Jigsaw (Hell's Handlers MC Book 3)

by Lilly Atlas

  It was the most Jig had spoken to a woman in one stretch for years. And he found he liked it.

  Izzy reached for the remote and killed the tv, plunging the den into darkness. Without the moonlight streaming through the windows, the place was like a tomb. “Shit,” she said as she flicked on a tableside lamp. “Never realized how much light those windows let in. Even at night.”

  They sprawled on the couch side by side, feet propped on her coffee table. Jig’s cut rested on the back of an armchair. The whole scene was very domestic. He’d given up any thoughts of that life years ago, but would be lying through his ass if he said it didn’t feel nice. It felt too nice. Intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with appreciating the person he was with for nothing beyond her company.

  Izzy rolled her head in his direction. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.” He grabbed his beer and took a good pull. Nothing like beer and pizza to round out a shitty day.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  His gut tightened, and he lowered the bottle, unable to take another sip. “What’s your question?”

  She reached out and traced a finger over the scar pattern on his face. Feather-light, her finger tracked the puzzle-piece shape that had given him his nickname. Each spot she smoothed over tingled with awareness until he could feel the entire scar on his cheek. Not the burning that came when the shit hit the fan, but a pressure, almost like someone was pushing a template of the pattern onto his face.

  Jig froze, couldn’t move a single muscle, couldn’t speak, could barely draw in a breath. Over six years he’d had that scar, and none of the women he’d been with had touched it. Most of them would never want to, and the two that had tried faced fury they hadn’t bargained for.

  Anger didn’t come this time, just a paralyzing terror for the question about to fall from her lips.

  “Will you tell me about this? About how it happened? About what you went through?”

  Not only had his face been untouched, but no one dared ask him about the event. No one was willing to face the consequences. Copper knew the entire story, but he was the only one. Everyone else knew the basics, but never learned the depths to which Jig had sunk after the tragedy.

  But Izzy was brave and didn’t back away from a fight or let fear control her actions. There was true caring gleaming in her gaze, not morbid curiosity. The intense events of the day had deepened the bond growing between them, and he now realized that, even though neither was prepared, the connection between them was growing into deep affection. So she touched. And she asked. And for the first time since Copper, Jig found himself willing to unload the story. There was a chance she’d run screaming before he was finished, but he still felt compelled to tell her. The gentle way her fingers caressed his face and the uncharacteristic way her body melted against him made him putty in her hands.

  He cupped his hand over hers on his face and held her palm against his cheek, then turned his head and pressed his lips to the very center. Izzy straightened on the couch and faced him, folding her legs underneath her.

  “About six and a half years ago, I had a wife and a little girl.” His voice cracked over “girl.” “They’re both dead now.” For so many years, he’d refused to voice that truth, and while it was painful to say, it wasn’t quite as gut-wrenching as he’d imagined. And that was all due to Izzy and the compassion flowing from her. Not pity, just concern and patience.

  She didn’t feed him bullshit, didn’t tell him it was okay, didn’t say she understood. It was appreciated. Because nothing about the story was okay, and how could anyone ever understand? But she sat in silent support, listening with focused attention and holding his hand.

  “I was—” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I was very different back then. You probably wouldn’t recognize me if you crossed me on the street. Fuck, I wouldn’t recognize myself anymore. I was a Ph.D. student in physics. I’d never been in a fight, hardly swore, never held a gun. I was…normal.”

  Izzy gave him a small smile of encouragement and squeezed his hand.

  “My wife was…” He blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling as a host of unresolved feelings washed over him. It was astounding how sorrow could feel so fresh even after six years had passed. “She was the definition of sweet. Small, a tiny little thing, soft-spoken, non-confrontational, a pacifist.”

  His gaze met Izzy’s, and though neither of them spoke the words, they both had to be thinking about the differences between the women. Callie and Izzy couldn’t have been farther apart on the spectrum.

