Defiance Falls War: Defiance Falls Book 3

by Dean, Ali

  “You know it’s not about jealousy. Not really. I trust you. It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

  “I know that. If I didn’t know it, I wouldn’t be being so patient with you.”

  I crossed my arms right back at him, which lifted my chest and brought his gaze to that area.

  “This is you patient?” he asked, a little smirk appearing.

  I shot him a glare. “If you actually felt threatened by another guy dancing too close to me, even a hot one like Isaiah Cross – and stop.” I threw a hand out at his little growl. “We can all acknowledge he’s hot, just like I can say Polly Tutino is hot, and you’ve even made out with her so, chill – if you felt threatened by a hot guy talking to me, you wouldn’t be strong, you’d be weak. You wouldn’t be you, and we wouldn’t be us.”

  Cruz narrowed his eyes. “He wasn’t talking to you, he was touching you.”

  “Cruz, I’ve been touched when I didn’t want to be. This wasn’t that.”

  Cruz’s chin snapped back and he looked like I’d just punched him in the gut. My eyes widened. “Wait, that came out wrong. Shit. I think I might be a little drunk.”

  I threw my hand up though. “But I’m not that drunk. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never been wasted but I think this is what would be called tipsy.” I tilted my head to one side, then the other, trying to assess my state of mind. Cruz watched me closely and he was about to say something, I could feel it. But I still wasn’t done.

  “We know we’re good, Cruz. What I’m saying is, stop using jealousy or whatever you want to call it as an excuse to pummel someone when what you really need is to deal with your emotions in a better way.”

  Cruz bit his lip like he was fighting a laugh, and I was cool with it being at my expense if it meant he wasn’t angry or hurt.

  “Hazel Ross, what am I going to do with you?”

  I pointed a finger at him. “Cruz Donovan, I see you. You can’t hide from me.”

  Taking a step closer, I finally allowed myself to brush my knuckles along those razor-sharp cheekbones and offer a little sympathy.

  “I sure as fuck can’t.” He leaned into my touch. “I know fear. I know loss. But when it comes to you…” Cruz closed his eyes. When he opened them, his voice was hoarse with the admission. “It’s always there. The fear of losing you. Even now, when it shouldn’t be. I see every situation like a potential threat, through the same panicked lens. How do I stop that?”

  There was anguish on his face, and my chest twisted at the realization that he was struggling all night, trying to be in the moment, while I was having no trouble doing what we had come here to do. Celebrate.

  “I don’t have all the answers, Cruz, but I know I’m here right now, and I want you here with me too.”

  His arms slipped around my waist and he pulled me into his chest. “Guess I didn’t see how deep this pain ran. From Mom, Dad, being at war with the Malones. All of it made me stronger, yeah, but when it comes to you, it made me vulnerable as hell. I’m sorry, Hazel.”

  He’d been through so much, had he ever really dealt with any of it? Besides through the fighting over the years, the strategizing, soccer, partying, the security firm. I knew it was all necessary, sure, but it was also all a distraction from the pain. “Did you ever, like, talk to a therapist or anything after your mom died?”

  “I can’t see a therapist. Pretty sure there’s some exceptions to patient confidentiality that would apply to my story and land my ass in jail next to a Malone.”

  Cruz’s hands were wandering lower and I pulled back, refusing to let us move on just yet.

  “At some point, Cruz, you need to sort out all that pain, the loss and fear that you’re so familiar with. I’m sure you can figure out a way to deal that doesn’t involve excessive violence and harming of innocent humans, hmmm?” I crossed my arms and jutted out my hip for good measure. It seemed to get my point across. I hoped.

  “Anything to get to touch those all-state boobs,” Cruz said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Not yet. I still want to dance.”

  “Hey, where’d you go earlier? We couldn’t find you.”

  “Oh.” This wasn’t the best timing, but I gave a shrug and told the truth. “I went to pee in the woods and then I ran into Willow and Hunter. I think they were trying to find somewhere to bang, actually. It was a little awkward.”

  “Oh yeah, I saw Moody with Meg earlier too. That crew’s been at our parties before.”

