Everlasting (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 6)

by Christine Michelle

  Even without them in the picture, Deck has always been family to me too,” I reminded him.

  “I know, it’s just that not being able to be the one out looking has been eating me up with guilt.”

  “You have your own burdens that couldn’t be put off,” I reminded him. It was a fuck of a thing that life never seemed to let up for us. If it wasn’t one thing happening it was a handful of others. Deck missing, losing Lucy, and then Tiger Lily’s breast cancer diagnosis. It all stacked up. Judging from the sickly pallor of my best friend, I had a sneaking suspicion his wife wasn’t the only one whose health was in question.

  “Are you doing okay?” I finally asked him.

  “I will be once we bring my boy home,” he answered and then went back to quietly ignoring me as we pulled in and blocked off the front exit with the truck.

  “Okay, let’s do this. Stay close. I have it on good authority that they’ll send a decoy out the back and run from the front.”

  “How the hell would you know that?”

  “Somehow, it seems my daughter or the women of S.H.E. managed to find an inside source.”

  “Source identified at all?” He asked.

  “Nah,” I answered back and gave him a knowing look. It meant that whoever had fed my girl her information might well die in the crossfire that night.

  We were using the dark to our advantage since the sun had set about 30 minutes earlier. It was still light enough to see, but dark enough to blend with shadows. Perfect for sneaking up on unsuspecting mobsters while they tried to move our boy to another location.

  “Heading over this way,” Merc told me. “I have a feeling.”

  “I’ll take this side,” I told him and then signaled for two men to follow him while the others followed me. It was an even split among those of us who had arrived in the truck. I didn’t see Jay or any of the other men who had arrived on foot, but that was the point.

  Just as we were about to storm the side door, it cracked open and the imposing figure of a younger man slipped out. I nearly shot first, but pulled back when he looked my way and the light from that side of the building hit his face.

  “Toby?” I called out in a disbelieving whisper. I wondered, for a brief moment, if I was losing my damn mind. My son had been dead for more than a decade. There was no way it could have been him. Still, the shock of seeing a face that looked just like his was enough to give him a head start. I chased off after the man while the others moved to the door we were supposed to breach. An explosion stopped me cold in my tracks and I turned to look back and see that the door had been blown. A second explosion rocked the house, from further away, and I just knew that it would be Merc and his team who took that hit. When I turned back towards the forest that surrounded this side of the house, I realized I could no longer see the man I had been chasing.

  “FUCK!” The word flew from my mouth as I turned to run back towards the door that I was supposed to help breach. Both of the men were dead. They had been newer nomads in the club, and I hadn’t gotten to know them very well while we’d been working up here because they tended to keep to themselves. Still, it was a loss for the club. I continued to move and came to Merc, who was thankfully far enough away that he avoided the brunt of the blast. He still had shrapnel sticking out from his thigh and his midsection.

  “Shit, hang in there, man.” I grabbed some gauze I had stuffed in my pocket and wrapped the pieces tight to hold them in place. I was concerned if either was moved, we would have a bigger problem on our hands. “Do not remove them. Don’t let anyone else do it either. I have to secure the area. Play dead if you have to,” I told him just as I heard shouting from the door.

  “Coming out!” I recognized the voice instantly. A moment later, J-Bird came out with Diamond, from the Tallahassee Chapter, by his side. Both of them were hauling a man out. It took a minute for me to recognize who they had with them.

  “We got him,” Diamond called out.

  “Thank fuck!” It was all I could say. “We need to get him and Merc to the hospital and have them looked at,” I called out.

  “Don’t trust these hospitals,” Jay answered.

  “We’re going to have to, your dad’s in a bad way,” I informed him. “Who else do we have?” I asked, wondering where everyone was.

  “Not sure yet,” Diamond answered. “Got separated from Court and Snake while we were in there. Pretty confident I took out the younger brother of their group.”

  “Good. Let’s hope we get the other two while we’re here. If not, I’m more than happy to go hunting again once we get these guys home.”

  Diamond chuckled. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

  “We lost a year. My girl had to give birth without her man by her side because of these fuckers,” I reminded him.

  “I know, Double-D. Your family has been through it this year, and part of that falls on our deal we made with these bastards all those years ago.”

  “Nah, it falls on their heads for having no fucking honor and pulling this shit.”

  “Still, don’t think the Tallahassee Chapter won’t go hunting with you in a damn minute. We’ll be more than happy to make sure this is one particular snake that never grows another head back.”

  I nodded as he helped me, carefully, move Merc. His eyebrows furrowed in on themselves about the same time my own did. Merc hadn’t appeared to have lost weight because he was wearing bulky clothing when he got here. I chalked it up to him dressing for winter, but as we moved him, I finally took a good, hard look at my friend. He was damn near gaunt. Granted, his son had been missing for a fucking year. His wife was undergoing treatments, and soon surgery, for her cancer. I expected his age to start eating at him, but not like this. This was something else altogether.

  “Damn it, Merc, what the fuck has been going on with you?”

