by Marata Eros
I also think of the bruise from Tommy’s fist.
Then I remember the sensation of my cock in her and how right she feels against my body.
Al studiously watches my expression. “I was afraid of that. Will you tell Vincent about the extra angle of your involvement, or shall I?”
My face whips to him. “Don’t tell the prez nothing. I’ll deal with it.”
“I’ll give you time, but my first loyalty is to Vincent.”
“I know.”
Al puts out his hand for me to shake, and I give it a hard pump. He winces but keeps hold.
He’s a good guy; he just doesn’t get the lure of pussy, especially pussy with potential.
Chapter 11
Angel
“Angel, that guy’s dangerous.” Brad takes the ice pack away from his jaw, where an ugly, egg-sized knot is playing havoc with his GQ good looks.
“Yes, I’m aware.” So aware.
“Then why are you defending him?”
We’re sitting on the same leather couch where I had a panic attack to beat all the others. I thought I was done with those, but I guess not.
I give an exhausted sigh. “I’m sorry, Brad. It might be because I was in charge of the Dreyfus case, and now Mini Dreyfus is dead. And Shane Dreyfus is her cousin.”
Brad touches my hand lightly. I give him my full attention, and I can admit he is handsome. And there’s never been a lack of him trying to persuade me to date him, but I just never wanted to mix work and pleasure. That didn’t seem to make any sense. And with the smell, feel, and taste of Lariat still on my body, I can’t do whatever this is.
I pull away from his touch.
I can tell by his miffed expression that Brad takes my withdrawal the wrong way.
Which, of course, is the other part of the reason I wouldn’t see him. He gets offended at any perception of rejection, probably because he hasn’t had enough of it. Angela Monroe’s indifference is a novelty, one he doesn’t like.
Brad’s eyes narrow, and I rush into the awkward silence to explain. “I met Lariat over the weekend in order to feel him out, see if the personal touch would get the bail money for Mini.”
“Lariat?” His eyes flow over my face with judgment. “How personal?”
I flush to my roots, my scalp tingling as though he were witness to those few hours that Lariat owned my body.
My soul, my mind whispers.
“I see. You slept with him.” A flutter in his swollen jaw makes an appearance.
“What a conclusion to jump to,” I say in as neutral a voice as possible, not giving an inch. Brad doesn’t deserve that information. “Not that it would be any business of yours who I slept with, Brad.” I lower my voice, cognizant of the ears in the room. “We knew it wasn’t going to work between us.”
His smile is cold. “Because you didn’t want to try.”
I stand. “I’m sorry that Shane Dreyfus jumped to conclusions and punched you. I’m sorry that you and I aren’t dating.”
The hell with how loud I am.
He stands as well, looking down at me from his six-feet-two-inch frame, oblivious to the curious stares we’re getting from the office staff. His lips curl into a cruel smile. “And I’m sorry that you’ll bang anything with a dick.”
I slap his unscathed cheek.
The strike manages to hurt my ribs, and my palm stings. “And I’m sorry you’re too crude to breathe the same air as me.”
I spin on my heel and walk out of the office, barely keeping the tears in check until I can leave.
How can I ever darken the doorstep of my office again, knowing that his assumptions have been spun into a web of gossip where we both work?
The cops took our statements, and mine was to the point. Lariat has the sympathy of the situation going for him because of Mini’s death, but I just put him in jeopardy because Brad is within his rights to press charges. If he truly suspects that I slept with Lariat after denying him for the year that I’ve been with the law firm, Brad will see Lariat rot in a cell to spite me.
Let’s just heap the guilt on. It’s not bad enough that Mini is dead and the mob is after me, but I screwed her cousin in some kind of fit of hormonal excess then got him tossed into a holding cell because I can’t control my emotions.
With a jerking suck of breath, I stride to my rental car and nearly rip the driver’s side door off the hinges. I’ve got to get out of here right now.
I know what I need and head there. All they can do is listen.
But they hear me; I know they do.
