Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2)

by Giana Darling

  She relaxed. “Good, because seriously, I know these Entrance mums and I’ve heard them talk about ‘taming the bull’ and having a round with you. Women like that don’t know the first thing about handling a man like you, Zeus Garro, and you should know better than to get involved with them.”

  I looked at King. “Did the woman just give me a lecture even though I didn’t do what she fuckin’ thought I did?”

  “It was a preemptive strike,” she explained like the prim and proper little teacher she’d been. “And I’m not a teacher anymore, so don’t call me ‘teach’.”

  “She did,” King confirmed, ignorin’ her. “She does that.”

  “Don’t know how you put up with it,” I told ’im, purposely ignorin’ the irritation makin’ Cress bristle. I liked buggin’ the fuck outta her, she was cute like a little yappy dog when she was mad. “Knew I raised a strong man, didn’t know I’d raised a saint.”

  King laughed, throwin’ his head back just like his sister and I did when we laughed. He was blond like his mum, skinnier than me but fillin’ out now he was nearly twenty, and other than the colour of my eyes, he didn’t look a thing like me. But fuck he was so much my son it slapped me in the face sometimes. Like me but, thank fuck, better.

  “Oh shut up, both of you,” Cress snapped but there was no real heat in it. “Zeus you’re trying to distract me from the topic at hand and I will not be deterred. Something’s different about you.”

  Fuck if that wasn’t true. I was sittin’ there in my cut, my normal scowl on my face to intimidate the dads and brothers in the stands and turn on the repressed mothers and curious little girls, and I was doin’ it leanin’ forward with my forearms on my knees so that the rows of people behind me could clearly see the cut I wore, The Fallen symbol on the back. I wasn’t smilin’, doin’ a fuckin’ jig or singin’ some pop song about it bein’ a beautiful fuckin’ day.

  Yet somehow even I knew I looked different. There was something wrong with the air around me, like a near invisible shroud of misery had been lifted and people could see me clearer. Hell, even I could see me clearer.

  I was fuckin’ happy, and after years of gettin’ by on rations of happy moments stolen from seein’ my kids grow good and strong, memories my brothers gave me ridin’ behind me in formation down the hot roads of the province and the brief flares of pleasure to be had from fuckin’ random pussy, this kinda happiness rocked me.

  Yeah, I was different and Cress was too smart not to see it.

  There was no reason to lie to her. She’d meet Lou sooner rather than later ’cause I planned to bring my girl over for Sunday dinner to “meet the family”.

  But I was a selfish man and I wanted just one more night with my teenage woman as my dirty secret.

  “Mute, brother.” King stood up with a loud cry to greet his best friend with a backslappin’ hug. Mute didn’t like to be touched but he was used to King, loved ’im more than anyone else in the fuckin’ world, and he embraced him back like they’d been parted for years insteada weeks.

  When they broke apart, they were both smilin’.

  “You been here this whole time? Why aren’t you sittin’ with us?” King asked, wavin’ a hand at the man sittin’ beside him to make room for Mute.

  The man blinked at my son, looked to me and the entire size of me, then forcefully shoved into the person on his other side to make room. I grinned at him manically and watched him swallow.

  Laughin’ under my breath, I caught the end of Mute sayin’, “Got a job to do.”

  Fuck.

  I stiffened before I could tell myself to stay cool. Cress was a fuckin’ hawk when it came to sniffin’ out secrets and I had a feelin’ mine was about to be blown to fuckin’ bits.

  King was frownin’. “A job? At a fuckin’ high school basketball game?” He laughed, lookin’ at me as he did it to confirm that Mute was bein’ ridiculous.

  Mute was never ridiculous and, un-fuckin’-fortunately, he never lied.

  “Gotta keep an eye on Foxy,” he said, lookin’ over at his charge as she did a fuckin’ backflip on the opposite side of the gym.

  “Foxy?” King and Cress both said at the same time.

  It woulda been funny if I was in the mood to find the situation funny.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my palms to ’em ’cause I knew what was comin’.

