by Bo Reid
Walking over to the man, I extend my hand out to him. Making no move to hide the knife in my other; he smirks at me.
“Excuse me if I forgo pleasantries with a girl who knows how to handle a blade. I already learned that lesson,” he says, tilting his neck and showing me the scar running from his ear and dipping into the collar of his shirt.
“Fair enough,” I shrug, lowering my hand.
“What’s your name, Dear?” he asks.
“What’s yours?” I raise an eyebrow at him in a challenge.
“Matthew Shay,” he says, raising his chin in pride. I smile; he is exactly who I’m looking for.
“Morana, Morana Valdis,” I say, emphasizing my last name, and I see it in the tick of his jaw that he is very familiar with that name.
“You’re a long way from home, little girl,” he says, his tone losing all pretense of pleasantries.
“Don’t I know it,” I say with a small chuckle, “and I’m just itching to get back there, so if you could do us both a favor and just tell me where to find Victoria Tyler, I’ll be on my way,” I say with a smile.
“Sorry, Dear, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Oh, now, Matthew, we both know that just isn’t true,” I say, tsking.
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” he says, leaning in close to my face he whispers, “there’s no place for a Valdis on Shay turf.”
He turns on his heel and begins to walk away, expecting me to do as I’m told. I was never good at following the rules.
“Oh, Matthew? Just one more thing,” I call out, and he pauses, turning to look at me over his shoulder.
“You know anything about the Marks family?” I ask, casually twisting the blade in my hand.
“Anything specific you want to know?”
“Deputy Marks, who killed him?” I ask, and Matthew smirks. Turning back around and walking towards me.
“He didn’t know what side of the law was safer for him; he picked the wrong side.”
“Did you pull the trigger?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.
“Didn’t have to, his not-so-loyal co-workers did it for me,” he smiles at me, trying to read my face for any reaction, one he won’t get.
“Be seeing you, Matthew. I think I’ll stick around a little while longer,” I say with a smirk and turn on my heels, walking across the bar. I turn to Kesden and shoot him a wink as Ranger and Hunter fall in line behind me.
Chapter 10: Porodica
Talin
“Talin, are you listening?” Dad asks me.
“Yeah, dad,” I sigh as I drop my controller onto the couch next to me, turning to look at him.
“I want you to remember that not everything is black and white. There is room for grey,” he says.
“I get it, Dad,” I huff, slightly rolling my eyes and picking up the controller for my game.
“I love you, son,” he says as a sad smile pulls at his lips.
“Yeah, dad, love you too.”
“Sometimes, the right thing isn’t what you think it is,” he says softly as he walks out of the door.
If I had known then, that would be the last time I saw him; I would have held onto him a little tighter. I would have listened and asked him questions about life. I would have told him I loved him, that I would take care of Mom. I would have made sure he knew I would always do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t clear.
I rap my knuckles on the old, wooden door and wait for a few beats for my mother to answer. The house is still the same as it was all those years ago, it’s never changed very much. Sometimes if you’re quiet, you can almost hear the deep rumble of dad’s laughter.
I wish more than anything that Morana could have met my dad; he would have loved her, even with her destructive nature. Dad was good like that, always giving people the benefit of the doubt, still trying to help wherever he could. I'd be willing to bet money that he could have helped Morana in some small way, even if it was just letting her know she was loved, not by me, Ranger, Hunter, or even Nash and Emma; but letting her know she had the love of a father, hers and mine. I think it would have made a difference, but we'll never know.
Regardless of what Morana thinks, my bloodline isn't as pure as I like to believe. When Dad became a cop, his brother became a kingpin. Dad never agreed with what he did, how he made his money, or treated people. But one thing that never changed was that Uncle Sammy was at every single holiday dinner, every Christmas, he never missed a chance to send a birthday card or give me a call. They had a deal, Dad didn't talk about the law, and Sammy didn't talk about his "work" either.
They pretended for years that they weren't on opposite sides of the law, and when Uncle Sammy died in a run gone wrong, Dad never once got angry. He didn't yell and scream that if he had just gone down the right path, he would still be here. Dad honored his memories the best way he knew how to. Dad might have been a cop, and I might have been a federal agent at one point, but we both can see the grey in life; not everything has to be black and white.
“Talin, sweetheart!” Mom gushes when she opens the door and wraps her arms around me, pulling me in for a hug.
“Hi, Mom," I whisper and wrap her up in my arms.
“Is she here?” she asks, pushing me to the side and looking around me for my girl that isn’t here.
“No,” I say, and watch Mom’s face fall. “Sorry, Mom, she’s just not ready yet.”
“That’s okay, Sweetheart; she just needs time,” she says and smiles, but I see the tears that barely gloss over her eyes before she blinks them away. She has been asking about Morana — about the whole family — for two years, and more than anything else, she wants to meet the people I call home. “Come in, come in. I didn't realize you were coming up, why are you here?”
I walk into my childhood home, looking around at the décor that hasn’t changed in twenty years. “Well, it’s a little complicated,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck.
“Since when is your life not a little complicated?” she asks with a small smile.
