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

by Giana Darling

  “Our appointment?” I echoed as he swung back onto the bike.

  He ignored me as he reversed out of the alley and took us back onto the highway and onto the Main Street of Entrance. We stopped in front of a revamped Street Ink Tattoo Parlor, brand-new without a sign of the Nightstalkers trauma.

  Zeus got off the bike then plucked me off and put me down on the pavement.

  “You wanted a tat for a while now, this is as good a time as any seein’ as mine’ll take ’bout three hours. Just cleared it with the Doc and you’re good to get one now, if you want one,” he explained.

  I blinked at him.

  I’d wanted a tattoo since Mute died.

  He’d come to me in a dream, as he often did, silently standing off to the side of my adventure packed dreams like a sentry. And one time, he’d shown me what he wanted me to get inked on my skin to remember him by.

  But, “What are you getting done?”

  He grinned at me and for the first time, I thought he looked like his son in all his boyishness. “You’ll see.”

  And I did. Because two hours after Nova finished giving me a Mute symbol on the inside of my left wrist, Zeus appeared bare-chested in the main room of the shop and I got my first look at his tattoo.

  It was an angel, one inked right over his heart. Her small, detailed face was mine and her hands were raised to cup the scar of the bullet wound Zeus had taken for me nearly eleven years earlier.

  “Z,” I breathed as tears compressed my chest.

  He wrapped an arm around my waist and brought me into his right side. “My fallen angel.”

  “My guardian monster,” I breathed into his mouth as he lowered it onto mine for a kiss.

  I needed to tell ’er.

  In fact, I’d needed to tell her for fuckin’ weeks but she was so goddamn happy and healthy for the first time in over a year so fuck me if I wanted to be the one to ruin it.

  But I knew Danner wouldn’t wait for much longer.

  My girl was eighteen years old now, celebrated her birthday in the hospital with an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen that she couldn’t eat because she was avoidin’ sugar so the dozen of brothers and their families had indulged while we pumped AC/DC into her hospital room.

  Shit birthday but she’d told me she loved it anyway ’cause it was her first with me.

  Girl still gave me a fuckin’ toothache, she was so sweet.

  And now she was mine in a way that was permanent.

  I watched her black diamond ring glint in the light as she waved it in the air to punctuate her story about what Sammy had done at the Autism Centre the other day. She was gearin’ up to work there full-time after graduation after decidin’ against university. I’d pushed for it. Lou was smart and if things had gone a different way—as in I wasn’t in her life—she woulda gone for sure. Told her I had enough money to send her to the best university for twenty fuckin’ degrees if she wanted.

  She didn’t.

  My girl didn’t want to commute to Vancouver or be away from the club and me for any length of time. She liked her new family too much to let ’em go.

  I loved that so I’d shut up about school.

  Besides, she’d be happy as fuck at The Autism Centre and the club had just done a charity run down the coast to raise money for it. Raised enough to add an after-school special needs tutorin’ program, one that my girl was going to set up.

  H.R. was leanin’ toward her, captivated and nearly as in love with her as I was. It was weird as shit that my daughter’s stepmum was her age but we made it work and the way we did that was through lovin’ each other like we’d never be given another chance to love again.

  Fuckin’ cheesy shit but we’d embraced it after Mute’s death and Lou’s long battle with cancer.

  The only shadow over our fuckin’ heads was the Nightstalkers.

  There’d been no vengeance for Mute’s death.

  No opportunity to extinguish the fucker MC for good.

  Until now.

  And that opportunity was hangin’ on Lou.

  “You’re quiet, old man,” Loulou said as she leaned over her stool to nip my chin. “Please God, tell me I’m not boring you already? We’ve got a long marriage yet to go.”

  I grinned at her but my heart wasn’t in it ’cause the door was openin’ and two men I’d rather not have seen walked into Eugene’s.

  Seemed my time was up.