  “She was just a good, loving, supportive wife. We met when we were fifteen, and I fucking loved her.” He snorted. “She’d have hated me saying it like that. Don’t think I ever heard a four-letter word come out of her mouth. Everything about her was so damn sugary sweet. I swear, we never even fucked. Just made love. Callie was a hopeless romantic. And my daughter was a carbon copy of her mother. Two peas in a pod.”

  He rested his head against the back of Izzy’s couch and closed his eyes. The sensory memories from that night were so strong he could easily take himself right back to his kitchen. “The night before my graduation, I came home after dark. As soon as I walked into the house, I knew something was wrong. There was an abnormal silence. The power had been cut.

  “I remember that silence. It’s burned into my mind. It was so quiet I could hear my own heart racing. I remember the fear, too, the certainty something was seriously wrong but, honestly, I never expected what I found.”

  He stared off into space as he was transported back in time. Then Izzy stroked his cheek again, pulling him from the dark water that threatened to drown him. “I walked into the kitchen to find Callie bleeding out on the floor, but before I could even register what I was looking at, I was grabbed from behind. There were two guys. When I say I had no skills back then, I mean it. As much as I struggled, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save her, my daughter, or myself.

  “And it was all a fucking mistake. The wrong fucking house. They wanted my neighbor. All a sick, twisted, fucking mistake.” He continued to gaze at nothing, speaking on autopilot just to get the words out. Now that he’d started, they felt like a poison, eating him from the inside out, and he needed to purge. “They knocked me down, carved the fuck out of my face, and threatened me over something that had nothing to do with me. I couldn’t get away. All I could do was take it and pray they’d leave before they realized there was a sleeping child upstairs. They beat the fuck out of me until I passed out on the floor next to my dead wife, having no clue where my baby was.”

  “Jesus, Jig,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow. “But…” Her voice cracked. “But they found her?”

  He nodded, tears burning his eyes. “I never saw my daughter alive again, Izzy. I was late getting home so I didn’t get to kiss her goodnight.” God, how he missed the soft weight of his daughter in his arms. The way she’d light up and quiver with excitement as she stood by the door waiting for him to come home from work each evening. “She was a fucking baby.” Wetness tracked down his cheeks, and his chest tightened until he could barely breathe.

  “Shhh,” Izzy said, wiping his tears away even as she ignored the ones trailing down her own face. “You can stop. You don’t have to tell me more.” There was so much genuine caring in her voice and in her touch. He wanted to soak it all up because it was the only thing warming his heart enough to prevent it from turning to a block of ice.

  Jig shook his head and clutched her hand like a lifeline. “No. I want to say it. You need to hear it. Hear who I am. After their deaths, I fell into a deep depression. I stopped going to work, cut ties with both our families, I couldn’t even get out of bed. Cops had nothing, though I’m pretty sure they were in the pocket of the asshole who killed my family. Then, one day, I was watching the news, and I saw a mugshot of one of the guys who’d been in my house. Who murdered my—” He swallowed, unable to repeat it. “He’d killed someone
else in a carjacking gone bad and was on the loose. That story snapped me out of my fog. I was done being a pussy. Done being unable to protect myself or anyone else. Done letting life happen to me. In that moment, I decided I’d be the one controlling what happened in my life from then on out, so I went to the gym and learned how to fight, training ten to twelve hours a day for months. I also went to the range and learned to shoot. Basically, I turned myself into an entirely different man.”

  “Jigsaw,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Yeah. About eight months after their deaths, I went off in search of the two men who’d broken in, their boss, and anyone else in their gang’s chain of command.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Their boss was a powerful crime lord, and it took me months to track him and formulate a plan to kill him. In that time, I became obsessed with uncovering every aspect of his life. The combination of grief and anger nearly destroyed me. I killed two men one night after following them from a bar. The men who killed my family. I was nothing more than a rabid animal bent on revenge.”

