
Gaz steps away from me, smirking briefly and running his thumb across his lower lip. He pushes past the pair of officers and disappears into the house. I watch him go, that cold feeling taking over me again.
It seems odd, I’m sure, for me to be upset about the idea of my brother working with the mafia. After all, didn’t I rescue their heir? Aren’t I still communicating with him? Chalk it up to cognitive dissonance if you want, but it feels like what I did was different.
I saved an eighteen-year-old from a bullet to the head. Saved myself from having to murder a guy in cold blood. I wasn’t trying to get rich or pit my family against their worst enemy; I was trying to run.
So what the fuck is Gaz doing?
I’ll give you three guesses, but I’m damn certain it has nothing to do with romance. Nothing to do with friendship. Nothing at all to do with freedom.
“What do you think?” Crown asks me, in that even tone of his that he usually reserves for Cat. It’s a respectful tone, a contemplative one. Pleasure arcs through me at the sound of it, as heady and dangerously addictive as my father’s rarely doled out praises.
“He’s guilty,” I say, nibbling on my thumbnail, my eyes still on the doors leading inside. “I know he is. But how, exactly, do we tell Cat that without revealing our hand?”
“As of right now, we do nothing,” Crown tells me, frowning hard and glancing over his shoulder. There’s a storm in his eyes that promises more to this sordid tale, information that I don’t yet have, that he probably feels sick at the idea of giving to me. None of it will be good. “Sometimes patience is key.” He looks back down at me, his eyes flashing. I wonder if he’s thinking about how it felt to wake up beside me? I know I’m thinking about it.
Beast and Grainger reappear like specters in the night, their hiding places still unknown to me.
I’m not sure if Cat knows there’s something going on with the Palm Motel, but even if he does, he won’t know about the key to room two. Even were we to dig up the same information that we have now, it would take much longer than two days. On top of all that, I’m assuming my father will come to the same conclusion as Grainger: Gaz skimming product, keeping the profits for himself.
It’s a fucked-up accusation for sure, but the only proof we have is the word of a prostitute. To me, her word is as good as anyone else’s. She’s just as likely to lie, just as likely to tell the truth. Cat won’t take her word as evidence though. He’ll want to set up surveillance on my brother which Gaz will already know about.
“Can you try calling that girl for me?” I ask finally, blinking through my haze to realize that all four of them are watching me with interest. “Ray of sunshine chick?”
“What for?” Sin asks, but he’s got his phone in his hand already.
“Just a hunch,” I reply, and that’s enough.
Somehow, someway, my hunch is enough to act on.
The tides really are changing around here.
Rhea Bundy is dead.
Her body is floating in the creek that runs behind the Santuario with the broken spire. My stomach clenches with nausea as I kneel down, biting down on my knuckles. Beast is wearing waders, standing knee-deep in the water and gathering the girl’s body in his arms like she matters.
Because she does.
“It never gets any easier, seeing things like this,” Crown says with a tired sigh. “Even as a cop, I never got used to it, and I saw this shit nearly every week.” He watches as Beast carries the girl onto the shore and sets her down, her head lolling, her dark hair wet and plastered across her face.
“It’s not the body that upsets me,” I tell him, and, as fucked up as that is, it’s the truth. “It’s the knowledge that my brother did this.” I scoot closer to the body and sweep the girl’s hair from her parted lips.
“Never make assumptions,” Crown corrects, squatting down opposite me as Sin and Grainger keep watch and Beast stares impassively down at the pale-skinned corpse. “Even if you’re damn near certain you’re right.” He grits his teeth and then exhales, touching his fingers to Rhea’s throat.
She’s been strangled; the bruises on her neck are just that obvious.
Not unusual.
It’s such an easy, relatively mess-free way to kill someone. To keep someone quiet. To send your bad deeds to a watery grave.
“Do you think she told him willingly what happened?” I wonder, considering all the ways Gaz might’ve known we were looking into him.
“Who knows,” Crown continues, checking her pockets and finding nothing of interest. She doesn’t have any money on her. No wallet. No jewelry. “Regardless, we need to report this to Cat. That’s the issue here. We have all of this information that we shouldn’t rightfully have.” He throws me a challenging look that I return without flinching. “On this particular issue, patience is a luxury we don’t have. We need to report this now.”
“Tell him you got a call from another one of the girls,” I say, releasing a heavy sigh. This girl’s death feels like it’s on my hands. As is Carol Briggs’. It seems that, no matter what I do, I bring about death. I draw i
t behind me like the train of that Catholic wedding gown, a mix of blood and lace and silk that follows me like a shadow. “They worry about each other. Cat will know Rhea is one of his son’s favorites. That oughta throw some suspicion his way.”
“You’d think,” Crown remarks dryly, lifting his gaze up to meet Beast’s. “But that’s not necessarily the case with your father.” He stands up and pulls out his phone, making a quick call. “We have a dead girl in Gemma Creek.” A pause. “Yep, one of ours. Get some guys down here to deal with it.” He hangs up, squeezing the phone so hard in his hand that his knuckles whiten.
“What does that mean?” I ask as Crown throws me a warning look and takes off. He just starts walking in the direction of the street and disappears down the block. I give Beast a raised brow in question, and he humors me with a sad, tight smile.
“He can mow down men in the field and grin about it.” Beast redirects his attention to Rhea’s body. “But things like this? They hit him hard.”
“He’s a pussy, you mean,” Grainger grinds out around a cigarette, but when I look back at him, I find that he’s staring at the stone wall on the opposite side of the creek and not at the girl. “More than likely he’s pissed off because way back when”—my nemesis, the bane of my existence, and yet somehow also the crux of my heart, steps up close to me—“Crown suspected your brother of being a traitor.”
With that little nugget of information tossed out of his imperious lips, Grainger moves away from the body and tosses his cigarette to the ground, crushing it with the heel of his boot. The edge of Sin’s lip is curled up in annoyance.
“Excuse me, what?” I choke out, wondering how goddamn deep the club’s secrets really go. “I can’t work with snippets of information. I need the whole story.” I throw a glare in Sin’s direction, but he surprises me by nodding.
“You’re in, aren’t ya, Gidge?” he asks, looking down at Rhea again. “Consequences be damned. This is happening.”
“It’s happening,” I agree, pausing as Sin’s phone vibrates in his pocket and he pulls it out to answer.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 22