Shatter (Unbreakable Bonds Series Book 2)

by Jocelynn Drake

  “How do you like it?”

  “Rare.”

  “Snow?”

  Snow’s head jerked up and Lucas snickered. Yeah, he’d been caught by his best friend ogling the sexy man in front of him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t caught Lucas a dozen times doing the same damn thing with Andrei. “Still mooing,” he growled back.

  “Got it.” Andrei pressed a kiss to Lucas’s jaw. “Why don’t you set the table and get the salad out of the fridge. I can handle this.”

  Wordlessly, Lucas turned toward the cabinets and started gathered together the necessary plates and silverware. Snow watched as the domestic scene played out, the two of them moving easily around the kitchen. There was the occasional murmured word or lingering touch, as if they were dancing together. As if they had been dancing together for years and not just a few months.

  A familiar stab of jealousy hit Snow, but the pain was blunted this time as his eyes strayed to Jude, who was also watching them with an odd, almost wistful expression on his face that he was quick to wipe away when Lucas turned toward them on his way to the dining room table.

  “Can I help?” Jude said, holding out his hands for the stack of plates and silverware.

  Lucas grunted and handed it over. Now that the teasing had ended, Lucas was closing up before Snow’s eyes, his gaze becoming assessing as he weighed Jude and his association with Snow. Before Snow could bark at Lucas, his friend turned back to the fridge and pulled out two bags of pre-made salad.

  “Where the hell did these come from?”

  “Picked them up two days ago after your last doctor’s visit,” Andrei replied, lifting his voice above the sizzling of the steaks in the skillet. “You need more greens in your diet.” Lucas growled in warning, but it didn’t faze Andrei.

  “What did the doctor say?” Snow demanded.

  “Nothing. I’m fine,” Lucas practically shouted, his hands tightening on the bags until it looked like they were about to explode in a storm of lettuce bits and carrot shavings.

  “His blood pressure is up,” Andrei corrected.

  “It’s fine. I’m just stressed.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Snow snidely interjected, snagging Lucas’s gaze. His friend was horrible about taking care of his health. He had it stuck in his head that he was impervious and that he could simply keep going because he willed it to be so. “Cholesterol?”

  “Ha!” Lucas dropped the bags on the counter and smirked at Snow. “It’s down.”

  “Two whole points,” Andrei added and Jude snickered from across the room.

  “Fuck you, it’s moving in the right direction. It’s a slow process,” Lucas growled, smacking Andrei’s ass before digging in the cabinet for a bowl to put the salad in.

  Snow felt a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips as he walked over to the table with seating for six and dropped into one of the chairs. Jude hesitated, looking as if wanted to do something else to help, but there really wasn’t anything he could do. Snow patted the chair next to him. “Sit and enjoy the show.”

  Jude grinned at him as he dropped into the seat. “They been together long?” he inquired in a low voice.

  Snow shook his head. “Few months.”

  “Seems longer.”

  Snow couldn’t argue with that.

  Conversation fell into an easy lull as they watched Lucas and Andrei finishing up dinner. They had to wait only a few minutes before the men loaded the table with steaks, vegetables, salad and even a basket of rolls. The silence grew a little uncomfortable when Lucas and Andrei joined them at the table. It was clear that no one quite knew what to say and Snow had a feeling it was because of Jude. He’d never had someone in his life, someone from outside the group, and Snow had no doubt that Lucas didn’t have clue as to how he should handle it. Luckily, Jude was the first to break the ice.

  “Wow!” He flashed Andrei a grin. “When Snow made the comment about cooking, I was little worried, but this is great!”

  Andrei flushed, ducking his head for a second before lifting dark eyes to Jude. “You obviously haven’t had Ian’s cooking. This is passable.”

  “No, he’s right,” Snow said. “This is really good.”

