Anytime Gray was late, it usually meant nothing but bad things. Today was strange enough, seeing John in the supermarket, that she wouldn’t put it past her own crazy life to deliver her something else weird. Kristie flicked through the TV channels. It was nearing ten-thirty. She hoped he wasn’t involved with any gang madness.
She must have drifted off to sleep because a soft noise caused her eyes to flutter open. The clock above the TV showed it was eleven now. Gray crept into the living room, a strange expression on his face.
“Gray.” Kristie mumbled, trying to prop herself up.
“Why are you still up?”
“I didn’t hear from you. I was worried.”
Gray ran his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. Just a lot going on.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. You should get to bed.”
He headed to the kitchen. Kristie watched him go, frowning. He was short with her, something he hadn’t been in a long time. It set off a hint of paranoia for her. She didn’t want to go back to how things were before they separated.
Her fear spurned her toward the kitchen, where she found Gray digging in the fridge for something. After a few seconds, he pulled out a beer that must have been hidden in the back for ages. It had been a while since she had seen him drink.
“Gray, maybe you should tell me about your day.”
His eyes met hers and for a second, she saw the old Gray – the one who would fight with her over every small thing – and she worried that he was going to revert back to that old version.
Instead, he shrugged. “I was too hasty in recruiting people for the group.” She noted how he refrained from calling it a gang to her face. “And some of them are just assholes.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t take me seriously as a leader. The only one who does is Dern, who is equivalent to a puppy. Grant, this asshole I recruited because he could rip Armand in half, wants blood. He doesn’t want peace with the Infernos at all.”
Fear tightened Kristie’s throat, but she tried to ignore it. She was so sick of the violence. She just wanted to move away, like Rick and Kass had planned to do. What if, by the time they decided to escape, it was all too late? If the Infernos came after them, what would happen then?
“What are you going to do?”
“I want to work out a treaty. Don’t look at me like that. I know it sounds stupid. Overly serious to use the word treaty, but I don’t know what else to call it.”
“I wasn’t going to call it stupid.”
“So this treaty, for lack of a better word, would split up our turf. The Infernos want more space. They don’t have that much. They’re just violent jerks. Armand wants more control. I don’t even know if Ben is really in control of the group anymore or just a figurehead.” Gray was rambling now, something he rarely did and Kristie made sure to be silent and just listen. “So split the turf. Find an agreement on the car races. Even the boosting of cars, if they want. Fuck it, merge the groups at this point. I just want out.”
He took a swig of a beer and when it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything else, Kristie prodded, “And…?”
“Grant just shut the entire thing down. No one was listening to me. They want blood. It’s my own fault. I made sure of that… recruiting only guys that wanted blood. And now I want to end it, and they don’t want that.”
Kristie rushed over, gripping his arm tightly. “Gray, let’s just move. Let’s get out of town. Quickly. We’ll just leave.”
Gray yanked his arm away from her. “Kristie, no. Rick and Kass tried to get away, too, and looked what happened.”
“They waited too long. We still have time.”
“No. We don’t.”
“You’re being stubborn, Gray. We can just leave now. Move away. We’ll be safe before the baby comes. We have to leave. The violence isn’t going to stop.”
“I’m trying to make it stop.”
But the fear for Megan and her new baby getting hurt or even worse overtook Kristie’s thoughts. She could picture being gunned down in a parking lot and bleeding out on the pavement. Her breath caught, and she got the cold and clammy feeling washing over her that meant she was about to have a panic attack.
“Try harder!”
“Kristie, stop!” he said, raising his voice at her. “I’m trying my fucking best, okay? You make it sound like it’s all so easy. Like I can just have everyone fucking hold hands and hang out and Armand will drop the entire thing. I’m trying! This is why I don’t talk to you about this shit. You just think it’s easy to fix.”
Gray moved past her, storming off to their bedroom. Kristie leaned against the counter, trying to catch her breath. She wanted to chase after him and say…her mind was spinning and she realized she didn’t know what she would say to him. Kristie sat down in a chair in the dining room and focused on her breathing, trying to fend off the panic attack. She pushed Gray away, the very thing she didn’t want to do. But how could he not understand that they were on borrowed time?
Chapter Five
“You have to act quickly if you want to get this truce moving,” Dern said, looking at his phone intently, as if reading notes from it, although Gray felt pretty confident he was playing some sort of game.
“I told you, one of the original remaining members is spying for Armand. They’ll tell him my idea, even if no one else agrees with it.”
“Yeah, Grant really thinks it sucks.” Gray looked up at Dern, who looked abashed. “Sorry.”
