A Dark Place (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 5)

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  “No!” she declares. “You will stay here!”

  “I will stay here for a little bit.”

  A ‘little bit’ turns into four hours on the floor with a hyperaware four-year-old. She changes clothes about a dozen times and pirouettes for her prince charming every time.

  I am so ridiculously in love with Mae.

  From the moment I saw her swaddled in a pink blanket until this moment, she has been a beacon in my foggy existence. We’re coloring pictures in oversized books on our bellies and kicking our legs, alternating, of course, when I say, “Guess what?”

  “Hmm?” she says, swiping the red crayon from my left hand and attempting to use her left hand. Her impressive coloring skills turn to scribble like Dom’s handwriting—with any hand.

  “I’m going to be moving here really soon.”

  “Will you be here for the holidays?”

  “Yes!” I promise. “I will be here for Christmas with tons of presents for you!”

  Standing up, she announces, “Iris is having my baby.”

  Oh, she is?

  I could’ve sworn I put my seed in that nest.

  Lowering my head between my arms, I lick my lips and laugh. “Did Auntie Iris tell you that?”

  “Nope! Deeeee did.”

  I’m going to kill him.

  “Do you like staying with Lula?” I ask, grabbing her and rolling over. She sits crossed-legged on my chest. “Is she nice to you?”

  “Lula is pretty.”

  “She is,” I reply.

  “But not as pretty as Iris.”

  Slam—gotta love kids.

  “You are beautiful.”

  “I know,” she brags, poking and prodding at me. “What happened to your paws?”

  “My paws?” I take a deep breath. “Sometimes, Sally gets very mad because bad men want to hurt Iris.”

  “You beat’em up like I do, Kade?”

  “Yes,” I reply, unable to hold back my laughter. “But you should not beat Kade up. He’s your brother.”

  “He’s my cousin,” she harshly reprimands. “Duh, Sally!”

  How is it she has these familial relationships down, and I do not?

  With a sad face, I beg, “Forgive me.”

  “He likes to eat dirt pies and play in the mud.”

  “Ya, that’s a boy thing.”

  “I don’t like boys.”

  “You will one day,” Amber says from the doorway. “But, they’ll still like to get dirty.”

  The little one squeals with delight as she lunges off my chest. I quickly sit up, and Mae says, “Mama!”

  Despite wanting to sneer at Bamber, I can’t when she is holding Mae. She smiles, and I do the same. “Anna ordered lunch for us. Are you hungry?”

  I get up, kiss her cheek, and whisper, “Are you Bamber or Mama, Amber?”

  “Both,” she giggles as Mae clings tightly to her side and shields her face, feigning shy. “Depends on the moment.” She tucks Mae’s hair away from her face. “Why don’t you carefully go downstairs and wash your hands?”

  Her lip quivers, “Sally come?”

  “Sally is going to come.”

  I snarl at Amber’s suggestive innuendo. She sets Mae down. The little princess runs off with her wand in hand as my eyes dance with Amber’s. “What is going on?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says. “Deacon and I…”

  I don’t care or even want to hear about it as I hastily interrupt, “I want her with you or me.”

  She presses her lips together and nods. “I will agree to that if you are letting me come back to The Unholy.”

  “You aren’t coming back to The Unholy.”

  Her expression turns bleak, and she questions, “Why? What have I done wrong?”

  “You’re coming back to Sal Raniero.”

  64

  Count Your Blessings

  The Master

  After lunch from Idamae’s, I watch Amber and Mae running through the garden and playing hide-n-seek. Everything is simpler in Texas. Life makes sense. Basic things become essential, and all the shit I thought was important dissolves into nothingness.

  Here, I am home in the town my great grandfather built with his love for one woman.

  And how fortunate I am to be the lucky bastard holding her hand.

  “You couldn’t have stopped Iris if you wanted to, Salvatore,” she says, sipping her glass of sweet peach tea in one hand and clasping onto mine in the other. She hasn’t let me go since I returned to her side. “She’s headstrong and fierce.”