  “Louise Lafayette,” Mute explained, pointing at her. “The one with gold hair and gold skin and blue eyes like Barbie.”

  God, the kid never talked and now he was fuckin’ Shakespeare.

  I opened my eyes and peered between my fingers to see Cress lookin’ at me like a fuckin’ pedophile and King’s mouth wide open enough to swallow a Quarter Pounder without chewin’.

  I sighed, dropped my hands and shot Mute a look. “You do that on purpose or is this one of those things you can’t help doin’?”

  Mute blinked at me.

  No fuckin’ help there, then.

  “Zeus, please do not tell me you’re sleeping with Louise Lafayette,” Cressida breathed. “She’s a kid!”

  “Cress babe,” King muttered, sittin’ down beside her in a—useless—effort to control his woman. “Think ’fore you speak.”

  “She a kid like King was a kid when you two started fuckin’?” I asked blandly, adjustin’ one of the skull rings on my finger where it’d gone crooked from finger-fuckin’ Lou twenty minutes before.

  I brought my fingers to my nose and caught the salted caramel scent of her. Tried to focus on that insteada bein’ annoyed with Cress.

  “That was—” Cress opened and closed her mouth. “That was different and you know it!”

  “You know shit about it bein’ different,” I told ’er. “Careful here, Cress.”

  “Queenie,” King said, firm. “Let Dad explain.”

  She rolled her lips under for a second, tryin’ to reign in her sass.

  No surprise, she failed.

  “No, seriously, what the hell, Zeus? Louise is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the mayor! A man, I don’t have to remind you, who just last year held a freaking town meeting in an attempt to run The Fallen MC and, more specifically you, out of this town.”

  “Memory works fine,” I told her between my teeth.

  Didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to ’cause even more of a scene than we were already makin’. Lou needed to finish high school ’fore we went public in her mainstream society. We didn’t need my son’s woman outing us in the middle of a fuckin’ high school basketball game.

  “I’m trying really hard not to say something I can’t take back, but Zeus, help me understand how this isn’t wrong?” she begged me, her eyes wild with caged accusations.

  She’d been raised by parents so stuck in the mud, they were permanently rooted in it and their stifled, judgmental ways. I knew it, I’d witnessed it and defended her from it then watched her grow away from bein’ that herself, so told myself to calm down even as the anger rolled through me like thunder lookin’ for a place to land.

  I leaned toward her, closer than was necessary but I needed the threat to be real for her and I didn’t want to use my hands.

  “Listen here, teach. I met you, you were a repressed sad little woman livin’ a life you hated and the only thing you wanted, the only thing that could take you outta that, was my boy. Why do you think I gave you the go-ahead to fuck your student, to stand beside my son? ’Cause I’m a rebel and I didn’t give a fuck either way. How ’bout fuck no? How ’bout I knew what it was like to want someone younger, to want someone so fuckin’ forbidden it made you dark and corrupt even to thinka having ’em? I know love when I see it and you think I got that from bein’ with my fuckin’ ex-wife? No fuckin’ way. I know that shit ’cause I helped raise a little girl with the soul of a fuckin’ angel and when she turned into a woman and still somehow had that fuckin’ soul after everythin’ she’d been through and I got the chance to hold that kinda woman in my arms, you think I was nuts enough not to take it?
”

  Cress blinked at me.

  King did too, his face slack and younger lookin’ than I’d seen it in a long time.

  Mute looked satisfied, his arms crossed over his chest and a hint of a fuckin’ smile round his mouth.

  Yeah, the bastard had done it on fuckin’ purpose.

  “Sometimes, Cress, you’re even younger than my son,” I told her with a disappointed frown.

  She gasped slightly and leaned back into King who banded an arm around her hips and dragged her the rest of the way into his lap.

  “The letters,” King said. “Remember you writin’ ’em, even when you got home you’d still write ’em every week. H.R. thought you were workin’ or some shit but I knew it was somethin’ else. You’d always get angry after writin’ ’em, frustrated.”