  There was a pause, and then I rushed out the rest. “I asked about Kai, and they said they think his beat-down was drug related because he won’t tell anyone what happened.”

  Cruz nodded, but he eyed me warily at the same time.

  “So yeah, I guess that’s a good thing.”

  “It is.”

  “Can we have sex here later?” I asked, definitely ready to be done with the heavy stuff for the night.

  “Yeah, Hazel, we can do that.” Cruz took my hand this time and started pulling me back up the hill. “But I ruined your dancing so we need to fix that.”

  “Hell yes we do,” I agreed as a new song started up. “It’s my favorite song!”

  “You say that about every song.”

  “That’s because every song’s my favorite.”

  Cruz paused before we reached the top of the hill and turned to me. Our eyes connected and an understanding passed between us. We might be on top of the game now, the power players, but Cruz still had a lot of shit to deal with. Not the kind that required covert meetings in dive bar basements – hopefully there wouldn’t be too many of those in our future – but the kind of shit that couldn’t be dealt with by law enforcement, security firms, hacking, or fist fights. He needed healing, and that would take time.

  “I’m here, Cruz,” I told him. “For all of it.”

  He bent his head down for a kiss. My mouth parted to let him in, the vulnerable parts of him that no one else saw. Cruz Donovan had become a hero of sorts in Defiance Falls, but I knew there was inner turmoil he’d buried deep, that he only felt able to expose recently. With me.

  Cruz pulled me into the middle of the dancing, and as soon as our bodies were moving together, the tension radiating from his earlier fell away. He molded to me, and we stayed that way for hours, one song after the next. His lips trailed my collarbone and up my neck, his hands up and down my sides. Now this? This was touching. We danced while the bodies around us grew in number, seeming to turn into a mosh pit at one point, despite how much space there was to spread out. We kept on dancing when the crowd thinned out, until we were the only ones left, and people were passing out in sleeping bags, tents, cars.

  We were the last ones standing that night, and when we shut off the music, we stumbled our way, drunk now on lust, back to our tree.

  “You can touch my boobs now,” I told him, reaching up on my tiptoes to tug his earlobe with my teeth. I’d always wanted to do that.

  “Hazel, anyone could wake up and see us,” he said, even as he slipped a hand under my shirt.

  “Nah, they’re all up the hill. Besides, it’s dark.”

  He wasn’t hard to convince, and within seconds his other hand was tugging down my shorts.

  “I’ve pictured this so many times,” he told me.

  “Really?” I wanted to know more.

  “Yeah.” His breath was hot on my neck as I let him play out his fantasy.

  “How did you imagine it?”

  “So many different ways. One of my favorites is like this.” He spun me around so I was facing the tree. “Put your hands up.” He moved my hands above my head and then he slipped my underwear down to my knees. His palm glided over my ass cheek and he whispered in my ear, “Spread your legs.”

  I heard a zipper and the sound of his shorts falling to the ground. We’d been working each other up for hours now, and we were both more than ready. He rubbed his length from my lower back all the way to where I was aching most. One of his hands held mine, and he didn’t touch me. Cruz taunted m
e, guiding himself all around but not where I was pulsing, dripping for him. Our breaths were already ragged when he finally pressed the tip right where I wanted him.

  “This is the part where you moan my name.”

  “Cruz, please,” I begged, not needing to fake a thing. I was desperate for him.

  He plunged inside, but his movements were steady and strong, not half as crazed as I knew he was. Cruz must have practiced this enough in his mind that he was able to execute with perfection, because I was expecting quick and hard but got something else. An agonizing build-up, until my legs were shaking and I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming his name.

  We went over the edge together, tumbling into oblivion before crashing onto the grassy ground together afterward.

  I looked over at him and he was staring up at the sky, smiling. “That was way better than the fantasy.”

  I shoved his shoulder. “You should probably get out of your head more often,” I teased, but then leaned over to kiss his jaw. “Be in the moment, with me. Hmm?”

  “Yeah. I think I can do that.”