*
Scenic Hill Cemetery looms large. It’s one of the oldest in Kent, situated on the east hill, looking over the valley. Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s another cemetery, literally the oldest in Kent, but it’s more of a homesteader’s plot than anything. It’s located on the opposite side of Kent, almost in Renton, the armpit town just to the north of us. Scenic is well-established too, just not full of settlers.
I drive underneath the wrought iron gate, its scrolling ebony framework peeling like an onion scorched by the sun. As predicted, the day has warmed up nicely. I had set aside the day to get the bail situation handled.
But it is turning into another day of grief.
I’ve had many.
I park my car at the small building where people go to meet with funeral directors. I no longer get panic attacks when I come here. It’s been almost fifteen years now. I don’t miss a week. I avoid the anniversary of my parentsʼ death but always come on their birthdays. I’d rather celebrate their life.
I get out of the rental, and my feet carry me with unerring accuracy to their plot. It’s a combined headstone. They died on the same day, but not at the same moment.
My dad lingered for an entire ten hours.
They wouldn’t let me be there for his last breath, but I was there for his last words.
I still hear his deep baritone ringing in my ears. “I love you so much,” he’d said.
Photos are now the only things that keep my parentsʼ image sharp in my mind, yet his words echo in my brain.
When my foster dad—what a joke—when he raped and beat me, my real dad’s voice was there.
Endure, Angel.
Survive, Angel.
I almost hadn’t. I turn my wrists over to face a sky choked with clouds. The skin at the edges of my blouse cuffs show the proof of my grief. The magic of what plastic surgery could later erase almost completely.
Lots of women might think they want to end their life—I knew I did.
It was only then, at fourteen years old and after two hard years of suffering, that I finally did what I had to do.
If I had to live another day in fear and self-loathing, I would rather not breathe.
So I didn’t.
I sliced my wrists in the bathtub and let the water ease me toward death.
When I was found, it was almost too late.
Arnold would have let me die and gotten himself another innocent girl to decimate, but his wife, who’d never given a shit about me except for that state check, had called the ambulance. Guess my death would have been messier for them.
Child Protective Services removed me from the home, and I got well. I got strong.
I took self-defense classes so it wouldn’t be easy for the next man to hurt me.
That’s why Lariat is so wrong for me on the deepest of all levels. He’s everything I should be afraid of—violent, gang biker, military assassin.
I cover my mouth with my fist. He’s the beater of Brad.
Then the laugh explodes out of me anyway over my parents’ grave. My smile fades, but the spoils of the humor don’t, and my lips continue to twitch.
It feels good to have a little happiness, even at Brad’s expense.
I run my fingertips over the smooth, cold granite where my parents’ names are etched.
Libby and Gregory Monroe, Loving parents of their Angel.
I try not to let the memories surface. But they d
o, and I’m helpless in a current within the ocean of my grief.
I come here to this place and invite the fabric of my life to replay itself when I visit their gravesite.
“Angel,” Mom says and rubs her thumb over the tip of my nose.
I sneeze, and flour blasts everywhere.
Her dark brown eyebrows rise. “You have more flour on your face than in the cookie dough.”
I nod happily. “And I want to taste it before we bake it.”
“It has raw eggs, Angel.”
I giggle. “But you told me that you always had the uncooked dough.” I feel my eyebrows pop.
Mom frowns. “Yes, I lived,” she says with an abrupt chuckle. “But we did all kinds of crazy things when we were young. Rode in the back of pickup trucks, drank from the hose.”
I pull a face of disgust. “Gross.”
Mom gives a sage nod. “Yes, and we only had half a dozen channels for TV.”
“I’d die,” I breathe in horror, swiping some cookie dough when Mom turns her back to wash her hands.
“Most certainly.” Mom’s lips twist into a wry smile as she glances at me over her shoulder.
Dad crashes through the door, full of energy and vitality as always. “What are my two favorite girls doing?”
