The chitchat continued until Mac reminded us all that we were there for a reason. “You need my help?”
“Mal’s got a situation,” Reef began.
“My ex douche has taken out an insurance policy on me. Shadow thinks he’s going to cash it in. You don’t look like an insurance expert.”
Mac the nomadic stranger looked like he’d give old ladies heart failure if he knocked on their door selling insurance. But in complete contradiction, if the person on the other side of that door happened to be in their mid-twenties onwards, their panties would probably combust on first sight. He looked at me and grinned. “I like this one, she’s funny.”
Like any woman who receives a compliment from a hot guy, I blushed and Reef fake-coughed to remind me he was there. “What?”
“Babe.” That was it—one word. And that word, as always, spoke a multitude of sentiments.
My embarrassment grew huge. “I have natural sparkle.”
“I know that. I’d ask you to tone it down, but it would be like trying to hang a drape over the sun.”
My heart melted at his kindness. He didn’t want to tell me off in public, but said enough to hammer his point home.
“Cute as this is…”
“Yes…” I snapped out of my hearts and flowers moment, wondering if they could see those hearts and flowers floating in the air. Back to reality. “What’s your accent?”
“Scottish.”
“Okay.”
“Need me to talk slower?” He grinned.
“Now he’s fucking flirting with her,” I heard Reef mumble, which I ignored.
“No thanks, but I guess it serves you well if females have to watch your lips as you talk.”
“And my secret is out.”
“Alright. This is over. Shadow, find someone else to help.”
Mac’s face turned dark and stormy. “There is no one who understands these motherfuckers better than I do.”
“Understands what?” I chipped in, worrying that this conversation was veering wildly off track and that it was totally my fault.
“Do you know what your ex does?” Mac asked me seriously, and I felt Reef touch the skin on my back in reassurance.
“He makes porn. Enough to have a secret company set up. One I didn’t have a clue about. How dumb am I?”
No one answered my rhetorical question. It was clear where Dean Morrison was concerned, I was pretty dumb.
“Sweetheart, you ever hear the term ‘snuff movie’?”
I shook my head. “Should I have?”
“It’s heart warming that this shit is all new to you. There’s no easy way to say it, so I’m just, gonna lay it out.”
I knew this was going to be something I didn’t want to hear and would probably never, ever forget.
“Normal regular porn is an act. They act shit out, loosely scripted scenes. You know, teacher and student—”
“Washing machine repair guy,” I interrupted.
Mac smiled. “Ah the classics,” he crooned in his attractive drawl then turned serious again. “A snuff movie is real. All of it. And not all of the participants are participating freely. The rape is real. The smothering is real. The death at the end, snuffing out a life, is very fucking real.”
Fuck. That was horrific.
“A lot of snuff is just sick, twisted old perverts getting their freak on by raping girls on camera.”
It was as if Mac knew I still hadn’t processed it, but when he mentioned rape a second time my hand flew to my mouth in horror.
“Your ex has found a niche. He sets this shit up, and they use his production sets. He does it for some very nasty people who use those sets to settle scores.” Mac leaned forward. “It’s not unusual for him to partake.”
I didn’t know what to say. How was I supposed to respond to that? Stupidly, the only thing my brain could process was don’t puke on this nice stranger. With each minute that passed, it was becoming a real possibility. I bolted off Reef’s lap and headed for the bathroom. When I got there, I fell to the floor and dry heaved until the only thing leaving my body were my tears.
“You okay?”
“Silly question,” I cried, the words echoing off the porcelain.
“You’re gonna be. Come on. We need to get this out in the open so we can deal with it.”
I splashed my face with water and followed him back to Shadow and Mac. I knew from the looks on their faces that they were just as distraught about having to deliver that news as I was to hear it.
“A score to settle?” I asked, prompting them to talk. “I’m okay. Let’s do this.”
“One gang land boss wants a piece of someone else’s territory. Having a video of someone who means something to you being violated in the worst possible way causes one of two things. Capitulation or revenge.”
