The Dangerous Son (Coalition Collection Book 1)

by Zoe Hill

  Outside, I’d screamed at him to get away from me because I believed that he knew what Harrison did to me and thought I was too damaged to fuck. Hearing the agony in his admission, I revise my assumptions and try to see what happened between us from his eyes. The tension that I’d felt in him. The tentative way he accepted my touch. The tenderness he used with me.

  It all makes sense.

  “I told you I don’t fuck,” Spenser quips. The chuckle he makes sounds forced. “Also told you I wasn’t lying.”

  I close my eyes to block out the memory of wishing him dead as I stormed out. “You didn’t lie.”

  “Not about that, no.”

  “Shit.”

  This time Spenser’s laughter is genuine. “You already said that.”

  My dad clears his throat. “This is touching and all, but we need to talk about Bella.”

  “Jesus, Bennett.” Mom slaps my father’s back. “That was really insensitive.”

  Arching an eyebrow, I ask, “Insensitive, how? If Bella is missing, then we need to find her.”

  “The touching comment.” Throwing her hands in the air when I shake my head and frown, Mom turns around and storms off, declaring for all to hear, “That’s what I get for trying to be PC.”

  Dad follows her. Spenser stands up, then helps me to my feet. Laying his arm across my shoulders, he tucks me into his side. I go willingly. Being this close to him helps. With all that I now know about him, I should be wary, yet the familiar comfort I’ve always felt around him remains intact.

  When Spenser tilts his head, I expect him to kiss me. I’m left a little disappointed when he whispers, “Your mom heard our little discussion. That’s what she meant... your dad said, ‘this is touching and all’ and she must’ve thought it would upset me.”

  “Ok-ay.” My mind has moved on from my mother. She has a bad habit of seeing insults in everything, so we kind of ignore her unless she gets really upset. What I am stressing about is my best friend. “Why would Harrison contact you about Bella? Why wouldn’t he send it to my parents or hers if he wanted to spook us.”

  Spenser runs his tongue over his bottom lip. He quirks his shoulder in a half-shrug. “I don’t know... maybe because he knows I’m coming for him as well?”

  His statement is pronounced as more of a question than a fact. “But Bella means nothing to you—”

  My question is cut off when every phone in the building goes off at once. It’s a cacophony of trills, ringing bells, and beeps. As people retrieve their cells, the building fills with gasps and angry muttering. I don’t have my phone with me—it’s still on my bedroom floor where it fell after I shoved Seb. In my apartment. Where Seb’s dead body probably remains.

  “Is Seb dead?” I ask Spenser in a rush. He shakes his head and hustles me over to my father. While I grapple with an irrational fear that Seb is already hot on our tail, my mom is glaring at her phone. Dad hastily shoves Spenser’s cell into his hands when we reach them. I stand on my toes, but I can’t see his screen. “What is it?”

  No one answers. No one needs to. Spenser presses something on his phone, and the sound of Bella screaming echoes throughout the bar. He taps his screen, and the noise stops, however, it’s clear that everyone was sent the same thing. Two dozen pairs of eyes turn to me, every set radiating with sympathy and fury. My heart skips a beat, and my head starts to buzz with dread.

  “He’s really got her, hasn’t he?”

  My question isn’t directed at any one person, but Spenser is the person who answers me. “He does. And the MC has twenty-four hours to hand you and me over or she’s dead.”

  “You and me? Why?”

  Spenser looks between me and my parents. He opens his mouth and says something, except I can’t hear the words. The buzz in my mind morphs into a deafening pounding. As my heartrate increases so does the banging in my ears. I blink fast to clear my darkening vision as my breathing becomes shallow, then the room tilts on its side. Dropping my hands to my knees, I press my lips tightly together and attempt to suck air through my nose like my therapist taught me long ago.

  It doesn’t work.

  My panic attack continues to mow me down.

  Fuck. Thinking about Bella, I fight it back with every iota of willpower I possess. The infernal dizziness steals my sight and the roar of my racing heart becomes a freight train carrying a ton of impending doom. It crashes into me so hard that every hair on my body stands on end and my skin crawls with prickles.

