The new structure was complicated, and the exposure for everyone was greater—and on both sides of the law. It was impossible to centralize this much power without gaining notice from law enforcement and from other outlaws. People everywhere would be looking to take the Águilas Alliance, as Dora had taken to calling it, down. But the upside was hard to turn away from. So they were in. They’d just have to look sharp.
Bart had stepped up in the weeks—nearly two months now—since Connor’s father had been hurt. He was good in the lead. But he didn’t want it, and Connor was glad about that. His father still held that seat, and he would take it again. He would.
In the meantime, Bart’s leadership was a lot like Hoosier’s, and the club was in good hands.
When the business meeting had wound to a close, and everyone was standing around, eating and talking, Connor had gone looking for Trick, and he’d found him here, alone on the balcony of the hotel suite in San Diego. To every extent possible, Dora liked to conduct her meetings in comfortable style. She stayed in a nice hotel suite, and she always had food and drink for everyone.
It was a stark contrast to the way the Perro Blanco cartel had been run, back in the day. Julio Santaveria, the Perro boss, almost never met with his partners north of the border, and every meet Connor could think of had happened in some abandoned building, or out in the sticks somewhere.
“Come back in. Let her do her thing. Then we can get drunk and you can get laid.”
At that, Trick laughed and stood. “The Conman, all settled down and domestic. How are all the little girls going to learn their lesson about bad boys now?”
“Fuck you, brother. Get inside. The Queen wants to knight you or some shit like that.”
Dora was standing in the middle of the room, talking to Eight Ball, Bart, and Muse, who’d stepped into the SAA role for the time being. She smiled when Connor and Trick came in.
She held out her hand. “Mr. Stavros.”
“Trick is fine.” Trick shook her hand. Connor noticed that he’d squared his shoulders and picked up his military bearing, like an old habit that hadn’t died.
Still smiling, she released his hand and waved at one of her men across the room. He stopped at a table and picked up a box, about the size of a business envelope, but half an inch deep, then carried it to her. She took it and turned back to Trick.
“You did me a great service, Trick.”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I did the job my club asked me to do.”
Dora’s brow creased slightly, and she looked at Trick like she was trying to see something he wasn’t showing her. Connor felt a tickle of apprehension. Trick was calm, and he was goodhearted, but he was not one to shiny up the truth.
“Be that as it may, I am grateful that you did that job so well. It was important to me. I give you this to express my gratitude.”
Trick looked at the box but didn’t take it. “You paid us for the job, and I got my cut. I don’t need that.”
“I’m sure you don’t. But please take it. I put some effort into it.”
With a deep sigh, Trick took the box and opened it.
Standing at his side, Connor saw that the box contained a folded piece of paper. Trick glanced up at Dora, then took the paper out. There was a key in the bottom of the box, under the paper.
Trick opened the paper. While he read it, Connor tried to read his face. What he got was confusion—and disbelief.
“What is this?” Trick returned his attention to Dora.
“The deed to your grandparents’ home in Santorini. It’s paid in full, and the back taxes, too.”
“Losing that house killed my grandmother.”
“I’m very sorry for that. Do you think your grandfather would not want to live in it again?”
“No, he would. He thinks he left her there.” Trick looked down at the deed and then back up to Dora. “You bought my grandparents’ house?”
“I paid for it. I don’t own it. It’s in your grandfather’s name.” She put her manicured finger on the deed and pointed to the name.
For a long, long second, Trick was silent. When he looked up, Connor thought his friend might have been on the verge of tears. “Thank you. I…I think I want to hug you.”
Isidora Vega, the most powerful person in the entire country of Mexico, smiled. “I would like a hug.”
~oOo~
Three days later, an early morning just days before Christmas, Connor paced back and forth across the main entrance at the hospital. The automatic doors kept sliding half-closed, then open again, over and over. He was probably driving the person inside at the information desk insane, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t be still.
When he saw Pilar pull in on her Victory, he followed after her. As soon as she dismounted and took her helmet off, he grabbed her.
She pushed back from him. “What happened? Is he worse?”
“No. He…he’s awake.”
“My God! That’s great! How is he?”
“I don’t…I haven’t seen him yet.”
“What? Why?”
