SOLD: Jagged Souls MC

by Naomi West

  “Thanks again,” he said, groaning.

  “You say your peace, then? To the lady?”

  Zed shook his head, smiling sadly. “How do you know it was even a lady?”

  “I get to see all sorts of looks driving this cab,” she said, laughing, “and men don't look like that for much else other than a lady.”

  He gave her the address for his brother's apartment, his final destination.

  “Want me to stick around when we get there, too?” she asked, not prodding, but just wanting to know how her schedule looked.

  “It's my brother's place, where I'll be staying,” he said. “So definitely won't need a ride from there. Thanks anyways, though.”

  “No problem, sugar.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. When they pulled up in front of Kai's apartment, Zed stuffed a fifty in her hand and refused to take it back. “I can't,” she said. “I really can't.”

  “You can and will,” he said, shaking his head. “Tell your husband thanks for the call,” he said, closing the passenger door behind him.

  He headed up to the door and searched the names listed at the entrance. He found the one labeled K. Hesse and buzzed it.

  “Hello?” his brother answered after a long minute.

  “Guess who, bro.”

  “Holy shit!” Kai said, his voice electronic and filled with static. He got off the intercom and buzzed him in. Zed made his way inside and trudged up to the stairs to his brother's apartment.

  Kai was waiting for him, the front door open, with him leaning against back the frame with his arms crossed, a broad smile on his mirror-image face. “Why didn't you say when you were gonna get out?” he called, when Zed's head popped into view over the stairs.

  “Had to make a stop before I saw you,” Zed replied, as he dragged himself down the hall. “And I didn't want to have you talk me out of it.”

  “Abby, huh?”

  Zed nodded. “Yeah. Abby.”

  Kai sighed and shook his head. “Tough, man. Real tough. Come here.” He wrapped Zed into a warm embrace, clapping him on the back. It was the first time they'd hugged in years, and something about it felt right. Like Zed was having an arm returned to him.

  “Thanks,” Zed said as they broke apart.

  “Well, come on in and have a beer while we get you settled. It ain't Hesse's Hops, but it still ain't bad.”

  The two brothers went into the small apartment. It was a spartan one bedroom place, with no pictures on the walls, and no television even. There were just books and half-empty boxes and cheap furniture. On one table, next to the couch, sat the pictures of Kai's deceased wife and their children together. They were memories from a happier time, memories of the life Zed's brother used to have.

  “Still unpacking?” Zed asked, as he followed his brother into the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” Kai said, as he opened the fridge and poked his head inside to grab a beer. He pushed one into his brother's hand and gave him the bottle opener. “Little here, a little there. Just getting everything put up still while I try to figure out everything. Still weird being out and working on being healthy, you know?”

  Zed popped the lid on his beer and took a long, grateful drink. He hadn't tasted a good beer in he didn't know how long. Since before prison, that was for sure. It was cool and effervescent, with a good bite of bitter hops.

  They stood there in the kitchen, a mutually agreed silence falling over them as they sucked on their beers.

  “Sucks, doesn't it?” Kai asked, smirking.

  Zed shook his head. “It's like I don't have a heart anymore, but I'm still fucking living for some reason. I don't know how I'm going to do it.”

  His one-minute-older brother nodded and took a long drink. “I hear ya, man. The whole time I was in there, I was thinking about how I didn't want out. I didn't deserve to be out. You know that?”

  Kai had never told him this before. He shook his head.

  “I thought that you were barking up the wrong tree about Dimalerax. I'd accepted the blame, shouldered it entirely. But, you, Zed, you little brother, you kept pushing and pushing and pushing and finally did it.”

  Zed set his beer aside. “I didn't know, man.”

  “I was ready to die in there,” Kai said, nodding, licking his lips free of beer as he set his own bottle on the counter. “Ready to just give it up entirely and accept full responsibility. But, then, you came along with actual proof of the damage those bastards caused. You know how that makes a man feel? To be told he's not entirely to blame, that there really wasn't anything he could do?”

  He shook his head at Kai's words. “I don't know what to say.”

  “You set me free, man. I mean, we're still the only family we have, and now the settlement's almost entirely gone.”

  The settlement was almost gone? There had been enough in there to pay for his legal fund twice over. What had he wasted it on? “Wait,” Zed said, his voice rising. “What did you just say about the settlement? What the fuck did you do with your money?”

  “Relax,” Kai said, smiling as he took another drink of beer. “Invested it.”

  “Invested it?” he repeated back, his voice still just below a shout. “In what, Kai?”

  “A business. Demolition work. Hesse & Hesse Demolitions.”

  “You . . . both of us?”

  “Yep,” Kai replied, grinning. “Partner. Just look at it as a way for us to build something together. We're both starting off from scratch, right? What better way to honor someone than to create something new? Especially when we put a portion of the money to helping vets and first responders with PTSD?”