The three of them remained quiet, allowing me time to digest it all.
“And you’re sure Dean is involved in this? Not just, you know… washing machine repair man and busty housewife?”
“Absolutely. He’s a facilitator, a creative director and part time actor. His business brings him into contact with the worst of the worst, the underbelly of America’s crime network.”
“But he’s a builder, a foreman, just a fucking laborer,” I shouted, completely shocked.
“A front, which has served him well.”
“What’s all this got to do with me and some stupid illegal insurance policy?”
Mac spoke softly, slowly, like he was talking to someone mentally challenged. “Word on the street is that he didn’t deliver for someone serious. That someone serious does not take kindly to lack of delivery. They want what they’re owed, plus the value of business they would have taken had they got their snuff flick.”
It all clicked into place.
That motherfucking fucker.
“So, he offs me and has the money to save his own skin.”
Again, they remained quiet, which was pretty much an admittance I was right.
“Motherfucker!” I leapt off Reef’s lap again and stamped my foot.
“Settle, babe.” Reef made a grab for me.
“You fucking settle!” I looked at Mac. “Do I want to know how you know this stuff, Mac?”
“No.” His response was completely closed, leaving me in no doubt that I would never again ask if the look on his face was anything to go by.
Shadow stepped into the conversation then. “While Mac was digging through that part of his world, I was watching your ex. Needless to say, he’s unhappy his payday has disappeared.”
I gasped.
“He won’t get to you. Stop those thoughts right now.”
“Can we just cancel the policy? What’s the plan?”
Mac and Shadow exchanged a look, and I knew whatever they were about to say, Reef was going to hate as much as me. “No, darlin’. That policy is keeping you alive, or at least out of the clutches of the fuckers he owes. If we cancel that, I’m worried he’ll just offer you up instead. You’re pretty and feisty. You’re worth a fortune in the skin trade.”
I didn’t need to leap off Reef’s lap; he all but pushed me off it as he exploded. The words that fled his mouth were rapid and repulsive, and it took both of them all their efforts to calm him down. “Sorry, babe. Sorry, babe. Come here.”
Reef was vibrating when I wrapped my arms around him, but like he had for me earlier, my presence brought him back to center. “Should just kill the fucking asshat myself, save everyone the trouble and he can pay his own debt,” I mumbled.
The room stilled. It was like no one was breathing until Mac’s face became sinister. “Works for me.”
“Wait,” Reef intervened. “We’re not seriously considering this. She was joking. You were joking, right, babe?”
I thought about it for like two seconds and the idea wasn’t abhorrent to me. What the hell was wrong with me?
“We could give him a swamp hug?” Shadow mused to himself. “If the gators see to him, there isn’t
a body to find.”
“Fuck. No, stop.” Reef’s anger spiked again. “Good decisions never come in moments of panic.”
“So, we need a body. Doesn’t have to be his,” I mused, and they all looked at me, Reef in particular, like I was finally making sense.
“That could work,” Mac ploughed ahead.
Reef’s face wasn’t just cloudy with worry. It was stricken with thunder and lightening, and there was a hurricane on the way as Shadow and Mac continued to discuss all the possible ways to dispose of Dean’s body. When they began to talk about how to keep it from the rest of the Black Sentinels, I knew it was wrong. I couldn’t let Reef get swept up with that for me. He’d be involved in a lie and I’d be the cause of it. This was his family and I needed to make sure he kept that intact.
“Guys, can you give us a minute?” I asked, interrupting the chatter, causing everyone to stare at me. Did women not request things like that with these men?
Shadow’s gaze flipped between Reef and me, and he walked off immediately with Mac close behind. When I heard the yard door out back close, I took Reef’s hand in mine.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
I pulled him back to the bedroom, the place where we’d had most of our meaningful discussions so far and prayed this time would be the same. I shut the door and leaned up against it, locking us in because I had to make sure he couldn’t escape this discussion.