Mom blushes, and Dad swoops in, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
My wooden spoon lands upside down in the batter.
“Making you fat!” I yell, hopping off the counter and running to him. I wrap my small arms around his flat middle, and he smiles down at me, stroking the back of my head. “You can’t make Daddy fat, princess. I do too much running around.”
My brows come together at our familiar verbal game, and I pull away, gazing up into bright hazel eyes, a perfect meld of gold and amber. “After who?” I shout, knowing the answer.
“The crooks, of course!” he yells.
I spin and run through the house.
Daddy chases me.
A few years after that early memory, they’re dead.
I clench my eyes shut, driving the memory back underneath the steel of my skin.
Gregory Monroe was a defense lawyer. Mom made a hell of a batch of cookies, and she kept the house a home.
Tears stream down my face in burning, twisting rivulets of anguish.
“I hope you’re proud of me, Daddy,” I whisper brokenly. “Because I’m barely hanging on. One of my clients died, and I couldn’t save her. I saved me, but I couldn’t save her.”
There’s no comment from the grave, but my hand lies flat on their gravestone. The stone gradually grows warm beneath my skin.
“I’ve met a man.” I bite my lip. “I don’t know if you’d approve. But he saved me. He’s so like you, Daddy. Not polished and classy, but truthful, brash, and gentle.”
I don’t think Lariat would appreciate my commentary. I swipe my eyes with my free hand, unwilling to break contact with the stone marker.
It doesn’t matter what I say here. It’s sacred. This is my communion with my dead parents, and I say everything to them.
“I miss you, Mama.” I hiccup back my next words then finally get the nerve to tell them my most desperate wish. “I want what you and Daddy had. But I can’t find him, Mama. I look, but all I see is the bad in humanity.”
I tip my face to the sky, and a ray of early afternoon sun breaks through the clouds, hitting my face. The swelling has gone down, and the tender spot on my cheekbone welcomes the heat.
I lay the uninjured side of my face on their gravestone, cradling my head between my folded arms.
“I need something to feel happy about, like my life has meant something. Without you in it, I don’t know what’s left,” I whisper.
That’s not entirely true. I have a good friend, Trudie. But I can’t tell her the entire truth—that I maintain distance from men and from loving someone because there has been no man I can trust since my dad died.
Though she might guess. Nor do I relish the eventual disclosure of my sordid past, which would eventually come up with friendships. I keep myself to myself.
It’s not every day that a high-profile lawyer and his wife die in a gruesome car wreck. Then their orphan tries to commit suicide because the system failed, placing her with a sadistic rapist.
My identity was sealed by the courts, but the media can say everything but the identity of a minor. After a few days, everyone knew it was me. The town wasn’t big enough to protect my anonymity.
One atrocity on top of another.
The fragile psyche of a child is always second to sensationalizing the next journalistic ladder rung.
The sun heats my back as I lie close to my parents. They’re dead. I know this. But for a few minutes, I can be close to them. They loved me, and that knowledge is the solitary thing that has gotten me as far as I am today.
I only close my eyes for a second, but I should have known my exhaustion would take over.
Chapter 12
Lariat
“What the fuck?” Viper practically spits in my face.
I know I deserve his wrath, but I’m hot-blooded enough that the urge to knock his teeth down his throat surfaces like oil on water.
There’s something to being a man who defaults to violence first that makes that part of him instantly accessible forever.
“I know I fucked up.”
“Fucked up? Fucked up, he says!” Viper strides around the room we meet for church yesterday in a full-on lather. I expect him to froth at the mouth any second and tear out hair too short to yank.
He pivots, hands going to his lean hips. He’s still in pretty good shape for a guy past fifty. There’s nothing soft about Vipe. He’s a fucking hard man, all five feet ten, steel hair, and piercing pale blue eyes of him.
That is probably why he has lasted as prez of the Road Kill MC for as long as he has—going on two decades now.
“It’s gotten fucking complicated. I saved Angel—”
“Angel? Who?” Thick black brows edged in steel slump hard over his eyes.