  Zed grinned and lifted his beer back to his lips, tilting it back as he took a swallow. “Believe it or not, that actually sounds nice.”

  “I mean, it won't fill the holes left by anyone. But, it might help. Besides, we probably need some work to take our minds off things. That was the best part about the service, right? Always having something to do.”

  Yeah, Zed thought. His brother was right. Idle hands, and all that. Something like this, a business he needed to build up from scratch, was perfect for two military vets, and two ex-cons, like them. Hell, he'd helped to take down a multinational drug company, hadn't he? If he could do that, he could manage whatever he put his mind to.

  Zed raised his beer in a toast to his brother. “To better days,” he said.

  Kai toasted him back, and they clinked their bottles together. “To better days.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Zed

  “I know the way we met was a little unorthodox,” Zed said, as he bent his knee in front of Abby. “And I'm sorry for turning your world upside down. But, people like us, we need each other. We're too different and too strong for anyone else to handle us. We'd just chew them up and spit them out.”

  Abby stared down at her hand as Zed took hold of it. She watched as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. “What are you . . .?”

  “Let me finish,” Zed said, filling in where she trailed off. “I'm nervous here, and I'll lose track.”

  She laughed as she wiped a tear from her eye. “Okay, finish.”

  “People like us, Abbs, we need other people like us. We need them because we're like tornadoes with other people, walking disasters. You're the only woman that's ever meant anything to me, the only woman I've ever met who could be stronger than me and put me in my place. I love you, Abby. I have since our first screwed up week together, and I will until the day I die. I guess I'm just trying to say . . . will you marry me, Abby Winters? Will you become Mrs. Abby Hesse, and make me the happiest man alive?”

  She smiled and nodded, the tears coming down her cheeks like rain on a spring day. “Yes, Zed. I'd love to.”

  Zed stood up from his bended knee and swept her into his arms, just like he had the day he'd gotten out. Her arms around his neck, they kissed, their smiles barely contained as he spun her around and around.

  Later, Kai and Zed divvied u
p the steaks and seasoned them before slapping them on the platter. The coals were hot and ready on the grill outside and they didn't have time to waste. Laughing and talking about their plans for the company, they both headed outside with them.

  On the way, Abby came in and distracted Zed, baby in arms. “She wants to see Daddy,” Abby explained to Kai, and he just rolled his eyes and headed towards the backyard.

  “I'll get 'em started. You guys worry about Aunt's Kara's favorite niece.”

  Zed laughed as he pulled the mother of his children into his arms, kissing the top of her head. Their daughter, Caitlyn, had gotten the blonde hair from Abby's side of the family, along with her smile. He knew she'd gotten his strength, though, from the way he grabbed his finger and tugged at it.

  “She's so feisty,” Abby said, smiling so widely that it didn't seem like her face could contain all her joy.

  “Just like her mother,” Zed said, squeezing Abby tighter.

  “I was thinking more like her father,” Abby said.

  “Dad!” Zed Jr. called from the back door. “Uncle Kai says you need to grab some more seasoning from the kitchen.”

  Zed laughed, his heart full to bursting with the love that it could barely contain. This house was so full of life and happiness. His brother was rebuilding his life, while still being mindful of what he'd left behind. This, right here, was what dreams were made of.

  “Well, of course they are,” his wife said, smiling up at him as she agreed with his thoughts.

  “Of course, they are?” Zed asked, squeezing her tightly. “What do you mean?”

  “Dreams, silly. They're made up. Like this.”

  Zed awoke with a gasp on the couch, his eyes wide and staring at the dark, blank ceiling. The fan circled in a low, lazy motion, barely casting a breeze on the cold sweat that dampened his chest. He centered himself and remembered where he was.

  He was in Kai's tiny apartment. He'd been exhausted and crashed for the evening, and he could see the dim light coming from beneath the door of his brother's room. He got up from the couch and padded into the living room, grabbing a glass of cool water from the tap and drinking it down to try and clear his head.

  It didn't work, so he drew another and put the glass to his head, savoring the feel of the cold surface against his skin. He groaned, knowing it had all just been wishful thinking. Eventually, he knew, even those wishes would go away.

  Wouldn't they?

  # # #

  Abby

  Abby stared blankly at Ethan as he blathered on about the car he and his buddies had been working on. It was an older one, a 60s mustang that his friend had been restoring for as long as she could remember.

  She wasn't sure what he was talking about now. Maybe the paint job? Or trying to find the right tires for it? God, they were only on the soup course. How much longer till their entrees came out and they could get out of here?

  “So, yeah, we managed to track down an almost mint condition steering wheel . . .”

  Nope. That was it. Abby stifled a yawn.

