“We don’t need the cops?” Jesus. This was mafia stuff. Stuff that happened on television, not in my friggin’ life.
“You really want to call the cops when there's a Croatian gang threatening to kill you?” he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
I looked over at Blake who was still completely tuned out of the conversation, and I swallowed. If they had the balls to come into the shop with guns... I didn't want to know what else they were capable of.
“All right.” It wasn’t all right though. My face hurt a whole friggin' lot and my heart was going to burst out of my chest from how scared I still was. But Slim's observation got to me. "They were Croatian?"
He nodded wearily. "I recognized the tattoo on their hands. I had an old customer that had me cover up that gang symbol a while back."
Jesus. This was a friggin' nightmare.
And this was exactly what Sonny had said he didn't want to know—who our father owed money to besides the Reapers.
The moment we crossed the second block over to get to Mayhem, three men were already waiting for us outside. One was the guy a little older than Dex that was really attractive, and the other two I’d never seen before. One of the guys went directly for Blake, only casting me a sidelong look before he pulled bloody Blake inside the building.
“Oh, fuck,” the good-looking man named Wheels muttered when he stopped right in front of me. His eyes went on a search. “They did this?”
Slim had the grace to repeat what the men had told me in a voice much more balanced than mine could have been at that moment.
Wheels groaned in response, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, doll.”
I was too. “It’s all right. It could’ve been worse,” I tried to tell him but my voice was wobbly and unpaved. Weak, weak, weak. I was fine. Totally fine. I needed to get myself together when Blake was bleeding all over the place and I ran the risk of peeing my pants in fear. When I lowered my eyes to the ground, I caught a flat black piece of metal tucked into the waistband of Wheels's jeans.
A gun. Holy shit. He had a gun. Why was I even surprised?
“Let’s get you some ice,” he somehow managed to suggest through gritted teeth.
The three of us headed up the stairs while Blake had gone off with the other men toward the kitchen on the first floor. Wheels and Slim seemed to be having a telepathic conversation over my head. I didn’t have it in me to care enough to pay attention to what was being communicated. The throbbing of my face multiplied tenfold with any muscle twitch.
With a Ziplock bag pressed to my cheek and a bottle of water between my thighs on the couch, Wheels planted himself next to me with Slim on my other side. None of us said anything. What was there to say? Wheels didn’t ask what happened or ask if I was okay. He simply sat there breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“Is Blake okay?” I finally asked after grabbing another wad of paper towels to cover the bag of ice.
“Jesse’ll be stitching him up now. He’s fine,” Wheels answered.
I sucked in a ragged breath, looking around the dimly lit room with its pool tables and bar. This mess was eating at me little by little. They didn’t want to get cops involved. My dad owed those assholes enough money that they drove all the way to Austin to make a point, and I'd gotten dragged into the middle of a mess by a man that didn't love me. And they’d just held a gun to my friggin’ face after hurting Blake. It was one thing to deal with Liam but a completely different one to get held up by gangsters.
Gangsters. Jesus. Two months ago my biggest worries had been paying my cell phone bill.
“Is this normal?” I asked the man weakly.
Wheels glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes, sighing. “It ain't totally uncommon.”
I didn’t know how I felt about his answer.
"Do you think they'll come back if they aren't paid?”
The door burst open, cracking against the wall in a loud pop of cracked sheetrock that signaled Dex's arrival. His tall, fit outline filled the doorframe. He scanned the room before landing on the three of us huddled together.
And I felt it. Everyone felt it.
The snap of his mood plummeting was like a blanketing sheet of ice—it might have even been hell freezing over from how chilling and powerful his anger was. It signified the coming of the second Ice Age. Then his eyes narrowed in on the Ziplock bag I had pressed to my cheek. And if possible, the taut line of control in the air pulled to the point of unraveling strand by strand.
In the span of two seconds, Dex had stormed over and dropped to his knees in front of me, one hand burying itself in my hair, the other one planted on the couch cushion just to the side of my thigh.
“Iris.” His tone was wild and low.
I blinked at him. “It’s okay.”
The hand on the couch moved up to pluck the ice pack from my grasp. Dex’s face shuttered down. Something indescribable flickered in his bright blue eyes, something that was related to fury and a distant cousin to murder.
That added in with his tone, scared me. “Tell me.”
“Those guys came in and hurt Blake. Then they told me that if my dad doesn't pay them back by tomorrow they’ll return.” And finish the job, whatever the job was—me dying or something equally brutal. Not that I would ever say that to him.
Dex’s head dipped toward mine, his eyes not losing an ounce of that dark emotion that swam behind them. “What did they do?” he asked me in a whisper.
I was torn between giving him a shortened version and the truth. I figured both would somehow blow up in my face. The expression I must have made was a sign to Dex that I wasn’t telling him something because his hand reached up to trace my jaw, his eyes locked on what I could imagine was the swelling red mark on my cheek.