  “So, tell me about some of these other fantasies.” I was satisfied and exhausted but I loved knowing he’d been thinking about me just like I had him all this time.

  “Well, when it played out in my head there weren’t any mosquitos.” He slapped one on his arm.

  I hadn’t noticed myself; it was getting cool enough that they weren’t too bad, but I had to laugh as he quickly tugged up his shorts before they could get him anywhere else.

  “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

  I’d set us up in the bed of the pickup. It had a top over the cab and it was cozy with him beside me. Last time I’d slept in here, it had been lonely, and I’d been confused, my confidence rattled. Now I had my body tucked into Cruz Donovan’s, but it was more than confidence that infused my limbs. I’d found the trouble I’d been looking for, and it’d given me just what I needed. This was the girl I wanted to be. The one I was right now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cruz

  “First on the agenda: Branden and Sean.” Jeremy was all business today, and the rest of us were right there with him. “They never reported what happened last Friday night, and I don’t think they will. The fire was their retaliation.”

  Hazel sat beside me on one of the couches at the Spot, and she shifted forward now. “Maybe the fire was meant to be payback for that, but then we unleashed everything for the RICO charges, so what does that mean?” She referred to the organized crime act that the head honchos of the Malone Mafia were being charged under.

  Jeremy looked at his daughter. “It’s not the same tit for tat game anymore, Haze. That ended when we put those boys’ fathers behind bars, and took away their power. They tried to make a move, ordering a hit on you, and failed. They’ve got nothing now.”

  “Tit for tat,” Bodhi said under his breath, laughing. “That sounds like a phrase more appropriate for toddlers fighting over toys, Uncle Jeremy.”

  Jeremy smiled. “Never said I was good with words.”

  Hazel ignored them, asking, “But is that it then for Sean and Branden? We don’t bring anything else we have against them and we assume they’ll stay quiet about what I did to them?”

  Gramps answered, “Those boys won’t want anyone to know what happened to them, Haze. You humiliated them. And if they reported it, they’d risk you reporting what they did to you.”

  Moody jumped in, “Plus, we have plenty we can bring against them too. Not enough to get them under RICO, they weren’t in leadership positions, but there’s definitely evidence they committed crimes.”

  “Like what?” Hazel asked, her voice a little shaky.

  “Drug dealing to start,” Moody answered. “I got some backup evidence on that from your friend Meg, actually.”

  “They weren’t involved in the higher-level fraud schemes, but they did the dirty work, on-the-ground stuff,” Spike said.

  “What’s that mean?” Hazel asked.

  “It means,” I told her, “it’s trickier to send the evidence to law enforcement in a nice tidy bow like we did for the more complicated schemes. Keegan and some of the other Malones at Harvard, along with Branden and Sean, moved shipments, threatened people, and even followed through on some of those threats.”

  Hazel’s eyes shot to mine. “You mean they beat people up and killed them?” She didn’t beat around the bush and despite the gravity of her question, I had to fight a smile.

  “Yeah. They only hired outside help for the real complicated jobs. So while there’s supporting evidence for those crimes that ties into the RICO evidence, there’s not much in the way of eyewitness testimony since they all have each other’s backs.”

  Hazel’s eyes moved to her dad. “Did you have to do any of that?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No. Like Cruz said, those were the kinds of things the younger guys in the family took care of. Or hitmen,” he added.

  “Okay, so there’s other stuff besides drug dealing we have against Branden, Sean, Keegan, the younger Malones, but it’s less of a sure thing than the RICO stuff against the leaders?”

  “Right,” Jeremy and Mitch said at the same time.

  Hazel was frowning and staring at her hands as we all waited, letting her sort this out. “What about girls? Did they do anything to women with these threats and violence? Besides me?”

  My eyes moved to Jeremy’s, knowing he was the best one to answer this. “Not that we know of. The thing is, the Malones have always been patriarchal in the way they run things. They’re still living in the past in some ways, treating business like a men’s only club.”

  Hazel let out a breath. “Okay, so we’re done with Sean and Branden Malone? I got my revenge and they won’t report it because it’s too humiliating for them? That and they risk us bringing more claims against them specifically?” Doubt was heavy in her voice, but I knew she wanted it to be true.