  It wasn't that she didn't like cars. She loved them. Just, she wanted to be included in it if she was going to have to hear about it all night, no matter what it was.

  Her mind drifted away from Ethan, though, quickly finding a gentle, sloping path back to Zed. She hadn't been able to get him out of her thoughts, especially not after his goodbye. She didn't think Ethan had come close to making her feel so much pleasure in bed. Sure, he got her off. She would have had to teach him how to if he couldn't.

  But it still wasn't the same. Even with how gentle Zed had been, for a change, he'd still been more domineering and forceful than Ethan. And, God, those muscles of his. He must have been doing nothing but working out for the last year.

  Things would have been so different with Zed over the last year if he hadn't gone to prison. Abby sighed internally, while smiling for Ethan to continue with his pointless story about himself.

  Zed would have been by her side this whole last year. He would have supported her as she crawled back to the top, as she got her next position and kept moving with her career. Instead of Ethan, it would have been him sitting across from her at dinner, those piercing brown eyes of his making her a quivering mess as she waited for them to get home. Or maybe just to the car . . .

  They would've been talking about the garden right now. Or places they'd been and seen. Not his buddy's old mustang.

  A flash of inspiration entered her mind, a perfectly clear image of herself as she slipped the engagement ring from her finger and slid it across the table cloth to Ethan. She could do it right now. Sure, the wedding planning would all have been a waste, and her fiancé would be crushed.

  But . . . what did Abby want?

  She touched her engagement ring, the pads of her fingers just barely brushing over it. She sighed internally again as she grabbed her glass of wine and took a sip.

  “You okay?” Ethan asked after a minute.

  “What?” Abby asked.

  “You just seemed distant, Abby. Everything all right?”

  She smiled. “Just tired, that's all.”

  She left the ring where it was on her finger.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Abby

  “That sniveling little asshole!” Abby swore under her breath as she stormed into her office, Jackie Robertson hot on her heels. “Who the fuck does he think he is talking to me that way?”

  “Abbs,” Jackie said as she quickly and quietly closed the door behind them. “He didn't mean anything by it. He just forgot to include you on the CC from the email. Anyone could do it. It was just a mistake.”

  Abby rounded on her, eyes alight with rage. This was exactly the kind of thing that, if you let it go once, it would just keep happening.

  Jackie had followed her from Pharma-Vitae, just like Abby knew she would. Especially when Pharma went belly-up after the lawsuits, settlements, and fines. She was more than happy to have her old assistant along.

  “Abbs,” Jackie soothed. “You're really on edge. You need to take a deep breath and think about what you're doing.”

  “I don't need—” Abby began, her voice raised almost to a yell, but Jackie quickly cut her off with a single finger held in the air. She shut her mouth when she saw the finger, realizing what she was doing.

  “What have I told you, Abby? What will I not stand for as an employee?”

  Abby took a deep breath. “I can be your boss,” Abby said, “but you're not my whipping boy.”

  “Exactly. I had that shit before, when I was younger, but I won't put up with it from anyone. You're yelling at me, and I did nothing wrong. Now, like I said, I think you're on edge.”

  The new CEO took a deep, measured, cleansing breath, and nodded again as she slowly blinked her eyes. “I think you may be right.”

  “Thank you. Now, this was all just a mistake on Vincent's part. He didn't mean to exclude you on the email chain. You're respected here, okay? Everyone thinks you're going to be great for the company, including the shareholders.”

  She was right, too. Upon news of Abby's hiring as the new CEO for the pharmaceutical giant Wat-Cor, shares rose nearly ten percent by end of the trading day.

  Abby took in her friend's words and nodded. “Okay,” she said, sitting down at her desk. “Okay. You're right.”

  “I hate to say it, though,” Jackie said as she sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “But, you've been on edge for weeks. Ever since the engagement.”

  Abby groaned. She hadn't told Jackie about Zed showing up at her door. She hadn't told anyone. She felt like, maybe, if she didn't ever say anything to anyone about it, it would all just be like it never happened and she wouldn't have to think about it again.

  Unfortunately, she couldn't get it out of her head. She couldn't get him out of her head.

  “I just feel like your heart's not in it, Abby,” Jackie said quietly.

  “The wedding?” Abby asked. “Of course it is! Look at all the work we
've done on it!”

  Jackie shook her head. “I don't mean the work you've done. It's going to be a beautiful wedding—huge and glorious. But you don't seem like you're going to enjoy it. It feels like you're putting together something from a magazine, from some fairy tale girls are supposed to want. There's no love in it, Abbs. No part of you.”

  That wasn't true. That couldn't be true. Or was it? Abby frowned and looked away, hoping that she could somehow dismiss Jackie's argument if she didn't pay any attention to it.