  Andrei stared at Snow for a couple seconds, his face completely blank, but Snow could almost see the thoughts whizzing through Andrei’s expressive eyes. He nodded once. “Thanks,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper and then he turned back to his food. The uncomfortable tension slammed back onto the table, but then that happened every time Snow and Andrei tried to talk directly to each other. It was always better when Lucas was physically between them as if he could act as a filter, smoothing everything out. Otherwise, something hung in the air between them, a cloud of unspoken words that neither of them dared to say.

  “Do you cook?” Lucas asked, looking at Jude as he attempted to get the conversation moving again.

  “Some. Nothing really fancy. My mana is determined to teach all her sons to cook and we’ve learned some things to varying degrees, but her cooking is still so much better.”

  Andrei’s head lifted, his eyes widening. “You have brothers? How many?”

  “Two. Both younger. Carrick is twenty-nine and Jordan is seventeen.”

  “And you all live in the area?”

  “Yeah. Carrick and I help our mana out with the bills and keeping an eye on Jordan. We get together at least every other week for dinner.”

  Andrei smiled at Jude for a second before shaking his head, directing his gaze back down to his plate. “I can’t imagine what that’s like. I’m an only child.”

  In the pause, Jude looked over at Lucas in expectation of him adding his own comment to the conversation, but Lucas didn’t move. Instead, Andrei spoke up, stunning Snow with his dark tone.

  “Don’t bother,” Andrei practically snarled, his glare directed on the vegetables as he stabbed them with his fork. “They don’t talk about the past. They were hatched as adults.”

  Snow looked at Lucas, but his friend didn’t meet his gaze. What was even more shocking was that he didn’t reach over to Andrei, touch him, soothe him in any way. During the time Lucas and Andrei had been together, this was the first time Snow had seen any kind of rift between them, and it only made him want to smack Lucas.

  “Carrick and I are really close in age. I don’t have any memories of what it was like not to have one of my brothers around,” Jude ventured, trying to move them past the awkward moment.

  Andrei snorted, his hand loosening just a little where he gripped his fork. “I couldn’t get away with shit. Plus we had bunică and tata mare living with us for a while. It was like there was always an adult there telling me what to do.”

  Lucas paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, his brow furrowed in thought. “Grandmother and grandfather?”

  “Very good.” Andrei smiled at Lucas and the last of the tension flowed out of him. Lucas actually sat up a little straighter, almost causing Snow to choke as he took a sip of his water.

  “Are you learning Romanian?” Snow demanded, putting his glass down.

  “I thought it would be useful.”

  Snow just stared at his friend. “How’s it going?” he asked, trying not to sound as stunned as he was.

  Lucas’s face turned dark and he glared down at his plate. Andrei reached over and placed his hand on Lucas’s wrist, his thumb rubbing over the top of his hand.

  “I speak four damn languages fluently—one of them German—but I can’t get this,” Lucas grumbled.

  “It just takes time. Romanian is different from what you know.”

  Jude was quick to move the conversation along, seeming a little more at ease with Andrei since the two men had some common ground with both born of immigrant families. Jude explained that he was half Spanish from his father and that his mother was Greek—which explained him launching into the language at Southgate House.

  Their easy banter didn’t completely mask the tension that hovered in the air. Snow was working hard to avoid
Lucas’s piercing, questioning gaze. He knew what his life-long friend was thinking without him saying the words. Who is this man? What is he to you? Why is he at my table? What’s his place in your life?

  But Snow couldn’t meet Lucas’s gaze because he didn’t know the answers to those questions. Jude…just made everything better. He could breathe when Jude was near him.

  Dinner was over soon enough and they all worked to clear away the dishes, even though that just meant leaving them piled in the sink for Lucas’s cleaning lady, who would be stopping by at the end of the week.

  Snow sighed as he settled on Lucas’s soft couch, knowing he had to come clean about the other place he and Jude had gone the night before. He wished Rowe was here, remembering a night not that long ago when the man had face-planted behind this couch in a rain of crab puffs. He’d been so worried Melissa would be pissed at him. Pain slashed through Snow’s heart. He’d give anything to have Melissa pissed at Rowe. At him. At all of them.

  Anything.

  A glass appeared in front of his face. He glanced up to find Lucas holding it out. “You look like you need this.” He frowned. “You also look like you have something to share.”

