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

by Giana Darling

  I blinked at him and in that time, the tears came.

  Fuck but I hated to cry but fuck if this wasn’t the time to do it.

  I brought my fist to my mouth to stop the sobs and turned slowly again to face the twenty odd bikers coalesced in the room. They all stared at me with varying degrees of solemnity.

  “Don’t try an’ talk us outta it, Foxy,” Buck grumbled from his chair. He had coarse grey hair he wore in a short queue at the back of his red neck. “Not askin’ your permission. Just figured you’d wanna be a part of it.”

  I took a deep breath, in and out as I felt the Garros surround my back and H.R. came up beside me to take my hand.

  “Cress and I are cuttin’ ours too. Just to our shoulders but we got long hair and we’re gonna donate the clippings to the cancer foundation that makes wigs for chemo patients,” she explained in a sweet voice I only heard from her rarely, usually when she was speaking to her dad, brother or Cress.

  And she was using it with me. While holding my hand. And telling me that she was going to cut off half of her thick, crazy-beautiful hair for me.

  “This is way too much,” I whispered because my voice wouldn’t work properly past the lump in my throat.

  Zeus’s heat hit my back a second before his arms wrapped around me and his voice moved through my body as he said, “Nothin’s ever too much for family.”

  I deep breathed as I stood in the circle of Z’s arms, in the circle of his blood family and within the greater circle of his chosen one and I knew then if I’d ever doubted it before, that I had made the right choice in choosing Z,and more, in believing enough in myself to have made that choice at all.

  He waited a beat to let me collect myself then stepped forward, rolling up the sleeves of the black Henley he wore under his cut and saying, “Let’s get this show on the fuckin’ road so we can hit Stella’s for some fuckin’ grease and pancakes. Someone hand me one of those fuckin’ shavers. I’m doin’ Nova’s hair. That pretty boy’s always had it comin’ to ’im.”

  I was sicker than a dog run over twice by a sixteen-wheeler.

  It was late January and the latest round of chemotherapy was kicking my ass worse than it ever had before. Logically, I knew it was because they were targeting the cancer more aggressively than they had before, that this was a new technique that had proven very successful with women my age in my condition.

  I was young and fit, it had seemed like a good idea to my parents and my doctors at the time to knock me around for three rounds of chemo in the depths of dreary winter to see if they couldn’t beat the cancer out of me. My mother was the only one who kept in touch with the doctors now and made sure the insurance papers were signed, but I hadn’t seen her or my dad since the incident at the dinner party before Christmas.

  I sure as hell felt beaten but I didn’t feel cured. Not even close.

  The only things I was grateful for in all of it was that I didn’t have to go to school sick as I was, and Zeus was gone on a run with The Fallen, so he didn’t have to see me like this.

  He hadn’t wanted to go but things were going badly for the club. The second round of fires had revealed that there was definitely another snitch in their ranks, and Z didn’t feel comfortable leaving the San Diego run to anyone else, not even his most trusted brothers. After all, back in the day, Zeus had earned his presidency by backstabbing his President and he didn’t want history repeating itself.

  When he’d left, I hadn’t been that bad but the past two weeks had been rough. I’d barely left the house and I hated getting out of bed because my entire body ached like a livid bruise. Zeus called every day to check in and I was never without at least two brothers in the house, lounging around shooting the shit with me as if they actually wanted to hang out with an invalid, and watch marathon sessions of Game of Thrones. I knew they reported back to him that I was getting worse, so I wasn’t surprised when Z called to tell me he was coming home early and leaving Bat in charge on the run to California. I’d tried to downplay things because I didn’t want to cause an issue for club business, but I was thrilled my guardian monster was coming home.

  Without him, Mute, Harleigh Rose, and Bea were my angels.

