Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2)
Page 27
King shoved back from his chair, already pulling his phone from his pocket. Cressida got up too and went to the stove to put on the kettle and grab a bottle of tequila from the freezer.
Zeus peeled my wet face out of his neck and held my head like I was breakable as an eggshell in his ham like hands. A low growl started up in his chest as two fingers gently brushed the aching skin of my cheek.
I placed my hand over his heart, dipping a finger into the divot of his gunshot scar. “Sorry I interrupted you in the middle of dinner.”
Zeus shook his head at me but I’d successfully broken the seal on his bottled-up fury and let a little air escape.
Cress and H.R. laughed at me. Then to my surprise, the latter came over to place a gentle hand on my shoulder and asked, “Want me to make you up a plate?”
“Smells good.”
H.R. grinned. “I made it, my famous chili. Dad’s a shit cook, which you probably know already, but I make some serious magic in the kitchen.”
“Looking forward to tasting it,” I said with a small smile as I wearily rested my head back on Z’s hard chest.
H.R. nodded then looked up at the rage in her father’s face and hers transformed into a mirror of that fury. Evidently, no Garro liked a man who hit women and Z’s girl wanted to see him ruin my dad nearly as much as he did.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked me.
I sighed deeply. “If I tell you will you promise not to kill him?”
“Fuck no.”
I sighed even deeper. “Didn’t think so.”
“You’re still gonna fuckin’ tell me,” he warned me.
“Someone sent my dad photos of us like you’ve been getting at the fire sites. There was a whole dossier of them so clearly someone’s been watching us.”
“Fuck,” he roared over my shoulder but I didn’t flinch, because I’d known he’d react this way and part of me yearned for it. I wanted to pit my guardian monster against my beast of a father and see Zeus tear him apart with his bare hands.
“I’m goin’ to have a word with the fuckin’ mayor.”
“He might be expecting that, Z,” I warned him because even though my dad seemed relatively oblivious, it was clear Javier had a part in the unveiling.
“Good.” He grinned down at me then captured my mouth in a toe-curling kiss.
“What was that for?” I panted slightly when he was done, my hand fisted into his tee.
“Can’t have my girl in my lap and not kiss ’er,” he said like it was obvious.
“Thank you for being my safe place,” I whispered, aware of his daughter and Cressida in the room but not caring because my heart was going to implode if I didn’t share some of what I was feeling.
“I got you, little girl,” he reminded me of the words he’d said when I was seven years old and running toward him through a hail of gunfire.
Even then, I knew the kind of man he was and knew he’d take care of me.
I brushed my lips against his, so silky smooth compared to the roughness of his beard. “I love you, ya know?”
He smiled under my questing mouth. “Love you like it’s my religion, little Lou.” Then he pressed his forehead to mine and said, “Just in case there was any fuckin’ doubt, this is your house now and my bed is your bed. Wanted you here anyway, sorry it happened this way, little warrior, so fuckin’ sorry, but glad you’re here all the fuckin’ same.”
“Tequila?” Cressida asked, coming to the table with a full bottle of Patrón Gold, a bowl of fresh cut limes and a saltshaker. “I only learned how to do a shooter last year but I’m freaking hooked. I think it solves everything.”
“Not hangovers,” H.R. said drily.
“No tequila for Lou,” Zeus said over my laughter. “She can’t drink doin’ chemo. That tea you put on would be good. Somethin’ herbal.”
Cress, H.R. and I all turned our heads to stare at Zeus with the same shocked expression.
He shrugged. “Did some research when I found out Lou was sick.”
“You did?” I asked, moved beyond belief and also a little amused that my badass biker had spent the time looking up medical information.
“Fuck yeah. Gotta know how to take care of my little warrior. Now, get off me so I can handle your fuckin’ father.”
He slipped me out of his lap and onto the chair then jerked his chin at King as he came back into the kitchen shrugging on his leather jacket and looking like something out of a James Dean movie.
