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

by Giana Darling

  “Detention then, at least!” my mother tried, her hands shaking as she pressed one to her heart and one to Bea’s shoulder to bring her even closer to her side. “Your daughter needs to understand there are consequences to attacking someone. Maybe in your… home or wherever it is people like you live…you encourage behavior like this but in the real world, it’s completely unseemly.”

  I thought it was funny that my parents were so staunchly defending me when they didn’t even know I’d been saved and piggybacked by one of the very bikers they hated so much.

  I rested my cheek against Mute’s shoulder, my chin in his neck. He stiffened for a second then rested his head lightly against mine. My heart melted even in the midst of this chaos.

  “H.R., you gonna do somethin’ like this ever again or have you learned your lesson?” Zeus called to his daughter, his voice mild like he was bored with the conversation and was only placating my parents.

  They noticed and both their jaws went tight with anger.

  “I’m on my period,” Harleigh Rose admitted with a defeated scowl.

  Zeus nodded like that explained everything. “Look there, my girl’s on the rag. ’Course she’s feeling emotional. I think we all can understand that, can’t we, Officer?”

  I laughed into Mute’s neck.

  Officer Lionel looked about ready to laugh himself, but he schooled his face admirably and frowned at Harleigh Rose. “I’ve picked you up more times than I care to count for minor offenses. Let’s not level up to a bodily assault charge, okay?”

  To my surprise, H.R. blushed and ducked her head so that a soft curtain of hair partially hid her expression. “Yeah,” she muttered petulantly. “Whatever.”

  “Looks like this thing is all cleared up, then. I’ll just be takin’ my daughter home and we’ll let you folks get on your merry fuckin’ way,” Zeus said magnanimously, already moving his family to the other side of the parking lot. “Okay, Mute, let Louise go.”

  I giggled again as I slid from Mute’s back and made my way back over to my parents who stared at me in horror.

  “Louise,” my mother breathed. “Are you… friends with one of those men?”

  I smiled at her, pulled a highly entertained Bea into my arms and started walking toward the car. “Yes, Mum. Mute’s been one of my best friends for ages now.”

  “Ages?” Phillipa echoed as she followed us to the car, casting a fearful glance over her shoulder at Zeus and King, standing so fierce and proud on the other side of the lot beside their huge motorcycles.

  I understood her fear. They were like gargoyles, horrifying at first sight in their ferocity but utterly beautiful up-close, intricate with detail and gruesome because their role as guardians called for them to be so.

  I was glad my mother feared them. She had cause to.

  Men like that only protected the innocent and the loyal, and my mother was no such thing.

  “Yep,” I confirmed as I pushed Bea into the car and then opened the door of the Lexus SUV for my mother. “He’s been over to the house nearly every day for the past few weeks.”

  “Oh,” she said as I closed the door on her after she’d gotten in.

  “Dad,” I called to Benjamin who was arguing with poor Officer Danner again. “Come on!”

  They ignored me and as I walked closer, I caught sight of the utter disgust on Lionel’s face as my father spoke.

  “You better get on board with things here, son,” my dad was threatening, his habitually immaculate hair gone slightly astray in the ruckus. It was a small thing but it reminded me of my father’s fallibility. “Your father is always vouching for you but I’m beginning to doubt your investment in this.”

  “I’m invested, Ben, and I don’t have to answer to you,” Lionel said.

  “I’m the mayor,” my dad said as if that explained just how wrong Lionel was.

  “And Javier is the one with the money and the connections. My dad is the one with the intel, Jack and Ace are the ones with the inside track and Mitch is the one with the dealers. That makes us equal.”

  “Fuck,” my dad swore viciously, so unlike him I stayed frozen between two cars, only a meter away from them. He ran a hand through his mussed hair and looked, for a moment, utterly lost. “I don’t know how it got to be this way, Danner, I really don’t.”

  Lionel squinted at him. “As a cop you learn pretty quick what motivates people and you know what it is 85% of the time, Ben? Greed. Plain and simple.”

  “I have money,” my dad muttered.

