We were a unit.
We were brothers.
“No.” My word held finality when I had no authority to demand it and no status to enforce it. Shadow and Mac would be behind the kill plan in an instant if they thought Wolf was even remotely considering it. “We have to try the other way.”
Wolf rubbed his palms down his face in frustration. “You gonna tell Gears he needs to send Gigi and the kids up into the mountains? Because that might be the only place they’re safe. You gonna be responsible for what happens if this goes wrong and Angel and my fucking kids become a target?” His voice became quiet, fierce, determined. “You’re asking me to go back to a world that nearly cost me everything. You’re asking us to go to a place that could end this club.”
“I’ll do it.” Mac stepped forward.
“I’m the fucking president.”
“Exactly. You need to be around to lead the club and the shop, and for your family. I don’t have that.”
“Yet.” Wolf looked at Mac and something passed between them. Mac’s face darkened and whatever Wolf eluded to was information from the past that neither Shadow nor I knew. “I’m doing it.”
“Mac stepped closer to him, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I won’t have any more girls die because I couldn’t save them. My conscience wouldn’t take it, and besides, my soul is already in hell.”
Shadow stepped forward. “I’m in.”
This was getting out of hand. If it was as risky and dangerous as they believed, then I couldn’t be the one to put my brothers at risk.
“I need to do this. It’s for my old lady.” They all focused their attention on me, as if only just remembering I was still there. It was also the first time I’d voiced what Malia meant to me and that I was planning on keeping her around.
“No.” Wolf’s voice became presidential. “If I don’t do this then the fucking Acerbis will roll us over and we’ll be their bitches forever. Shadow, Mac, you two make contact with them.” He pointed at me. “You and me will go see the ex.” There was no fucking way I could do that. I didn’t trust myself to be anywhere near him. “I see that look on your face, but you’re gonna do it.”
“She’ll wanna come,” I argued. “Not sure how I feel about them being in the same room together.”
“Better fucking figure it out fast, because she needs answers and fucking deserves them. We go through with this and hand him over to the Acerbis to settle his own debt, she won’t get the chance again. We better just pray he isn’t the only one those scary motherfuckers take out.”
Whichever route we took was only going to end one way—Dean’s sorry demise. Killing him ourselves could turn out to be the kinder option in the long run.
“We have a plan then,” Wolf confirmed. “You two go set up the meet with the Mafia. Wave and I will get the ex to the meeting point.”
“You’re banking on him wanting to take me out, on following us.”
The look of sheer scheming perfection on Wolf’s face said it all. His words weren’t necessary, but he still gave them to me. “Which is exactly why we’re taking Malia. He turns out to be as predicable as I think, he’ll definitely turn up. No guy wants to lose their woman to the other guy.”
“She’s not his fucking woman,” I growled.
“Exactly. So, let’s have some fucking fun showing him that.”
Malia had paid attention to every word that dropped from my lips. There were no responses, no replies, just the odd facial muscle twitch when she heard something she wasn’t impressed with.
“So, our grand ole plan o’ vengeance is ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?
Well, didn’t I feel like a dumb fuck for using a million words, paragraphs, college dissertations and fucking novels to say what she threw back at me in a sentence.
We were still at Wolf and Angel’s place. The thinking was if she needed support from Angel, it was on hand, or more than likely if I needed support from the Sentinels to explain it to her, they’d also be on hand to dig me out of a hole. They’d given us some privacy, but Wolf had hearing like his namesake and if things started to go south, they’d reappear quickly.
“I have to go see him.” Her voice was meek, sad almost, but I knew that to see her meekness as a weakness would be a mistake.
“We. We have to go see him. I won’t leave you alone with him, not for a fucking second.”
Malia smiled. “And I won’t leave you alone with him either. I reckon if I did, I’d be cashing in that policy.”
“That’s my girl,” I mumbled, and the smile that had started to sprout a few seconds ago full on beamed. “Ready to go home?” The hesitation I’d been expecting came forward. “What?”
“It’s just… Where is home? What’s that look like for me? Us?”
“That really worrying you?”
Uncertainty clouded her face. “Look, I’m not crazy. I crashed into your life days ago and I have nothing unless we do manage to kill Dean.”
“The future starts the minute we see the back of that fucker. Up until recently I was living at Shadow’s. He was out of town and I needed somewhere to crash. He’s only been back a couple of weeks and since then I’ve been crashing in my room at the compound.”
“So, you don’t have your own place?”
“Did. Long story short, I was in the middle of something and it ran its course. It was just a rental and Sondra was more than happy to take it on.”
“Looks like I’m not the only homeless one.”
“Not at all. We could stay at Shadow’s or the compound. The first chance I get to find us somewhere permanent, I will.”
Malia smiled again. It was amazing how a simple word like permanent could trigger such emotion in her. She’d never really had that, and that cunt had failed to provide it for her, too. If I had to hack off a leg to pay for a home for her, I would manage it, but first we had to put her troubles firmly in the rear-view mirror. “Compound.”