“Aim to maim not kill,” Harleigh Rose called out helpfully as they headed out the front door.
I laughed at her and curled up into an even tighter ball, wincing at the pain in my eye now that Zeus wasn’t around to distract me. H.R. noticed and went to get a pack of frozen peas from the fridge. She wrapped the package in a dishcloth and gently pressed it to my cheek.
I hissed.
“Sorry, can you hold this here?” Harleigh Rose asked. “I’ll make you a plate of food and then we can watch a movie. I know you’ve had a rough night and I should let you choose the film but I’m really big into old Westerns right now, so how about we compromise. I choose the genre, you choose the film?”
“She’s only into Westerns because she has a huge crush on Officer Danner,” Cressida explained as she prepared my pot of tea.
I laughed before I realized that she was serious because Harleigh Rose sent her a withering glare.
“Sorry, just, a biker’s kid with a cop? Isn’t that like wrong?”
She tossed her wild mane of streaky blond hair over her shoulder and fisted her hands on her hips as she leveled me with a look. “Sorry, but isn’t the mayor’s kid with a MC Prez the same fuckin’ thing?”
“Touché,” I said with a wince then winced again because the expression put pressure on my cheek.
Cressida laughed as she came to the table with the tea and poured us our cups like a perfect little lady. “I shacked up with my eighteen-year-old student a week after we started dating, so I don’t think any of us are in a position to judge the other.”
“I still can’t believe you did that,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you guys do it at school?”
“Um, ew!” Harleigh Rose put her fingers in her ears. “Disgusting much?”
Cress winked at me. “The better question would be, when didn’t we do it at school? My King has a thing for public sex.”
“Mmm, I know what you mean, Z and I did it under the bleachers at a basketball game.”
“No,” Cress covered her laughing mouth and propped her pretty face in her hands. “In your cheerleading outfit? King would love something like that…Do you think I could borrow that?”
“Okay, hold up,” H.R. demanded on a shout. “If we’re all going to be one big modern fuckin’ family we need to make a rule about sex talk. I don’t think my brain can handle knowing what my dad and brother do in bed.”
“Fair.” I nodded slowly. “My brain can barely handle it either and I’m the one doing it.”
“Okay, see, that’s what I’m talking about, waaay gross.”
Cressida and I laughed, or at least, I tried to, but my cheek was too swollen to allow much movement and the frozen peas had made my face numb.
A key rattled in the front door and a second later, Mute appeared in the front hall. He didn’t look over at us startled women. Instead, he calmly relocked the door and put his keys on the catch-all table beside the stairs. He watched his booted feet move across the wood floorboards as he crossed into the kitchen and came to a stop unerringly at my side.
Only then did he look up at me and when he did a strange garbled groan emerged from his chest.
“Foxy,” he said, dropping to his knees and taking the peas from my hand so he could look at the split flesh. “No.”
“I’m okay, Mute,” I said softly.
“Wasn’t there,” he grunted.
There was heartbreak in his dark eyes as he stared up at me. It echoed in my chest.
“Not your fault, Mute. My da
d’s an asshole.”
“Shoulda been there,” he said again.
“Can’t be there all the time,” I pointed out reasonably.
His heavy brow fell into a glower. “Me or Zeus.”
“Mute…”
He held out his hand with his pinky extended like he’d seen me do with Zeus.
The gesture warmed my heart but more, I knew this behavior from the Autism Centre. If I didn’t agree with Mute on something he felt this strongly about, I knew he would throw a tantrum like Sammy would have. My silent hero was still smarting from not knowing about the cancer and I knew this was the final straw.
Mute would stalk me if he had to, in order to keep me safe.
So, I linked my pinky finger with his and we shook thumbs.
“We’re going to watch a movie,” I told him. “A Western.”
“John Wayne,” he said instantly, getting to his feet.
He went to a long cupboard beside the fridge, reached in and came out with a huge bag full of salted nuts and another with HealthWise popcorn. Even his snack food was always healthy. The three of us watched him as he walked out of the kitchen and the sound of the TV floated in from the other room.