  “Vengeance and pride work a close second,” Danner retorted. “Garro hurt your daughter, undermines your respect and makes more money than you do each year in around about a month with the operation he’s got going. Trust me, Ben, you’re chin-deep in shit and it stinks of greed.”

  With that parting shot, Officer Danner inclined his head and prowled over to his personal vehicle, an old Mustang convertible.

  My dad stood there for a second, looking so lost that I almost didn’t recognize him. All I knew was that my dad was doing more than his usual bit to incarcerate The Fallen, and in his quest, he might end up precariously close to incarceration himself.

  Zeus.

  I was fuckin’ livid.

  Don’t know where the fuck H.R. got off on bein’ a bitch to a woman she didn’t even know. What did it matter that Lou was her age in number if not in fuckin’ maturity?

  The woman made me happier than Harleys, Canadian whiskey and any kinda high.

  But my kid didn’t want to hear it.

  The second we’d got home, I’d called her out on her shit. Fights in the Garro house were usually loud bursts of shoutin’ and screamin’ followed by hours of brooding silence. We all had tempers but H.R.’s was worst of all.

  She called me disgustin’, cryin’ as she did it as if I’d broken her little girl heart by fallin’ in love with a woman. She’d never had a hope of her mum and me gettin’ back together and when that childhood pain had drained away, she’d grown up likin’ her dad’s full attention.

  She wasn’t gonna get as much of it now and my spoiled brat didn’t like it.

  “You’ll be nice to her on pain of bein’ turned out on the street,” I’d growled at her when she’d called Lou a slut for the last fuckin’ time.

  I’d sent Cress on ahead before gettin’ involved with the confrontation at the school and when I’d come home, she’d been ready. She had her jacket on, purse across her shoulder and keys in hand. She knew it’d come to H.R. stormin’ out, so when she did, tears streamin’ at my dishonest threat, Cress followed her with a gentle smile my way.

  She’d do what she could with my girl.

  The cat was outta the bag now and it was fuckin’ scratchin’ and wailin’ like a wild thing but I had hope H.R. was mature enough to see that Lou made her old man happy.

  I wrenched a kitchen chair out from the table and dropped myself in it with a loud fuckin’ sigh.

  King did the same.

  “Why do I feel like my son is ’bout to give his old man a lecture?” I griped, running my hands through my hair to relieve some of the stress runnin’ through my body.

  He shrugged. “Spend a fuckuva lota time with Cress, it’s not a bad guess.”

  I sighed, slid the pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and laughed despite my fuckin’ fury when I saw that Lou’d drawn a disgusted or dyin’ face on each cancer stick. I looked up grinn’ as I put the pack back in my pocket. “Have at it, then.”

  “’S not really a lecture, Dad. Just me tellin’ ya that I get it. I get what it’s like to see the face of an angel and covet it so hard, you’ll do anythin’ to posses it. And I know what it’s like at the end’a that road when you got her beside you and you wake up to that face of beauty every fuckin’ day like you’re livin’ a dream.”

  King paused for a sec, searchin’ my face before he continued. “Yeah, I get that you’re on that road now and I get you know it’s a fuckin’ rough ride, but you gotta do what you gotta do t
o secure that kinda happiness for yourself. Don’t regret a minute of the pain that was securin’ my woman to my side and know you won’t either. H.R.’s a little girl still but she’ll come ’round.”

  I stared off over his shoulder, rubbin’ my fingers through my beard as I thought over my son’s wisdom and blessin’. He’d always been a smart kid and I liked to think I’d given him that. He’d stopped bein’ a son to raise a long fuckin’ time ago and now he was more like one of my brothers, one of The Fallen.

  “When you comin’ home to prospect?” I asked, because as far as I was concerned, the other conversation was wrapped up tight.

  King laughed and slapped his messy hair into a knot at the back of his head. “Why’d I know that was comin’?”

  “As I said, smart boy.”

  “You serious though, Dad? ’Cause Cress and I are havin’ a fuckin’ blast down in Vancouver but you need us, we’ll be back faster than you can say ‘The Fallen.’ Hope you get that.”

  “Got it. But nah, it was just the wishful thinkin’ of an old man. Shits goin’ down with the Nightstalkers and I’m not sure who to trust, to tell you the fuckin’ truth of it.”