I didn’t want to worry him, but I knew if I didn’t tell him what happened, he’d be more pissed about it later.
“He grabbed my hair when I was on the chair and he yanked me off of it,” I told him honestly. I could see by his bulging Adam's apple that he swallowed hard. “Then he slapped me.” I sucked in a breath, letting that wild fear creep over my shoulders. He pressed a gun to my face, I wanted to tell him but I couldn't convince myself to say the words out loud.
Dex’s mood shot through the room like a live current. His face hardened, his posture stiffened, and I swear he even stopped breathing. Molecules in the air paused in deference to him.
But instead of saying or doing anything, he dipped his mouth to mine in a press of a gentle kiss. A lingering kiss that made me forget my head hurt because it made everything else feel better.
“I’ll get one of the guys to bring you some Advil,” Dex whispered, kissing my jaw with a tenderness he so rarely possessed.
It was right then that I noticed his hand was shaking—trembling. He kissed me once more right next to my eye, careful not to hurt me.
Dex took his time getting to his feet, his movement was steady and level but there was something off about him.
"Where are you going?" I asked, scanning his face. That look in his eyes wasn't right. It was savage and unruly, and it made my heart clench even harder.
"I'm gonna go take care of this," he said, eyes flashing up to the ceiling.
Oh crap. Panic nudged at me. Worry over what in the world this man was going to do if he left. In that split second, I couldn't have cared any less about what happened back at the parlor. Not if Dex was going to go do something stupid. "Charlie."
"Babe," he growled. "I need you to feel better. Sit down."
I reached out and grabbed his hand, threading my fingers through his in a tight squeeze. "Don't do anything." I tugged on his hand. "It's fine. I'm fine. Really. I'll figure something out so that they can't find me."
"You're not goin' anywhere." It was stated. Demanded. His Adam's apple bobbed with hard swallows, his muscles tightened and loosened twice.
"Dex, please," I begged him. "Please. If you get in trouble with the cops again..." A sob was lodg
ed deep in my chest. "Don't go." My heart was going to shatter. It was getting julienned by what-ifs.
He ground his teeth together, a vein in his neck bulging. “Don’t ask me to do nothin’, Ritz.” His neck tipped up in barely controlled anger. “You want me to sit back and let them get away with this shit?”
“Dex—”
“Look what they did to you!” he snapped. His eyes flashed bright. “They hurt you. They put their hands on you. I can’t sit here and look at you with a clear conscience. I should’ve never let this happen.”
Oh my God. My heart did this dumb pitter-patter-clench thing in reaction to his words, to his conviction, his loyalty...everything. I really was in love with this man. It was horrifying and amazing at the same time. I squeezed my fingers around his. “This wasn’t your fault, Dex. “
He scrunched his eyes together, blowing out a breath that made his lips flutter. Ticking his neck from side to side, he rolled his shoulders. “You’re my responsibility. You’re mine. And I won’t stay here like some punk. I think I’d do anythin’ for you, believe me. But I won’t do this.” He pressed his lips to my forehead, his breath hot. “I gotta do this.”
I could have let him go. I could have just sat back and let him seek vengeance on my behalf, but I wouldn’t. Not that day, not the next or any month or year after that. Because the situation wasn’t worth the possibility of losing him, and I wasn’t above playing dirty. Saying what I needed to. Doing what I needed to.
"Please. Don't leave me, too," I whispered.
That statement must have hit home in his thick, stubborn skull. He blinked those brilliant blue eyes repeatedly before finally nodding slowly, as if it pained him. He lifted a hand to rest on my bad arm, pressed his lips to my forehead and let out a shuddered breath. It was a low move to say those words to him but I didn’t care when he finally spoke. "Lemme get you some Advil.”
I looked up at him as I sat down. Dex's eyes were fierce on Wheels's, his mouth curled cruelly. That fierce tension pumping through his veins returned with every second he communicated wordlessly with Wheels before he retreated. It wasn’t until he had turned to walk out of the room that that static he seemed to radiate expanded, tripled and quadrupled.
The next thing any of us knew, he’d grabbed one of the stools at the bar and thrown it across the room, where it met a loud, messy death with the wall. Dex roared. He friggin’ roared this guttural, primal noise that could have caused earthquakes. Dex tipped his face up, hands clenched at his sides. "Goddamn it!" he yelled, raking his hands through his hair.
Holy crap.
He grabbed another stool by the legs and launched it in the same direction. “Fuck!” exploded from his lungs.
With one final burst of noise, he disappeared through the door. Just like that.
And for some not so strange reason, I trusted him enough to not assume he’d lied to me.
"That went better than I expected," Slim sighed.
I pressed the ice pack to my face again and reached out with my free hand to grab his fingers. "I'm sorry about all of this."