  He grinned at me. “Don’t worry about it, D. I have it covered. You just get me to someone who can remove this bullshit sticking out of me and we’ll worry about the rest later.” Then he put his hand up on my arm and attempted to squeeze. “You did it, brother. You’re bringing my boys home.”

  “Ever got us the information we needed. She’s responsible for bringing them home, finally.”

  “Remind me to kiss our daughter when we get back then.”

  “That did not sound right,” I tormented him. He chuckled and then coughed and sputtered when the pain from moving ripped through him. “Stay still, brother.” The warning wasn’t necessary because he passed out before he could comprehend what I was telling him anyway.

  Merc wasn’t able to come back with us, so Jay stayed behind along with Diamond and Snake to watch over him and make sure no one turned up to exact revenge. Before we left to take Deck home, I pulled Jay aside, “You let me know what the hell is going on with him. It’s more than the stress of everything that’s happened to your family this year.”

  Jay nodded, but then shocked the shit out of me with his response. “No offense, D, but if my father wants you to know what’s happening with him, he’ll tell you himself. I won’t break his confidence unless it means saving him from himself.”

  I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I respect that, but that man’s been by my side since long before you were a misfire, you feel? You make sure and tell me if he needs anything at all so I can get it for him, or put a boot up his ass about it, you got it?”

  “A misfire?” He laughed.

  “Well, you ain’t all there, are you?”

  “Fucking hell,” he murmured after a bout of full-blown laughter. “It’s good to be able to do that and breathe.” I knew what he meant. There hadn’t been a whole lot of cause to just laugh in quite some time. “Get my brother back to his family and take care of him. He doesn’t look so good, D.”

  “He’s alive. Anything else, we can work on.”

  Chapter 26

  Finally

  Ever

  I didn’t tell my girls that their dad was coming home today. Honestly, I wasn’t
sure if that was more for selfish reasons than to protect them at this point. I’d been called and told that the information I provided was good and that they were on their way back. A couple nomads with Aces High, a security contractor with Redemption Inc., and a brother from the Tallahassee Chapter had all been killed in order to make it happen. Four men lost their lives to bring mine home. Merc was also in critical condition in a hospital in Canada. Tiger Lily sat with me, holding my hand while we waited, but Gretchen and Kane had taken my kids for the day.

  My father had been the one to call and suggest that the girls not be there when they arrived. “He’s a mess, Ever. I need you to prepare yourself. Physically, on the outside, he’s unharmed. I don’t want you to fool yourself though, he has a long road to recovery.”

  I already knew that. Ava had told me about his condition and what Toby had explained to her was being done to him. Knowing my brother, he was sheltering me from part of it, so I expected the worst. We also made sure to keep the Durbin guy around, just in case his particular skill set was needed when Deck got here. As it turned out, he was one of the foremost skilled people in the damn world at getting others detoxed and their habit kicked. Due to a rather shady background and upbringing, he tended to work for hire for the rich and the dangerous, taking extremely large payouts for his services and his silence.

  He spoke to me, told me what to expect and the condition he had last seen Deck in. I was stunned, and I’m not going to lie, devastated to learn about the amnesia and memory issues. No woman wants to hear that her man forgot who she was. I especially didn’t want to know about it, because that meant that at some point, he may have willingly been with the woman who was brought back to the compound, still pregnant. She was still screaming down the pit that she was having Deck’s baby. I hadn’t been allowed to see her in person, but Kane snuck me into the guy’s command center, as I called it, where I was able to watch her on video and hear her claims. It killed me to think that my husband had ever been with this woman, and I knew that they had a history before me. He had told me about her on one of our first dates. That was where all my doubts had kicked in. My husband had explained to me that he was ready to propose to her, had he not found her fucking his best buddy at the time.

  “Put it all out of your head,” Tiger Lily whispered to me.

  “What?”

  “All the doubts, the worries, the what ifs that go along with that whore they have locked up, you need to put them away for now. You’ll get to the bottom of it all, eventually.”

  “What if he doesn’t remember? What if she really is pregnant with his baby and he did that with her willingly?”

  “I’m going to tell you this once, and I want you to really hear me,” she looked me right in the eye as she spoke. “Whatever he did when he couldn’t remember, whatever he did when he was drugged out of his mind, none of it matters and sure as fuck shouldn’t count. You know why? He was their prisoner the whole damn time. Even if she managed to trick him because of the drugs and amnesia, that wasn’t your Deck who did those things. You need to get that right in your brain, because you can’t hold it against him. If that baby turns out to be his, you can’t hold it against his child either.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I whispered. That much, I knew for sure, even if I was confused and frustrated about the rest. Lily patted my knee.

  “I know, just had to say it for myself. Lucy set a good example for you, with you. There’s no way you wouldn’t do the right thing, but sweetheart, you know she struggled. I know you’d struggle, and I’m here. You need to know that I’m here when you do.”

  “I know. Thank you. I love you, Lil.”

  “Love you too, baby girl,” she insisted. “Now, let’s get ready to welcome my boy home.” While I knew she was just as excited to do so, her smile wavered, and the exhaustion played out in her features.

  “After you get to see him and welcome him home, I need you to get some rest,” I demanded.