“The doc talked to me and…he’s not okay. He’s awake and ‘responsive,’ whatever that means—”
“It means he’s reacting to stimuli. Like light and sound. Voice. Touch.”
“Okay, that. But he’s not talking. They’re doing a bunch of tests.”
“But why aren’t you in there?”
“I can’t…on my own. I’m fucking freaked. What if he doesn’t know me? And Mom’s not here yet. Demon’s bringing her. Faith’s dropping the kids off with Riley and coming after.”
“Connor. Should you see your dad first, so you can talk to your mom before she goes in?”
“It won’t matter. She’ll want in there right away. She won’t slow down enough for me to talk to her.”
She grabbed his kutte in her fists and shook him a little. “He woke up and there’s nobody he knows around. Connor, think.”
Oh fuck. Fuck. He’d fucked up. “Damn, damn. I’m such a fucking idiot. I’m a pussy. Fuck!”
She took his hand. “Beat yourself up later. C’mon, let’s go.”
Feeling far too full for his head to contain, Connor let her lead him into the hospital.
~oOo~
In the nearly two months that he’d been comatose, Hoosier’s burns and other wounds had healed. His skin was scarred but intact. They’d taken him off the ventilator shortly after Thanksgiving. All his injuries had mended. Except for his head.
Part of his skull was still embedded in his belly; even though the rest of his wounds had healed, they’d left his skull open in case they needed to go back in, to minimize the trauma of further surgery. Connor still hadn’t gotten used to the sloped gap in his father’s head, or the idea that just below the skin of his scruffy scalp was his exposed brain.
He had taken to focusing on his father’s hands instead of his head when he was there with him. There was too much weakness about his head. Connor hadn’t been able to find hope there.
But when he and Pilar went into his father’s room, the first thing he saw was his eyes. They were open and alive, and for a second, Connor felt overwhelming hope. That was his father in the bed, back in his body. He went to him and bent over the rail to kiss his forehead. “Hey, Dad. Welcome back.”
Hoosier blinked but didn’t react otherwise.
Still, Connor thought his father did know him. Maybe. It was hard to be sure. The doctor had told them on the way in that tests had shown that Hoosier had full feeling in his body, his pupils worked, and he could follow simple commands.
But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk, and he hadn’t reacted with any kind of emotion to anything anyone said. He couldn’t hold a pen—he could grasp it, but not in the way he needed to be able to use it. Like he’d forgotten how. And he couldn’t write. He seemed to have lost words completely, even the idea of them.
Connor didn’t know how much of his father had come back.
But then the door burst open, and
his mother was there. “I’m here, Hooj. Baby, I’m here. I’m here. You stay with me now.”
Crying, she pushed Connor back and did as he had, leaning over the side rail and kissing her husband’s forehead. Connor watched as she made a fist around Hoosier’s chin—the way she always had, though normally she was taking hold of beard.
“I’m here, baby. Right here. Be with me, okay?”
And Connor’s father smiled.
Connor felt hands on his back. He turned and wrapped Pilar up tight. She clutched him hard, and they stood like that. He didn’t know what to think, whether he could stop being so afraid for his father, or whether there was more fear to be had, but he did know that the woman holding him now made him better and stronger.
~oOo~
“What are you doing?”
Connor glanced over his shoulder and saw Pilar wearing his t-shirt, and seemingly nothing else. Damn, he loved living with her. He had his own personal hottie on tap. Just for him. “Cooking you breakfast.”
“For serious?” She came to his side. “Oh.”
“What oh? These things are great.” He turned and put into the oven the tray of orange rolls that he’d gotten out of a tube. Then he pulled her into his arms and slid his hands under that t-shirt. Yep. Nothing else.
“I don’t think that exactly counts as ‘cooking me breakfast.’ But thank you.”
He kissed her. “We have something like fifteen minutes.”
“Barely time to get a good start.” She scratched her fingertips over his bare chest.
“No, I don’t want to…well, yeah, I do. I always do.”
“I know.” She grabbed hold of the waistband of his sweats, but he caught her hands in his own and held them.