“We can’t do this,” I began.
“We need to do whatever it takes to keep you fucking safe.” His words were comforting but the pain on his face took all that away.
“No. We need to take a breath and think sensibly.”
I watched the man I loved get up close and personal. “You wouldn’t have to be involved, baby. In fact, I’d prefer it if you knew nothing. Deniability.”
“I’m already involved. But I can’t let you risk everything for me.”
His face hardened. “I’m not letting you go again. We need your shit sorted so we can get started.”
“Then find another way.”
“I don’t know another way,” he shouted, his frustration finally flying free.
“Then we do nothing.” I put my hand on his cheek, urging him to calm down and think rationally.
“We can’t hide forever.”
He was right.
I didn’t want my life under threat of anything. I wanted to be free to be with him. I wanted to start the life I’d always dreamed of, and I wanted more than anything to go back to a beach with him and free that part of ourselves again. Find that connection and build on it. I wanted to earn his trust and love, and to do that I had to build bridges with his parents, and I couldn’t even consider that with things the way they were.
“I can’t let you risk your relationship with your brothers. At best, Reef, you three need to tell Wolf.”
His face brightened instantly. A huge grin appeared, showing me a glimpse of his perfect white teeth. “That’s it.”
“What?”
“Wolf. If anyone can come up with a way to make the impossible possible, it’s the prez.”
He kissed me, almost soothing the fears within me. He was thinking rationally. We were out of the danger zone. “I know it’s fucking ridiculous but how do you miss something you never had before?”
Dazed from his kiss, I mumbled, “Uh, what?”
“You and me, babe. You’re the part of me that was always missing and now I’ve got you I’m gonna move heaven and earth to keep you with me.”
“Dean won’t come between us. I promise.”
“No, he fucking won’t,” he said in a voice so stern and lethal that it could have been Shadow talking back to me. “Gotta say, I’m pissed as fuck I can’t sink my dick inside you right now.”
My insides spasmed, the need to have exactly that so great.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “My pants suddenly got a whole lot tighter at seeing whatever just went on inside your head.”
“I want you. You can’t talk to me like that when your brothers are in the yard.”
Reef paused for a split second. “Fuck you quick, then we go sort out a plan.”
Our lips crashed together, both knowing that what we were about to do was more about needing confirmation of our connection than anything else, and after he satiated that need and we headed to the back yard, two things were obvious.
“Someone got himself a little something something.” Mac grinned.
“Yeah, and she also talked him out of our plan,” Shadow surmised correctly. I couldn’t tell whether he was relieved, pleased or disappointed.
“Time to take this to Wolf,” Reef confirmed, and with no argument from either of them, we climbed on bikes and got going.
It was my first ever biker convoy, and even with the circumstances it was spectacular.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wave
I would have gone through with it for her. If she’d asked me, simple as that, I would have done it. I would have put that fucker in the ground and lived with the consequences. This was why I loved my brothers, loved the world of the Black Sentinels, because when I told Shadow and Mac that the plan had changed, they got it. There was no counter argument, just acceptance. We sensed when something didn’t sit right within each other and the way of our world was respect and understanding. They were the rules we lived by.
“Holy crap! They live here?” Mal was wide eyed as we approached Wolf and Angel’s off the beaten track place.
“They do.”
We’d ended up coming on the bikes. I’d tried to get those two whiny fuckers into the back of my truck, but they bitched and bleated about sitting together. Sure, they both attempted to shotgun the front, but that was Mal’s spot. No one was sitting close to my girl in the back of a truck but me. Besides, I needed her up front where I could taste her mood and reassure her that I was okay, but the prom queens had other ideas, so I pitched a fit because they’d pitched one and we ended up rolling here on our Harleys.
Wolf was already outside his door when we finally made it to the end of his lane. He had a sixth sense about visitors, and no one got close to his family without his prior knowledge, and anyone who attempted it and didn’t heed his warnings ended up looking down the barrel of a gun.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, but his face was wide with a smile, his head in Mac’s direction.