  H.R. and Bea helped me in the shower, which was embarrassing but necessary and they brushed and braided my hair away from my face. H.R. helped me get dressed in new pajamas each day so that the old ones didn’t smell like sick sweat and puke, and she made me countless pots of tea that I could barely bring myself to drink. Bea visited nearly every day and she always brought teen magazines, outside world gossip and endless optimism. Apparently, Mum knew she visited but Dad didn’t. I didn’t know what to think about it until Phillipa gave Bea my old Hephaestus Auto toque one day and told her to give it to me. It was a nice gesture, nowhere near enough, but nice.

  Mute didn’t do much and yet he did everything. He was there when I woke up in the morning and he was there when I went to bed at night. Most of the time, I think he slept in the old tree house in the backyard for a few hours before coming back to hang out with me. We watched cult classics because we both loved them; The Godfather trilogy, Star Wars, Quentin Tarantino and Alfred Hitchcock collections. We played board games and card games but spoke as little as we could because Mute, obviously, preferred it and I found it tiring.

  My entire body ached, but it was my feet and lungs that faired the worst. By week three, I needed a respirator because my oxygen levels were so low. The bottoms of my feet were deeply bruised and even though I was used to a lifetime of pain in them from ballet and pointe shoes, this was worse. I whimpered at any contact against them so poor Mute had to piggyback me around the house if Bea demanded I get out of bed more often.

  I was too sick to see Sammy at the Autism Centre so Mute or Margie brought him to me at home. He was curious about my illness and wanted to know how to fix me. But I didn’t have the answers to give him and he’d twice had a tantrum because of it and the fact that when he’d last visited, I’d been too weak and pained to cuddle him as he liked.

  I was tired of being sick and I was sick and fucking tired of Zeus’s house even though it’d only been my home for two months.

  So, when another Friday rolled around, I begged Mute to take us all up to Z’s cabin outside Whistler. I missed my man so much it made my heart palpitate just to think of him and the cabin was our place. Mute wanted to refuse me, I knew, but he couldn’t deny me anything, especially not when I was like this. We couldn’t go on his bike obviously but he borrowed a truck from Hephaestus and the four of us loaded it with all the yummy health food we could find and about twenty cherry lollipops because they were still my weakness and we headed up into the mountains.

  It was exactly what I needed. I felt like a teenage girl having a slumber party with her friends as we all got into our jammies—even Mute who wore, hilariously, sleep pants that looked exactly like his normal blue jeans and one of his standard black tees—and made a mound of pillows in front of the TV so we could sprawl out comfortably to watch our Banshee marathon on HBO.

  I was lying diagonally with my head on Mute’s stomach, his hands in my gold hair he loved so much, and my legs over H.R. who had Bea curled into her side when Zeus called.

  “Little warrior.” His rumble came over the phone and pierced my heart like an arrow. “How’s my girl?”

  “Better,” I said, because even though I had the portable respirator beside me and my body ached like it was decomposing, my mind was happy and that was enough for me. “We’re watching a super violent show.”

  He laughed and I could picture him leaning against his bike in the open air outside a bar while he talked to me, rolling a cigarette in his hands by habit but not smoking it because he’d made a promise to me to quit.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Tell Dad I say hi,” H.R. called out with popcorn in her mouth and more in the fist she was ready to shovel in just as soon as she had the space.

  “Tell my other girl I love ’er, yeah?” Zeus said,
hearing her over the phone.

  “I will but just saying, you never told this girl you love her,” I pointed out.

  “Love you, little girl. Loved you for ten years and love you for ten decades more,” he told me as if it was the simplest thing to do, to declare your undying love for a person like it was nothing special.

  To Zeus, it wasn’t the miracle it was to me. To him, it just was.

  There was a beauty in the simplicity of that that I knew I’d never cease to appreciate.

  A low rumble sounded through the cabin and at first, I thought it was the TV show but Mute had turned the volume down low when I picked up the phone.

  Immediately, my protector slid my head off his lap and went prowling to the window. I watched frozen but electric with static as his posture slammed ramrod straight.

  “What is it?” I asked even though I knew whatever it was couldn’t be good and I knew it even before Mute reached into his boot for his knife and ducked down beside the couch to grab his gun.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Zeus asked me, somehow sensing my fear through the radio waves.

