Charity For Nothing: The Virtues Book III

by A. J. Downey

  “What’s going on?” Nothing called out to one of the men, confused.

  “That Charity behind you?” the man called.

  Nothing looked back over his shoulder and frowned, but I was grinning, “Yes! I’m her, are you Bobby?” I asked.

  “Sure am, sorry it took me so long to get out here, I had to do some digging through the assessor’s office to find out where the utility lines are buried. They’re on the other side of the driveway, so we should be good to go. Is this a bad time?” he asked, glancing between Nothing and the gun in his hand.

  “Bad time for what? What are you doing, bro?” Nothing tucked the gun into the back of his waistband and I smiled.

  “Faith called Bobby for a favor for me,” I explained.

  “Favor? What favor?”

  “It’s a lemon tree,” I said and wrapped my arms around his waist. I kissed the back of his shoulder, “It’s Katy’s tree,” I murmured against his skin.

  One of the men called out and Bobby turned, “Got the tree spade all ready to go, should only take about an hour to do this, you good?” he asked Nothing, who was standing there a little shell shocked I think.

  “Good?” he asked, staring in disbelief at the tree on the back of the truck, “Yeah, good, we’re good…” he said and Bobby gave him a nod, turning and striding back down the driveway.

  Nothing twisted and raised an arm and I ducked, tucking myself into his side.

  “You did this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it was Bobby’s idea to bring a tree as old as Katy would be, though. I can’t take credit for that.”

  “I can’t imagine what this cost you, Baby…”

  “Nothing, I mean, it didn’t cost me anything… Bobby wanted to do it.”

  He leaned on me heavily, as if the wind had just been knocked out of his sails and I smiled, kissing his cheek.

  “A lot of people love you,” I observed and he just shook his head, mystified. We stood in his doorway, letting the air conditioning cool our backs as the Florida heat swirled in front of us, and watched the installation of the new tree. It took minutes with the giant tree spade machine, but then Bobby and his crew took the time to take up the sod around where the old tree had been and lay it in front of the new one so Nothing wouldn’t have this giant bald spot in his lawn. That’s what took the real time. When it all was done, Bobby came up to the porch again, smiling proudly.

  “What do you think?” he asked and turned to look at the lemon tree, standing proud in the spot in Nothing’s yard that the old one had resided in before the driver had taken it out, long before I’d ever resided here. The only giveaway that anything had been there was the sad, lonely ring of bricks that’d been left behind. Let’s face it; I was a sucker for a rescue in any form, and right now, this felt like one.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said with a smile, while Nothing stood mute. I don’t know if it was a loss for anything to say, or if he were emotional, or what. His face certainly gave nothing away.

  “I don’t know what to say, man.” Nothing scoffed, “I’m just… I don’t know, I’m speechless.”

  Bobby’s face split into a wide grin and he held out a hand. Nothing grasped it and they pulled each other in for one of those manly hugs, slapping each other heartily on the back.

  “I can’t thank you, any of you, enough for this.”

  “Just try not to let this one die, eh?” Bobby pulled a folded piece of computer paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me with a wink. “Care instructions,” he said and I smiled.

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised and with a backwards wave, he went back up the driveway to oversee the removal of the heavy equipment. Nothing pulled me back into his side and I cuddled there, comfortably.

  “You’re incredible, you know that?” he asked.

  “How so?”

  “You seriously did all this, even after I treated you –“

  “Shush,” I said and he looked down at me, raising an eyebrow, “It seemed like the right thing to do,” I shrugged, “So I did it.”

  “Well thank you. I think she would love it. I know that Corrine would have…” he fell silent, his mixed feelings playing out in a war of expression on his face. I hugged him around the waist and looked up at him.

  “Let’s grab a shower,” I soothed, changing the subject.

  “Then what do you want to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know about you, but it’s been ‘go, go, go, go, go’ since I got here. I would love a lazy day in bed having sex, oh, say, two or nine times.”

