He killed his son. If necessary, he will kill me, too.
“This is my house,” I repeat, and I don’t care if I’ve said it a thousand times. I’ll keep repeating it until everyone around me understands.
Footsteps behind me bring both Beast and Grainger into the room. Grainger stays beside Sin while Beast moves up beside me.
“Bring your old lady to heel before I do it for you,” Cat suggests, looking at Beast and acting as if I don’t even exist anymore. It’s enough to put me into a quiet fury.
“If you touch her …” Beast begins, and I feel the tension in the room ratchet up a notch.
“This is her house,” Crown declares, before any gauntlets can be thrown. Cat looks back at him, along with several of the other men in the room. The VP isn’t looking at any of them though, just me. His moss green eyes find mine, dark with conviction. “Respectfully, Boss, what do you care if Beast and I want to share an old lady?”
My father turns a look on the man who used to be his righthand. If he were smart about it, he’d keep Crown closer still. There isn’t another person in the entire club who cares for Cat the way Crown does. He truly respects and loves the man.
“Announcing that you’re neutered to the entire club, eh?” Cat asks, turning back to look at Sin and Grainger. The expression on his face darkens even further, sending chills down my spine. Grainger is right (again): if my father gets a chance to catch his officers in a lie and kill them, he will.
I’ll lose all four of my men in one go.
“You two want to add to that?” Cat asks, baiting his road captain and his sergeant-at-arms, trying to break down their respect amongst the other club members. This could get bad. It could get really, really bad. I can’t have the Daybreakers turning on their officers or disrespecting them.
“We have an arrangement,” Sin offers up, shrugging his shoulders as he drops his hand from mine. “The four of us and Gidget.”
“Couldn’t resist a hot piece of ass like that,” Grainger adds, moving up on my other side. “I mean, look at her.” He glances down at me with a dismissive expression that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. But that’s okay. I’m the only one in here that’ll be able to read into that. “If Beast wants to share his wife, I’m game. Best fuck I’ve ever had.”
He moves past me and then grabs the sofa against the far wall, flipping it over by himself and probably putting unnecessary strain on his still-healing body. He takes a knife out and cuts the protective covering on the bottom of the couch, even as Crown’s eye twitches. I’m discovering that my asshole lover is actually quite particular about his things.
“Nothing here,” Grainger announces, shoving the couch back into place and putting the cushions back. “It’s that easy to clean up after yourselves. Hurry up. We have other buildings to sweep.” He snaps into sergeant-at-arms mode, moving out of the room while the other men hesitate just briefly, waiting to see if Cat will defy his officer’s order. When he doesn’t, they resume their sweep but in a much more respectful sort of way.
The rest of the men exit the room to continue their perusal of the property while I wait with Beast, Sin, Crown, and Cat.
My father’s eyes bore into me, shimmering with violence.
“You little cunt,” he hisses out, but he can’t make a move on me without making a move on his officers in front of the other men. Crown was right when he said that maintaining secrecy was a brilliant political move. There are men in the club who will defer to the officers in the event of a coup. Cat can’t risk that. He also can’t risk losing his best strategists and his best fighters all in one go.
Even though he won’t admit it, he doesn’t want to lose me either.
Killing these men will alienate me forever.
“Whatever you think of me,” I say, wishing we were alone, wishing he’d let me talk to him without grabbing me by the fucking throat or throwing me into a swimming pool, “just know that I’m on your side in this.”
Cat moves up next to me and leans down, making Beast tense up.
“One wrong step from any of you, and I’ll have your fucking heads.” He tries to move away, but I grab his arm, and he moves like he might just punch me, my lovers be damned.
“She’s pregnant,” Sin says, grabbing his president’s arm before he can sucker-punch me.
I wondered if Nellie hadn’t already told him … but based on Cat’s expression, I’m guessing not. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and he stares at me like he’s never seen me before. I stare right back, but I wish that he would reconsider beating the fuck out of me for me, and not because of this.
