by Jayne Blue
“You and Billy are meeting with him? I need to be part of that too, Sly. The fucker called me the other day.”
Sly narrowed his eyes at me then shook his head. “You need to trust my judgment on this one. You’re a sore point with Pagano. You know why. If he reached out to you that’s even more reason to keep you out of this. You need to lay low where they’re concerned, at least for a little while. You come at ’em right out of the gate guns blazing and it gets a whole lot harder for me to keep anything contained.”
I barked out a laugh as I sipped my coffee. “This is you keeping shit contained?” Sly’s eyes narrowed at me. He was getting the hint that this conversation was about more than just what happened with Franco. And I felt a distinct brush-off about Pagano that didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me. “Fine.” I started again. “How are you planning to approach it?”
“If this was Pagano’s way of sending a message, Londo’s not going to be coy about it. Pagano’s not a hit-and-run type of guy. And I know what you’re saying and I know why you think he’s behind this. I’m still not sure. He uses us to send these kind of messages.”
I let out another bitter laugh. Sly could show me all of the spreadsheets he wanted, but that hard fact made it tough for me to think very much had changed since Blackie Murphy’s days. But he was club president, not me. I’d abide by his word but that didn’t mean I was going to like it. And I didn’t like it one damn bit at the moment.
“I’ll play it your way. I know there’s still a lot I have to get up to speed on. So what’s your number-one theory of what’s going on?”
Sly shrugged. “I know it seems obvious, but I really think DiSalvo’s people could be behind this. They had a hell of a lot more to gain by putting Franco out of commission. Just because it’s obvious, doesn’t mean that bastard’s not crazy enough to try it.”
I nodded. “So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you and Tiny to pay DiSalvo’s father a visit. He’s running the show for them. Shouldn’t be hard to scare the piss out of him. He talks a big talk but he’s small time. If he’s made to understand he’s got the full weight of the Great Wolves about to rain down on him, I think he’ll fold pretty quick. I think you’ll be able to figure out whether he’s involved just by seeing how he reacts.”
“Good.” And it was, sort of. I believed in my heart this was Pagano, but Sly wasn’t wrong that we had to rule out every other possibility. I knew I had a personal vendetta against the guy and it was damn hard to separate that from what might or might not be going on with the club. Plus, this little excursion might be good for me in other ways: my years of pent-up rage and everything else needed an outlet.
And now that we had that settled, there was another subject Sly and I needed to have out. He knew it too. We’d spent over a decade away from each other, but he could still read my mood as well as he ever did. “So what’s up your ass?” he said.
I straightened my back and leveled a stare at him. In a lot of ways, Sly and I had been tiptoeing around each other since I got back. We tried to feel each other out. It wasn’t like us. It had never been like us. If we had a beef with each other, more times than not we resolved it with words and sometimes fists, just like real brothers. He turned his palms up in a questioning gesture, waiting for me to get to the point.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I finally said.
Sly exhaled and set his coffee cup down; in fact, he almost slammed it.
“You know,” he said. “I think this is a conversation I’m going to need a much higher blood alcohol level to get through.”
I clenched my fist and pounded it once on the counter top. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Sly.”
He shifted and turned to face me. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
“I am.” My voice came through gritted teeth. I harbored even more anger on this subject than I realized. Sly swore me an oath when I went inside. I would keep mine to the club; I would never do or say anything against them even if it meant I could have freed myself. It wasn’t our way. But it was the club’s job—it was Sly’s job—to protect what was mine when I couldn’t. Among other things, that meant Ava.
“What the hell was I supposed to do? Lock her on a chain and give her a water dish?”
I pushed my chair away from the bar and stood up. I tore a path back and forth in front of him. Rage simmered so close to the surface. I truly hadn’t meant to lose my cool with this. But I felt in my heart if this had been a woman of Sly’s I could have found a way to keep her out of Iraq, for God’s sake. “Don’t sit there and try to spin this as anything other than you not looking out for her.”
