I snickered at her. “Me too. Jesus, I swear I was thinking the exact same thing.”
Her lips twisted, and she muttered, “I really don’t want that shit either, but fuck, some days it just really goddamn hurts.”
I nodded. “Today is one of those days, and I don’t think it’s helping that we know something is going on and no one is telling us shit.”
“Probably isn’t helping that you know your father is somewhere on the compound.”
My throat felt thick at her statement. “You think that’s what Rex meant?”
She snorted. “Of course it is.”
“I thought… Well, I was hoping it meant that he was dead.”
She shook her head. “No way. Steel only just got back, and I know for a fact he wasn’t going to be killing that fuck over there.”
Last I’d heard about my father, he’d been in Hong Kong before his arrest warrants had gone wide, and he’d started hopping around countries that had a non-extradition order with the U.S. like he was a party boy on coke with a passport to burn and a bank account so padded, he could see the world in style. Unluckily for him, his padded bank account was now mine.
I tugged on my bottom lip. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Katina said she saw a big box on a pickup truck when the bikes rolled in.”
The soft voice had me jolting in surprise. I twisted around, instantly regretting it when my neck and shoulders twinged, then seeing Ghost, I relaxed.
I was in the bunkhouse I’d been given when I’d had to stay on the compound, and while it wasn’t the most comfortable of places, it would do. It was better than the clubhouse, where people would and could fuck anywhere their hearts desired.
I wondered why the men were okay with that.
It was like…
This place was like a funhouse for kids but adult style. It was irritating, wondering if somewhere had been Lysoled, and it was even more irritating when you’d be sitting down and drinking something or eating something, and a few feet away, someone would either be boning or on the brink of boning.
I’d never seen as many pussies in my life, truth be told, and I’d watched a lot of porn before Link. A lot. But seriously, I’d never seen as much of a woman’s body as I had until recently.
So, this bunkhouse?
The safest place to be for a non-coitus spoiled area.
My lips twitched at the thought, even as I asked Ghost, “What did she see?”
She spoke perfect English, but sometimes a word would come out thickened by an accent.
“A cr-ah-te.”
My eyes flared wide at that and what it might mean… “You think my father’s alive in there?”
Ghost shrugged. “I hope he is.”
My jaw tensed as so many emotions washed through me, I wasn’t sure which to process first.
Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted to be going down on the compound right about now.
Whatever had sent the brothers shooting off, well, I knew it wasn’t related to my father, because they’d only just gotten back from wherever they’d collected Steel and this crate from.
I assumed an airport, because it hadn’t been that long, and I thought it took a couple of months for shipping containers to make land when it was from Asia.
“He’s alive,” I murmured, somehow feeling it in my bones. “Link would have told me if he wasn’t.”
“Why would he? Isn’t that making you a coconspirator?”
I sniffed at Tiff’s reasoning. “Aren’t I that already?” I shrugged when she clucked her tongue, and muttered, “He wants me to help kill him.”
Tiff’s eyes widened, and I knew that was because whatever she’d expected me to say, it wasn’t that.
Ghost whispered in, as was her way, moving over from the doorway, which she’d managed to open without a sliver of a sound, and as she took a seat opposite me, I stared at her warily.
“You’re braver than me for even thinking of it.”
Her words didn’t get my back up, neither did they soothe me.
Had I thought she’d be jealous?
I cocked a brow at her. “Don’t you want to twist the knife in?”
She shook her head. “No. I-I don’t think I could bear to look at him,” she muttered earnestly. “I just couldn’t look upon him without wanting to puke.”
“You could always puke on him,” Tiff suggested helpfully. “Right in his smug face. I’m sure he’d love that.”
Ghost gave her a small smile. “I’m sure he would. While he deserves it and more, I-I don’t want those feelings in my life.”
“What feelings?” I queried hesitantly. I wanted to know more, while being terrified she’d open up too much.
It was one thing to know someone evil had spawned you, but it was something else to realize that you, maybe, were just as bad as the person whose seed gave you life.
I cleared my throat at the unsettling thought, then tuned in as Ghost answered, “The anger, the rage…it’s toxic. As is the fear and the hurt. I know Tatána and Amara feel the same way. Maybe even worse. I feel like I’m dealing with it better than them. I told Katina not to tell them what she told me, and I don’t think they would deal well with the situation if they found out he was still alive.”
“You told them he was dead?” Tiff asked.
She nodded. “I did. They asked me what they thought Rex had meant, and when they found out, they were relieved and they cried.” Ghost shrugged. “That is enough for them to cope with. Knowing he can’t hurt them anymore, knowing Luke is dead, and that they are safe? It is enough. It has to be.” She cut me a look then, her delicate face softening from its pinched tension as she studied me. “But you are different than us, Lily. You’re not a victim—”
“I am!” I whispered, finding it strange how strident my tone was at that, how eager I was to accept that label.
When she shook her head, I felt like crying. “This isn’t a bad thing, kohana,” she whispered softly. “You are very strong, stronger than any of us.”
“You survived hell,” I bit off fiercely.
“She’s right, Ghost, you did,” Tiff inserted calmly, her watchful eyes taking in the conversation in a way that I knew meant her brain had ticked into therapist mode.
