Craving Cecilia

by Jacquelyn, Nicole

  Swear to God, he was needling me just because he could see how very uninterested I was in dealing with his shit. We were sitting in the empty main room of the clubhouse, waiting for Dragon and the boys to come back out and give us a rundown. I wasn’t sure what exactly they had to discuss beforehand, but honestly, I didn’t really give a shit unless it directly involved Cecilia. Olive had been up repeatedly throughout the morning, and me and Cec hadn’t gotten much sleep. It hadn’t helped that we’d gone to bed as the sun was coming up.

  Forrest checked his watch. “They better get a move on, this place is gonna start fillin’ up with women and kids at noon.”

  “I’m starving,” Lu said, knocking her knuckles on the table. “I hate waiting on other people to get shit done.”

  “The wait’ll be worth it,” I told her with a sigh. “They go all out when everyone’s here for a meal.”

  “This place is different from the club down in Sacramento,” she replied. “More family oriented or something.”

  “You can thank Brenna for that,” I said. “Callie and Farrah, too. They made it a family meeting place.”

  “Brotherhood’s the same, though,” Forrest said.

  I nodded.

  “I really wanna see inside that room,” Eli said as the door behind the bar opened and the men filed out.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I warned, shooting him a look. “At best, you’d have broken bones if you tried it.”

  “At worst?” he asked, grinning.

  “You been waitin’ long?” Dragon asked as he pulled up a chair at our table.

  “Not long,” I replied, hoping Eli would keep his mouth shut for once. I didn’t worry about Lu and Forrest—they were like chameleons, they could read a room and blend in anywhere.

  “First off, I wanna thank you for everything you’ve done,” Dragon said seriously as the rest of the men found seats. I braced. If the next words that came out of his mouth were anything close to telling us to leave and let them handle the Free America Militia, we were going to have problems.

  “Of course,” I said, realizing that he was waiting for a reply.

  “We don’t usually bring outsiders in on shit that’s happenin’ with the club,” Grease chimed in.

  “I’m well aware,” I replied flatly. Seriously, if they thought they were going to cut us out, shit was going to get nasty.

  Grease’s mouth curled up in amusement.

  “With that said,” Dragon murmured, “we realize that this is a different situation—not only because you came through in a big way for Casper. Hell, boy, we raised your ass. You can’t trust your children, you ain’t any kind of parent.”

  “Boys have been fillin’ me in on what I missed while we were down south,” Casper said. “I’m thinkin’ that, while we were dealin’ with the head of the snake down in California, they were dealin’ with the rest of it up here.”

  I sat up straight as the implications of that sunk in.

  “Mack and Rose were kidnapped by a couple of skinheads,” Grease said darkly.

  “Excuse the interruption,” Forrest drawled, “but skinheads are a dime a dozen. What makes you think it’s the same group, and not a couple’a good old boys with a flare for dramatics?”

  “Two things,” Casper said. “One, that Copper, a former brother and Rose’s ex, is the one who hired them, and two, that FAM had some information on a shipment that they couldn’t have gotten anywhere except from inside the club. The Free America Militia had an inside man up here, an inside man in Sacramento, and a random pair of skinheads kidnapped my niece and her man? No such thing as coincidence.”

  “Copper was your inside man up here?”

  “Yes,” Dragon said.

  “How can you be sure?” Lu asked, staring at Dragon.

  “We’re sure,” Grease replied firmly.

  I shot Lu a look before she could say anything else. By Grease’s tone and body language, Copper must’ve given them plenty of information—and it didn’t matter how many times Lu asked, there wasn’t a man in that room who would tell her how that had come about. There also wasn’t any way that our team could interrogate him. The man was definitely already dead.

  “From what Copper said, those boys he hired were low-level shitheads and the only people he was in contact with,” Dragon continued.

  “Do you know who the leak in Sacramento is?” I asked.

  “Got some ideas,” he replied enigmatically. “Nothin’ concrete.”

  “Yet,” Casper added.