Sly’s eyes narrowed. He stood up and took a step toward me. We were almost nose to nose; I clenched my fists at my side and thrust my chest out. He did the same. If this was going to come to blows, like a brother or not, I’d knock him on his ass.
“Don’t you fucking stand there and accuse me of that. I get where this is coming from. But yours wasn’t the only life that got ripped apart when you went inside,” he said. “You did what you had to do in there, we did what we had to do out here.”
We both stood stock still. The slightest move by either of us and this conversation was going to turn into something else. And the thing is, I wanted it to.
“You could have stopped her,” I said. Some small part of my brain told me to quit right there. I blamed Sly and I didn’t. I’m not proud of everything that happened next, but I’d spent too much time checking myself, keeping things bottled deep. “You should have stopped her. What happened to her over there is on you.”
And there it was. My words hung there between us and I felt a tinge of sadness at the same time my anger rose. I couldn’t help it. The memory of those scars on Ava’s perfect skin still had me reeling. Then there was that deadened, sad look that came into her eyes as she struggled to tell me what they meant.
“Once.” The word came out of Sly’s mouth as a snarled hiss. “You’re still the closest thing to a brother I’m ever going to have. And what you suffered, what you lost is more than even I can imagine. So for that, I’ll let you say that to me once. Not again.”
“She almost fucking died,” I said. We were still nose to nose, chest to chest. My blood boiled in my ears. There was something deep brewing in both of us that probably had a hell of a lot less to do with our words and more to do with what was in our blood. “She’s covered in shrapnel scars. She won’t talk about it with me yet but she’s got deeper scars on the inside. It was your job to stop her. I never would have let her go.”
Sly moved first. He crossed his arm over my chest and pushed me back against the wall, thinking he could hold me there. Coffee cups that had been hanging next to the shelf near my head crashed to the ground and shattered. “She went there because of you, asshole. Not me. I told you, you weren’t the only one whose life got ripped apart. And I didn’t know she was going until she called me on a pay phone after she’d already reported to basic training five hundred miles away.”
Red rage clouded my vision. Later, I’d understand what happened next really wasn’t about Sly at all. It was about me trying to take back some control and make someone pay for everything I’d lost. Even if I knew Sly wasn’t the one who owed me anything. I dropped low, grabbed Sly around the waist and shoved him back as hard as I could. We toppled backward in a heap of arms, legs and flying fists, crashing over the top of the bar and sprawling onto the kitchen floor.
Sly got in a good blow to my jaw, I got in a better one dead square to his nose. I drew first blood. We called each other every vile thing we’d been raised on. Rolling end over end through the kitchen, we both got to our feet and I got my fists up, ready to take another swing. Sly dropped low and meant to charge me again. Before he got the chance, a shower of ice-cold water rained down on both of us. Sly slipped in it and landed on his ass.
“That oughtta cool ya off, ye couple a thick-heided mongrels!” Mo McGilliv
ray had lived in Northern California for thirty-odd years, but when her temper flared, her Irish brogue got thick. And she was spitting mad right now. She stood in the center of the kitchen aiming the spray nozzle from her sink straight at us with the same murderous intentions as if it were a broadsword.
“Had enough or are ya ready for another? Neither of you have more sense than you were born with. Rip each other’s throats out if ye like but do it outside.” Water dripped down Sly’s bloodied nose and he looked from me to Mo with wild eyes. He looked ridiculous. I raised a brow and wondered if I looked any better. Shrugging, I ran the back of my hand over my chin then offered a begrudging hand to Sly to help him up. He batted it away and tried to stand up. He slipped again in the water. He hung his head in surrender then shook his head, spraying droplets of water everywhere like the mongrel Mo had just called us. Then he clasped his hand in mine, giving me a solid grip, and I helped him to his feet. The rage I’d felt seemed to slough off like I’d opened a release valve. Sly’s posture seemed easier too when he let go of my hand.
