Bad Boy Romance Collection: The Volanis Brothers Trilogy

by Meg Jackson

  “No,” Damon said quickly. “It is your birthright. And you are good at it. At the more important things.”

  Kennick’s eyebrows raised.

  “Important things? What could be more important than deciding the future of the kumpania?”

  “The little things,” Damon said with a shrug. “You know, Dad was shit for planning. He let the other men run the businesses, mostly.”

  Kennick nodded. This was true; he’d taken it upon himself, when he was old enough, to learn about the businesses his people ran, since Pieter seemed to have little to no interest in it.

  “But you and Dad – you’re good at people. You know how to talk to them. Settle out the little things. Make the women feel like their men love them. Keep the men from running wild. You delegate, make people feel important. It’s the right way to do things.”

  Kennick cracked a smile.

  “Shit, I’m just a politician, huh?”

  Damon shrugged.

  “No one ever said you had to do it all alone, brother,” Damon said, narrowing his eyes. “You know I’m here. Cristov is – well, he’s Cristov, but he’s here. And Mina, everyone loves Mina, if you really fuck up, she can change some minds in your favor. You don’t have to feel like a failure just because of all this mess. It’s all our mess, and we’ll clean it up together.”

  “I know, prala, I know,” Kennick said, offering a wan smile before running his hands across his face. Prala. Brother. He spread his fingers, looking at the mess he’d made in the middle of the trailer.

  “You think Mina will come clean this up for us?”

  “I think you can ask, and then kiss the family jewels goodbye,” Damon laughed.

  Just then, there was a knock at the door. Damon made as if to rise, but Kennick waved him down, limping towards the door, the pain in his feet returning as his energy waned. He was surprised to see his cousin, Pieter, standing on the step, looking red as a strawberry and shuffling his feet.

  “Trouble, huh?” Kennick asked, torn between smiling at the look of boyish guilt on Pieter’s face and groaning because more trouble was the last thing he needed. Still, any trouble the pint-sized devil could have spun for himself would be a breeze compared to a burned trailer and a mob of angry townspeople.

  “Um,” Pieter said, and the high, strained quality of his voice made Kennick’s throat go dry. Shit, he thought. What now?

  “Come in,” Kennick said, stepping aside as the boy darted into the trailer and turned around, still looking like his head was about to pop off his neck and hit the ceiling.

  “Hi, Pieter,” Damon said, examining the boy with curiosity. “What’s wrong, little man?”

  “I saw something bad,” Pieter said, his voice inches away from a wail. Damon and Kennick shared a glance. “Something…real bad. I’m…I don’t know if I should…”

  “Want a drink?” Kennick said, gesturing to the empty booth. Pieter’s eyes widened and his nervousness seemed to evaporate for a moment. There was nothing like being treated like a man to make a boy feel like a man. And Kennick could tell that the weight Pieter was bearing was a man’s weight.

  The boy slid into the empty seat and Kennick pulled a bottle of whiskey from above the fridge, pouring out barely a centimeter, diluting it with lots of cold water. It still smelled like a man’s drink, and watching Kennick pour it was enough to make Pieter feel like he was being treated like an adult. He took a tiny sip of the drink, struggling to hide the disgust that marred his features as the slight tinge of alcohol burned his throat. Kennick sat himself across from Pieter and folded his hands across the table.

  “Whatever you saw,” Kennick said, “you can tell me. I’ll protect you, Pieter. You are my kin, my familia.”

  Pieter nodded, the red in his cheeks started to lessen.

  “Last night,” the boy began, biting his lip between words. “When the fire? Well, before the fire. I was….I was runnin’ away, or I was gonna, ‘cause Ma was real mad that I put my crayons all in the microwave. Boy from town said it would be cool. But so I was sneakin’, you know, to get…well, anyway, I seen…

  I seen a man at the trailer. He had a green bottle. It looked green, anyway. It was hard to see. But there was – it was a weird bottle, ‘cause the cap was all floppy and soft. And then he put a light to it, to the cap, and it went on fire. And I seen him throw it into the trailer.”

  Pieter’s voice was rising steadily. Kennick and Damon exchanged a glance.

  “Did you see who the man was, Pieter? What he looked like?”