“The lawyer, Angela Monroe.”
He snorts, crossing his arms and giving a hard lift of his chin.
“Anyway”—I raze a palm over my scalp, feeling the short hairs of my flattop bristle against my calloused hand—“I slept with her.”
“God damn!” Viper roars, a vein in his forehead standing at stark attention. “I knew this was about pussy. Holy shit in a sack.” He beats his fist on the solid wood table carved with the Road Kill insignia and rests his folded knuckles against the polished wood surface. “Smell some pussy, hear it getting fucked, have a brother go all pear-shaped in his goddamned head… and sure as shit—voilà—there’s a woman involved.”
Couldn’t fault his logic. “It didn’t begin like that.”
“No?” His eyebrow shoots up, and Wring snorts.
I send a glare his way that clearly conveys my message—stay the fuck out of it.
That just makes the bastard grin.
Fucker.
“Explain why my perfect, cool-as-a-goddamned-cucumber bean counter is hot in the trousers for some high-end tail mouthpiece.”
“That’s a helluva lot of words, Prez,” Noose comments dryly. His thumbs are hooked through his belt loops, and one boot is planted on the wall behind him.
Wring grunts, cleaning his nails with a switchblade.
I roll my eyes heavenward.
“Fuck it!” Vipe roars, slamming his fist down again.
“I don’t know,” I admit in a low voice. “Don’t give any fucks about tail. Sweet butts and club whores, they’re easy pickings.”
“Then explain this bit of fuckery,” Vipe huffs, flipping a palm away from his body and slapping it back to place on his bicep.
“You gonna live?” Snare inquires from the group at Vipe, flipping his lighter open and closed.
Click. Snap. Click.
Vipe turns to him, incinerating Snare with a look.
“Fine, fuck,” Snare growls. “You’re not so f
ucking old that you can’t remember a broad nailing you between the eyes, can ya?”
Vipe stands there, stewing, then finally begins to nod slowly. He puts his thumb and index finger so close together, air wouldn’t fit. “Barely. And my old lady died ten years ago. Never gonna be another to replace that sweet bitch.”
No shit. Vipe has near-shrine acclaim for her.
The brothers are smart enough not to say anything. A person doesn’t talk about brothersʼ old ladies in any way except nicely and live.
“So Al has to bail you out of a cell—loved getting that motherfucking phone call, by the way—because you went down to post your cousin’s bail. But instead of just paying it all quiet-like, you fucking socked some douche mouthpiece right in the kisser.”
That about sums things up. I hang my head. “Angel was doing some kind of cry fest and wasn’t breathing, and that fucker was looming over her. Thought he was the cause of it.”
“Didn’t ask any questions, just charged in like an insane asylum candidate and introduced him to left and right.”
I held up my fists, displaying a slight abrasion marring my dominant hand’s knuckles. “Only right.”
“Well, thank fuck for small miracles,” Vipe says, clearly unconvinced.
Noose barks out a laugh, flopping on a nearby chair. He tosses his shitkickers up on the table, crossing them at the ankle.
We glare at each other over the toe of his black boots.
“I don’t care if Lariat sticks his dick in a dog.”
We all turn to Trainer.
He grins.
Wow. I stand, fists curling in readiness.
He holds up a palm to ward off the ass-kicking I’ve got planned. “Not finished. God, you guys are all fucking nuclear reactors.” His gaze touches on Wring, Noose, and me—saving Snare for last. Our master-at-arms didn’t serve with us, but he’s been on the front lines ever since, so to speak.
“I’m just saying.” He shrugs. “What’s the big fucking deal over Lariat getting some fancy pussy?”
“Trainer, it’s a miracle you patched in, and God only knows you’ve done your fucking time,” Vipe begins. The good-natured chuckles that follow cause Trainer to scowl. “But it’s not the kind of tail Lariat is tapping; it’s that what he’s tapped is mob-sanctioned.”