He was on his lunch break, in the break room of his uncle’s shop, eating a sandwich that Dern brought over. Dern claimed he had made it himself but forgot to remove the receipt off the back of the wrapping.
“Sorry, boss, trying to impress you,” he had mumbled, blushing.
It sounded stupid but that tiny gesture pleased Gray. At least someone was trying to impress him. No one else in the gang wanted to impress him. It was only a matter of time until Grant led a mutiny and Gray was out of the leadership position for good.
Gray mumbled as much, and Dern looked up from his phone. “Yeah, but…maybe that would be good? The Infernos could just forget about you then, you know?”
“They’re not going to forget about me.”
“Why not?”
Gray shrugged, not wanting to get into it. Dern looked as if he wanted to press the subject but decided against it.
“Well, if you are waiting for someone to go to the Infernos and tell them about this plan, I guess all we can do is wait. Hopefully you can get this all figured out before you have your baby, right? I’m sure your wife must be stressed out about this.”
The thought of Kristie made the sandwich go dry in Gray’s mouth. He didn’t like that he snapped at her last night. He knew she meant well. But she didn’t understand how difficult everything was. Her idea of running away wouldn’t work without either Armand dead or a treaty in place. He regretted talking to her about it. He always seemed to regret talking to her about the group and his plans for it.
“Someone will come,” he replied, ignoring Dern’s question about Kristie. “They’ll want to talk about a treaty. Even if Armand doesn’t, Ben will want to. He has the best interest of the Infernos at hand. Armand just wants blood.”
Dern nodded, standing up. “All right, well. I should go. Let me know if you need me.”
“Thanks for the sandwich.”
Gray watched him leave, hopping on his bike and roaring out of the parking lot. He gave a small sigh. Messy and disorganized. The one thing in his life that used to make sense now felt like it was only giving him constant stress and pain. He wished he could run away with Kristie. But if Armand followed and fired again, this time it could really be the end of Kristie, Megan or himself. Gray shook his head, clearing his mind of the dark thoughts and headed back to work.
***
Kristie watched her mom play with the baby. Megan had taken to gnawing on everything, due to her teeth coming in. Pamela was
currently prying a toy out of her mouth, in an effort to stop her from chomping down on things.
“She’s a ferocious little thing,” Pamela commented as Megan began to fuss.
“She wants to chew on absolutely everything right now. Plus she’s been waking up at four in the morning, ready to go.”
When her mom originally called to see if she could come over, Kristie wanted it. She didn’t feel like dealing with her mom slagging on her about Gray again. But she could feel the telltale signs of depression lingering in the back of her head and decided that being alone wouldn’t do her any favors. It wouldn’t do Megan any favors either.
Luckily her mom hadn’t brought up the subject of Gray. She was taking care of Megan, who was propped up and trying to shove any toy she could in her mouth. On top of teething, she was drooling like a fiend. Kristie could only giggle as Megan looked up at her with her bright eyes, drool dribbling onto the bib that Kristie placed on her even though she wasn’t eating.
“Let’s clean off this drool,” her mom mumbled, trying to wipe Megan’s face.
“Soon, your bites will hurt.”
Kristie let out a sudden hiss, holding her belly. The baby kicked viciously, like a soccer player in the making. She rubbed her belly hoping it would calm the baby down.
“Can’t believe it’s so soon. Feels like just yesterday you found out you were pregnant,” her mom said, seeing Kristie wince.
“I know. Less than a couple of months. Trying to get everything in order before then.”
“You have a plan afterward? For getting back into shape?”
“Yeah, sure,” Kristie said, before heading to the kitchen to grab a snack.
She didn’t feel like listening to her mom’s well-meaning, yet hurtful, advice on how to get the figure she had when she was ten. That was the last time she had been an average weight, because her father’s death had caused emotional eating. Kristie wasn’t ten anymore. She didn’t feel like hearing about her weight right now.
As she rummaged through the fridge for a decent snack, her eyes flicked to her cellphone on the counter. She hadn’t heard from Gray today. Their fight last night was still bothering her. Kristie chewed on her bottom lip, suddenly lost in thought. Yes, she might have been too pushy. No, she didn’t completely understand his gang and she never did. But Kristie knew they needed to leave sooner rather than later.
“Kristie?”
She turned around to see her mom stepping into the kitchen with Megan in her arms.
“Sorry, trying to find a snack.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She turned back to the fridge, finally settling on apple slices with peanut butter.
“You look tired, that’s all.”
“I’m incredibly pregnant. Of course I’m tired.”
“After the baby comes, what are you and Gray going to do?”
Great, here we go. “What do you mean?”