  The boy nodded and bravely took another sip of his “whiskey.”

  “It looked a lot like – well, I’m sure it wasn’t, but you know it looked like…it looked like…”

  The boy looked, more than ever, like he wanted to crawl under a rock for the rest of his life.

  “Jenner,” he finally said, voice barely whisper. His eyes flew upwards quickly, and he leaned forward, speaking loudly. “But I ain’t sayin’ it was him, I’m just sayin’ it looked like him! It just looked a lot like him! Coulda been anyone, really…”

  “Pieter,” Damon said, voice low and serious. “How much did the man look like Jenner? Whatever you answer, we won’t be mad. Just because he’s kumpania, you don’t have to protect him.”

  A silent tear rolled down Pieter’s red cheek and he nodded.

  “It looked just like ‘im. Just exactly like ‘im.”

  35

  Kim didn’t really know where to go. She had just been driving around aimlessly for a good long while. Trying not to think about the words he hadn’t said. Trying not to think about anything.

  Finally, she found herself driving towards the firing range. She slowed her car as she drove past it. This was someplace she’d felt strong, confident, unbreakable. But she knew that she couldn’t go there now. It was too full of his memory, of the feel of his body against hers, his words in her ears and his love in her heart.

  She drove on.

  And, before she knew it, she’d driven for six hours. Going nowhere, making a broad loop through the county, over and over again, like a dog chasing its tail. Except Kim was chasing some comfort she knew couldn’t be found.

  The idea of going back to her apartment was thoroughly unsavory. She’d been there with him, too. And she didn’t want company, not Ricky’s or Tricia’s or anyone’s. So, with the sun just about to set, she headed back into town and went to her office, where she might at least find a bit of Mayor Gunderson’s secret stash to help ease the dull pain in her heart and soul.

  As it turned out, though, she wouldn’t be alone in the office, either.

  “Oh, Tom,” she said, following the sound of drunken weeping to his darkened office. She was surprised he’d come to the office on a Saturday. It was hard enough to get him into the office on a day he was supposed to be there. But he was most certainly drunk. He wouldn’t be crying if he wasn’t, she didn’t think. And as she crossed the threshold, the smell of whiskey hit her like a train. She scrunched her nose and Mayor Gunderson looked up at her, all red eyes and blubbering lips. Outside, the sky was red as a blood orange, the soon-to-be-setting sun making everything fire up.

  “God, Kim,” Mayor Gunderson said, extending one miserably shaking hand towards her. “I jus’, I always jus’, I always jus’ wan’ed good things. For her, you know? For all’a us. Whole place safe and good. An’ fuckin’….fuckin’…gypsies!”

  His tears turned to anger and he slammed one meaty fist against the top of his desk.

  “I know,” Kim said softly. She’d never seen him this bad. But he’d been very bad indeed recently. Worse and worse, in fact. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in Kennick, she might have tried to help. But she’d been selfish…

  She crossed the room, determined now not to be selfish anymore. She needed to get him to sleep, or some coffee, or some food. Whichever of those things he was most accepting of would be fine.

  “Come on, Tom,” she said, coming to his side. He looked up at her, tear
s rolling down his cheeks, when she gripped his forearm and tried to pull him to his feet. “Let’s get you feeling better, huh?”

  “An’ now. Now I did it. I had-ta do it. I had-ta do it to ‘er. I had-ta kill ‘er, Kim, I can’t…I don’ have a choice,” he said, the words coming out slurred and shaky. Kim’s body stiffened for a moment. That was a weird thing to say. A very weird thing indeed. Mayor Gunderson ripped his arm away with a guttural cry. When he did, Kim caught sight of something shiny in his belt. A gun? Since when did the mayor have a gun?

  “You don’t have to kill anyone, Mayor Gunderson,” Kim said, her gut churning. She hoped he was just babbling drunken nonsense. But a part of her knew that was a lot to hope for.

  “I do,” he bawled, smacking the desk again. And then he quieted. And that was, somehow, worse. Much, much worse. Because when he turned to her, the tears were drying. “I do, Kim. An’, oh God. An’ now you. You…my Kimmy…I shoulda done you inst’d a her. Shoulda be’n you first, shoulda, but I couldn’t. But I gotta now. I gotta.”