  “The baby is mine.”

  “I am aware of what Iris did,” she replies as Amber and Mae’s laughter fills the air. “And I gave her a long talking to. She is risking her life, the life of your baby, and your future together, to eliminate Delarte Cristos from the planet.”

  “I don’t want to be without her, but part of me…I understand the compulsion.”

  “A dark place.”

  I scratch my forehead. “I know. I know. You probably think we’re stupid kids.”

  “Actually,” she whispers, laying her other hand on top of mine, sandwiched by Anna. Oh, the motherfucking joy! “I don’t. I made plenty of mistakes along the way. You need to make your own. The problem is that there is so much at stake if this goes wrong.”

  “I’m sorry about Wendy.”

  She scoffs. “No one saw that coming. At least not with Deacon’s half-sister. I’m surprised he didn’t go after Hannah.”

  Oh, he did.

  “Tell me Cruz isn’t at the police station.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s at Lakeside talking with Tank about taking over Reckless Rebellion.”

  “You know Serene is sick and pregnant.”

  “I am aware,” she contends with a scowl. “Something else I am none too happy about. Mae doesn’t belong with her family in Oklahoma. I talked with that woman for hours when she was up in Austin, trying to reason with her, but she won’t listen to me.”

  Putting my feet up in a chair, I stroke my beard. “I want Mae.”

  “I know you do, honey,” she says as I light a smoke. She pushes the crystal ashtray across the table. “But we cannot always get what we want. Mae is four and a half. All we can do is wait and see what happens.”

  “But they aren’t caring for her…”

  “No, Mae and Kade have spent more time here than with either of their parents. I honestly don’t know why Serene is insisting on having another child. She’s spent so much time across the pond recently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s been going back and forth to Copenhagen for months. Did she not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Oh, God…” She sits back in the chair, deflecting from speaking the truth. “That baby isn’t Nico’s.”

  “Which baby?”

  “Zachary! Or at least that is what the rumor mill is saying. It could be wrong, but she’s supposedly been having an affair with Stroker Mullins on and off for years since Gregory passed.”

  “You’re fucking with me,” I blurt out.

  “Darling, I wish I were fucking you,” she says, laughing and twirling her arm high. “I’d be up on that dick and riding all damn night. Yeehaw!”

  She finally earns a priceless grin from me. A well deserved one at that. “You’re as spunky as you ever were.”

  “It’s that doctor!” she remarks as I take my first gulp of the tea. The sweetness is wretched, but the peach is perfection. “Tristan Kerris. He’s been doing some newfangled experimental treatments with sea kelp. And I’ve been smoking a bong every few days.”

  Tea dribbles out of my mouth. “Fuck. Anna!” She chuckles and hands a napkin to me. “You’ve got to warn me before you say things like that.”

  “Really, Lucas?” She smiles and bats her lashes. “What fun would that be?”

  I hear an eruption of tiny giggles swirling from the garden as Amber runs with the bubble wand and Mae chases after it.
I look over to Kade, making a sandcastle with Lula. “Is he okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not showing any…”

  “Signs of being Nicky’s?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “I worry.”

  “No, but he has his mother’s flaring temper. Long wick, but when he goes, better watch it. Merritt is the one we all need to worry about. Raine and Merritt video chat every day, but…I shouldn’t gossip.”

  “Yes!” I charge, “You should! Give me all the dirt!”

  “Dom went to check in on the kids one night and found Raine with her tablet, under the covers, and Merritt was talking in a rather profane manner. Video chats have since ceased, and from what I have heard, neither one is happy.”

  I shake my head. “He’s a preteen.”

  “And she is still a child,” she says as I shrug. “He’s trouble!”

  “They spent their entire lives together, and we split them apart. No one thought that would be easy on either one of them.”

  I rub the tips of my fingers as the feeling starts to return. “Who has legal custody of Merritt?”