“I’m never riding in front of that fucker again,” Shadow grumbled. “All I could see in my mirrors was ball sack because of that ridiculous fucking skirt.”
“Call my kilt a skirt again and you’ll fucking taste ‘em.”
“Not a chance, you’re hairy.”
“The fuck I am. Look.”
I managed to get my hands over Mal’s eyes as he whipped up his fucking man skirt and flashed his goods. Wolf, unfortunately, didn’t have such luck as Angel rounded the corner of their house at just the wrong time.
“I’d recognize those bollocks anywhere,” she commented.
“That’d better be a flippant joke, or someone will be eating his own nut sack straight from the steel of my blade,” Wolf warned.
Even though we all knew Angel was taking the piss, the edge in Wolf’s words left us wishing the conversation would turn to happier subjects. Wolf’s inner animal was always there, just waiting under the surface to rear up and bite someone, and we all knew better than to taunt it. Angel, though, she’d always loved living on the edge. Without a second thought she ran straight over to Mac and had a moment that sent the rest of us silent. It was the first time they’d seen each other since he’d helped Wolf protect her from some crazy Carnal motherfucker.
“Khaleesi,” Mac bellowed and fell to his knees at her feet. “Mother of dragons and breaker of chains. How are you, my queen?”
“I am well, Ser Mac,” she replied and threw her arms around him.
“Alright.” Wolf had finally had enough of their playfulness. No one put their hands on his woman, especially another brother. It was an unwritte
n rule. “The only person who gets on their knees for that woman, is me, and the longer you’re all here, the less chance I have of making that happen before one of the kids wakes the fuck up. Why are you all here?”
“We’ve got us a fifty-fifty tie. You can be the deciding vote,” Mac grumbled as he climbed back to his feet.
“On?”
“Whether to kill her ex or not,” Shadow finished, and everyone went quiet, including Angel, which was practically unheard of.
“I need a beer. A wandering traveler returns and there should always be beer,” Mac decided, spearing Wolf with a look.
He was on point with Mac’s hint. “Angel, take Wave’s woman and get some beers, babe.”
“I wanna listen.”
Wolf turned towards her and gave her look that told her hell would freeze over before she was involved in anything before he knew the details first. He had the ability to flip between his many roles in their life—father, husband and protector. I wondered if it was something that came naturally when you found the one, the person you wanted to marry, have kids with and protect forever. Would it be like a light bulb moment? Then I realized I was a dumb fuck. I’d had my light bulb moment. Malia was still here and the thought of her not being caused me pain.
Malia’s voice broke my reverie. “Come on. I’ll fill you in.” Angel smirked at Wolf, linked her arm through my girl’s, and they wandered off as thick as thieves. At the very last minute, Angel turned back to face Wolf and stuck her tongue out. He remained stoic until she the rounded the corner; only then did he smile. The true feeling of love for that girl was crystal clear in every facet of his emotions.
“Tell me you’re fucking joking?” In truth, I wasn’t sure how this would go, but I didn’t expect Wolf to be as livid as he was. Even Mac, who knew him better than the rest of us put together from when they were Carnals, seemed to be having second thoughts about involving him. “Maybe Malia is right. It might just be easier to off the motherfucker ourselves rather than sticking our heads in this snake pit.”
I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let someone from my past taint my future, a future for Malia and me with the Black Sentinels as part of the family. These boys weren’t about cold-blooded murder. They defended their own to the death, but they didn’t instigate that play. If we turned down that path, the stench of death would never leave the club. It would become a part of who we were, and the lies we would need to tell the brothers not involved would shape the nature of who we would become. It would divide us into those who knew and those we tried to protect. That division would be felt. The Black Sentinels trusted implicitly; we didn’t lie, and we didn’t have secrets that would eventually destroy us through division.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 19