  “Evenin’ Garro, Loulou,” Danner hesitated when he noticed my kid sitting on her stool in little shorts that made her look practically naked and a deep cut tank. His eyes darkened in a way only another man could understand. I let a low growl work in my throat and watched the officer swallow. “Harleigh Rose.”

  My girl nodded at him in a cool way she’d learned bein’ raised by biker babes.

  Lou grinned at him. “Lionel, how are ya?”

  The cop’s face softened. My wife had that effect on people. “Better question is, how’re you?”

  Lou grinned at me and placed a palm over my heart where her tattoo was still bandaged. “Cancer free and ready to graduate.”

  “Married and in high school,” Danner mumbled. “Never a dull moment with the Garros.”

  I raised my brows at him and stuck a toothpick in my mouth wishin’ it was a cigarette. “You’d be outta a job if there was.”

  He laughed. “Touché. Speaking of, I was hopin’ you’d had time to talk to your wife about the situation.”

  Lou’s head spun to me.

  I glared at the cop. “No.”

  Danner frowned over his shoulder at his partner Gibson who crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at me.

  I scowled back harder.

  “Talk to me about what?” Lou asked.

  Danner looked to me, which was the only reason I wasn’t fuckin’ stranglin’ him. I tipped my chin at him ’cause the damage was already done.

  Once Lou knew she had the power to help bring down the Nightstalkers, there would be no talkin’ her outta it even if it meant puttin’ her life on the line. A-fuckin’-gain.

  “We got a lead on the Nightstalkers,” Danner explained.

  Immediately, Lou sat up straighter and the glimmer of vengeance I saw in my own face every mornin’ when I brushed my teeth appeared on hers in full force.

  “We got the opportunity to smoke them out. Thing is, we need your help,” he continued.

  “How can I help?”

  “We have reason to believe that Mitch Warren is involved with the Nightstalkers. We’d like it if you could get close to him. We’d outfit you with a wire and hope to get a confession out of him,” Gibson explained.

  I snorted. “Like I said, this fuckin’ plan is held together with a hope and a fuckin’ prayer.”

  Danner’s eyes flashed and his voice was low like a man at the end of his rope and seekin’ retribution. Finally, he was talkin’ like a man I could understand.

  “It’s as good as we got, Garro. I know you want justice even more than I do and you give the okay for your woman to do this, I may just see it in me to let you overhear a conversation that lets slip where the Nightstalkers have been holding up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked casually, leanin’ back in my seat to play with the ends of Lou’s hair. “Not sure why I’d care about somethin’ like that.”

  “Yeah, me either,” Danner played, his eyes shrewd.

  “Let’s do it,” Loulou said like I knew she would and then added, “Can I bring my gun?”

  The tape between my breasts itched but I tried not to wiggle as I sat in McClellan’s Bar waiting for Mr. Warren to show up.

  He was the “Mitch” my dad and Danner had spoken about in the parking lot of EBA after the basketball tournament. We still didn’t know who Jack was but it was clear that everyone else at my parent’s frequent dinner parties were in on the plot to take down The Fallen using the Nightstalkers to do it.

  Mitch Warren. It was stupid of me to have forgotten his first name but everyone, even his friends, call
ed him Warren.

  When I’d called him to ask him to meet with me and discuss my options for a future after EBA, to say that I was feeling hemmed in by my relationship with Zeus and that I wanted an out, he’d been thrilled.

  Mr. Warren liked young girls and I was a young girl with a biker mentality. Catnip to pervs and rebels alike. Mr. Warren was the former.

  When he showed up, he was wearing one of his stylish suits, this one navy blue over a blue, red and white plaid shirt with his signature bow tie, this one yellow, at his neck. His thick brown hair was pushed away from his forehead and he could have been handsome if his chin wasn’t so weak and his eyes weren’t filled with false pride.

  “Wow, what a vision,” he said with an approving grin as I slipped off my stool to greet him and he got a full look at me in my short black dress, tight at the hips, thighs and ass but blousy up top to hide the lines of the wire beneath it.