  “I won’t argue with you because I feel dead on my feet right now, but when I have more energy, I’m going to tell you that you aren’t the boss of me,” she joked.

  I was laughing when the compound doors opened, and my father walked in with Declan by his side. Deck was on his own two feet, but it was obvious that he wasn’t doing too well. Sweat was beaded up on his brow and his body was shaking. Still, our eyes locked and I swear, I saw relief in them for just a moment before he noticed someone else in the room. Durbin. He bypassed me and went straight for him, and when he spoke, my heart broke. “Help me.” That was it, just two words and then he couldn’t hold himself up any longer.

  “Oh God!” Lily cried out from next to me. I reached for and just wrapped an arm around her thin waist and pulled her close.

  “It’ll be okay. We knew this was probably how it was going to be,” I told her while trying to reassure myself with those words as well.

  “Oh, Ever! I’m so glad the girls weren’t here to see that.”

  “Me too.” My father came to us then, and didn’t bother picking which one of us women needed a hug more, instead, he scooped us both into his big arms and held us tight to him. Then he kissed Tiger Lily on the head and leaned in to whisper in her ear, although I still heard what he said to her and felt her body shake with the emotions she was holding back.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring Merc back with me too. He’s going to come home though. Jay will see to it. When they’re back, we’re having a discussion about family, and not excluding them from things.” She tipped her head, acknowledging his words and then he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Baby girl, give him a little time. He needs to heal.”

  “Did he even recognize us?” Lily asked.

  “He did,” I said at the same time my father nodded his head.

  “He has memory of everyone, though he’s still missing things,” he told us both as he took us to one of the couches to be seated in order to get Lily off her feet. Dad focused his attention on me though. “The whole way back he kept mumbling about not wanting you to see him like this. He didn’t want us to bring him to the house because that’s where he thought you’d be waiting.”

  “He should know better,” I managed to huff past the emotion that was threatening to choke me.

  “All he knows right now is the itch he has for the poison that cunt was pumping in his veins.”

  My eyes met my father’s then, and I didn’t bother to hide the fury in them. “When that baby comes out of her, I better get my time in,” I demanded.

  “Ever, I don’t think,” he started to say.

  “It’s not about you or what you think. It’s not even about any of them either,” I spoke, my voice grew louder with each word, and I realized I had everyone’s attention. “What she did… She stole time from us that we can’t get back. She stole moments and memories, and she turned him into something he never was and now never can escape. She took our Deck from us. He might be back, he might get better, but he will never be the same Deck. She stole that. I know everyone here thinks they deserve a piece of her because he’s your brother, your friend, your President. He’s more than all of that to me. He is my best friend, my lover, my champion, my fucking hero, and when I tell you that the line starts here and I don’t care if any of you get your piece of revenge, so long as I do, then I fucking mean it. This club owes me. Now, it owes my family even more because he should have never been out there to begin with.”

  The room was dead silent until Trunk spoke. “We’ll take that under consideration.”

  “You think so?” I asked. “I’m not giving you a fucking choice here, Trunk. I don’t give a good goddamn about your ‘boys only’ rule or any of your other bullshit you plan to spout at me. That man, the one who was just brought in here so broken he couldn’t even look me – his best friend, wife, life fucking companion – in the face. He is mine! I will handle that vile piece of whore flesh you’re keeping in the pit and you won’t say a fucking word about it. This isn’t a vote. You don’t
get to do that. This is my fucking life. His fucking life. Not something to be stripped down to some catch-all you want to call ‘club business’!”

  “Did you forget where the hell you are?” Trunk lashed out because, yeah, I’d just disrespected him and his authority in front of everyone. He may only have been acting president while Deck was away, but he was still the VP.

  “Enough!” a booming voice called out from over by the door. The older man with eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea stepped further into the room with a whole entourage following behind him. Part of the group, I could see, included some of the women from the S.H.E. MC.

  “Ever, your disrespect will be overlooked today, because we all know what you’ve been through for a year now because of the position club business put your old man in.” He didn’t hesitate and turned to Trunk. “Not sure what’s going on with you, but your first reaction to her impassioned plea should not have been to shut it down and disrespect her claim either, brother. That’s not how this club has ever operated. The women might not hold positions in our ranks, but they’re an important part of our life and what they have to say matters too. Especially your president’s old lady.”

  Trunk’s eyes slid to mine and I could see the remorse swimming in them. “Sorry, Evie. So sorry, honey.”

  I just shook my head. I understood, but Trunk had been on edge for a long while now and not quite himself. I glanced toward my dad and noticed that he was scrutinizing Trunk as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to worry over it too much because Ghost spoke again.

  “I promise you that you will have your time with her,” Ghost told me as he closed in and leaned down to give me a hug. “You will need to save something of her for your husband, because he deserves his own revenge, but I will give you the time you need too.” It was a whispered promise in my ear, but one that I knew I could count on. Ghost was retiring from his position as National President to the Aces High MC soon. I just had to hope that I was able to get my time in with her before that happened and his promise no longer held the weight it once did.