“Sure you wanna stay with a bunch of bikers who party way too hard on a school night? You’ll be safe at Shadow’s.”
“Family.” Malia took my hand and linked her fingers through mine. “I want to get to know your family.”
I leaned forward and kissed her mouth gently, knowing that I’d hack off the other leg to give her something else she’d never had before—a family who loved her and a place where she belonged.
Back at the compound, I was starting to feel a bit out of sorts. I wasn’t pissed, dragging some piece of ass back to my room for a quick fuck. I was taking the girl I wanted to be mine forever. It was a kind of normality we’d never had, and I didn’t know how to handle it. All that had gone on in this room before her, including her, tarnished the fact that this was nearly our new normal. Outside the door, I hesitated.
“What’s wrong?”
“You deserve so much more than a bed in a room.”
“It’s the people not the place that make the home.” Now she was reassuring me.
“I’ve never seen you the same way I saw others before you.”
“I could say the same.” She smiled.
With one hand reaching for the door handle and the other linked together with hers, I squeezed. “This is just temporary. We send that fucker back to hell and then I’ll give you the world.”
With a seriousness I’d only seen during harsher times of our teen years together, she used her free hand to palm my cheek. “The one thing I learned growing up is that I don’t need the world. I just need someone to look at me and love me like I’m their world.”
Her words blew me away. What she was asking for wasn’t a fancy place, nice motors and designer handbags. What Malia wanted was the simplest, most basic form of appreciation and from the right person it cost nothing, while to the right person it meant everything. “That I can do.”
Chapter Thirty
Wave
Malia was as nervous as fuck.
I was as nervous as fuck.
Every time I’d thought about that dic
k over the last decade or so, flames of fury had licked at my insides like I was a combustion engine, and now I was gonna see him. Be in the same fucking room, breathing the same putrid air, and even worse, so was she. I’d have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t apprehensive about their reunion.
“It’ll be fine. This will all go to plan. In and out, baby—breathe in and out.” I squeezed her hand as I rolled back into a town I’d deserted faster than a bullet leaving a gun. Such was my need to be away from the happy couple, or at least what I thought was happiness. How wrong I’d been.
“But what if it goes wrong? What if I’ve put all your brothers in danger for nothing and I still end up… you know… dead.”
“Don’t fucking say it. There is no way our story ends like that. When the Sentinels set out to do something, we don’t settle until it’s done.”
Malia forced a smile onto her face, but the slight dark tinge under her eyes told me that she’d had a restless night, even though I already knew. She’d spun like a spinning top until I pinned her to the bed and fucked her into exhaustion. Now, her nervousness and wariness caused her hands to be clammy while her knee bobbed up and down in the track next to me just a little too fast. “You had the sign from the brothers?”
I hadn’t, but I told her a white lie. “All on track, baby.” Whatever was going down their end, I was committed to seeing my part through and if I didn’t get the sign from them soon then it was back to plan A: kill that motherfucker. At least that way, my brothers wouldn’t be involved, and I’d have acted out of sheer necessity, not premeditated murder. “This place hasn’t changed much. I can still smell the ocean.” I was hoping the subject change would distract her, but it hit me again how much I missed the sea. A part of me came alive just by sheer proximity.
“Maybe when this is done, we could stop off. Feel the sand, paddle a bit.”
If this shit went sideways, we’d be taking a boat, cutting through the ocean waves and dumping a weighted body for the fishes, which in reality could pretty much seal my relationship with the deep blue sea.
The town had developed a little more. Different shops had sprung up through necessity and tourism, but the road structure was still such that I could roll along and take in the scenery. My body thrummed when we passed an intersection I knew would lead to my parents’ place, a sense of hope sparking that one day I’d be happy to visit them in the house I grew up in, rather than staying away for fearing I’d want to torch the houses around theirs.
I knew Mal had never visited the studios of Morrison Mayhem, and to the outside world it was just a bunch of warehouse buildings on an industrial estate on the edge of town. How they got away with the shit they did here was no real surprise. The sleepy seaside town would bury anything to keep the tourists flocking. Even so, you could feel the stench of wrongdoing clambering to get out of the place, so much so that Malia started to hyperventilate, causing me to drive straight past, parking the car a quarter mile away. With the wheels rolling to a stop, my hands were already reaching for her.
“Calm down, baby,” I urged as I pulled her into my lap inside the truck.
“I… I… what if he’s doing stuff to a girl in there right now?”
“He isn’t.” I stroked a finger down her cheeks. “Breathe. Calm.”
“How do you know he isn’t?”
“Because we’re his next appointment. He thinks he’s meeting Wolf.”
“I can’t do this.” She began to pant again, just as Wolf had predicted. He knew the pressure would be too much, even though I hoped he was wrong. Without Malia next to me, I was treading a thin line with my temper. All alone, there was every possibility I wouldn’t be able to control myself. Dean was a master manipulator who was going to get a kick out of this, and I’d have a hard time keeping things real. I should have been pleased she didn’t want to see him.