  “Henney, but she hasn’t been seen or heard from in months.”

  “Henney alone, not Giles too?”

  “Hennessey Bindel alone,” she confirms. “But she didn’t want him. Deacon was off with you, Diablo had just gotten out of jail, and Delarte told Trudy if she took Merritt that he wouldn’t marry her.”

  “… She asked him?”

  “I don’t think she so much as asked him as they mutually agreed to marry,” she comments. “Who else do you want to know about?”

  Anna is an open book for me, and I take her up on the offer. “Any word from Cas?”

  “Not a peep,” she says. “But I do know Pico was talking with her. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing considering he split the club.”

  “What about Charlotte?”

  “Gone!” she bellows. “She had the baby almost a year ago. Broke up with Derek because she claimed to be in love with Lula. She spent a few months living with Lula at her house in Godland when out of the blue, she gathered her shit and left town. We found out two weeks ago that she’s been in Russia with her grandparents.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mumble. “Has everyone lost their damn mind?”

  “Yes!” she declares with a sarcastic laugh. “And I am so pissed off at all of the Girl Crew for acting the way they are, even Iris knows better. Her only reprieve is the fact that she still calls me all the time. I never hear from any of the rest of them. I haven’t seen Jaid in months. I found out from Ella that Jaid had the baby, and she and Abel were divorcing.”

  “I’m scared, Anna,” I confess. “The love junk hurts.”

  With a smile, she lays her hand on my arm. “Enjoy her, Sal. That’s my best advice. If you really love this girl, enjoy her. Enjoy her before life truly gets in your way. Enjoy her before things change. Enjoy her. And let her enjoy you.”

  In the distance, I hear the rumble of the motorcycle. Amber looks up, smiles, and catches my observation. I flick a curious brow. She blushes and looks away.

  Would I give him up for her?

  Not a fucking chance in hell.

  She must learn to share like Mae with her crayons, crackers, and abundant love.

  Because I plan on enjoying the shit out of him.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you come to the Swamp Shack?” he asks as we walk through Juliet’s campus in the late afternoon. We’re closing in on the fountain with the statue of the naked woman with butterflies.

  With uncertainty, I shake my head. “Because…the shack in the back is not my house. My house is the derelict mess in the front.”

  “Bull-fucking-shit it’s not your house!” he argues in the cut patched with President. “They’re both your houses.”

  Damn, I missed Deacon Cruz.

  “I didn’t know if you’d want me there.”

  “After everything we’ve been through, you’re all I want,” he insists, stopping to stare me down. I turn my back against the brick wall and smirk at our positioning—he’s always on the outside to protect me. He never fails. He never forgets. “I bought that fucking house for you and me—for us. Tonight, you are following my ass home.”

  “But you and Amber are hooking up...”

  “It was one night!” His arms spread wide. “I didn’t drop down on one knee, and I certainly don’t plan to. She was staying here with Anna until I launched her over the ocean to rescue you…”

  “You were sending Amber to Italy?”

  “I was, Iris, intercepted that,” he confides. “Because I knew you wouldn’t want Iris left alone.”

  “And yet, you sent her away last night.”

  “With Navarro,” he replies, easing closer. “You need to trust her.”

  “Where is she going?”

  “She’s hanging out in Texas,” he says. “But if you want this to work and you don’t want Muerte breathing down your neck, I suggest you let her do what she needs to do.”

  I prop my foot on the wall and scout across the landscape to the main gate of Juliet. “I’m not ready, and that means this is a loss. I’m such a failure.”

  “Admitting your capabilities is the first battle. Knowing you can’t handle a war with Muerte isn’t a failure; it’s admirable. Just like it was when Dom sold his family business off to Campanelli. Why invest if you can’t win?”

  “Because at some point risk comes into play,” I answer. “But regardless of what I do, I lose.”

  “So throw caution to the wind and enter the big boy board, but you best pray it doesn’t ricochet and rebound back into you.”