The idea pissed me off, but also, I was glad.
I needed all the help I could get, and Tiffany knew the lay of the land in so many ways that no other shrink could ever learn.
Sure, she wasn’t fully trained. Sure, she wasn’t an actual shrink, but I’d take it.
I’d take it all the way to the bank.
I gulped, swallowing down my rage and hurt. “I’m strong because I had to be strong,” I whispered, reaching up and rubbing my face. When I rubbed my eyes, though, I dug a little too hard and I knew I’d be feeling that ache for a while, but it was better that than anything else.
And that was when the need for drugs whispered through me.
Just like it had since the car crash.
A drug that would mellow me out. Take away the pain, a pain that was both mental and emotional, physical and psychological.
I closed my eyes, wishing I was different, wishing I wasn’t me.
Here I was, all torn up inside, not because my father was somewhere in the compound, maybe being tortured as we spoke. But because I didn’t know how much input I wanted in his death.
Once upon a time, I’d wanted to be the one to kill him. I’d wanted to reap unto him what he’d reaped unto my mother, but in the here and now, I wasn’t so sure.
I was, I’d admit, a little lost, and without Link here, I felt that even more so.
Blowing out a breath, I listened in as Ghost murmured, “I’m strong, I know this, and so are the others, but we are strong in different ways, no? There are many ways to be strong, and the truth is, I’m content with my lot. I’m free, and that’s all I ever wanted. I had the man who hurt me running around, chasing his tail, and more than that, his son is dead, and his empire is crumb
ling down around him. That gives me satisfaction. It makes me happy. But Lily is different. Her background is not mine. She was raised expecting more, expecting to have it all—”
“I never got it,” I snapped, angered by her words to the point where I clenched my fists, which had my broken bones jarring like fuck.
Before I could even wince, Tiffany snapped, “This isn’t a contest, Lily. Stop hurting yourself. It won’t make things better.”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered, wounded by her tone.
“You know what I’m talking about. There’s no oblivion worth seeking that would make all this go away. You’re an adult, let’s act like one, and let’s make sure that you’re ready for whatever you’re faced with.”
I blinked at her, then slowly shook my head. “You think I should do it, don’t you?”
There was a flatness to her expression that I’d never seen before. A cool reasoning, a logic that made me more twisted up inside than ever before.
I thought she’d try to talk me out of it, not lead me into hell like Link was doing.
Of course, he was only trying to give me what I’d told him I wanted. I’d said I wanted to take my father out, and Link, being the good man he was—even if good was relative to some people like Tiff’s mother—was trying to give me what my heart supposedly desired.
“I don’t know if I have what it takes,” I admitted rawly. And that was the crux of the matter.
When it boiled down to it, I wasn’t sure if I was talking all game.
A breath gusted from my lips as I made the admission, and her lips twisted as she murmured, “Sweetheart, you can do whatever you set your mind to. If you think it would give you closure, then if anyone deserves to die a horrible death, it’s Donavan.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, but it provided no comfort. “I know he deserves to die, I just don’t know if I want to be the one who’s sliding the knife into his heart.”
Ghost snorted. “I think if you wanted it, you could do it, but do you want that? Do you want to end his life?”
For a second, I thought about that, then I huffed. “The funny thing is, since I was a child when I saw him push Mom down the stairs, that’s all I thought about. That was like my one aim—to make him pay, to get him back. Now the opportunity is here, and in a way that will never have any repercussions because I’d hazard a guess and say that the authorities still think he’s in Asia, and I’m being chicken shit.”
Tiffany pshawed. “Hardly chicken shit. Taking a life is a big deal. But his life doesn’t mean anything, does it? In the grand scheme of things, I think you’d be getting good karma for the shit he put you through, for what he did to your mom, and then with his business practices. That’s nothing compared to what he did to women like Ghost, Tatána, and Amara because, let’s face it, they’re not their first and only victims, are they?”
“What are you talking about?”
I jumped at Giulia’s voice, and scowled at her through the window she was leaning in, her head peeking through the empty space.
“Is there no privacy on this compound?”
“Umm, nope. You can’t live with so many people and expect privacy. You might as well ask for a genie to give you three wishes.” She chuckled at her own shitty joke. “It always drove me crazy when I was growing up. How everyone was in each other’s business. Now?” She shrugged. “I find it therapeutic.”
Of course, that was Tiffany’s trigger—her shoulders rolled back as I watched her morph into a shrink before she inquired, “Why do you think that is?”
Giulia huffed. “I ain’t getting into shit with you.”
“No? Why not?” Tiff’s smile was wicked, and it was a challenge to anyone with Giulia’s temperament. “Scared?”
“I ain’t scared of shit.” She tipped her chin up, and muttered, “Anyway, I heard what you were saying. The walls have ears, babe,” she told me, surprising me with the endearment. “It’s all good for me to hear. I ain’t gonna say shit, am I? But those clubwhores? Nasty fucking skanks.”
Ghost’s nose crinkled at that. “Why do they have them?”