  “Okay,” Kim said, trying to keep the quiver from her voice. “Okay, Tom, no one is going to be killing anyone. Right? No one kills anyone.”

  He shook his head, his lower lip trembling as he sniffled, deep and loud.

  “You were always real good,” he said, sighing as though resigned to an action he couldn’t avoid. When Kim watched his arm fall, hand reaching for the gun in his belt, a rock fell into her stomach and it plummeted all the way to the base of her body. She reached, too. Faster than him, but not by much. His hand landed on hers, much bigger, gripping it tight, engulfing it.

  “Leggo,” he slurred, his eyes now ferocious as he looked at her. “Leggo! Gotta do it!”

  “No, Tom,” Kim screamed, panic kicking in heartily now, adrenaline rushing through her like white lightning. She used it to her advantage and wrenched her hand free, taking the gun with it. But as Mayor Gunderson’s strong grip released her, the momentum drove her backward until she landed on her ass in front of him. Rolling to his feet, his face a blank mask of rage, he roared and advanced. Kim grabbed the gun in both hands, pointing it up at him.

  “I’ll shoot, Tom! I swear, I’ll shoot!”

  He lunged downward. She had a split second to aim. The sound deafened her as her finger squeezed the trigger. His shoulder spun back, bright red exploding as the bullet shot through his flesh and came out the other side. His roar was animalistic, but Kim barely heard it over the ringing in her ears. He was still falling toward her, and she raised her knees, meeting his stomach with her feet and pushing back with all the strength she possessed. He looked at her, suspended for a moment above her, his eyes almost childlike with surprise and sorrow.

  “Kimmy,” he said, their eye contact broken as he was forced backward, his back slamming into the desk with a solid thunk. Scrambling backward, Kim’s hands were shaking as she raised the gun once more, ready to unload the whole damn clip if she had to. But she didn’t have to. His eyes were closing. His shoulder hung at an unnatural angle.

  Unbelievably, he snored.

  Kim felt like each breath she took was part torture, part blessing. She felt like she should be crying. But she wasn’t. Mayor Gunderson bled out onto the floor. The gun was still in her hands. When she dropped it, there was a clatter she barely heard.

  Raising on shaky legs to her shaky knees, hands out as though the room were pitch black and she needed to rely on touch to get around, she finally managed to fall upwards to shaky feet. She stumbled forward until she hit wood. She’d managed to avoid the Mayor’s unconscious body.

  She sat down heavy on his chair and scrambled for the phone, still breathing in small, hitched, barely-enough breaths. Her elbow knocked over the mostly-empty bottle of whiskey that had been sitting on the desk. As she dialed, she saw what Mayor Gunderson had been looking at while he drank himself into a prison cell. It almost made her drop the phone. Almost.

  It was old, weathered.

  The date on the upper-right corner was old, too.

  Thirty years old.

  It looked official.

  It looked exactly like page from a police report.

  36

  Damon and Kennick went back and forth, back and forth. What if Pieter was wrong? Even if he'd really seen Jenner set the fire, would anyone trust the word of a kid over Jenner's? Did they trust his word? If they came forward with what he'd told them, would they be putting him in danger? If Jenner Surry was crazy enough to set a trailer on fire with a baby inside, who was to say he wouldn't do something to Pieter as payback for ratting him out?

  There wasn't time to sleep on it. It was only a matter of hours before the kumpania would gather to discuss the fire and what it meant and what they'd do. They'd sent Pieter home to his mother and told him that he should stay home for the rest of the night. They told him not to tell anyone else what he'd seen. He'd seemed eager enough to follow that bit of wisdom.

  Kennick held his hair in both hands, staring straight down at the tabletop. Everyone was eager to believe that the fire was set on purpose by someone from Kingdom, someone who believed they were responsible for Rhonda's murder thirty years prior and then Jessica's murder. It was a spectacular coincidence, after all, even if thinking about it for only a few moments yielded more confusion than anything else. But this was not a time for rational minds to prevail; in the aftermath of murder, in a small town like Kingdom, there was only room for emotion and revenge.