I was sorry. But more than anything, in that moment, I was mainly really pissed off.
What in the hell was wrong with my dad? What kind of a selfish asshole would put other people at risk for his mess? And why in the universe would I have to be related to him? I knew it was unfair and maybe even a little mean but what he was doing eclipsed any of my thoughts. There was no way he didn't know what the friggin' Russians or Romanians or Croatians were capable of. This gang and mafia crap was on a level reserved for the books I read and movies I watched.
I was pissed. And now that even more people that I cared about had gotten involved, this felt all the more like my own personal battle. My own mess to fix. Obviously there was no way in hell those jerks would get their money the next day but if I left, nothing would happen, right?
It was a long shot but it was the only hope I had.
Slim tugged at my hand, squeezing the fingers he held. "It's not your fault."
"It is." I told him with a sigh. I felt terrible.
I needed to fix this.
It was Wheels that told me exactly what I needed to do. "You still don't know where Curt is?" he asked.
I did—now, at least. Luther's friend had found him blocks from the house we lived in back... back before everything had gone to hell when I was a kid.
And I knew what I needed to do, regardless of whether or not I'd told both Luther and Dex that I'd let them handle it. Handle bringing him in, that is. The moment those assholes had come into Pins, this had become my problem. Not anyone else's.
Not even Sonny's.
Sonny. Crap. My fingers flexed nervously as I reached into my back pocket to pull out my phone. Later on, I wouldn't even remember tapping on his speed dial button. All I was aware of in that moment was that I had to be the one to call my brother and tell him. This wouldn't fix the trust issues between us but it was a start, I hoped.
I didn't even let him finish greeting me before I cut him off. The event and my recent decision taking the front of my thoughts by storm. He had to know. "Son, I have to go back home."
~ * ~ *
“We’re here, baby.”
I felt the hand on my thigh pressuring me back to life, and I yawned. It had to have been close to three in the morning by the time Dex was pulling Luther's pick-up into the driveway. Despite the nap I took at Mayhem, I was exhausted—absolutely exhausted. I also had a feeling that they’d given me some sort of sleep aid instead of Advil, but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t care.
After Dex’s meltdown, I’d only seen him in passing twice at the bar. He’d come back up the stairs with Blake in tow. Poor Blake who had to get a handful of stitches in his eyebrow. I apologized to him about a dozen times but he waved me off, and left the bar after giving me a hug that hopefully said he wasn't holding the incident at Pins against me. Dex, on the other hand, had watched me with a tight jaw, his fists clenched at his sides until he'd bowed over to kiss the top of my head. His nostrils had flared and the corded veins in his neck had been the only sign that he was on the edge.
The second time I saw him had been when he'd been heading down the stairs of the bar. I knew he was mad and even though all I really wanted was to climb onto him and ask for a hug, the distance was probably good for both of us. I needed to figure out how the hell I was getting to Florida, and he needed to chill out.
Worry and fear had burrowed itself into me, and I was trying my best to talk myself out of it. I wasn’t completely successful either. As long as I could leave Austin until this mess got sorted out, no one that I cared about would get hurt.
At least that's what I hoped more than anything.
And it was that argument that finally lassoed my half-brother into agreeing with me that I should try to find our dad. With supervision, he'd insisted, but I'd never agreed. Sonny realized, just like I did, that this mess had just turned into a disaster. A disaster that he'd tried to contain, but now that he was so far away, it fell on my shoulders.
It wouldn't be the first time responsibility was on me, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. The fifteen minute conversation had worn me down to the bone. If anything, it'd also made me just that much more angry, too.
Drained, pissed, and sore, I'd napped on the couch and eaten the food that one of the younger guys had brought me. Someone kept me supplied with ice packs for the first couple of hours. Even after that, I kept having people I'd met briefly in the past ask if I needed anything. My new friend Lee had come up at some point and rubbed the top of my head before sitting on the couch next to me and going straight into a story about how weird it was going to be getting his “goods” fondled at the doctor’s office.
But what I needed the most was for my fingers to quit shaking. The pain on my face I could deal with, but that hard printed memory of the gun on my forehead was semi-permanent by then.
Slim and Blake left about an hour after the incident with plans on going home. Dex
had decided to close down shop for the time being. Not that I could blame him though I felt even worse that they needed to reschedule appointments because of my mess. I didn’t want to have a repeat of that afternoon anytime soon.
Or ever.
I hadn't even woken up from my nap until Dex had carried me halfway out of Mayhem. He’d brought the familiar big truck around and carried me into the passenger seat, going as far as to buckle me in. Later on, I could worry about where he'd left his bike, and remember to thank Luther for loaning out his truck again. Riding on the back of his Dyna hadn't exactly sounded like an appealing idea in that moment. No sooner had he slipped into the driver seat than he was fishing my hand off my lap and pulling it onto his, linking our fingers together.
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