  Izzy scooted closer then threw a leg over his lap, straddling him. Her hands went to his face then she laced her fingers behind his head, cradling his skull. He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of a beautiful woman who held no judgment.

  “You’re shaking.” She said the words so low he almost missed it.

  He circled her with his arms, hugging her flush against him, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. Her arms immediately tightened, giving him comfort.

  “I finally found the shot-caller here in Tennessee, in the mountains at some rundown bar. My head was so fucked I was going to kill him right there in the parking lot where anyone could have walked out and seen me. And someone did. It was Copper. He said he’d had his eye on me all night because I looked like a volcano ready to erupt, and he suspected I was going to do something stupid.”

  “What’d Copper do?” She sifted her hands through his hair, almost unconsciously. Each caress of her fingertips stroked along his wounded soul, healing him. It was the first time he’d allowed himself to draw comfort from another person.

  A woman.

  And, fuck, if it wasn’t better than the best drug in the world.

  “Copper made sure there weren’t eyes on me, then he knocked the guy out cold. We stuffed him in my trunk and drove into the middle of nowhere. He demanded I tell him my story in return for his saving my ass.”

  “So you told him.”

  He nodded, her soft skin brushing over his face. “I spilled every last ugly detail.”

  Still playing with his hair, she lightly ran her nails over his scalp, eliciting a deep shiver from him. “And then? Did Copper talk you out of killing him?”

  Jig lifted his head and stared at her. Izzy now knew things about him that no one else knew. Things that could put not only him, but his president, away for the rest of their lives. Yet he trusted her completely. She’d never tell a soul his story. He felt that in his bones and saw it in her compassionate gaze. Most women would run screaming in fear after listening to his story. Who wanted a man that admitted to spending nearly a year of their life on a murderous revenge mission? But Izzy didn’t even flinch. She was unique. An independent fighter who understood that violence was sometimes the way.

  “Then Copper watched me kill him, helped me bury the body, and I prospected with the club.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IN EVERY LIFE, there are snippets of time so significant their mark brands a person’s heart, mind, and soul. Typically, those moments are the extremes of positivity or negativity. Falling in love, achieving a dream, death of a loved one, epic failure.

  At some point, almost everyone experiences those very same moments. Books are written, careers spent, and studies are performed to dissect, learn from, and advise people on how to handle their emotions and survive those very powerful times.

  Then there are moments so unique, so out of the realm of ordinary experience, that there are no scripts, no playbooks or instruction manuals on how to handle them. Those experiences carve away at a person, exposing raw nerves and a bleeding heart.

  Jig’s confessions, his pain, and catastrophic heartbreak reached inside Izzy and touched a place she didn’t even know existed. Platitudes wouldn’t help. When her mother died, everyone she knew hit her with cliché on top of cliché.

  I’m so sorry for your loss.

  I understand what you’re going through.

  Time will heal your pain.

  Bullshit.

  She wasn’t going to offer empty phrases to Jig.

  Never had Izzy considered herself much of a nurturer. She certainly wasn’t the one friends ran to when they needed a shoulder to cry on, but she found herself needing to relieve Jig’s suffering. Needing to be the one to bring some light into the all-consuming darkness he’d lived in for years.

  As she stared into his tortured eyes, her insides twisted with pain for this man. He’d endured more in one fated night than anyone should in their entire life. If she had the capability, she’d take every single ounce of his pain and suffering away from him. She’d even endure it herself to keep him from the torture.

  How did she tell him what he’d done with his life was okay? How did she let him know she could accept who he was and what he’d become after tragedy blasted a hole in his life?

  “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said, sliding her hands up and down his arms.

  “You’re the first besides Copper.”

  Izzy’s eyes widened. “Why? I couldn’t have been the first to ask. What made you tell me?” Their voices were hushed, and Izzy was afraid speaking at a higher volume would break the spell of trust and acceptance surrounding them.