Giulia heaved out a sigh. “Because they’re men, and those women will spread their legs at any time of the day or night for them. Plus, before me, they cleaned, even if their version of cleaning was beyond unhygienic, and they cooked.” She shrugged. “Sounds like any man’s idea of a palace. Pussy on hand, doesn’t have to feed himself or clean up after himself?”
I shuddered at the thought of what went down in the clubhouse. “I don’t like it,” I admitted.
“You know how I feel about them,” Tiff grumbled, sniffing as she pulled down her tailored shorts so that they covered her knees.
Her mandala mark on her hand flashed at me, and I smiled at the sight because it did my heart good to see that on her.
Knowing she was safe, knowing that she was one of us, that we could talk like this, that we could be open in a way I hadn’t been able to be before she’d become an Old Lady, it made me realize that our friendship wasn’t going to crash and burn.
And I needed that.
I needed the constancy of our relationship.
“It’s not like we can say anything, is it?” I groused. “We knew getting into this that was how things were.”
Giulia sniffed. “Speak for yourself. I didn’t get into this knowing I was going to be accepting those skanks sniffing around my man. The second a bitch does, I’m gonna rip her throat out.”
And from the mean smirk in her eyes, I actually thought she meant it.
She wouldn’t wimp out over it, like I was with my father. No, she’d go straight for the jugular.
“Anyway, I’m going to be making some changes around the place.”
“Oh?” Tiff questioned, her ears pricking up with interest.
I laughed faintly at the sight of her eagerness, and I tuned into Giulia’s conversation as she muttered, “Rex has told me that the clubhouse is in a state and that I need to get the place cleaned up. Apparently, now that we have more Old Ladies, it’s time we started acting like it.”
My brow puckered at that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that he’s been putting this off for a while, and he’s decided that now’s the time for change.”
“Why?”
Tiff’s question had Giulia shrugging. She placed her hands on the windowsill, then let her weight fall back, her head rolling on her shoulders so she could stare up at the sky. “I’d hazard a guess and say it’s because of Storm.”
“Storm? What about him?”
“Well, his Old Lady left him over this shit, and his kid and woman are refusing to go to Ohio to be with him. They want to stay in West Essex.” She sighed. “That’s wrong. I mean, she wants to stay here and the kid wants to go be with her father. It’s a mess.”
My heart ached for them all, because it was so much more than a mess.
“Who is she?” Ghost asked softly.
“Name’s Keira. Actually, I’ve never met her, I just know of her, and I know Storm is a dick.”
“I didn’t even know he had an Old Lady until recently,” Tiff admitted. “The parties I came to before, when I first met Sin, they were all the same, but Storm’s a real manwhore.”
“Yeah, he’s his own worst enemy. And things got worse, too, because he found out she was dating.”
Ghost snorted at that. “God forbid she be allowed to move on while he’s sowing his oats here, there, and everywhere.”
The three of us laughed at her antiquated, if spot on, phrasing.
Giulia winked at her. “Exactly. She was smart getting out of that shit, if you ask me. But no one is asking me. So I’m just gonna take advantage of the gift Rex gave me and crack some skulls together if they don’t toe the line.”
I could hear the zealousness in her tone and knew she was stoked to be heading up this little task force that Rex had set up.
Truth was, I didn’t know how Rex had the time to mic
romanage every aspect of club life, but somehow, he did.
I plucked at my bottom lip again, and questioned, “Are you going to make them stop having sex in the bar?”
Giulia grinned. “What do you think?”
Snickering, I thought about how that was going to go down—like a lead balloon. “They’re going to love you.”
She winked. “Oh, they will when I start telling them that if they fuck out in the open, I won’t be making them any food.” She tapped her nose with her pointer finger. “Way to any man’s brain is through his stomach. Good thing for us, I’m a brilliant cook. They won’t want to miss out on any of my food.”
“You got it all worked out.”
She smiled at my statement, which I’d admit was wistful.
“Babe, I’ve got shit worked out, but I’m gonna do what feels right, and that’s what I think you should do. I got my revenge.” She cleared her throat, and a shadow whispered over her eyes. “I know what it feels like to watch the bastard who was hurting me bleed out. If you want to do the same, then the ball is in your court, but don’t think you’re weak if you just don’t have the stomach for it.
“Trust me, taking a life isn’t something you should be easy with doing. It doesn’t make you chicken shit. It makes you strong, and it makes you a good person.” Her smile was gentle, accepting, then she clapped her hands together, rubbed them, and chirpily asked, “Who’d like to help me wake up the club snatch and get them scrubbing the staircase?”
Tiff laughed at that. “Is the key to get them to do all the miserable chores so they’ll leave?”
Giulia winked at her. “Method to my madness, babe, method to my madness.”
Eleven
Stone
When Indy strode into the hospital room, it was like she brought in a thousand kilowatts of energy with her.
In fact, she might have been coming in off the back of a mushroom bomb. I felt the aftershocks in the floor as they traveled up to the bed I was lying on.
Seeing her, though, made my heart settle down. I was on edge, shaky, and whatever the woman had drugged me with—something the doctors had taken blood tests to discern—was making me feel sluggish at the same time.
Steel: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 4) Page 12