  “Always been a smart kid,” I told him, leaning forward to punch him lightly on the chin.

  “You’re in love with Louise Lafayette,” Cress said soft and fulla wonder. “Zeus Garro is in love and it’s with my heartbreaking and beautiful favourite ex-student, Louise Lafayette.”

  “Second favourite,” King amended.

  “She prefers Loulou,” I told ’em. “And I’m bringin’ her over for Sunday dinner so you two better be fuckin’ gems ’cause I still got Harleigh Rose to think ’bout.”

  The three of us looked over to where my daughter was leanin’ against the wall to the exit door of the gym, smokin’ a cigarette when she shoulda been cheering. A teacher hurried over and told her to put it out. She did, in the guy’s coffee.

  “You’re fucked,” King said.

  “Don’t I know it,” I agreed.

  The game was over and so, unfortunately and fortunately, was my relationship with Reece. He’d taken one look at me after the game, at my swollen mouth and remorseful eyes and known.

  “Wish I could say you’ll regret dumping me, but I have the feeling you won’t,” he’d said and then because he was one of the best guys I’d ever known, he’d hugged me. “It was a hope and a dream that I could tame a wild one like you.”

  “You were the one who taught me to be wild.” I’d laughed wetly, because for some reason I wanted to cry. It felt like the end of something, like I was shedding the last vestige of Louise. At least, the last part of her life that I actually liked.

  Reece’s beautiful face screwed up as he tugged on my ribbon-tied ponytail. “It was always in there, babe. Just needed a little coaxing.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered past the lump in my throat.

  He nodded. “Not more than me. Listen, you need anything, I’m here and I won’t even ask for a kiss as payment, okay?”

  God, he was amazing.

  I wondered briefly if he’d ever stood a chance with me, even if Zeus hadn’t sucked me into his life and planted me there for good. I looked over at the crowd of people leaving the gym and immediately caught the back of Zeus’s dark hair, head and shoulders above the people around him. There was a break in the flood and I caught sight of the wicked skull and flaming wings across his leather jacket and knew without a flicker of a doubt, that I’d never been meant for anything or anyone else.

  Reece had read the resolve in my face, squeezed my hand and shook his head ruefully before walking off to join his celebrating teammates.

  I’d felt like shit but also strangely relieved. It was one thing crossed off the laundry list of obstacles threatening to take down my man and me.

  Speaking of obstacles, my parents took the time to find me after the game and walk me to the car. Phillipa had her arm around my waist, her head bent close as she giggled about the gossip she’d learned that day. It wasn’t that she wanted to share it with me particularly, it was that it made her look younger, our blond heads together like sisters instead of mother and daughter. People looked over as we passed and praised my mother for being just that, a mother and a good one at that.

  The irony made my teeth ache.

  Benjamin had Bea under his arm but they both looked uncomfortable, especially when a local reporter stopped to take a picture of them and ask them some questions. Dad didn’t know how to bring Bea into the conversation because he didn’t know her at all, and Bea didn’t know what to do because she rarely had the opportunity to shine alone.

  It was vaguely depressing, but I was still riding my orgasm high as we stopped at the curb of the parking lot and stood talking with random family friends like the school was our home and we were thanking people for coming to visit.

  In a way, we were.

  EBA was my parents’, grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ high school. It was the seat of youth in Entrance and so now, Bea and I went there and with us as a viable connection, my family could rule there too.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the appeal of that power, of having men come up to my father in search of endorsements and political favours, of my mother raising and lowering women in her society with the twitch of an eyelid or the flip of a hand.

  It was heady stuff, that kind of power.

  But as I understood it, being Queen and King of Entrance was hollow. Mayors were elected out of office, society queens grew elderly, old families moved out of town and new ones moved in.

  No, I wanted power but the real kind, the kind that was deeply rooted in fear and reverence, power and genuine cleverness that kept you at the top of the greedy pile of bodies that had tried and failed around you.

  Zeus’s kind of power.