  King frowned. “You think you got a rat?”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I held up a finger for King and answered, “Yeah.”

  “Prez, there’s another fire,” Nova said over the sound of revving engines in the background.

  “Fuck, where this time?”

  “The grow-op near Squamish. We got Officer Hutchinson over there now, he’ll deal with keepin’ the illegal nature of the warehouse on the down low, but there’s more.”

  “Say it,” I growled.

  “They hit the tattoo parlor and the truckin’ company too. There’s graffiti everywhere and they took all the money from the till at Street Ink Tat Parlor, but there wasn’t anythin’ to take from Edge Trucking. This was to make a fuckin’ point.”

  “Motherfuckers,” I spat. “How the fuck they’d know about Edge Trucks, huh? Buck’s owned that company since before he was even a fuckin’ member and it’s under his old fuckin’ name. Explain that to me, would ya?”

  “Can’t,” Nova said grimly. “Got that kid Curtains on it. I’m headin’ to Street Ink, Bat’s over in Squamish and Buck’s at the trucking company.”

  “I’ll meet Bat,” I said.

  “Uh, I’d meet me, Prez, the staff sergeant’s at Street Ink and he’s claimin’ the business was ‘unsafe’ and in violation of about a dozen fuckin’ codes.”

  “Fuck,” I roared. “Who the fuck told them about this shit? I swear to motherfuckin’ God that heads will fuckin’ roll for this shit.”

  I hung up, jammed the phone in my pocket and stormed over to the door.

  “Later,” I called over my shoulder to King,

  He was up and movin’ though. “I’m comin’.”

  “You’re not a member of this club, kid.”

  His eyes flashed grey as a lightning strike just like mine. “Fuck that. We both know I was born a member and I’ll die a member. Just ’cause I ain’t prospectin’ doesn’t mean this isn’t my goddamn family that’s been fucked with.”

  I clapped him on the back and brought ’im close to press our foreheads together and squeeze the back of his neck. “How’d an old fuck like me end up with such a kickass kid?”

  He grinned and clapped me on the back. “Pure luck.”

  It was late, or fuckin’ early dependin’ on how you looked at it. It’d been a long fuckin’ night of puttin’ out fires, literally and metaphorically. Our friendly neighborhood cop, Hutchinson, had dealt with the fire at the grow-op but we’d lost the entire fuckin’ thing. It was a huge loss even for the scale of an operation like ours and to say I was pissed woulda been the understatement of the fuckin’ year.

  There were three more of those glossy eight-by-ten photographs, one at each scene and each mutilated violently. King’s stuck in the empty till at Street Ink, Cress’s plastered on the gates to the Edge Trucking lot and Lou’s on the mailbox at the grow-op.

  More warnings.

  Only they weren’t warnings anymore. They were threats and I wasn’t havin’ fuckin’ anymore of that shit.

  The problem was, I didn’t know where the fuck these fuckin’ Nightstalkers were. They weren’t actin’ like bikers. I didn’t see ’em drivin’ down the streets of Entrance in their colours or hear tell of them in any biker bars on the Sea to Sky. They were just these invisible enemies playin’ a game I didn’t want any fuckin’ part of.

  They were bein’ smarter than last time, which meant that they had someone else helpin’ ’em. Someone smarter, and I intended to find out who that fuckin’ well was.

  None of the brothers would be sleepin’ for a long fuckin’ time, includin’ me, but I was tired as shit, mad as hellfire and I wanted—fuckin’ needed—my girl.

  Which was why I’d parked my bike down the road from her house and was calmly breakin’ into the backdoor of the Lafayette mansion. They had a weakass-alarm that I disarmed easily with a little help from The Fallen’s resident computer hacker, Curtains, and then crossed softly in my boots through the house and up the epic fuckin’ staircase.

  Wasn’t a man who liked opulence, gold plated this or eighteenth century that, but even I could recognize that the place was worth a fuckin’ mint. It was fucked to me that my Lou grew up in a place like it, like a fuckin’ museum. There were no pictures of the kids on the walls, only old guys with huntin’ rifles, and there was no life in the house. No clothes on the stairs or keys and shit on tables. Just rich furniture and a smell like clean money.