“I kept her as safe as I could,” he said; his voice held no trace of the vitriol we’d thrown at each other just a few seconds before. “That girl has a calling and I wasn’t going to stand in the way of it. And that’s how it was. She’s home, she’s safe. And what she did mattered. It wasn’t for me to take that away from her. And it’s not for you either. If you don’t see that, you probably don’t even deserve her.”
My shoulders sank. He was right. I knew he was. Ava was Ava and maybe I was a fool to think that I could have stopped her myself if I’d been here to try. Still, his words stung and I had half a mind to take another swing at him to make it stop.
I jerked my head up to Mo, letting her know she could holster her sprayer. She set her mouth in a hard line and pointed a finger in warning to Sly. A harrumph from the doorway let me know we had a bigger audience than I realized. Charlie leaned in the kitchen doorway chewing on a toothpick. He pushed himself away from the wall, wrapped an arm around Mo and led her out of the kitchen.
“I suppose we both had that coming,” Sly said. “Glad to see your skills are still sharp.” He leaned his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose. Blood still trickled down his chin.
“Are you kidding me?” My head jerked toward the doorway again. Ava stood there, straight and tall, her blonde hair long and wild around her shoulders. She wore a black tank top and skin-tight jeans. Her feet were bare. I stirred again at the sight of her. She had her hands on her hips and the same fury in her eyes Mo had just leveled at us.
“Aggh!” Sly said. “Just reminiscing about old times, darlin’.”
Ava shook her head. She stomped across the kitchen floor and smacked Sly’s hand away from his nose. She put a hand on his forehead and angled his face further back.
“Sit down,” she ordered. Guiding him with her hand still on his head, she forced him onto one of the bar stools around the kitchen island.
“You!” She turned to me. “Get some ice out of that freezer.”
“Yes ma’am.” I gave her a mock salute. She wasn’t amused.
“For the moment, that’s Captain to you. Go!”
I did. I came back with a bag of frozen peas. Ava had the blood cleaned off Sly’s face and was busy tapping his cheekbones with her fingertips. She’d found a red-and-white tackle box that apparently served as the club’s first aid kit. She snorted a couple of times but wouldn’t look at me. God, she was sexy as hell like this—in charge and pissed off at me. It took everything in me not to hoist her over my shoulder and haul her back up to bed, caveman style.
She turned, opened the tackle box and took out what looked like a tampon. Hell, it was a tampon. She snapped off the string and shoved it up Sly’s right nostril before he could protest. He groaned and I winced in sympathy.
“I don’t think it’s broken, but I could be wrong,” she said. “Again. Keep that up there and put this on it.” She handed him the bag of frozen peas. “Any chance I can get you to see Joleen in the E.R. today? She’s on at seven and can fast track you. I’d feel better if you had a doctor take a look at that.”
Sly shook his head. “Ava, you know better than anyone that’s not the first and probably not the last time I’m gonna get my nose busted. If it even is. I’ll suffer through the frozen peas but that’s it.”
She slapped him lightly on the shoulder and pointed toward me with her thumb.
“Next patient.” I slid onto the stool and put my hands on her hips, pulling her between my legs.
“No need to nose rape me, Ava,” I said.
She tried to pull away a little but I wasn’t having it.
“I see that,” she said. “Your jaw’s swollen but you’re talking. It’s not broken.” She put her hands on either side of my face and tapped her fingertips along my jaw like she’d done to Sly. He shot me a wink over Ava’s shoulder and went to the far corner of the room. He leaned against the wall with his hands crossed in front of him and that ridiculous tampon hanging out of his swollen nose.
“You want to fill me in on what that was all about?”
I shot a look to Sly. He shrugged. “Just, ah ... just our way of catching up, baby. Nothing to worry about.”
“Right,” she said. “My diagnosis is an acute case of testosterone poisoning.”
I wagged my eyebrows at her then winced; my face was starting to swell a little. I rubbed my sore jaw. “Ow. Well, baby. I think I might know the cure for that.”