  “From what Casper said, you were thinkin’ of goin’ around the big man and usin’ his group to take him down,” Grease said. “Smart move.”

  “But that ain’t gonna work for us,” Dragon said. “Might make Cecilia safe, might not, but either way, it’s not a long-term solution. Creatin’ a power vacuum in a white supremacist group is askin’ for more trouble.”

  “What do you propose?” I asked cautiously.

  I knew in that moment that whatever they decided, I was in. As far as I was concerned, the less power the FAM had, the safer Cecilia and Olive would be. However, I didn’t know that my team would be behind me. I couldn’t blame them. We were venturing into dangerous territory with an outlaw motorcycle club, and while we’d all skirted the law for a greater good in the past, this was different. There was a level of immunity that working for a government contractor gave us, and we’d be completely without that cushion if something happened.

  “We go to them,” Cam said, speaking for the first time since they’d come into the room. “No more waiting for them to strike.”

  “Because they will,” Grease said. “Sure as I’m sittin’ here, once they realize we know that it’s all connected—Cecilia, Rose and Mack, and Copper—they’ll be on their way.”

  “How the fuck is it all connected?” Eli said, his face screwed up in confusion. He lifted his hand when Casper started to explain it again. “No, I get it. I see the connections. What I mean is, how the fuck did Cecilia somehow get caught up with this shit at the same time that you’re dealing with those asshats up here? No coincidences, my ass. This is the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard, and I have a grandpa that’s also my uncle.”

  Every man sitting at the table stared at him.

  “His mother’s mother married his father’s brother,” Lu said nonchalantly. “They’re from a small town. It’s not as incestuous as it sounds.”

  “And I thought we had a tangled family tree,” Tommy said with a laugh.

  “They knew where I was from,” Cecilia said from the edge of the room, making most people in the group glance at her in surprise. Everyone knew we were in the middle of a sit-down, so they’d steered clear of the room. I wondered how long she’d been eavesdropping. I was actually impressed by her nerve—if Olive would’ve started fussing, it would’ve given them away instantly.

  “Explain,” Dragon said, waving her toward us.

  I stood from my seat as she got closer and put out my hand. As soon as she’d laced her fingers through mine, I pulled her close.

  “Thought I told you to stay in the bedroom?” I murmured into her ear.

  “I thought you knew by now that I don’t take orders from you?” she replied easily. She lifted her head and gave me a quick kiss right there in front of everyone before handing Olive to me and sitting down in my chair.

  Lu must’ve noticed the stunned expression on my face, because she leaned over and drug a chair closer so I could sit. “Here, Chief,” she said in amusement.

  “Thanks.” I dropped into it and, holding Olive against my chest with one arm, I laid the other across the back of Cec’s seat.

  “Cane Warren,” Cecilia explained. “The head of the militia? He knew where I was from. Who my family is.”

  “He knew your pop was in the club?” Grease asked.

  “Yeah,” Cecilia replied, nodding. “It wasn’t a secret. I mean, I didn’t talk about it with Cane, but I’m sure I talked to his wife Liv about it. She was my friend for yea
rs, so of course it came up.”

  “What else you tell them?” Dragon asked. I could see that he was trying to keep his voice level, but the tension in the room had grown thick.

  “That’s it,” Cecilia said with a shrug.

  “You think it’s smart to go around tellin’ people that your pop’s an Ace, especially in San Diego?” Leo asked. It was the first thing he’d said to her since she got back, and she stiffened, which made me tense.

  Cecilia’s hand gripped my thigh before I could say anything.

  “I wasn’t out at the bar boasting about my daddy being in a motorcycle club,” Cecilia said through her teeth. “Liv was one of my best friends, who I’d known for years. Our families came up a few times.”

  “From what I remember, once you were drunk, you weren’t too careful about what you spread around the bar,” Leo said, his voice flat.

  I was on my feet before he’d finished speaking. The only thing that stopped me from hopping over the table was the baby in my arms.