  “Mute,” I whispered as he took up his spot beside the front window and used a single finger to push aside the curtain slightly.

  He looked out the pane then turned his head until our eyes locked. His dark gaze was filled with muted horror.

  I was on my feet in a second, wincing at the tender pain in them but so far past caring I barely noticed.

  “H.R., I need you to take Bea into the back, hide in the closet or under the bed or something, okay?” I asked, already hobbling over to the duffle bag I’d packed for the trip.

  Ever since he’d given it to me for Christmas, I’d carried the gun Zeus gave me everywhere I went.

  “Lou, what the fuck is goin’ on over there?” Zeus barked into the phone.

  I was startled to find myself still holding it loosely in one hand. I tucked it against my ear as I searched for my gun and watched as H.R. kicked into gear like the biker girl she was and raced to the kitchen to grab a knife. Bea sat in the middle of the sea of pillows looking so young and so afraid it made my heart ache.

  “Loulou,” Zeus snapped again.

  “Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what’s happening but Mute is standing at the window looking out at the front yard of the cabin like someone really bad is outside.”

  “Hand ’im the phone now,” he ordered.

  I half crawled across the floor below the open window to put the cell in Mute’s outstretched hand.

  “Three guys,” Mute said immediately, his eyes still on the action outside.

  Vaguely, I heard the opening and shutting of doors.

  Bea whimpered.

  I went over to her and wrapped her up in my arms, keeping my gun ready in my right hand.

  “Recognize two of ’em, Lysander Garrison and Ace Munford.”

  Shit, Lysander was Cressida’s brother. The guy had been blackmailed into working for the Nightstalkers and spying on The Fallen. His actions had nearly gotten Cress killed and as far as she or I knew, Zeus and King had beaten him close to death then told him never to come back to town on fear of death.

  He was back and clearly, he was back with the rival MC.

  “Don’t know. They’re all carryin’ far as I can see but that’s it. They look calm. Someone told ’em we were here,” Mute continued.

  My stomach clenched and before I could help it, I was sick all over the pillows behind Bea’s shoulder. She stroked my back with a shaking hand.

  “Only got my Glock and blade, Foxy and H.R. got theirs and a coupla kitchen knives. ’S not enough,” Mute admitted quietly.

  Not quietly enough for a room gone thick with silence.

  Bea pressed her face into my breasts and burst into tears. H.R. returned from the kitchen and knelt beside me on the other side of the puke.

  “We need to figure out what to do with her,” she said, tipping her chin at my little sister.

  I couldn’t think of anything. There was no space inside the house, it was just the rustic three rooms, no basement, only one closet and…

  “You can get up on the roof,” I said, prying Bea’s face out of my breasts. My thumbs rubbed at her tears as I held her tight and drilled my eyes into hers. “Harleigh Rose is going to lift you up so you can get into the crawl space in the closet and then you’re going to climb onto the roof. You have to be really fucking careful and don’t make one single noise, okay?”

  She shook her head manically, her tears spraying out onto my own cheeks as she did. “I can’t, I can’t.”

  “Listen to me,” I ordered her so harshly, she stopped shaking and blinked at me. “You’re a Lafayette and they might not have given us a fuckuva lot but they gave us a cool head, okay? You can do this. I need you to do this because we can’t concentrate if we know you might get hurt.”

  “One’s comin’ to the door,” Mute muttered into the phone he still held to his ear.

  My heart thudded in my throat and bile churned volcanic hot in my belly. “Bea, please baby, you’ve got to go with H.R. now, okay?”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered brokenly, her huge blue eyes glazed with tears. “You’re the one who’s sick. You should go up there.”

  “It’s a small roof, honey,” I tried to explain with a tight smile. “And you’re right, I’m already sick so if only one of us gets through this, I want it to be the one with better odds.”

  Bea burst into tears again but I’d done my part and when H.R. took her shoulders to lead her to the closet in the bedroom, Bea went willingly.

  As soon as she was out of the room, I got to my feet and walked gingerly over to Mute.