She tried to keep the scowl on her face but the corners of her mouth lifted in a smile and her cheeks colored with a slow blush that started at the roots of her hair. I pulled her in close and planted a great smacking kiss on her lips. Fuck. That hurt too. I guess I’d just have to suffer through.
“Not now, lover boy,” she said. “I’m going to go home.”
“You’re off tonight, you told me.”
Ava stepped out of my arms and busied herself reorganizing Mo’s first aid kit. “I need to, Dex.” Her eyes darted to Sly. He got the hint. This was a conversation she didn’t want an audience for. She turned back to me.
“But I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Maybe we can grab dinner before I go into work.”
I took a breath and braced myself for the reaction I suspected I was about to get.
“Baby, I think it’s better if you let me send one of the prospects over to get a bag for you or something. With what happened to the Franco kid, I’d feel a whole lot better if you were under the club roof at least for the next twenty-four hours or so.”
Ava froze. Her hand trembled slightly as she snapped the latch on the first aid kit. She turned to face me; the shadows had come back into her eyes and it was like a sledgehammer to my heart. We’d taken an important step toward each other last night. The look in her eyes told me she’d just taken two steps back.
I wanted to tell her it wasn’t what she thought. This was different. This time I wouldn’t let club business touch her or us ever again. But the truth was I couldn’t promise her that. I opened my mouth to tell her, but closed it when I realized I couldn’t say anything that wasn’t a lie.
She saw it on my face and something shifted in her posture. She went a little cold. She closed her eyes and sighed. When she opened them again, her walls were in place all over again and I knew it would be that much harder to get her back.
Chapter Thirteen
Ava
I knew when I climbed on to the back of Dex’s Harley, I was headed for trouble. I let my body and heart lead the way when I should have listened to my head. I was foolish enough to think that things would stay level for at least a little while. I’d been dead wrong. As Dex looked at me with that smoldering stare of his that made me weak in the knees, I steeled my back and stared straight back at him.
“Already?” I said. I opened the cupboard door and slid Mo’s first aid kit back on the shelf where she kept it. Dex’s eyes widened when I did it. It surprised him, I think,
that I knew my way around the Wolf Den kitchen this well. Yes. Yes, I did. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to patch up torn flesh and broken noses for club members over the years. Luckily, it hadn’t been often lately. But whenever Sly needed someone tended to without a paper trail, I’d get a call.
“It’s probably nothing,” Dex said and it was about the worst thing he could say. Thirteen years ago I would have believed him. I did believe him back then. And he’d grossly miscalculated if not flat out lied to me more than once.
“Stop,” I said putting a hand up when he tried to put his arms out to embrace me. “At least do me the courtesy of not lying to my face within the first twenty-four hours of me being back here with you. Whatever happened to Franco, whoever did it either actually meant to kill him or didn’t care too much if he didn’t make it. Same thing, really.”
Dex leaned back against the bar and gave me a terse nod. Good. At least we’d cleared the hurdle of him sugarcoating things to try and protect me.
“And the timing of that, with you just coming back to town, that’s not a coincidence, is it?”
Dex shrugged. “That I don’t know for sure. That’s the honest truth, Ava. But it could be. But it’s going to get handled. I prom—”
I put my hand up again. “Stop that too. Don’t promise me. Don’t we both know better by now?”
Dex dropped his head. Then he lifted it and leveled a sheepish one-eyed stare at me. God. I couldn’t help that it made me want to go to him, let him bend me over that counter right then and there. I needed to get the hell out of here and fast if I planned to keep my wits about me where he was concerned. It had happened so fast. Just one look, the solid strength of his broad hand as he slid it to the small of my back and I was almost willing to forget everything that had happened and let him draw me back into this chaos.
Almost.
“Dex?” Sly poked his head back through the kitchen door. “Tiny and the prospects are ready to take off. I’m sorry to break things up for you, but you need to get going.”