  “You ain’t helpin’,” Dragon barked at his son. “You got shit to say to Cecilia—you bring it up when we’re not discussin’ shit more important than your high school drama.”

  “Sit, baby,” Cecilia said to me quietly, tugging on my belt loop.

  “And I’d have a word with Lil before you do it,” Casper said, staring Leo down. “Think she might have something to say about it.”

  I slowly lowered myself back down into my seat.

  “So, they knew you were Casper’s,” Grease said.

  “I didn’t specify who my dad was,” Cecilia said with a shrug. “But, I mean, we have the same last name, so it wouldn’t be a jump to figure it out.”

  “’Specially with the last name Butler,” Grease murmured, running a hand over his beard. “Been a number of years, but I’m bettin’ those stories are still circulatin.’”

  “What stories?” Will asked in surprise.

  “Our uncles were notorious,” Casper said dryly. “And so was your great grandmother.”

  “Gram?” Cecilia said in disbelief.

  “Still waters,” Grease said, his lips tipping up in a smile. “Your gram was a badass.”

  “Well, we knew that,” Tommy said.

  “I’d like to hear this story,” Eli said, nodding his head. “But what does that have to do with what’s goin’ on now?”

  “Could be nothin’,” Dragon said. “Just tryin’ to get all the information.”

  “You think Liv hooked up with you because she knew who you were?” Casper asked Cecilia gently.

  She jerked back in surprise and paled. She was silent for a long moment, before shaking her head. “No.” She shook her head again. “No, we met at work way before she got with Cane. That came later.”

  “Could he have been usin’ her to get to you?”

  “They were together for years. He was playing a really long game if that was the case,” she replied.

  “Did he hit on you?” Lu asked quietly. “Before or after he got with your friend?”

  “No way,” Cecilia said with a nervous laugh. “Never. It was always Liv. He worshipped her.”

  “Alright then,” Dragon said. “We’ll take your word for it.”

  “Even if he didn’t plan it,” Casper said, leaning back in his chair, “opportunity dropped in his lap.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Well,” Casper replied, “he’s got his people up here, makin’ friends with members and then stealin’ from us, and he’s got my daughter down there, close as he can get her, carrying his child.”

  Cecilia’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Can we not phrase it that way? It makes it sound like I had sex with Cane.” She shuddered.

  “Sorry, Bumblebee,” Casper said with a bark of laughter. “Still, we retaliated up here and he woulda had the perfect set up to fuck with you, and if you tried to fuck him over down there, he had the means to retaliate up here.”

  “Smart,” Forrest said to himself with a huff.

  “So, now what?” I asked. “The man’s dead.”

  “Now we take care of the rest of ’em,” Dragon said.

  As the group tossed out ideas about how we’d take care of the Free America Militia, Olive woke up and started to squirm.

  “I’m going to take her back to the room,” Cecilia said as she took the baby from me. “You guys don’t need me for this.”

  “Always need you,” I teased quietly.

  “Come find me when you’re done,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll hopefully be the one napping.”

  “Lucky,” I said, squeezing her hip as she stood. “You want me to wake you up when the food’s ready?”

  “Sure.”

  I watched her walk away until I couldn’t see her anymore, and when I turned back to the table, I met Leo’s eye. He wasn’t glaring, but his expression wasn’t exactly welcoming, either. Yeah, we were going to go rounds if he didn’t get his shit straight. Out of respect for his dad and the grounds we were on, I’d never put a hand on him in the past—but I was just about at the end of my patience. If he didn’t keep his mouth shut, I’d shut it for him.

  “What do you think?” Dragon asked Casper, dragging my attention back into the conversation happening around me.

  “If they don’t get back to Woody’s whiz kid today,” Casper said, tilting his head to the side, “then a show of force would be the right way to go about it. Chances are, the son won’t be there—but we can make it clear that we’re watching them.”

  “You think it’ll matter?” Cam asked.