“I know Rick and Kass were going to move away. I just don’t want anything to happen to Megan and the baby.” Her mom cleared her throat and looked at Megan, who was growing sleepy. “I’m going to put her down for a nap.”
Kristie watched her mom leave the kitchen with a sense of growing dread. A mother put her children first. If Gray refused to move away from the gang and start a new life then maybe that meant she would have to do that without him.
***
“Gray, someone is here for you.”
Gray looked up from the engine he was working on to see his uncle’s concerned face looking back at him. “Who is it?”
“Not sure. Big guy. Wearing a jacket. No one I’ve seen before.”
“I’ll talk to him. Thanks, Uncle.”
His uncle nodded, but Gray could feel his eyes on his back as he made his way to the office. His uncle knew Armand, so it was must be someone from the Infernos… Gray could feel it in his bones.
He stepped into the office and saw Gale. He tried not to scowl. The last time he had seen Gale, he was spying on Rick and the two of them had gotten into a fistfight. The rest of the office was empty.
“Hey.”
“Gray. Mind if we talk for a few minutes?”
“Sure. We can talk here.”
“You think I’m going to beat the shit out of you if we leave?”
“No. I think I’ll beat the shit out of you if we leave. We can talk here.”
Gale’s eyes stared into his, as if he was sizing him up. After a few moments, he shrugged, as if it didn’t matter to him. “We heard that you wanted to meet with Ben… about a treaty.”
“Yes, that’s right. How’d you hear that?”
Gale shrugged, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Just around. You want to meet with Ben then?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Figured we could settle this like adults. Instead of attacking each other through the night.”
“Mostly us attacking you guys, don’t you think?” Gale replied, smirking.
Gray didn’t fall for the bait. “I’m only interested in talking to Ben.”
“Ben wants to talk to the leader. I’m hearing that no one is taking you seriously as the leader anymore.”
“Why are you here? To confirm what the spy told you was true?” Gray took a step forward.
“I’m here to talk about the treaty. You can tell me what you want. I’ll tell you what we actually want and you can agree to it.”
But Gray was already shaking his head. “I speak to Ben. No one else. Tell him that.”
He turned around, not glancing back at Gale. After a few seconds, he heard the office door chime as Gale left. Gray leaned against the wall in the hallway, lost in thought. He hoped this would worked.
Chapter Six
“Are you going to be home late?” Kristie asked Gray as he finished dressing.
“I don’t know,” he replied, although his tone was colder than she would have liked.
“How do you think this is going to go? What if Ben just shoots you on sight?”
“He won’t. He’s an asshole but he’s never gunned anyone down at a bar. We aren’t meeting at their bar either… neutral ground. That counts for something.”
Kristie watched him pull up a pair of well-worn jeans. The baby in her belly kicked again, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. Anxiousness filled her, causing the baby to be unsettled. She closed her eyes briefly. She thought back to that moment in the kitchen yesterday. If it came down to my children or Gray, I would always pick my children. Kristie wanted to say something to him at this very moment. He deserved to know the stakes. He deserved to know that if he didn’t break them free of this then Kristie would break free herself.
“Gray…” she started to say.
But when he looked up, every muscle in his body was tense. At that moment, he looked as if he had been alive for ages and was weary with everything he was doing. A lot hung on this meeting. Kristie knew that. To tell him right beforehand that she would have to leave if things weren’t resolved felt cruel. Like shooting him in the foot and then leaving him alone in the woods.
“Good luck,” she finished lamely.
Gray’s features softened. “Take it easy, okay? If you need anything, give me a call.”
She nodded. Gray walked over to her and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. Then he left the bedroom. She heard him stop to check up on Megan, who was fast asleep, having previously tuckered herself out from playing with her toys.
When Gray finally left, Kristie realized her heart was pounding.
***
The place that Ben picked to meet with Gray was some family friendly place to eat. Gray had assumed it was going to be a bar. But the colorful sign showed him that he had picked Gruffy’s, a family establishment that apparently cooked up food home-style… whatever that meant. Gray’s idea of home-style food was when his uncle was working long hours after his mother had died, and he would try not to burn his own grilled cheese sandwich.
Gray didn’t know how this was g
oing to go. The fact that Gray would only speak to Ben and that Ben had to contact him personally, offered some dim hope that he would agree to a treaty.
Gray had ridden his bike to the restaurant. It was a strange feeling to be back on the bike, roaring through the streets, feeling alive. Everything was a blur. Whenever Gray rode, all his worries and concerns faded away. With a mental promise to himself to ride more often, Gray strode into the restaurant.
Devil's Advocate: A BBW MC New Adult Romance Series - Book 4 (Devil's Advocate BBW MC New Adult Romance Series) Page 3