  Falling to his knees in front of me, Spenser takes my right hand and places my palm against the pulse point on his neck. “Focus on my heartbeat. Do you feel that, Zricha?”

  I nod.

  “Good.” He gets right in my face until he’s all I can see. “Breathe deep when I tell you, then let the air out through your nose once your lungs are full.” My vision tunnels until it’s a pinpoint and my knees wobble. Spenser holds me upright as he urges, “Breathe in. Slowly out. Breathe in. And out.”

  He pats the back of my hand every second time his heart beats. As my vision begins to return, I close my eyes to ward off the spinning world and swallow down the nausea that’s making me queasy. Following Spenser’s instructions, the dread that’s stalking me slowly recedes to a manageable level. He slides his hand under the T-shirt he gave me and presses his palm against my heart. “It’s working, Zricha. Your heart isn’t racing as fast.”

  I reopen my eyes and peer at him. The seriousness in his face makes my bottom lip tremble.

  I just fought off a panic attack. That has never happened.

  God. I take my eyes off Spenser’s to stare at the ceiling. Please help me here... I’m already in over my head with this man.

  My hands shake when I use his shirt to pull him closer to me. On his knees, he’s still much taller than me, so I link my fingers at the bottom of his neck to drag him down to my height and plant my lips against his soft mouth. He kisses me back with a notable absence of restraint compared to our kisses this morning. Big hands cupping my backside, he stands, lifting me in the air without breaking the connection between us. If anything, he manages to kiss me harder as he touches his tongue to mine, and we explore each other’s taste. A low whistle breaks the quiet that dawned when I started to panic when I wrap my thighs around Spenser’s waist.

  My second youngest brother, Archer, laughs. “Holy fuck. Never thought I’d see anyone stop Poppy when she gets going.”

  “The man deserves a medal, although she’d be the only one able to give it to him without losing their hand,” my baby brother, Levi, jokes.

  A titter of laughter makes the rounds of the room.

  “I think it’s romantic,” Violet interjects.

  “Yeah, it’s straight up Harlequin romance shit,” Chester quips.

  Eli snorts. “It won’t be so romantic when she’s carrying his balls in her purse.”

  “We’re going to have a talk soon,” my dad says. He moves to place a hand on Spenser’s shoulder but stops when Mom catches his wrist and shakes her head. “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  “All right. That’s enough gawking.” Mom claps her hands together. “It’s time to put our heads together to work out how we’re getting Bella back.”

  With my best friend at the forefront of my mind, my sibling’s teasing means nothing to me right now. Worry about the battle to save her aside, I’m too wrapped up in the man holding me to care what anyone else thinks. When I pull away from Spenser’s mouth and rest my forehead against his, I spy the same astonishment in his eyes that he displayed after he made me come around his fingers.

  At the time, I hadn’t understood why he reacted like that, but now I get it.

  We’re the same.

  That’s why he feels familiar and affects me in a way that no one else does.

  Spenser’s words from last night echo in my mind and I appreciate how right he got it.

  We really are nothing but two broken people bleeding together.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Somet
imes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.” ~The Fray~

  SPENSER

  The Samaritan’s Soldiers have a weapons cache that rivals the Coalition’s, however, it’s the technology they have at their disposal that gives them the edge they need. A nerdy man in his late-thirties with barely enough scruff on his face to call it a five o’clock shadow, let alone the full-faced beard he’s going for, walks me through the system the MC has been using to take down the sex trafficking routes.

  “This displays the location of shipments,” he tells me. A black screen with bright green icons that rarely stop moving is updated every ten seconds by the satellites they’ve hacked. I try to keep up with his energetic explanation. “Since we don’t know where they’re headed until our contact finds out, being able to track them on the way into the US enables us to have boots on the ground in the general vicinity.”

  Poppy’s dad taps his techno-geek on the shoulder. “That’ll be enough, Chase.”