  “I think that they believe they’re flyin’ under the radar at this point, and it would be in our best interest to let them know they aren’t.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to let them go on believin’ it, and let them come to us?” Tommy asked.

  “It would,” Grease said, “if they lived by the same set of rules that we do—they don’t. They’ve already come after your sister and your cousin. Don’t know who they’d fuck with next, and don’t wanna find out. I’m ready to put a stop to this bullshit now.”

  “And let ’em know that if one of our kids falls off their fuckin’ bike, their heads will roll for it,” Dragon said firmly.

  “I bet the militia will send thousands of feet of gymnastics mats if that’s the way they word it,” Eli whispered to Lu, making her grin.

  “You’ll let us know when your man calls?” Dragon asked me.

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “Alright,” he said. He glanced up and over my shoulder. “Perfect timing, where are my grandsons?”

  I looked behind me at Trix, who was pushing through the doorway with a big platter in her arms.

  “They’re out front waiting for the girls,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Rose and Mack were right behind me.”

  “I’m gonna go hide out in my room so I don’t get pulled into helping with breakfast,” Lu said, elbowing me in the side.

  “Coward,” I said as I got to my feet.

  “I don’t do that female bonding shit,” she said, standing up. “If they were going to grab a beer, I’d be down. I’m not cooking for a big group of men.”

  “Is that feminism?” Eli asked, cocking his head to the side. “I can’t tell if it’s feminism or bitchy-ism.”

  “It’s self-preservation,” Lu said, shoving him away from her. “I’m not taking the chance of killing one of these guys with my cooking.”

  “You’re not that bad,” Forrest said, fooling none of us.

  “Woody,” Casper said, rounding the table as the group dispersed. “Keep it locked down until this shit is over, yeah?”

  I didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. “You realize I’m not the only one you should have to say that to, right? Where the fuck is Cam in all that? Or her cousins? Or you, her father? Why am I the only one that wants to knock his teeth down his throat?”

  “Think we just hide it better than you do,” he replied, his lips twitching.


  “Doubt it,” I shot back. “Leo better keep his fuckin’ distance.”

  “If Rose is here, then Lily isn’t far behind,” Casper said with a slap to my shoulder. “She’ll keep him in line.”

  “Right,” I said with a scoff.

  “Hey, Casper?” Forrest said. “Josiah and Ephraim are in town with Cecilia’s stuff, you think we should get a storage unit, or you guys got some place to put it?”

  Lu smiled at Forrest, knowing just like I did, that he’d chosen that moment to bring it up because he was trying to smooth shit over, and not because the boys were in any kind of rush to unload the truck.

  “Nah,” Casper said. “No use wastin’ money on a storage unit. I’ve got room in my garage—we can put it there. Let your boys know we’ve got food on, and afterward, we can head out to our place.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Why do you look like someone just kicked your puppy?” Eli asked, throwing his arm around my shoulder as Casper was called across the room.

  “The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

  “You don’t want to go to Casper’s place?” he asked, holding tight to my shoulders as I tried to shrug him off. “I do. I have got to see where a man like that lives.”

  “It’s a fuckin’ house, Eli,” I said, succeeding in getting him to let go of me. “It’s white and it’s old and it’s got a big front porch.”

  “Oh, yeah? Huh.” He looked over at Casper. “Seems alright. Why don’t you want to go there?”

  “Leave it,” Forrest ordered Eli. “Go call the boys, would you? Tell ’em to get over here.”

  “Fine,” Eli said with a sigh. “Though I hope you realize that means less food for us.”

  “He’s in fine form today,” Forrest said as we watched Eli leave the room.

  “It’s ’cause we haven’t had shit to do,” I replied. “Boredom is kicking in.”

  “Yup. God, I can’t imagine livin’ with that guy. You think anyone will ever marry him? How the fuck would she handle the day to day monotony?”

  “Earplugs?” I joked.

  “I’m gonna go ask if the ladies need any help,” Forrest said, scratching at his beard as he smiled ruefully. “And after they kick me out of the kitchen, I’m gonna take a shower.”