  I shook my curled hair over my back to give him a clean shot as he leaned forward to kiss my cheek.

  He smelled like expensive deodorant but also a little bit like a teenage boy trying too hard.

  “Warren, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me,” I gushed as his hand found my lower back and escorted me to one of the more intimate booths at the back of the bar.

  I spotted Nova dressed in civilian clothes at one of the tables talking up a pretty waitress even as his eyes tracked us across the room. There was a man with a stern face and too-good posture sitting alone at the bar nursing something that could have been a gin and tonic but was probably just Sprite. Watchful eyes surrounded me, but I still hated Warren’s hands on my body.

  “So,” he started as we settled in, “already tired of your walk on the bad side, eh? The filth getting to be too much for you?”

  I smiled at him even as I thought he was a complete dumbass for hitting on the well-known wife of The Fallen MC President. He was either incredibly cocky or incredibly dumb. My money was on both.

  “Honestly, Warren, I don’t know what I was thinking. He’s so…” I struggled to find something bad to say about Z. “Big, just like this big oaf, you know?”

  He nodded sagely. “I could have told you that, Louise. I understand that he got to you at a vulnerable time but I thought I’d made it clear to you that I would always be here to help.”

  He opened his hands on the table for me to place mine into.

  I did so with a bright smile, calling on all my years as the dutiful daughter of Benjamin and Phillipa Lafayette in order to pull it off.

  “If it was a matter of money, I know I’m a high school biology teacher but you should know, I’m a man of means,” he continued.

  “Oh?”

  He smiled slyly. “You obviously don’t care if it’s dirty as long as it’s money if you’re with Garro so yes, Louise I’m a man of means. I can keep you in the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to with your parents. Richer even, if things go right and my investments keep turning a profit.”

  A server appeared without being asked with a bottle of champagne. We were quiet as the woman uncorked it then served us each a glass. He watched me the whole time with a small smile of self-satisfaction as if he had always known I would cave for him and it had only been a matter of time.

  His thumb rubbed back and forth over my engagement ring and wedding band.

  “What are we celebrating?” I asked as he handed me my glass.

  “A return to the rightful order,” he cheered, clinking our glasses together.

  I took a small sip and then put the glass down because I hated the sweet, bubbles enough that the taste made me want to gag.

  “Did Garro even give you a proper wedding?” he asked me sorrowfully. “A girl like you deserves a big day, Louise.”

  He was lecturing me about what I did or did not deserve, about what kind of girl I was. It was exactly this kind of pedantic condescension that I hated most about polite society.

  I thought about my perfect wedding. Remembered the plastic tiara I’d worn that proclaimed Bride with a short veil that Harleigh Rose and Cress had found at the dollar store in town. The bouquet of beautiful red roses that Nova had splurged on from the hospital shop and the enormous red velvet cake in the shape of Clifford the Big Red Dog that Maja had bought off some baker who’d had a last-minute cancellation. Zeus had the rings because he’d sent King out to buy them, two black titanium bands that Hannah had just stoked at Revved & Ready.

  My grandfather had done the service and it was beautiful in the way that forgiveness is beautiful because I knew my family would never really understand my love for Zeus and his world but it felt right that they should pass me over to him, to someone who always had and always would understand me better.

  Afterward, after Zeus had kissed me as long as my grieving lungs would allow, someone put on old school rock music and everyone cracked open Coke and Sprite because there wasn’t any alcohol allowed in the hospital and we’d all eaten cake with our hands and laughed with each other until I was too tired to socialize. And then even though it was our wedding night, Zeus hadn’t copped even a feel. He’d just held me all night, stroking my hair and whispering to me about all the things we were going to do when I was well.

  I looked up at Warren and tried to strip my voice of the sheer joy the memory held for me. “He tried his best.”

  “And his best wasn’t good enough. Honestly, I give the brute props for even thinking he stood a chance with someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?” I asked, leaning forward and tucking my hair behind my ear.