  His fingers played with the strip of skin at her low back where her shirt ended. She wasn’t a tiny, delicate flower of a woman, but he made her feel feminine all the same.

  “For the first time, I wanted to know,” he said.

  “To know what?” Her heart raced as she waited for his answer. Part of her wanted to run because she knew it was going to change things. Force her to take a terrifying leap off a very high cliff.

  “To know if someone could accept what I’ve done. I killed three people in cold blood, Izzy, and never had one second of regret. The mild-mannered physicist with a full life waiting to be lived turned into a murderer who people fear. And you know the craziest part?”

  She tilted her head and squeezed his shoulders. “What?”

  “I’d do it again for any of my brothers or their women. I could have gone back to my staid life when it was over, but I chose to join the Handlers. Copper would have let me walk. There wasn’t any pressure. Once darkness entered my life, I embraced it. And I chose it. Now I live with it in some form every single day. My wife would have hated the man I am today.” He shook his head. “Makes me sick sometimes.”

  Ahh, there it was. The real devil that wouldn’t release its grip on Jig’s soul. Izzy was swimming in deep water with a raging hurricane rolling in. She didn’t have a clue how to free him from the clasp of pain and guilt, but in some ways, she could relate to him feeling lost in his own skin. For years, she longed for love, affection, connection, but forced herself to harden, shove those feelings aside, and mold herself into a woman who needed no one. So she went with her gut. “I think you’re wrong,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “Excuse me?” There was a bite to his words that hadn’t been there moments ago, but Izzy could handle that. The man was entitled to whatever emotions he wanted after all he’d been through.

  Sharp teeth didn’t bother Izzy, anyway. She raised an eyebrow. “You told me she was sweet, kind, not judgmental. You told me how much you loved each other. How happy you were.” A small pang of something Izzy feared was jealousy pinched her heart. What kind of horrible person did that make her? Jealous over a man’s prior love for his dead wife.

  “I don’t think…” Izzy said, swallowing past thickness in her throat. “I d
on’t think it sounds like there was anything you could have done to make her hate you.”

  Please let that have been the right thing to say.

  Jig stared at her so hard it was as though he could see straight through to her insides. Two broken souls afraid of leaning on others for comfort, but who probably needed it more than most, though the universe didn’t seem to care what either wanted. It had its own plan, bringing Izzy and Jig together and forcing both to confront feelings they hadn’t before. She swallowed. There was something kind of sweet about having him hold a little piece of her vulnerability and vice versa. Not that she was ready to admit that out loud.

  He slid his hand up her spine until he reached the back of her head. Bringing his mouth a breath away from hers, he whispered, “Thank you.”

  Then he captured her lips in a kiss so deep it stole her breath. Gentler than their last kisses, it was so powerful all she could do was hold onto his arms while he explored her mouth and zapped her brain.

  Minutes, or it could have even been hours later, he released her mouth. As they panted for breath, Izzy stared at his lips wet from her mouth. He was so handsome, so dangerous, so potent she almost forgot all of her reasons for keeping her distance.

  Almost.

  “Why haven’t you kicked me out, Izzy? I have nothing to offer you. No future, no happy ending. Just a one-percenter with murders hanging over his head who thinks about fucking you at least a hundred times a day.”

  Izzy grinned. “You don’t scare me, Jig. Neither does the darkness inside you.” At least not physically. And she’d have to find a way to keep him from destroying her heart. “I’m no one’s moral authority. Do I want you to become some masked vigilante killer? No, but I don’t judge you for what you did.” She shrugged and gave him a smile. “Not my style.” Then she grew serious. “I don’t trust anyone, Jig. You get burned too many times, and you learn to only rely on yourself. At this point in my life, I don’t think I can learn anything different. So I have nothing to give you either.” Izzy ground her hips on the erection that had grown between them after she’d climbed in his lap. “Except this. And maybe some kind of friendship.”