“You can, baby.”
“No! I really can’t. I can’t see him. I can’t look at him knowing what he does to people, to girls. I’m not being weak honestly. I’m not. I just—”
Malia’s panic rose and I knew her not coming with me was the best thing. If she was like this then I’d have a hard time controlling the both of them. Maybe this was a blessing. “You may never get another chance. This goes to plan, and that asshole becomes someone else’s problem. One way or another he’s about to disappear, for real.”
“Leave me here. Don’t think I’m weak,” she pleaded. “Just finish it, for me, for us. My life with him ended when I walked away from him.” Her eyes were shaky but set, devastated but determined, as I pulled her face towards mine. On instinct, her lips pursed, and I took full advantage. Her breathing turned heavy this time for a very different reason. God, this woman, this connection… I hated all the time we’d missed out on, but I was looking forward to the future.
When this was done, if this all worked out and we were sitting pretty, I was marrying this girl and knocking her up at the first opportunity. I would happily spend the rest of my days worshipping her. “Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Lock the doors when I’ve gone.” I kissed her forehead and put her back in her own seat.
“Be careful.”
“No problem, beautiful.” I flashed her a confident grin, told a half-truth and left her.
On my way to his house of horrors, I dropped a text to Wolf with a location map of where I’d left her.
“How can I help you?” The girl behind his reception desk might as well have been laid across the top of it on a silver platter. She had tits that were so huge and inflated it was a wonder they weren’t tickling the underside of her chin. Her lips barely closed due to fillers that had them solidified in a permanent ‘O’ shape. The only thing missing was the cock forced in between them. “Sir?” she purred, after I’d spent far too much time looking at her like she was a freak in a circus show.
“Uh, yeah, Mr. Morrison. I’ve got an appointment.”
The frankenfreak smirked, no doubt assuming she’d caught me ogling, when in reality I was horrified. Why the fuck wasn’t any of the skin on her face actually moving?
“This way. Follow me.” She rounded the desk and led me down a corridor. Her ass, more hard than soft and inviting, swayed when she flicked her scary, platinum white mass of hair over her shoulder. It looked like old fishing rope, all dry and brittle.
“You makin’ a movie?” The voice that left the lips in a permanent trout pout and on the verge of exploding, dragged me back to the present.
“No.”
“Shame. Got a feeling that’d be one I’d like to watch, repeatedly. Or you know, co-star in.”
“My star turn is for private shows only.”
Frankenfreak stopped and rapped her knuckles on the door. “Shame.”
“Come in.” That voice.
While she fucked off back to work or whatever plastic surgeon had gone way past his territory and strayed into butchered and botched, I focused on the voice behind the door. A voice I’d sworn I’d never let tarnish my ear drums again.
Time to fucking do this.
Pushing the handle to open the door, I entered his office, catching my first glimpse of the fucker who was more preoccupied with the laptop in front of him.
The office walls were covered in pictures of clunge and cock, and had they been tasteful he could probably have spent most of his days with either a permanent hard on or beating one off.
“All alone?” He smiled, letting me know up front that he knew exactly what this was. He’d never expected Wolf and had known where Malia had run to.
“You’re not fit to breathe the same air as her, motherfucker.”
Dean finally stood up. “Good enough for her when you discarded her. I have to say that scene in the kitchen was fun to watch. Seeing her all heartbroken was not half as fun as seeing what it did to you. Knowing that I caused that still makes me fucking hard.”
Weirdo. He was a fucking weirdo. How had I neve
r seen this?
I folded my arms. “Let’s be clear. You fucking stole her.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “It was almost boring, you made it so fucking easy. In the beginning, I’d have let you have her, but then I figured out just how much it hurt the great and mighty perfect Reef Bryant to be a martyr, so I carried on.” I watched him, took in everything that made up my once upon a time best friend. He’d let himself go. There was a thickness to his waistline that fit well with the tired face and salt and pepper hair. Time had not been kind to him. “I got a lotta kicks out of telling Mal the things you were doing with other bitches.” He laughed again before sighing with boredom. “You made it too easy, brother, and in the end, you can’t steal what was yours in the first place.”
“Malia was never yours.”
“And you can’t steal what comes willingly and boy was she willing, in a filthy kind of way.”
I clamped my mouth shut. He wasn’t wrong in some of what he was saying. They had been together, and she had chosen him willingly. My short silence was enough to make him think he’d got an edge, some advantage in our back and forth.
“Fucked her yet?”
I grit my jaw and he squinted with uncertainty before making his mind up. “No, ha! That’s fucking funny. Malia’s knees are still locked together then.” Satisfied, he upped his game. “Started out with a sweet tight cunt, had a blast training it, but not so much recently. Take my advice and shoot her up the ass. That’s the way to set her alight.” He knew he was getting to me. You couldn’t be best friends with someone for years without knowing how to trip their switch, and when you were the manipulator Dean was, you studied people just to get the very best reaction out of them, or in my case the very worst.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 20