  “Oh, sure.” The black-haired man replies easily. He looks between Bennett Tennyson and Poppy, then to me and back to his, er... I look at the patch on Bennett’s leather vest and see that he’s both Founder and Chaplain. For some reason, I expected him to be the President. “Should I leave?”

  “Yes,” Bennett says. Glancing at his daughter, he adds, “Take Poppy with you.”

  The woman in question hasn’t left my side except to change her clothing and to have the injuries caused by Seb cleaned up since I helped her work through her panic attack. I can’t say that I haven’t enjoyed holding her hand and feeling her lean against me. Our interactions during the trip here and when we first arrived, hadn’t buoyed me with hope that she’d defrost this quickly. My reaction to her brothers touching me and Poppy’s speedy understanding had been the first ice breaker. When I was the only one able to help her when she spiraled from the news about Bella was the final nail in the coffin of our early morning misunderstanding.

  I think I can safely lay that situation to rest.

  It’s the other lies, some deliberate and others by omission, that hang over my head. The truth is too convoluted to explain while she’s upset that her best friend is missing, and her oldest brother has been killed by the man who stole her innocence. Sleeping dogs will need to be kicked awake another day—for now, they can slumber peacefully.

  “Come on, squirt.” Chester pops his head inside the control room. “Violet needs your help with the munitions.”

  “Argh. Seriously... she can’t manage anything by herself.” When Poppy reluctantly disentangles herself from my side, I can’t fight back my grin. She’s so damn cute when she doesn’t want to do something. Her oldest brother screws his nose up at my reaction, then glares at me as his sister tosses a warning over her shoulder to me. “I won’t be long, Spenser. Don’t let them piss you off too much with their inquisition.”

  Once Poppy’s out of sight, Chester holds two fingers to his eyes then points his fingers at mine. “You’re all Dad’s for now, but I’m watching you. We all are.”

  I shrug, biting back a chuckle when he flounces off with a similar flare to his little sister.

  Every time our paths cross, Poppy’s four brothers make it clear that if I hurt her, they’ll hurt me. Despite the grim circumstances, their overprotectiveness has brought a smile to my face each time.

  I’m a bonafide killer and Poppy is an NYPD detective. Seb aside, I can tell that she’s able to look after herself. Their underestimation of their sister’s strength would be funny if I didn’t feel Poppy stiffen every time they acted like she was made of entirely of shattered glass.

  “When are you going to tell my girl that Harrison’s your uncle?” Whirling around to face Bennett, I am unable to stop my mouth from dropping open when he continues, “She deserves to know the truth... warts and all. I’m pretty certain she’ll understand considering the circumstances.”

  “Excuse me?” I drag in a noisy breath through flaring nostrils. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Bennett sweeps a hand around to indicate all the technology that fills the MC’s control room. “We knew everything about you before you arrived at our compound with my injured daughter. Boy, we knew who you were before my brother spotted you slinking around in a dark alley with your hands down your pants—doing a piss-poor job of tailing that same daughter for the Coalition. We’ve had eyes on you for years. Everything there is to know about you has been uncovered. If it hadn’t been, there’s no way we would’ve allowed you to set one foot inside here without a gun to your head.”

  “Fuck.” Embarrassment winds its way through me. I grit my teeth as my mind is assaulted by the mortifying memories of my one-handed, self-guided tour of my trouser snake. I can’t quite meet his eyes, not knowing that he is aware of my issues and the role his daughter has played in opening my eyes to a different way of living.

  Poppy’s father pulls one of the swivel chairs to himself and takes a seat. With his booted foot, he kicks a second one in my direction. “Pull up a pew, Spenser Ingram Greaves. I feel a sermon coming on.”

  I do as I’m directed. As I sit, my skin feels too tight for my body, and I’m afraid that the top of my head is going to explode. I legally dropped my father’s last name the day after I turned eighteen and took my middle name—my mother’s maiden name—as my surname. Eitan had assured me that it was impossible for anyone outside the Coalition to know that I was a member of the Greaves family, and by extension, the Coalition.

  He promised that he’d purged all records of Spenser Greaves ever existing.

  Eitan was wrong.