I don’t want to freak Morana out by telling her my mom already knows everything, and I do mean everything. She knows about Connors, why Emma and I quit the bureau. She even knows all about our less-than-conventional relationship. And the murders, she knows everything.
It took her a while to come around, but once she did, she has been begging to meet Morana and even the guys for the last year. Wants to know if we have plans to get married, even if it isn’t legal, since you can’t have three husbands — trust me, I’ve looked into it. Mom suggested some kind of small, unofficial ceremony at our house in Colorado, just something for each other that shows our commitment.
Or babies, she wants to know if she’s going to get grandchildren. Again, she doesn’t even care if they’re biologically my children. She says that if I’m in Morana’s life, and she has a child, and I’m in that child’s life, then that makes me a dad. I agree with her, but I don’t want to break her heart and tell her that I don’t think Morana ever wants kids. She doesn’t trust herself to raise them without turning them into monsters. We don’t know why she is the way she is, and we’ll never know if a piece of Hades was like this as well, she worries that any child born of her DNA will be like her.
It makes me wonder, though, how she has so much faith that Nash can be a great dad since we found out they do, in fact, share blood. It's like she can see the goodness in everyone except herself. When we look at her, though, all we see are the best parts of her; there isn't nearly as much darkness as she thinks there is.
She doesn’t want to burden another life with her struggles or her sins.
I wish Morana would give my mom a chance to prove how great she is. Maybe having her around in our lives would help us all with a little maternal guidance. No one else has a mother in their lives, and none of us have fathers left alive; I know in my heart, my mother would unofficially adopt all of them as her own. She always wanted more kids, a whole house full of them
, but she never got it; she would kill to have more people that needed her, even if they were killers.
“Turns out Morana has a younger brother she didn’t know about,” I explain.
“That must have been a shock to her, but I bet she’s happy. After losing her brother and all, and how happy she was that Nash is her half-brother. I mean the girl could use all the family she can get; I think it helps her.”
“Well… not exactly. It’s–”
“Complicated,” she interrupts, and I laugh.
“Yeah. Well, turns out her mom and brother have been right here all along.”
“In Calliope?” Mom asks, confused.
“Yeah. Do you know the Tylers? I can’t remember ever hearing the name.”
Mom thinks for a minute, mentally running through the names of people she knows. I can see it when the name clicks with someone.
“Victoria Tyler?” she asks, and I nod. “Yeah, I’ve met her a handful of times at town events. She has a son, but I can’t remember his name. It’s not common.”
“Aether,” I say.
“Yes! That’s it. That’s her mother and brother?” she asks, and again, I nod. “Wow, I never would have guessed it; they look nothing like the pictures you have shown me of Morana… She’s missing,” Mom says quietly.
“That’s why we’re here.”
“She’s going to help find her?” Mom asks with joy evident in her tone.
“Well, sort of. Aether says the Shay family runs things now, and that some of the cops are dirty. Morana came to find out information on dad’s death, more than to find her mom. She isn’t exactly a fan of hers.”
“Well, I can imagine,” Mom shrugs, “I don’t know how someone walks out on their children,” she huffs, placing a plate of cookies in front of me.
My mom has always been one of those moms to have fresh-baked cookies ready and waiting; some things never change.
“You think the Shays have something to do with Victoria going missing?”
“Aether seems to think they took her, but we don’t know why.”
“So Morana is here... In Calliope,” she says; I see the wheels turning in her head, and I know what’s coming next.
“How long will you all be in town?”
“I guess until we figure everything out.”
“Please tell me you will all come over for dinner before you leave, even her brother if he wants. Victoria, too, if y'all find her,” she says, smiling like she didn’t just invite a pack of murderers and mobsters into her home.
“I’ll see what I can do, Mom,” I say, standing and planting a kiss on her forehead, “I gotta get back before Morana does something equally stupid and reckless.”
“Don’t you talk about her that way,” she scolds me. “Here, take these,” she says, moving to wrap the plate of cookies.
Smiling at my mom, I take the cookies and move to the door. “I love you, Mom,” I tell her, and she says it back, waving me off.
When I get back to the motel room, it’s empty. I groan setting the cookies down and running a frustrated hand over my face. I knew I shouldn’t have left them. They always manage to get into trouble when left unsupervised. I pick up my phone and dial Morana.
“Hey,” she says in a cheery tone.
“Where are you guys?”
“Just pulling up to the motel,” she says, and I pull the curtain back and see the SUV pulling up to the door.
I hang up the phone, setting it down on the small table, and move to open the door for them. “Where did you guys go?” I ask as Morana walks into the motel room, carrying bags of take-out from the only diner in town.
“Food,” she says, holding up the bags. She sets them down on the small motel room table and plants a kiss on my lips.
“Where else?” I ask against her lips because I know they didn’t just sit here while I was gone, Morana can't just sit still; she always has to be doing something; and that something typically comes with felony charges.
She ignores me and starts rummaging through the bags on the table. I wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her against me. She wiggles her ass into me, leaning over, I whisper in her ear. “Where did you go?”
“Food,” she says, pushing her ass against me. I rub my hard dick against her, and she groans, placing her hands flat on the table and hanging her head.