“Come on,” he called.
I turned to Cress and H.R. and grinned. “I think John Wayne awaits.”
Zeus.
The night was mine.
It always had been.
I’d never been scared of monsters in the dark or things that went bump in the night. I was part of that world, been born into it and grown up with intrinsic knowledge of how to tame those beasts and corral those demons toward my ends.
The shadows embraced me as I stalked across the Lafayette yard ’round to the back door where I’d broken in before, using the same lock picks and the same alarm code Curtains and Lou had confirmed for me beforehand.
The house was quiet.
But I could smell the fear and shame waftin’ through the house like the scent of some baked thing, this one cookin’ deep in the gut of the man I’d come to scare.
It was just me.
King had wanted a part, Mute too, and Bat, Nova and Buck had been so fuckin’ enraged I was sure there’d be a drive-by shootin’ on tomorrow’s front page of the paper.
But I was Prez and what I said fuckin’ went.
So, it was just me. Wearin’ all black beneath my cut, leather gloves on my hands and steel toes in my boots.
I had a message to send like the angel fuckin’ Gabriel.
Warm yellow light spilled out the door of Benjamin Lafayette’s study and the quiet rustle of papers sounded within.
Alone and workin’.
A normal night.
Not one where he’d beaten and verbally abused a seventeen-year-old girl with cancer.
Just a normal fuckin’ night in the Lafayette Mansion on Entrance Hill.
Fuckin’ dickbag.
I debated stormin’ into the room like an avengin’ angel but decided that my wrath couldn’t be settled with bluster. It sat cold and vibrant, complex like a multifaceted diamond. That hatred had sat like a lump in my gut through the years of writin’ Lou, hearin’ about the neglect her father shoveled out and the pressure to be perfect he shoveled in. But now it’d been condensed by the monumental weight of his latest fuckin’ transgression.
He’d beaten his fuckin’ daughter.
Hit her right in the face.
It burned in me that I’d been at the root’a that action, but I knew with clarity that this was not my fuckin’ fault.
I wasn’t the man bringin’ her a lifetime of pain.
I was the man healin’ her, from the inside out.
So, instead of dramatics, I slipped around the door and took advantage of his fuckin’ self-absorption and walked through the shadows clingin’ to the wall until I was just behind him.
He was older than me, not by a lot, but there was grey in his hair and thinnin’ at the back of his head that had to have made him self-conscious. He reached back to rub at the spot like he unconsciously felt something behind him puttin’ pressure there.
I grinned as I stepped forward, my 9mm in one hand.
Quick as I flash, I took his thin neck in a headlock and pressed the cold butt of the gun to his temple. He let out a shrill kinda garble, the sound a man makes just before he pisses himself.
Loved knowing he was such a pussy that the first sign of a threat put the fear of God into him.
“Shh,” I hushed him and tightened my grip so he’d stop his struggle. “Just here to have a chat, Benny Boy. Father to father. Man to man. See, I got my girl at home with a black fuckin’ eye and she tells me it was you who did it.”
I laughed in his ear and felt him shudder.
“Hard to believe though, ain’t it? A man throwin’ a punch at the face of his own daughter, a young woman with half of his fuckin’ DNA and all of his fuckin’ love inside ’er? Honest to Christ, Benny, it’s hard to wrap my fuckin’ mind around. So, I thought I’d come here and ask you straight up, you hit Lou tonight?”
His Adam’s apple scraped against my forearm as he swallowed hard.
“I’m her father. This is between me and my daughter.” He tried to say it strong, like the mayor he was, only he didn’t have shit to stand on and he knew it.
“See, that’s where you’re just fuckin’ wrong. That girl you hit tonight, she mighta been your daughter once and she might still have your fuckin’ genes, but she’s not your daughter now. And to be honest with you, Benny Boy, she started bein’ my fuckin’ girl the first time you left her down in a colossal fuckin’ way, when there were bullets flyin’ everywhere and you ducked down to save yourself ’fore your kid. She became my girl the second she saw me ‘cross the lot and knew in her soul she’d found someone to take care of ’er true.