  I put a hand on her knee, wanting her to be able to let go of all of this. “Not only that, but they know there’s no one left to support their claims. We were the only ones there. The people who were at the cabin when we arrived know who has the power now, and it’s not the Malones. It’d be the Malones’ testimony against ours, and the tables have turned. We’d come out on top.”

  “We’ve got the credibility now,” Mitch reiterated.

  There was a beat of silence and then Hazel nodded. “Okay. Next item on the agenda?”

  My muscles tightened. I felt Jeremy’s eyes on me and I forced myself to look at him when he answered Hazel’s question. “Easton Wagner.”

  Moody told us he was out of the hospital, and rattled off a list of his injuries – a fractured wrist, cracked ribs, bruises, a concussion. “He hasn’t reported anything either.”

  “Why not?” Hazel asked. “Because he doesn’t want the rest of his team to get in trouble for what they did to Cruz?”

  “Maybe,” Emmett said. “But my guess is he’s probably waiting on a Malone to tell him what to do. He’s used to answering to Neil Malone, all of those guys on the hockey team are.”

  Moody went on, “Keegan and Neil didn’t report Cruz for the same reasons Branden and Sean didn’t report Hazel or the rest of us. They report, we come out with the reasons it happened in the first place, and not only that, but a load of other crap they’ve done.”

  “Still a cat and mouse, tit for tat game, isn’t it?” Bodhi mused.

  “There’s a big difference though,” Spike said. “Their daddies are in prison. They tried making a move from inside with the hit on Hazel and learned they don’t have the upper hand. The younger Malones might be hot-headed but they have to know if they go down that path, we will be on the winning side. They will get prison time just like their dads, and we’ll get the last word.”

  “But,” I said, knowing I had to admit I fucked up here, “if I hadn’t done that, we could have gotten Easton off the hockey team or kicked out of school for the game he played with Ha
zel.” I turned to her. “Or, if you didn’t want to deal with testimony about it, we know he did it to others. We could have given him more permanent consequences.”

  “Wait, why can’t we do that still?” Hazel asked. “And what about the rest of the hockey team who jumped you?”

  “We can still take them down for what they did to Cruz, and other crap they’ve pulled. They’ve got nothing on Cruz. But Easton does,” Moody explained.

  “I don’t know. What about all this eyewitness testimony and us having the upper hand now? The last word? We’ve got the power now.” Hazel’s eyes lit up like it was just hitting her that we were most definitely not the underdogs anymore. This was the position she liked to be in, where she thrived. Except this wasn’t exactly a soccer game.

  Mitch said what needed to be said. “We might have the power now, but we have to be careful how we use it. If we abuse it, we’re no better than the Malones. The question is, did Easton get what he deserved?”

  We all looked at Hazel for this one. She shrugged. “Against me, I suppose those injuries are fair.” The knot in my stomach loosened at this. “But Blake made it sound like Easton and some of the others on the team pull this kind of thing with recruits all the time. If we can stop that, we should.”

  Jeremy was the one to respond to his daughter on that, and I recognized that while he might not be all that old, he definitely had some wisdom. “Hazel, I get what you’re saying, and you’re not necessarily wrong. But here’s the thing – when it comes to hacking, Moody and I can find out all kinds of dirty secrets about people and their sins. We have to draw the line somewhere on how far we go with this.” Jeremy looked around at all of us. “We turned the tables with bringing light to the Malone Mafia, getting the leaders charged under RICO. We have enough on the younger Malones to keep them in line. You guys can go on now, move forward. If we try to right all their wrongs, going as far as the games Neil Malone played with his hockey team, we’re digging ourselves a deeper hole here.”

  “But Dad,” Hazel was quick to respond, “this isn’t some random thing. Neil had those guys target me, and then they beat the crap out of Cruz and gave him a traumatic brain injury. I mean, we can at least ruin these guys, right?” Hazel didn’t wait for her dad’s response, turning to Moody. “What do you have on them, anyway?”