“You’re going to be a grandfather,” I tell him, looking him dead in the face and trying to get some sort of emotional response from the man. He just looks at me and then laughs. It’s an ugly laugh. A hideous one.
“Is it the mafia boy’s?” he asks, surprising me, and I blink back at him. “You and your fucking idiot sister,” he murmurs, and I wonder if that’s what he thinks is going on.
“Queenie loved Kian,” I say, challenging him. “You knew that. I know that. But I’ll tell you this: I’m not carrying Grey’s baby.” I keep my voice low, just as he does. There’s no way to survive this if news of my connection to Grey spreads through the rest of the Daybreakers. “This is a club baby.”
I make myself stand still and straight as Cat studies me.
“You don’t even know who the father is, do you?” he asks, turning a look on the other men. “Fuckin’ Christ, Gidge.”
I don’t correct him—even though I really want to. It’s Gidget, goddamn it.
My mouth twitches.
“We kill people and bury them out back of Gram’s house. What does it matter if I fuck four guys?” I wait there, hands curled into fists at my sides, but Cat just scoffs at me and moves away, leaving me to stand there trembling with a mix of rage and frustration.
I turn to watch him go. He heads out the front door, slamming it shut behind him. A few seconds later, I hear him start his bike and take off.
Not sure what reaction I was expecting from him, but I’m disappointed anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Sin offers up as soon as he’s sure that Cat is gone. “I didn’t mean to spill your secret.”
I offer up a sad half-smile in response.
“Hey, at least he might not beat the shit out of me for a while,” I murmur as Beast gives me a harsh look.
“He won’t touch you again,” he promises, and I get the chills. “If he does, it’ll be the last thing he ever does.”
“Don’t say that,” Sin hisses at him, but the club’s enforcer moves away from us like he needs a minute. I decide to follow after him, knowing full well what I’m getting myself into.
I find Beast waiting in his bedroom for me. He’s leaned up against the wall next to the door, reaching out to slam it closed as soon as I step inside. Without a word, he reaches for me and lifts me up. My legs go around him, and he lets out a growl as he thrusts his hard cock against my heat.
“What did I fuckin’ say about pants?” he grumbles, turning and then laying me down on the bed. Beast grabs a pair of scissors from the nightstand drawer as I blurt a protest.
“These are real leather—” I start, but it’s too late. He slides the scissors under the waistband, cutting through the fabric easily enough that I actually wonder what the fuck those scissors were made for. Like, are they meat shears or something? They cut through the leather like a hot knife through butter.
Beast cuts right down the center of the pants and over the crotch, splitting them in two.
And then he chucks the scissors aside and reaches down, ripping the pants apart and baring my already wet cunt. He opens up his own pants and then pauses at the sound of a knock on the door.
“Sir, we need to search this room,” one of the other Daybreakers says, his voice carefully neutral.
Yeah, like I said, Nellie was wrong.
No matter what the other men think about my arrangement with Beast,
they will keep their fucking mouths shut.
The Daybreakers might consider themselves shadows in the night, but my husband is the shadow that hunts the other shadows. And they all know it.
“Piss off,” Beast growls out, his voice a dark, rumbling demon.
He mounts me then, hard and fast, and even though I know there are men outside that can probably hear us, I don’t care. In fact, I want them to hear. I want them to know that Beast can fuck me so good that I scream and mewl; I want them to hear the headboard slamming into the wall. I want them to hear the mattress springs squeaking.
My husband pins my wrists to the bed and ruts me with all of that quiet rage, his stare so intense that I’d look away if I could. But if I try, he’ll turn my face back to him. I know it, so I don’t bother. Instead, I moan and lift my hips to meet each one of his thrusts, bringing us as close together as I can.
The noises I make are loud and boisterous, but entirely genuine. Beast is so big and thick that he fills me up completely, working every inch of my pussy with his cock. His balls slap my ass in a steady rhythm, speeding up as he brings himself to climax, a reluctant groan scraping past his lips as he slams into me so hard that I might have a bruised pelvis come morning.