  Snow shook his head. Damn Lucas and his sixth sense whenever it came to anything Snow. He waited while Andrei got a beer for Jude, waited until they were all settled in the comfortable living room. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t tell the cops everything about last night.”

  Lucas sat up straighter, his hand tightening on his glass.

  “I lied when I left here.”

  “Obviously,” Andrei muttered. “You went to The Dock.” His expression let Snow know the man wasn’t a fan of the place. That, in turn, made him wonder when he might have gone there since he’d only recently moved fully into a gay relationship. He shook his head. Back to the important discussion.

  “I found out at The Dock that Jagger’s current house of young love is at the Southgate House.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Andrei breathed, mouth falling open.

  Lucas looked at him in surprise.

  Andrei merely nodded at his boyfriend. “I’ve heard about those gatherings. You hear a lot in my line of work. Nobody thinks anything about talking about the most private situations in front of a bodyguard. A lot of people look at us like we’re merely pieces of furniture.” He curled one leg under him on the couch. “I heard about these parties where the men look like teens but aren’t actually that young. I’m just really surprised it would be there.”

  “You and me both,” Jude muttered.

  Lucas watched Snow, then Jude, his mouth in a frown so tight it had to hurt. “Ash.”

  Snow rolled his eyes. “I know. You’re pissed. But I found out at The Dock that Jagger’s group was meeting there and someone had actually seen Gratton there.”

  “That means he’s back in the fold,” Lucas murmured.

  Nodding, Snow moved closer to Jude before he realized he’d done it. He started to sit back up, but Jude wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close. He gave in, needing to feel the man’s strength against him tonight. He ignored Lucas’s pointed stare. “Gratton being at Southgate means he’s been let back into Jagger’s world. What I don’t get is why. Jagger was livid over what Gratton had done to—” he stopped, realizing he’d almost blurted Ian’s private business in front of two people who knew nothing about it.

  Lucas set his untouched drink on the table next to him. He leaned forward, dark brows drawn together as he looked down at his hands before looking back at Snow. “We are going to have to share some of what happened with Andrei.” He lifted one of those brows. “And since you took Jude with you to Southgate, apparently we need to share with him as well. And what the fuck, Ash? You went there by yourself?”

  “He wasn’t alone.” Jude’s tone held a thread of dark warning.

  Snow moved out from under Jude’s arm but the other man merely tightened his hold on Snow’s arm, keeping him close. “I know it was dangerous, but I also knew you wouldn’t want to go.”

  “Hell yes, I wouldn’t have. Not without a fucking plan.” He stood, tall and visibly angry in every tautly drawn muscle in his body. “And you took a paramedic with you. A paramedic! A bodyguard would have still made the situation risky.”

  Andrei looked Jude over critically. “I have a feeling Jude could hold his own.” He smiled at him.

  Jude merely tightened his fingers and pulled Snow back to him before he looked up at Lucas. “Maybe you should listen to the man instead of yell at him.”

  Silence filled the room as both Snow and Andrei waited for Lucas to lose it. But he didn’t. He only narrowed his eyes and stared at Jude before he nodded thoughtfully and sat back down. He picked up his glass, swirled it around. “Tell me what you learned.”

  “We missed Gratton,” Snow answered, still surprised Lucas had reacted to Jude’s note of authority. Or not reacted. He had to work to keep his dick from responding to that short but hot alpha show. “We did, however, find out that there is going to be an auction soon. I have a bank account number. A half million on deposit in the next twenty-four hours will get us all the details. We don’t know for sure Gratton is going to be there, but he’s definitely connected to this.”

  Lucas closed his eyes, silent for a long time before he looked at his lover. “Can you be free for this? I know you have a lot of extra work with Rowe gone.”

  Andrei nodded. “We’ve got a lot of men in the field and coverage needs to be coordinated. I’ve got someone parked at Ian’s until Sven gets back and a client returning to the area in a few days. Requests for research. But it can all be put on hold. Briefly.”