  Hell, Kennick himself had believed it was a Kingdom citizen who'd set the fire – the angry letters to the editor that followed the publication of Ricky's article were enough to convince him that there were some people in town who'd be happy to pick up a torch to avenge the death of one of their own. And if the roles were reversed, if someone from the kumpania had been killed, would his people be any more patient? He'd like to think so, but he had to be honest with himself at the same time. People were people.

  When he thought once more of Jenner Surry, sneaking through the trailer park with a Molotov cocktail, throwing it through the window, not giving a damn about the women or child inside, he saw red hot anger in his vision, his muscles tensing. He wanted to find the bastard and beat him to a bloody pulp.

  Too soon, it was 8:00, the day’s waning light still reddening the sky. One by one, the kumpania’s older members began to arrive at the Volanis brother’s trailer. Anyone over the age of 22 was considered adult enough to attend a meeting like this, and people either brought their own lawn chairs or sat on the grass or stood. Kennick, who could still barely stand, set up a chair on the stoop, where he could oversee the meeting. Damon and Cristov stood at his sides like sentries.

  “We all know why we’re here,” he said to begin the discussion. “Last night, something terrible happened to us. No one was seriously hurt, thank God, but it was a clear act of violence against us.”

  He scanned the crowd, wondering what would come of this discussion. He had his own hopes.

  “So we’re here to discuss what to do,” he continued. “We can leave. Or we can stay. I think it’s important to have this meeting so…”

  “We already know what to do,” a surly voice called out. Jenner Surry. Kennick’s hands tightened to fists. “We’re obviously getting out of Dodge. What is there to discuss? We know these townie fucks attacked us and….”

  “We don't know anything yet,” Kennick pointed out. “We know that it wasn't an accident. But we don't know who it was, or why. And...”

  He glanced at Damon, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes fell, instinctively, to Jenner Surry, who was staring at him with such blatant hate that it made him want to spit on the ground and scream his name to the heavens, tell everyone what he'd done and let the kumpania dole out what justice was due.

  “Well, I don't know how much I can say on this matter, but there's some evidence that it wasn't a citizen of Kingdom who did it. It may have been one of our own.”

  A collective gasp that went up from the crowd,
followed by grumbling whispers that threatened to rise to the level of shouting.

  “I can't say too much on that matter,” Kennick said, holding his hands up in an attempt to quiet the crowd. “I'm just saying it's a...possibility.”

  “Based on what?” a female voice called out.

  “Well,” Kennick said, “for one thing, we know that no one drove here from Kingdom when the fire broke out. Dago was sitting right in front of his trailer, overlooking the road. And you didn't see anyone, did you, Dago? No one entered the park in a vehicle.”

  “S'true,” the man called out. He'd already been questioned by the police, but Damon and Cristov had done their own bit of questioning while Kennick was recovering in the hospital. They hadn't come up with anything that proved anything....until Pieter had come forward. Then, all the little things they'd discovered seem to add up a lot more.

  “So it's hard to imagine someone from Kingdom trekking all the way out here holding a Molotov cocktail and then beating it through the woods without anyone noticing.”

  “That doesn't prove anything,” called a voice that Kennick recognized as Nico Kristina.

  “No, it doesn't,” Kennick admitted. “But you know what else doesn't prove anything? Running away.”

  This was it. This was the argument that Kennick and Damon had finally decided on presenting to the kumpania. And it was a good one. Not just in terms of logic or persuasion. In terms of heart, and honesty, and pure emotion. It was a good argument because it was the one that Kennick had been having with his own self ever since waking up in that hospital.

  Thirty years ago, Pieter Volanis and his people had run away from Kingdom because they were being persecuted for something they didn't do.

  When they say that history repeats itself, they never mention that you have a choice in how much you allow that adage to prove true.

  Kennick Volanis didn't want to run away from anything anymore. And he thought he could show his people that running away wasn't their only option. It was true, gypsies had spent generations running. It seemed the whole history of the Rom was a history of running. But it didn't have to be that way, not now, and not ever again. They'd set down roots here. They'd been welcomed here, at least by some. Gypsies travelled; it's what they did. But there was nothing like having a home to come back to after going wherever it was you wanted to go. And if they could stay in Kingdom, it could become that home.