  “Hmm, not sure we need a shower for that if we’re just going to go and get messy again,” he observed.

  “Right, but that’s half the fun, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Good point,” he smiled, and it was a genuine smile, one that warmed me from the inside out.

  “So how about it?” I asked.

  He kissed me as an answer and swung the front door shut on the outside world. I wrapped my legs around his hips and his hands on my ass, he carried me back to the bedroom. He set me down on the bed and returned the gun from the back of his waistband, to the bedside table.

  “Is that really necessary?” I asked and he looked me over.

  “Yeah, I’m afraid it is. The guys, however many of them, that were waiting for you and the one that took you back at the hotel, they’re in the wind. Somehow they got tipped off before the Captain and your sister got there. Better safe than sorry, Baby.”

  My libido cooled a degree or two.

  “Oh. Thank you for telling me.”

  “What?” he asked, my face giving me away.

  “Did they kill him do you think?” I asked softly, and he gave me a sad sort of little smile.

  “That’s club business, he won’t ever come after you or hurt you again, that’s all you or I need to know.”

  “You sound so sure of that.”

  “I trust the Captain, and my brothers.”

  “Even after they held back that information?” I was genuinely curious and he nodded.

  “Yeah, that was different,” he said.

  “How?”

  He looked thoughtful, “It’s hard to explain, honestly. There are certain things that are unshakeable in this life. Them hiding what Corrine was up to behind my back, I get why they did it. Does it make me happy? Not at all. Does it cast some doubt? On some things, yeah, but not on the really important stuff.”

  “The men who took my sister being more important?”

  “And you, Baby. They’re an outside threat. Let me ask you something, you and your sisters are at a club, right?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, listening to his scenario, relishing that his hand had found its way to the top of my thigh, a warm weight full of promise against my skin.

  “Say Faith and Hope start arguing.”

  I laughed a little, “Not hard to imagine, okay, go on…”

  “Out of the blue, some random drunk bitch comes up and tries to start shit with Faith, what happens next?”

  “Hope would probably smart off to the bitch, and put her in her place,” I said.

  “Right, but she was just fighting with Faith a second before,” he said.

  “Right, but Faith is Hope and my’s sister, we get to say shit to each other, some hooker in a club doesn’t.” I said and Nothing smiled.

  “Exactly.”

  “Same principle, huh?”

  “Exactly the same. When the threat’s over, we’ll go back to our inner dealings but until then, there’s a job to be done. The stupid shit, and really, it’s all stupid shit, is on hold until then. When something like this is in our face, it makes us appreciate each other all the more.”

  “Like family,” I intoned.

  “Some family is related by blood, but sometimes, chosen family is a bond that’s stronger. Fuck knows, I cut ties with a lot of my blood relations when they had a fit about Corrine and I still, to this day, don’t regret that decision. It’s a little ironic now.”

  �
�How so?”

  “Pretty sure my folks would have loved you, nice college girl, goals in mind, studying medicine,” he smiled and tucked some of my hair behind my ear.

  “Corrine wasn’t like that?” I asked softly.

  He shook his head, “It wasn’t that she wasn’t like that, Corrine just didn’t have a calling, not like you or me. She didn’t know what she wanted to be, other than a wife and mother. She was phenomenal as the latter. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother to my child. Just turns out she wasn’t so awesome at the first.”

  That weight of sadness was back, dragging Nothing’s shoulders down, but I was grateful he was talking about it. Even if it was just to me. He was fulfilling his promise, sure, but he was also, every time he talked, letting some of that weight go. I could see that his grief would always be a part of him, but it didn’t have to be the totality of his existence. I was relieved that he seemed to be seeing that for himself now.

  “Hm, thank you,” he said, shuddering as if coming awake after a long silence.

  “For what?”

  “Sticking it out, being here now, mostly for listening and not judging.”