Doesn’t matter. I love the way his muscles harden as he drives deep, pushing into me so that his hot seed finds my core.
Beast releases my wrists, planting his palms on either side of me as he brings his breathing under control.
“You’re just gonna keep on chasin’ me, eh, suge?” he asks as I wrap my arms around his neck and bring him down for a deep, prurient kiss. He ends up growling at me again and pulling away before we end up in round two.
Beast sits up and gives my severed pants a look.
“Get dressed. I won’t have anyone seeing my wife in this state.”
Even though I snort at the command, I get up and change my pants, yanking open the door and holding out a hand for the pair of Daybreakers waiting in the hall. They barely look at me. Probably for the best considering Beast might kill them if they blink the wrong way in my direction.
“Gentlemen,” I say, slipping out the door with Beast just behind me.
Let them tear this house apart: there’s nothing to find.
But I’ll give them something soon enough.
It’s just a matter of time.
The call from Grey comes much sooner than I expected.
I’m lying next to Sin in the dark. We’re both awake, but he sits up just as quickly as I do at the sound of my phone going off. I roll over and snatch it off his nightstand, pulling up the most recent text.
I’ll be calling from a new number. Answer, please.
I sit up and glance over at Sin.
“Grey?” he asks, and I nod.
I’ve been waiting for this.
Not only to have proof that he’s still alive, but also because it’s time to make some moves of our own. Cat is clearly looking for something with which to pin the boys to the wall. I won’t let him do that. I’m going to prove to him that we’re all in this together.
As soon as the call comes in, I pick up, a tight smile on my face as I greet Grey through the screen.
“You’re alive,” I say, not bothering to hide the relief in my voice. “Any trouble?”
He shakes his head slightly.
“My father knows that Gaz is dead. Not sure how, but he does. That means you’ve got at least one more rat on the compound.” Grey exhales. “Now that I’m out of that house, I suppose this might be a good time to tell you that I wasn’t just on the compound to bring the antidote. I was supposed to be leading a team in to search for you in the aftermath.”
I raise a brow, and he smiles tightly at me.
“They were all killed, by the way. My team. Not an accident on my part either, but we ran into a group of guards near the western wall of the compound.” Grey shrugs his shoulders, and I shake my head. He said that Kian was ruthless? Looks like it runs in the family. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to achieve his goals, whatever the cost. “Your father should either have left the compound recently or be on his way out.”
“How would you know that?” I ask, throwing a glance in Sin’s direction. He’s got one knee up, his elbow resting against it as he watches me. He’ll listen to whatever Grey wants to say, but he won’t trust any of it. None of them will. Not that I blame them. If Grey did want to fuck me over, this would be a good time to do it.
“Because the hit is supposed to take place tonight. Your father’s little FBI plant? He isn’t working for DBD anymore: he’s working for us. And trust me, he’s as loyal as they come. He has no choice, considering we’ve got his brother.” Grey pauses and glances to one side, like he’s listening for something. He turns his attention back to me. “He’s supposed to meet with Cat tonight to discuss the investigation into those bad drugs you doled out.”
“Your bad drugs,” I clarify, and Grey smiles tightly. On the inside, however, I’m freaking out. I’m panicking. As dangerous as Cat is, as much as I’d like to see him punished for his role in my sisters’ deaths, I don’t want him to die tonight at the hands of the mafia.
He isn’t allowed to die before we get a chance to talk. To really fucking talk. I need that. Even if he doesn’t talk back to me, I want a chance to give voice to all the dark things inside of me. My father owes me that much at least.
“Cat’s supposed to be meeting his informant inside the Ashbury police station.”
Mm. Sounds like something Cat would do. Protects both him and his informant. It’s hard to carry out an execution inside a public building full of cops. Not to say it’s impossible, especially considering the number of officers my father has in his pocket.
But it definitely complicates things.