“But I want to do something else first. I want to give you your Christmas present this morning, while it’s just us. Before we go and it’s crazy with everybody. I don’t want a bunch of gawkers when I give it to you.” They’d been to the Horde clubhouse party and the Station 76 party already. Today, Christmas Day, they were going out to Demon and Faith’s and then to the hospital.
His father still wasn’t talking. He just didn’t know how. But he knew his old lady, and he knew his son.
The things he’d lost, he’d simply have to learn again. It would take time, but Connor finally felt the kind of hope that was confidence. His old man was a fighter. He’d come back.
Pilar smiled and patted his belly. “Cool. Let me get yours, too.” Before he could stop her, she’d turned and left the room. Connor picked up the box he’d tucked at the back of the counter and went to sit at the table and wait.
She came back with a small box, wrapped in pretty paper. It was a little bigger than the one he had for her. When she sat, he pushed his unwrapped box toward her and said, “I want to go first.”
“Should we flip for it?” She laughed, her gold eyes alight with humor and happiness.
“Just open the damn box, Cordero.”
She did, and then she set it down on the counter and let her hands drop away. “God. Connor. Is this…”
He pulled the box toward him and took the gold ring out of it. “You don’t wear a lot of jewelry, so I didn’t think you’d like a big, flashy thing. If I’m wrong about that, we can take this back. This is a claddagh ring. It’s a Celtic thing. The hands are friendship, the heart is love, and the crown is loyalty. My mom’s is kind of like this.”
“But different.”
“Yeah. Hers is a traditional claddagh. And she likes bling, so the heart is a diamond. The chick at the store said this is a claddagh infinity ring. It’s—I guess it’s subtler. If you don’t like it…”
“I love it. Are you proposing to me?”
“If you want that, then yeah. I don’t need the ceremony. You know how I feel—I just want my life to be with you, and that’s what the ring says to me. And I want to put ink on you that says it to everybody else. But if you want to be married, then we’ll do that, too.”
“Nana would want it. It would make her happy. A Catholic wedding. She’d feel that like something she did right.”
Setting aside his discomfort with the idea of a big wedding like that, Connor smiled. He’d marry her wherever the hell she wanted, and he knew that giving her nana some peace was important to her. “Then we’ll get married.” He picked up her hand. Before he slid the ring on her finger, he said, “It’s engraved on the inside. It says anam cara. It’s Gaelic for ‘soulmate.’ Because you are that. Something was missing inside me until I fell in love with you.”
Looking at the ring on her finger, she laughed, and Connor wasn’t sure if his feelings should be hurt by that.
“What’s funny?”
She pushed toward him the box she’d wrapped. “Great minds.”
“What?” He tore the paper off the box and removed the lid. On a velvet bed lay two gold chains, one a little heavier than the other. From them dangled what appeared to be a broken gold pendant, one half on each chain. Engraved across the fragments, as if they were one whole, was a Maltese cross and the word ‘FIREFIGHTER.’
“It’s a mizpah. Each one is a half of the whole.” She reached into the box and turned the pendants over, fitting them together. On the back was inscribed May the Lord keep watch between us whenever we are apart. Genesis 31:49. “We each wear one half. Because we’re only whole together.” She picked up the lighter chain and fastened it around her own neck, and the pendant lay at the base of her throat, with her crucifix, which had been her mother’s.
Connor did the same with the heavier chain, and his half of the pendant lay with his crucifix, which his father had given him.
At first, they sat quietly. For Connor’s part, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. He just wanted to sit for a minute and marvel.
Then Pilar laughed. “I feel like we should do something to mark the occasion.”
Unbidden, the memory of the night they’d met rose up in his mind, and he grinned. “You want to go back and fuck?”
Her eyes lit up at that, but she asked, “What about your rolls?”
He shrugged. “I’ll turn the oven off. I hear those don’t count as real cooking, anyway.”
“They really don’t.” She stood up. “C’mon, big guy. Tie me down and make me yours forever.”
Connor stood. When she reached up as if to put her arms around his neck, he went in low. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulders.
Fireman style.
THE END
COMING SOON
Dream & Dare
A Night Horde Side Trip
Bibi and Hoosier have been together a long time. Their road has not always been smooth, but their love has always run deep and true.
This is the story of that long road and that abiding love.
Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) Page 31