  His eyes tracked the movement hungrily. “A princess.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes and tried to get us back on topic. “So, say I did leave him. Say I did want to be with you—what would that mean?”

  His eyes flared and his grip on my hands tightened. “It would mean I’d treat you right. Lavish you with money and attention.”

  I pouted, flipping his hand over in mine to draw circles on the palm in a way that had him shivering. “What about those other girls?”

  He frowned distractedly. “Other girls?”

  “I’ve seen you with Lily and Talia. If we’re together, I don’t want to share and…” I leaned deep over the table to press my lips right beside his ear to say, “I think you’ll find I can keep you satisfied.”

  He groaned. “You really are a minx, aren’t you?”

  “I prefer fox, but yes, I really am,” I agreed with a winning smile.

  “Well, no need to worry there. Lily and Talia are just two cogs in the machine of my alternative means of income.”

  My pout deepened and I was glad I’d worn red lipstick when his eyes landed on them and stuck. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means, pretty girl, that Talia and Lily are a means to an end. They deal product for me.”

  I gasped in faux shock, hand flying to my heart only so I could define the shape of my breast beneath the fabric for him. My heart beat fast but it wasn’t with modest surprise, it was with adrenaline. He was staring at the catalyst of his demise and he was literally handing himself over to it.

  I could have clapped, I was so happy.

  Instead, I kept up the act by saying, “You deal drugs? Warren, I never knew you had such a dark side.”

  He preened under my compliment and looked around the way a spy in a movie would to see if anyone was listening.

  People were listening but they weren’t dumb enough to do it obviously.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m a dealer, but I buy wholesale from a distributor and resell to the kids at EBA and Entrance Public. You’d be surprised by what a cash-cow partying teens can be,” he caught my eye and then laughed, “Or maybe you wouldn’t.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I admitted. “But I don’t understand. You can’t just go to Costco for drugs.”

  “No, sweetie,” he agreed with a patronizing smile. “You go to the cartel or the MC.”

  “Cartel?” I asked because something was sliding i
nto place, something obvious and dangerous, the barrel of a shotgun clicking into place.

  “Javier Ventura’s come up from Mexico to establish a base in Canada and he’s doing it from Entrance.”

  Tell me more, you fool. Dig your own grave.

  “Oh, that nice man who’s friends with my parents?”

  “Looks can be deceiving. He’s really a poor wetback risen in the ranks, but yeah.” Warren spewed his cruel, racist words with the casualness of an arrogant man born white, rich and oblivious.

  “So you buy it, use the students to deal it and then you split the proceeds with the cartel?”

  There must have been something in my question that alerted him to my eagerness for information more than any eagerness for him. He frowned at me over the rim of his champagne glass.

  “Why don’t we get out of here and continue this conversation at my place? We can get to know each other a little more comfortably there.”

  I really didn’t want to but I wasn’t sure they had enough information on everyone to make the necessary arrests and there was no way in hell I was going to back off this before I bought vengeance for Mute.

  So, I smiled at him. “That sounds wonderful. Just give me a moment to use the washroom?”

  He tugged my hand in order to give me a brief kiss on the lips, his tongue touching my lips like a promise. I fought the urge to rub at my mouth when he pulled away and let me go with a smug tilt of his chin.

  I rolled my hips side to side as I walked calmly to the bathroom, feeling his eyes on my ass. When I made it to the short hallway with the bathrooms, I unlocked my phone screen to text Zeus.

  “Hey, Foxy,” someone said over my shoulder.

  I startled as I whipped around then laughed when I saw Blackjack standing there with his hands in his pockets. “Jesus Christ, B.J. you scared the crap out of me. What are you doing skulking down here?”

  He shrugged, his eyes wet and dilated as he looked over my shoulder then back at me. “Zeus and Danner sent me to tell ya that they got enough. They’re waitin’ for ya at the police station and I’m supposed to give you a ride.”