  “You’re hurting,” I said softly, “It would be pretty shitty of me to judge you knowing that, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mm,” he nodded, “When you put it like that, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, the other guys just couldn’t deal?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, for three years they’ve watched you languish, knowing what they knew, afraid to tell you, and all the while holding it in and watching you spiral further and further down into your grief… I’ve only known you a short time, and insane attraction aside,” I shifted, straddling his lap so I could look into his eyes from a scant few inches away, “I hurt for you, I can’t imagine how the lot of them were feeling about it. I can imagine, a lot of those feelings translated to frustration and I know when I’m frustrated, it translates fairly easily to anger…”

  “Smart girl,” he murmured, hands smoothing up my ass, under my shirt so he could touch skin. I closed my eyes, relishing the touch.

  “Like that?” he asked, voice husky with desire.

  “Very much,” I whispered.

  “Hmm, me too.”

  He pushed my shirt out of the way and fastened his mouth over one of my nipples, teasing it with his tongue. I shifted, grinding myself against him until we both reached that fever pitch where it was all we could do to get rid of our clothes and join together in a frenzy of need and mutual heat.

  As he was last night, so he was this morning, tender, careful with me and, dare I say, loving. He moved inside of me with a singlemindedness towards bringing me pleasure, with no obvious thought or care towards his own. It wasn’t something I’d ever really encountered before and it upped my desire for him all the more.

  I held his hair back from his face, so I could see him clearly, as he moved above me and begged him, when he’d held me on that precipice for too long, “Nothing, please?” and it was like my plea was music to his ears, his eyes drifting shut, head turning so he could kiss my palm.

  “Touch yourself for me, Baby. I wanna see,” he murmured and I let my hand drift down between us, teasing my clit gently with my fingertips.

  “Oh, god,” he groaned and surged into me that much harder, hitting all the right points. I gasped and arched, coming around his cock in a tight, pulsating, rhythm. Nothing cried out and jerked, and I felt his dick twitch in counterpoint as we fell back to Earth together. He leaned down carefully over the top of me, and kissed me, a slow, languorous kiss that melted me into the dark sheets.

  He felt just so damn good.

  I wrapped my arms and legs around him and held him close, and he chuckled, cuddling me right back, that is, until my cellphone started buzzing across the nightstand. I groaned when he moved off of me, and out of me, so I could get it.

  I grabbed it up, “Hello?”

  “Charity, are you okay?” Hope demanded, and the urgency with which she said it sent up red flags.

  “We’re fine, why?” I asked sitting up.

  “We as in the club, ‘we’, have problems,” she rushed out.

  “What kind of problems?” I asked, the warmth of afterglow chased right out of my bloodstream by fear.

  “Is Nothing there?”

  “He’s right here,” I said.

  “Put me on speaker.”

  I did, letting her know it was done with an “Okay, we can hear you.”

  “Okay, first off, Faith is fine. Marlin stopped him, Hossler is okay, too. She took her’s out with a shotgun blast to the chest.”

  “Jesus!” Nothing exclaimed.

  “The cops are at Hossler’s, and are dumbfounded by the home invasion, Marlin beat the one that got on his boat to within an inch of his life, and we’re handling that one internally. Nothing are you armed?”

  “Yes, sure am.”

  “Okay, we’re on our way. We took care of one on the Mysteria Avenge, I don’t think he was expecting I knew how to take care of myself. Didn’t take much. Cutter and I have to take care of one or two things before we get over there, you two sure you’re good?”

  “We’re sure, we’re okay; who are they?” I demanded.

  “Give you two guesses, Blossom. Pretty sure you’ll get it on the first try.”

  “Nothing! Switch to the burner for all further communications!” Cutter called from the background.

  “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  “Shit, we’ve got to go,” Hope said and the line went dead.

  “Right,” I said.

  “Shower,” we both said in unison.

  “You go first,” Nothing picked up the gun off the nightstand and went for his jeans, “I’ll make coffee, burner phone’s in the kitchen anyways.”