“If you’re a good girl, I’ll give you what you want,” I whisper huskily in her ear as I grind my dick into her again, tracing the tips of my fingers along the waistband of her pants.
“When have I ever been a good girl?” she asks, thrusting her ass into me, and I grip her hips, digging my fingers into her soft skin.
“Am I the only one that wants to watch Talin fuck her against that table,” Hunter says, and I smirk against her neck.
“Happy to,” I say, and I thrust my hand into her pants and work my fingers over her clit, causing her to moan and fall forward against the table.
“Tell me where you went, and I’ll fuck you; however you want, Honey.”
“Naw,” she says.
“Now you’re just being difficult,” I pull my hand from her pants and take a step back from her.
She turns to look at me with defiance written in her features, as I bring my hand up and lick my fingers clean. She bites her lower lip, and I lean in close to her face. “I’ll lick you instead if you answer my question.”
“Are these the kind of interrogation tactics you learned in the FBI?” she quips.
When a sinister smirk pulls at the corner of her lips, my face drops because I just lost at my own game.
She grabs the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head, dropping it on the floor, before unhooking her bra and removing it too. She hooks her fingers into the waist of her pants and slides them over her hips, stepping out of them.
Walking past me, she runs her hand over my chest and winks before she moves over to the bed crawling between Hunter and Ranger.
“Playing games, Love?” Ranger asks as Morana wraps her arms around his neck, kissing her way down his throat.
“Would I do that?” she whispers huskily.
“Yes,” we all say, and a broad smile takes over her face, but it’s all evil, and dripping with venom.
“Fine,” she says, moving away from Ranger and settling against the pillows. She spreads her legs open, and my eyes zero in on her dripping wet cunt.
She moves her hand slowly down her body, stopping to pinch her nipples between her fingers. Then moves her other hand across her skin till she stops, working her fingers over her clit. Arching her back, she moans, and I can’t take it.
I strip out of my clothes and throw them on the ground, while Hunter and Ranger do the same. I settle between her legs, moving her hand away and pressing my tongue to her clit and moaning against her as her hand tangles in my hair.
“You should know better than to play games with me,” she whispers as I thrust two fingers inside her, working them in and out of her as I suck on her clit.
I remove my fingers, intent to fuck her tight pussy with my tongue when she’s pulled away from me as Ranger pulls her onto his lap, slamming her down on his dick, and I groan. Fucker always steals her.
I look at Hunter to gauge his intentions. “She’s all yours, man. I kind of want to watch,” Hunter says as he grips his dick.
This arrangement isn’t nearly as hard to get used to as I thought it would be.
I move behind Morana, gripping her hips as she stops her thrusts. Hunter tosses me a bottle of lube from the nightstand — we're always prepared, like motherfucking horny boy scouts — and I rub it over my dick and then Morana’s ass. I push one finger inside her and then another as she moans, wiggling her ass for more. I pump my fingers inside her, stretching her for my dick.
I move my hand and push the head of my cock against her ass. She leans over, pressing her breasts into Ranger’s chest as I slowly push into her.
She’s so tight; I grunt and strain to go slow, not wanting to hurt
her. When I’m seated balls deep in her ass, I give her a minute to adjust to being full. And when she wiggles her ass against me, I move slowly inside her. Ranger starts to work her up and down, matching my thrusts.
I grip her hips as I thrust deep into her. Ranger moves his hand to work her clit, and she moans, throwing her head back. Hunter moves over to us, and Morana smiles at him before she bends over, taking him into her mouth. He wraps a hand in her hair and starts to fuck her mouth, while Ranger and I take her other two holes.
Hunter grunts and stills his hips, emptying himself down her throat. She licks his dick clean before her legs start to shake, and she moans out her orgasm. Ranger grunts, stilling his hips inside her, and I pull my dick out, stroking myself a few times before I cum all over her ass.
She pants and lays her head on Ranger's chest.
“Someone want to get me a towel?” she asks.
I chuckle, moving off the bed and grab a towel off the bathroom counter. I run the hot water over it, wringing it out before moving back to the bed and wiping her clean.
“I don’t know why you insist on doing that,” she says to me as she’s moving off of Ranger.
I smirk at her, planting a kiss on her lips. “Just marking what’s mine,” I whisper before sinking my teeth into her lower lip.
“Alright, now, where did you guys go?” I ask again as Morana pulls on Ranger’s shirt. I grab a pair of boxers out of my bag, pulling them on as Hunter and Ranger do the same.
Morana shrugs. “To go talk to the Shay family.”
“Where at?”
“They run a bar outside of town.”
“Well, how did it go?”
“Morana didn’t kill anyone,” Hunter says, smiling at her and kissing her head before moving to dig through the food they brought back.
She smiles up at me like she is proud of herself for not committing any felonies in the two hours I was gone. If I'm honest, I’m proud of her, too; it’s the little things.
“Your dad wasn’t a dirty cop,” she whispers, and I cock my head to the side. “But dirty cops are the ones that killed him. He was trying to do the right thing,” she says, looking down and wringing her hands together.