“I don’t know where my father’s tactical team is meant to be assembling, only that they’ll be there.” Grey raises a hand, lifting five fingers and ticking them off. “All five men were present when your sisters died. There were more of them there that day, but it’d be impossible for me to know what grunts were sent in. But if you want to know who pulled the trigger on Queenie and who raped Posey, that man will be amongst these five. There’s no way they would’ve let one of the lower-ranking men take a turn on the club president’s daughter; they’d want that moment for themselves. Mostly, I’d keep my eye out for the team’s leader: Cosimo Balotelli. I’ll send all of their pictures over to you.”
Bile rises in my throat, and I let that hot anger sweep over me. There’s a time and place for it, and this is it.
This is fucking it.
“I’m going to kill every single one of them,” I hiss, and Grey’s face softens slightly.
“Be careful, Gidge. I’d love it if you could—it’d sure help me out a fuck of a lot—but try not to die out there.”
“Call me if you learn anything else,” I say, and then I’m hanging up and throwing my feet over the side of the bed. Sin’s hand latches onto my arm, fingers squeezing hard.
“We are not just rushing our asses down there; this could be a bait and switch, Gidge.” Sin’s making sense—Crown said much the same before—but I’m also not willing to wait this one out. Cat is a very difficult man to kill; he’ll expect betrayal. After his own son, how could he not? He’ll expect snipers. He’ll except assassination attempts.
But that doesn’t mean he’ll automatically escape this unscathed.
“I know,” I say, leveling a look on Sin. “I know. I trust Grey, but it makes sense that you don’t. Let’s figure this out.”
My answer seems to satisfy Sin just enough that he releases me, and I take off, opening Crown’s door and waking him up from a light sleep. I notice that he’s already got a weapon in hand.
“Gidge?” he asks, blinking back sleep. He throws the blankets aside, and I see that he’s naked. Oh. I like that. Stuck-up Boy Scout Crown sleeps in the nude? Yes, please.
“We gotta go,” I tell him, loving the way my voice rings with authority.
“The hit on Cat is supposed to happen tonight. Now.” I take off before waiting for his reply, checking the time on my phone as I go. It’s not even that late—just about ten after ten—but everyone in this house is on a hard-knock schedule. Beast and Crown regularly stay up for twenty-four hours or more at a time; I imagine Sin and Grainger generally keep the same schedule when they’re not, you know, recovering from almost dying.
I pound down the stairs as quick as I can, making a beeline for Grainger’s room.
I hesitate briefly before reaching for the handle on his door. Do I wake him up or let him sleep? Maybe he should sit this one out?
But then his door opens without my even having touched it, and there he is.
“Gidge,” he says carefully, his voice low and dangerous. Sure, he spent the night in the same room as me plenty of times before—at Cat’s house, at my Gram’s house. This seems different somehow. I mean, it is, right? We’re fucking living together.
I don’t know what our future living situation will be like, but for now, this is all of our house.
“The hit on Cat is happening tonight. Get dressed.” I start to turn away when Grainger reaches out to grab my arm. I figure if he shouldn’t be going tonight, the other men will stand in his way. Crown, in particular, has authority over the other three as their vice president. Even if the guys were willing to throw tradition to the wind in order to save me, they still believe in the way the club works; they’ll defer to him if necessary.
“Why do you insist on putting yourself—as well as our baby—in danger?” he snaps, yanking me closer to him. Somehow, thinking that I’m pregnant with his kid—maybe, maybe not—has turned on something inside of Grainger that I’m not sure I’d have seen otherwise. The possessiveness has been there all along, but the rest of it? This … sort of caring that I see in his eyes, that is brand-spanking-new.
“You heard me earlier, didn’t you?” I tell him, looking directly into his eyes. “I’m not going to sit by the sidelines and watch the world go by. I certainly am not going to let decisions be made for me the way they’ve been in the past. I have a right to dictate my own future.”
I Will Revel in Glory Page 23