  “Does it ever stop?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure this is the last stand, Baby.”

  “You think so?”

  “I hope so. Go get a shower, get dressed, okay?”

  “Okay,” I nodded and grabbed towels out of my bag, and a change of clothes, heading for the bathroom.

  “Leave the door open if you want, so you can hear,” he called from the kitchen.

  “Okay,” I called back and started the water.

  I stepped into the warm shower spray and sighed, letting it beat some of the new tension from my shoulders. I sincerely hoped that nothing else would happen, but at the same time, at least this time if something did, I was in a better position to do something about it.

  After Faith had disappeared, the first thing Hope had done, was enrolled me in an accredited Krav Maga class near my university. Whenever we’d gotten together in the intervening years, you’d better believe Corporal Badass had tested my ass on my learning, and had also given me a few pointers to impress my instructor with.

  I was pretty good, though nowhere near as hardcore as Hope. When it came down to it, there just wasn’t any comparing with my sister who had trained since she was a child. While she’d been whooping ass, Faith and I had taken dance classes. It just was what it was. Right now, I was simply grateful for my education in the martial arts, and that there was a total lack of drugs in my system, well, aside from Nothing, but that didn’t really count now did it?

  I shampooed my hair, and was in the midst of rinsing it, when I heard a footfall on the other side of the curtain.

  “Nothing?” I asked, and the curtain whisked aside, the man on the other side, definitely not my lover.

  I jabbed, and he caught my wrist, sidestepping just in time to avoid the throat punch I’d meant to deliver. I was in the shower, so slippery, and as I began to fall, I pitched myself towards him in a bid to both knock him off balance and save myself. It worked, to an extent, both of us crashing to the bathroom floor. The curtain and rod, crashing down on top of me. I scrambled over him and reached for the door frame trying to pull myself out into the hall, but the stranger grabbed hold of my legs
and hauled me back, climbing my body.

  I felt a surge of panic, and in my terror, bleated out, “Nothing!” but I had no idea where he was or even if he was okay…

  Shit.

  Chapter 32

  Nothing

  I stashed the gun in the junk drawer and pulled out the burner phone, turning it on and setting it on the kitchen counter. I made a point to keep it charged and it lit up, ready to go. I set about making coffee, and honestly, I didn’t see it coming. I was getting into the fridge to grab the creamer one second, and the next I was on the floor seeing stars.

  Charity, was my first thought, my second was that I didn’t want to get hit again, or go unconscious, so I played possum, and made like I was down for the count. Whoever was in my house, predictably, went for the bathroom, and my woman, leaving me to my own devices. I got lucky he didn’t tap me, really lucky. I guess ‘unconscious’ was enough for him.

  “Nothing?” I heard her call, and then the curtain rattle; her short shriek of fear twisted the knife in my heart and had me pushing to my feet. My vision swam and I fought down nausea, as I went for the drawer with my gun. I got it in hand just as there was a crash, and it sounded like the whole damn curtain and rod came down.

  “Nothing!” Charity screamed and I was around the corner and down the hall. She was on the floor, trying to pull herself out into the hall but whoever’d hit me had a hold of her.

  I rounded the bend, and aimed down at him, “Let her go,” I said with authority.

  “Or you’ll what? Shoot me, and risk hitting your bitch?” his accent was thick, and he looked up and sneered. His head was shaved, and his thick, black eyebrows were drawn down into a frown.

  “Shoot him!” Charity screamed and kicked back, catching our friend in the mouth. Good girl! I thought savagely. He let her go and she scrambled out of the bathroom around my legs.

  “Still want me to shoot him?” I asked, knowing if she rang that bell she wouldn’t be able to unring it, and neither would I.

  He snarled and lunged, taking the decision away from me. I pulled the trigger, and I honestly felt nothing about it. No regret, no guilt, he was trying to hurt the woman sheltering behind me, the woman I loved, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.