  The kind built on blood, sweat, threats and tears in credence of a lifestyle based on freedom of expression, brotherhood and defiance of the man just because he was the fucking man.

  That was real power worthy of sacrificing your kids, their health and dreams for.

  I was willing to play the power game, but only if I was doing it by Zeus’s side and playing it his way.

  I was distracted by my rebellious thoughts when I heard the piercing scream.

  One second, I was in the parking lot of EBA about to get into my car and the next second I was on the ground, my face crushed to the rough pavement and my hands and knees scraped up from the fall.

  “You slut!” a girl shrieked from where she dug her knees into my back. “You disgusting filthy slut.”

  Um, okay, what?

  I tried to wiggle out of her hold but she was strong.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked even though I had a horrible sinking suspicion.

  How many girls would blindside someone with a side tackle in a parking lot and call them a slut for everyone to hear?

  A biker’s girl, that’s who.

  “Harleigh?” I asked, straining to turn my head in order to look at her.

  It was at least half an hour after the game had finished but these sorts of things were a social occasion in Entrance as much as anything else and people still lingered, mingling. People, including my parents who were frozen in horror at the scandalous sight before them.

  “It’s Harleigh Rose, bitch,” she said as she pushed my head back into the ground. “And if you think you can fuck my dad and get him in trouble with the cops or something, you are so fucking wrong.”

  “Harleigh Rose,” I tried again as the asphalt rubbed my cheek raw. “Let me up and let’s talk about this somewhere private.”

  “Fuck private. You want the world to know you’re fuckin’ my dad so you and your dumbass family can attack The Fallen. Why the fuck else would you disappear under the fuckin’ stands for everyone to see?” she hissed in my ear, thankfully low enough for only me to hear.

  I was officially tired of this. Despite the cancer, I was still strong. A lifetime of ballet dancing gives you the kind of mean strength that’s hidden in long, lean muscles. I used it to buck up to my hands and knees then toss Harleigh Rose off me.

  Immediately she got back to her feet, her thick blond-streaked brown hair a crazy mess around her sneering face.

  “I don’t want to fight you, be reasonable here,” I told her, holding my hands up in the universal gesture of p
acifism.

  She spat at me. “Touch him again and I’ll do more than fight you. You probably think you’re too good for the likes of us but it’s the opposite way around.”

  I shook my head at her and spoke in a low voice because people were converging on us and I knew there were only bad endings in store for Harleigh Rose.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about and if you’d just give me a second to explain or find Z—” I tried.

  And failed, because the next second she was slapping me across the face, one of her rings cutting me across the cheek. “Don’t you dare say his fucking name when you’re trying to con him!”

  I staggered back, blinking rapidly so I missed the chaos as men erupted out of the gym doors and flooded the scene. I bent over to plant my hands on my knees and blink the tears out of my eyes when two hands lifted me up and spun me around midair so that I was deposited on a broad, hard back.

  Mute.

  He stood strong with his booted feet spread apart, glaring forward at the scene but keeping me at a distance from it. Officer Lionel Danner, my parents, and Zeus argued with each other while King Kyle Garro held back his struggling sister.

  “Mute, put me down, I need to get in there,” I told him, trying to wriggle out of his hold.

  His hands were iron shackles around the backs of my thighs. “Stay.”

  I stopped struggling because it was fruitless, my cheek hurt like a motherfucker and I didn’t want to miss anything else.

  “Your daughter is a menace, Garro,” my dad was claiming, his finger pointed like an ineffective weapon at Zeus. “This is what happens when you raise girls in a gang.”

  “Girls get worked up over boys all the time, Mayor. Not sure this is anythin’ to write home about,” Zeus drawled.

  “Danner, aren’t you going to arrest this girl?” my dad demanded, turning to Lionel when he failed to rile up Zeus. “She assaulted my daughter.”

  Lionel’s usually stern face looked years younger when he fought a smile as he did then. “Mayor, I understand you’re angry, but really, I think this was a harmless bit of teenage drama.”