She was right about that. I take care of my brothers and unlike you, Benny, I put my kids ’fore my every fuckin’ breath. And now I have Lou? Now, you’ve gifted her to me on a fuckin’ platter? I’m gonna keep ’er. She’ll be warm in my bed, safe in my house and protected from anything that might fuckin’ hurt her, includin’ you, for the rest of her goddamn life.”
I tightened my hold on his neck ’til he gasped for breath and then I shoved the barrel of my gun into his mouth until he choked on it.
My voice was low, almost too low and rough to understand but I spoke close to his ear so he wouldn’t miss a fuckin’ word’a it.
“I’m not gonna hurt you like I wanna, Benny. I’m not gonna string you up from your balls, rip off your pathetic little dick and shove it down your throat or skin you alive and dip you in fuckin’ acid. Hush,” I ordered when he let out a scared little whimper. “I’m not gonna do any of that ’cause I got a beautiful fuckin’ girl to get home to, but I am gonna share somethin’ with you. The next time you touch Lou, the next time you degrade ’er or fuckin’ breathe on ’er the wrong way, I’m gonna end your life and I’m gonna do it with my bare hands around your neck so that I can have the satis-fuckin’-faction of feelin’ your pathetic life leave your body. You get me, Benny Boy?”
He nodded as enthusiastically as he could with my arm wrapped around his throat.
I shoved the gun a little farther down his gullet just to hear him choke and then removed it so I could hit the motherfucker hard over that thinnin’ spot on his fuckin’ head so he passed out.
He’d given Lou bad nightmares with his shit that night.
It was only fair I gave him some in return.
And I was only too fuckin’ happy to be the monster that starred in that show.
I moved into the Garro house just in time for Christmas. It was strange to live in a house filled with a close but busy family. Harleigh Rose went to Entrance Public school, which started fifteen minutes later and ended half an hour earlier than EBA and at first, she spent most of her time out of the house hanging out with her boyfriend but as the month progressed and the Christmas spirit deepened, she spent more and more time at home with the family.
It was strange living with Zeus. I’d never lived by myself, let alone with a lover before so I’d never experienced tripping over men’s clothes strewn across the floor because he never picked up after himself or falling into the toilet because he never put the goddamn toilet seat down. He was also the Prez of a highly successful, highly illegal MC that turned wicked profits growing top quality BC Bud and selling to distributors, as well as several lucrative lawful businesses that needed minding. On top of all that, his life was his club, which meant that I didn’t see Z as much as I would have thought.
He didn’t have a schedule. He was a biker so he did what he wanted when he wanted and most of the time, he wanted to hang out in the morning fucking me in his bed, eating breakfast with his kids and working his big, hulking body in the gym attached to his garage. In exchange, he wasn’t around much in the evenings so I ended up spending a lot of time with H.R. and Mute, watching TV, playing poker and cooking. Zeus refused to eat the healthy meals Mute made whenever he was in charge of dinner but I was learning to make things he liked, massive platters of lasagna, homemade deep-dish pizza and a meatloaf that was actually good.
I’d even made Christmas dinner with H.R., Cress and Mute and it’d been really fucking good. We’d all eaten at the clubhouse so that we had space for any of the brothers and their families to join us and a lot of them did. When we were done eating, before the serious drinking began, Axe-Man, King and Bat had taken H.R., Cress and me out back to teach us how to use our Christmas presents (identical Sig Sauer hand guns) on bottles they lined up outside. We hadn’t had a Christmas tree or decorations because bikers didn’t go in for that stuff and I didn’t have any money to get presents for anyone so I’d made do with writing them letters, but it was the best Christmas I’d ever spent. Not least of all, because Zeus had surprised me with a new car because Benjamin had mine repossessed the week before.