  “Don’t even go there with boomerang theory. More importantly, who am I getting in bed with?”

  “Dom, Anna,” he says, opening his hands and tapping on his fingers as they uncurl one by one. “The Preacher, Morpheus, and me.”

  “That’s five-plus me, so six.”

  “Your math skills are hot today, Nero,” he teases with a grin. “I have five digits too.” He winks. “My point here is—you’ve got friends even if you bury The Unholy. Take everything in The Unholy accounts, and we’ll each invest.”

  “You’ve talked to Morpheus?”

  “No, Amber did,” he says.

  “Jesus,” I mumble, covering my face as he approaches. He spreads his legs to lower his height, so we’re eye to eye. His rough hands ease over my wrists to reveal the fret in my eyes.

  “What are you so scared of?”

  “Becoming my father!”

  “Vinny?”

  “No!” I yell, grinding my jaw. “Cesario. I don’t want the stress from deals determining whether I am breaking the hands of the baby in her belly.”

  “You would never!” he fiercely stresses, staring at me. “Let me repeat that—you would never do that to your child, wife, or me.”

  I smirk. “I might give you a black eye.”

  “That’s different,” he snorts, lifting a brow. “You don’t have much choice. The Unholy is going under and will be obsolete because no one will do business with Nico anymore. He sealed The Unholy fate when he killed my fucking sister, but you have an opportunity to come back and show everyone what you can do.”

  “Why not you?”

  He licks his lips. “I’m not interested in being the leader of your chapel.” Picking up the panels on the cut, he preaches, “This is my church.”

  I smile. “Do you remember everything I ever said?”

  “I try.” He smirks and brushes his hand over my hair. “I love you, and that ain’t gonna change, Nero. I am a Saint, the Pres of my club again, and your fucking right-hand man, sweetheart. It’s you and me until the very fucking end. It always was.”

  With tears in my eyes, I say, “You swear that you’re not going to leave?”

  He holds his ringed knuckles up. “With this ring, I thee wed until death rips us part.”

  “… What happened in Gifu?”

  “I
fucked up,” he admits, solidly. “I thought I was missing something. And do you know what I realized?”

  I shake my head. “What?”

  “I was missing something—you.”

  “Did he give good head?”

  “I don’t even know how to answer that,” he says. “He wasn’t you.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “No, I don’t! I love you. I love Iris,” he confesses with tears in his blue eyes matching the sky. “And I’m not so sure I don’t have feelings for her…”

  “And Lukas Cruz?”

  “Long fucking story,” he whispers, letting the tears fall. “I’ll tell you everything, but not here.”

  “You got snipped.”

  “Because she called and told me she was pregnant, and I didn’t want to risk hurting you with Iris.”

  “You’re such a fucker.”

  “I’ll be a fucker, just let me be your fucker.” With guilt bearing down on him, he takes a deep breath and turns away. I lay my finger in the blonde tufts of his scruff and urge his attention. I lean in and softly kiss his lips.

  His body slams into mine as his hands press against my cheeks. His tongue dives in deep, making a statement about what he wants. He parts with a reluctant heave, knowing we cannot go further. My head tilts back as his mouth skims over my neck. “You should stop before we’re christening the butterflies.”

  We’re two boys making out at Juliet.

  My life. My choices. My rule.

  And somewhere, Luca Raniero is smiling.

  65

  Fortune Cookies, Anyone?

  His Ride

  “I’m just angry,” Ma says as we sit around her outside table with boxes of Chinese food and fortune cookies. “What the hell was Nicky thinking?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sal says, chowing down on vegetables with his chopsticks. He’s fucking cute as hell in my Van Halen t-shirt and sexhat. “He isn’t getting out of this.”

  Rocking in the chair, I ask, “Where is Delarte?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Muerte’s asshole,” Sal quickly chirps, offering a carrot to me. I wave it off. “Eat the fucking vegetable, you carnivore.”