  “What do you think they want?” I whispered to him.

  Someone knocked forcibly on the door.

  I looked up at Mute and tried to suppress the fear I felt like an electric current running through my blood. I saw it mimicked in his own eyes and we shared a moment of pure terror. He broke the moment by pressing an awkward hand in the middle of my chest and saying in the clearest voice I’d ever heard him say, “Something bad is gonna happen. Need you to promise me you’ll get yourself safe.”

  “Mute,” I breathed. “We’ll be fine.”

  “If not, you gotta promise me,” he ordered.

  Another knock came at the door. This one louder, longer.

  Mute held out a hand, pinky extended and thumb already hooked to shake mine. He’d seen me do it with Zeus and he wanted me to swear on the same sacred ground I made all my promises on with the love of my life.

  My heart burned as I reached out to lock my pinky with his and shake his thumb.

  As soon as I let go, he was striding to the door.

  “We didn’t order pizza,” Mute yelled through it.

  It was a strange time to be funny but it was so utterly Mute to act against the norm that it nearly my made me laugh and then it nearly made me cry.

  The person on the other side of the door laughed. “Listen, kid. We just want the girls, yeah? Nothin’ bad needs to happen to anyone.”

  “No girls,” Mute said.

  “Know they’re here, brother. A little birdy told me Garro’s sweet teen lover and daughter would be here and looky look, the lover’s bodyguard is here so she must not be far behind. Now, open up before I kick this fuckin’ door down.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice but Harleigh Rose seemed to as she came back into the room because she froze in the hallway entryway.

  “Who?” I mouthed at her.

  “Blackjack’s dad, Ace,” she whispered as she came toward me and peered carefully out the curtains.

  There was one man in the front yard, a Mexican man by the look of him, wearing a Nightstalkers cut with the laughing demon face on the back. He sat on the hood of a black van picking under his nails with a huge, curved blade.

  “Lysander’s here,” I whispered.

  “Why do you want ’em?” Mute demanded.

  Ace laughed. “Zeus Garro kil
led my best fuckin’ friend, think he deserves to know some pain ‘fore we take back an operation he never shoulda been Prez of in the first fuckin’ place.”

  “I’ll bring ’em out,” Mute said after a long pause. “Back away from the door and I’ll get them sorted for ya.”

  “No fuckin’ funny business. You got nowhere to go and you know it,” Ace said, ending on a manical laugh.

  I heard his boots stomp across the small wooden porch and down the stairs.

  “Stuff in front of the doors,” Mute snapped immediately, turning around himself to drag the kitchen table over.

  I went over to help him, sweat breaking out across my skin at the effort to walk and then push the heavy oak table over the wood floors.

  “You’re going to pass out, sit the fuck down,” H.R. hissed.

  “I do, we die,” I said because it may have been dramatic but I had this awful, gut-wrenching feeling that it was true.

  Mute didn’t say anything. Once the table was in front of the door, he went to the huge armchair and hefted it into the air before slamming it down over the table, barricading the door entirely.

  “Close all the curtains. I’ve got the back door,” Harleigh Rose whispered as she dashed down the hall.

  Mute held out my phone to me again. “Call him.”

  My fingers slipped with sweat against the screen as I pressed in the number. Zeus answered immediately, “Update me.”

  “It’s me,” I told him as lazy male laughter floated into the house from outside.

  The bastards weren’t even nervous about what Mute could do to them. They thought we were easy pickings, most of The Fallen’s senior officers out on a run and the President’s women alone in a remote cabin.

  Fuck, we were dumb.

  “Lou, baby, got guys comin’. You just have to hold out for as long as you can, yeah?” Zeus’s voice was strong and sure as always.

  “I’m so fucking scared,” I admitted as I watched Mute grab another knife from the kitchen and add it to his arsenal.

  “Nah, not my little warrior. It’s gonna be fine, Lou. I’m on my way home right fuckin’ now and by this time tomorrow, this’ll all be a nightmare and you’ll be safe in my arms in our bed.”