  I knew which bedroom was Lou’s from the letters. She’d always talked about the huge willow tree outside her bay window, about the fact that her nanny had let her paint her door pale pink in defiance of her parents and then promptly been fuckin’ fired for it.

  So I knew when I pushed open that pink door that Lou would be asleep in her bed but I wasn’t prepared for what the sighta her curled up in a fuckin’ frilly white-and-pink bed would do to my cock.

  I felt like the fuckin’ monster under the bed come to play with the little girl bedded down in it.

  My cock hardened with each step as I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed to take off my boots.

  She didn’t stir.

  It was the first night she hadn’t spent in my bed in a week and there was no way after a night like the one I’d just had that I was okay goin’ to bed without her warmth beside me.

  When I’d shucked the boots, I shrugged off my leather jacket, unbuckled my jeans and tugged off my shirt before leanin’ down into the bed to get a closer look at the girl who’d stolen this monster’s cold heart.

  Her eyelids were pale purple and there were faint bruises at the tops of her cheeks. I frowned as I brushed a thumb over the silky bruises and wondered if I wasn’t lettin’ her get enough sleep. Those lids pulled slowly open when I slid my workingman’s hand ’cross her cheek and down her neck.

  She stared at me without fear, her pure blue eyes filled with wonder instead.

  “Zeus,” she breathed like I was a fuckin’ dream come true. “You’re here.”

  I kissed her warm, sleep-soft mouth. Without hesitation, she kissed me back, sliding her small wet tongue against mine in an innocent way that had me groanin’.

  When I pulled back to look into her face, she was frownin’.

  “Bad day for my guardian monster,” she whispered, her hand comin’ up to stroke my cheek and into my hair.

  Fuck but her sweetness did me in.

  “Roughest in a while, all good now I got my girl with me,” I told her honestly.

  “What happened?”

  “Not tellin’ you much, Lou. Not ever and that’s for your own good, yeah? But there’s stuff goin’ down with another gang, Nightstalkers, and shit’s gonna get violent and real before it gets gone. Need you to know and need you to be fuckin’ careful, yeah? Don’t leave Mute’s fuckin’ side when you’re not with me.”


  “You’re more than angry. I think you might even be scared,” she noticed like the sharp shooter she was.

  I rubbed a weary hand over my tired eyes. “They went after King’s woman last year. Seems they’re gearin’ up to go after family again.”

  “But why?” she asked, and I forgot that she was so fuckin’ innocent in all of this.

  “Got a business that keeps me cash rich and morally poor, Lou. Lotsa people want a piece of that, good ones and bad. This club wants what The Fallen has and they’ve decided the best way to take it is by cripplin’ us with death and debt.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Burned down coupla our operations but it’s the threats, I’m not down with. Can’t have my kids getting’ hurt,” I leaned down to suck her bottom lip into my mouth. “Can’t have my girl getting’ hurt, either.”

  She bit the lip I’d sucked, not realizin’ how it made my dick twitch. “I think my dad’s involved in it somehow. I heard him talking to Lionel after my cat-fight with H.R. earlier and it seemed like he was in trouble.”

  I went solid. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  She did, her eyes faraway as she told me the names involved in the scheme.

  “Don’t know who the fuck Mitch, Jack and Javier are, but Ace fuckin’ Munford is the motherfuckin’ rat who’s the reason things went down the way they did at First Light Church the day of the shootin’,” I told her. “He’s Blackjack’s deadbeat dad.”

  I didn’t realize I was vibrating ’til Lou’s warm hands slid up my arms and squeezed. “Text someone else to take over for the rest of the night and get in here with me. The bad guys and conspiracy theories will still be there in the morning. I want to feel my man beside me.”

  My heart burned ’cause the old thing wasn’t used to feelin’ so much. Her easy acceptance of my violent life and me was a gift I’d never get tired of receivin’.

  “Lose the pants,” she added when I got up to get in.

  I chuckled softly but did as my girl wanted and lost ’em. Her eyes tracked over my chest and abs, down my legs and back up to the hard-on pressin’ hard against my boxers.