  As I stare down Poppy’s father, it dawns on me that the Samaritan’s Soldiers MC have been a step ahead of me the entire time I’ve been here. I haven’t been using them to locate Harrison; they’ve been testing me to see if I’m worthy of joining the hunt.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to Poppy?”

  “I was going to, then I saw how she was with you, and I didn’t have it in me to break her heart. Her mama is filling her in with the barebones right now, although the rest of it is up to you. It is your story to tell,” he decrees. Bennett’s tone is quiet but damning when he elaborates, “She’s a good girl. A bit broken from what happened to her... which I firmly believe she would’ve recovered from if we hadn’t compounded her pain by taking hush money from her abuser.”

  Pausing, Bennett touches the scar that splits his thick eyebrow. He breathes out a heavy, tired sigh that I feel deep in my marrow. “At the time, I was on the fast track to Bishophood in a wealthy diocese. Eloise was a city prosecutor. We had friends, but we didn’t have the contacts or the money to properly defend our daughter against the Greaves family. We were advised by everyone from the current Bishop down to our family friends that accepting the money and moving on would be the smart thing to do. For Poppy and our family. A fresh start away from the rumors and gossip.”

  His words bear the scars of the past, however, it’s the hunger for revenge that beams like lasers from his eyes, which really drives home his next point. “He targeted her because she’s quiet and always wants to keep the peace. I’ve always blamed myself for that. After three rough and ready boys, all I wanted was a little girl. I wanted the pink and the lace and the softness. She was—is—the sweetest person. Eloise warned me that I needed to let her fall occasionally... that it’d toughen her up. I was ready for my little Poppy to get down and dirty with her brothers and their friends like a typical seven-year-old. What I wasn’t prepared for was a man we thought of as our friend breaking her spirit with his grimy hands and his even filthier dollars. Harrison Greaves stole my baby girl’s childhood from her, yet he’s never paid the price because his last name saves him from the justice system.”

  Fucking hell. I knew I wasn’t Harrison’s only victim... but Poppy? I try to wrap my head around this new knowledge, but all it does is cause the pain in my head to flare again. Closing my left eye to lessen off the throbbing ache, I do my best to meet Bennett’s
steady gaze.

  “Seems all roads lead back to my uncle,” I remark. Reopening my eye as the pain reduces to a manageable level, I add, “Always have, always will... at least, until I finish him.”

  “That is what we all want, Spenser.” Bennett’s throat works as he swallows. “First, I need to explain some things to you. It’s not going to be easy listening, but it’s time you found out.”

  When I attempt to talk, he waves me off with an impatient flick of his hand, “I didn’t take what happened to my little girl very well. In fact, I blamed her for not telling us after the first time. I’m still ashamed to admit that... it’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I can acknowledge my failings out loud, but I’m all right with God now, and I’ve found my penance in what we do here.”

  When Bennett starts to speak again, I brace my hands against the arms of the chair I’m sitting in. My tolerance for anything related to the abuse I survived is quickly drawing near, yet I feel a driving need to hear him out.

  Listening to him talk about his guilt is helping me put my own into perspective.

  All my life, I’ve been aware that my uncle has a long list of victims, however, I think Poppy is the first I’ve put a face to—outside the one that stares back at me in the mirror. Seeing her, and knowing her struggles, my complicity hits me harder than it ever has before.

  If I’d spoken up better when I was seven, if I’d argued with my parents until they saw the truth... I could’ve spared Poppy her ordeal. My cowardice is just as much to blame as my uncle for what happened to her, and the kids that came after.

  “My wife and I know that he hurt you, too. We know all his victims... we’ve helped them all in varying degrees, except you. Your name made you unreachable.” A strangled gasp is my only reaction to his admission. He touches the scar that cuts across his eyebrow again. “Being unable to help you broke your mom and dad up. I could see how much they were suffering when they came to us with their proposition. I felt their sorrow—it matched mine.” Again, he sweeps his hand around the room. “We’re proud of what we’ve built here, although I know they have the same fear as Eloise and myself that it’ll never be enough to atone for our failure as parents.”