  Lucas aimed his gaze at Jude. “What about you?”

  Snow felt Jude’s body jerk with surprise. “I can be free. Though, I don’t know if I want to be. An auction?”

  Disgust twisted Lucas’s lips. “Yeah, an auction. Snow and I were never invited to any of those during our brief association with Jagger. We would have made sure such things were shut down and Jagger knew it. But I know how we can get in.”

  Snow shook his head. “I have a feeling I’m going to hate what you’re about to say.”

  Lucas grinned. “You and I are too well known to go in. But I know just the person to help Jude and Andrei’s cover in that place. And I imagine we can easily find him at one of my bars…trying to find you.”

  Snow slumped. “Geoffrey. Shit.” He glanced at Jude to find him frowning.

  “The one from The Dock?” Jude grumbled. “The one made of hands?”

  Andrei started laughing.

  A grinning Lucas began to sketch out his plan. Soon none of them were smiling, too wary of the danger they were about to get themselves into…too sickened by what they’d be seeing. Snow knew himself well; knew that no carefully laid plans would save him from the nightmares that would inevitably come. Not with fucking Gratton back in Cincinnati.

  Chapter 14

  Blood pooled in her open abdomen. It slipped over her side in thick rivers, onto the table, to drip on the floor. He handed the forceps to his surgical nurse, the clatter of metal loud as she returned them to the tray. He preferred a quiet operating room. No music filling the space. No unnecessary chatter. But this time, the silence was too complete…too wrong. It turned his head into a black echo chamber that held nothing but the powerful drumming of his heart.

  He lifted his hands, stared at the red coating his surgical gloves.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” he said, his voice muffled from the mask and from the grief forming a knot in his throat. “The cancer has spread everywhere. Close her up.”

  Along with the clanging of tools, a nurse he didn’t know started crying. “Can’t you try to take some of it out?” she asked on sob.

  He shot her a glare. “Did you eat paint chips as a child?”

  She didn’t answer and he didn’t give a shit if she was upset or not. Unfortunately, everyone knew who this was on the table. Knew it was hi
s mother. He looked back down to close her body and noticed the blood on the floor writhed and twisted like it was alive. It congealed, rising to darken his surgical shoe covers, then his scrubs. His arms. He flung out his hands and blood spattered across the wall. The shape of the streaks was so familiar; it was like a punch to the gut. And as he watched, the table turned into his mother’s rickety bed in their home in Collinsville and that stink was back. That horrible, horrible stink that crept out from the room that had turned into her tomb. It had invaded most of the house during those many months of her slow death, hollowed out her constant cries…her pleas.

  “Just hold the pillow over my face, Ashton.”

  Those weak, whispered words jerked Snow’s gaze back to his dead mother. She’d said those same words when he’d been a little boy. Begged him. As if a seven-year-old could be strong enough to hold down a bucking body. Everyone fought death—even those who so desperately wanted it.

  Now, he stood over her, his body covered in bloody surgical scrubs, helpless just as he’d been as a child. Then, she blurred and turned into the man killed in his home. His eyes snapped open as his mouth slowly gaped to show black holes where teeth should have been.

  He looked at Snow much as his mother had, his eyes begging for help Snow couldn’t give. And right before his eyes that bloodied, begging man turned into Jude.

  The scream yanked Snow from the nightmare.

  He sat up in bed, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, staring around the unfamiliar room before remembering he was at Lucas’s. He blinked and ran his hands through his sweaty hair while trying to shove aside the horror. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the nightmare. He always had them when he let his stress levels built too high. But the last part had been new. He knew what the dream meant, that he’d felt helpless as a child as his mother begged him to end her suffering. His shit stain of a father had just left her in that room and Snow had tried so hard to help her. He’d fed her and washed her face and arms with a cool rag…

  She was the reason he’d become a surgeon. He’d originally planned to go into oncology, but the nightmares had grown so bad while he’d been in medical school, he’d switched to general surgery. If his mother had gone to the doctor when her pain had first started—if she’d been allowed to go—a good surgeon would have been able to help her.