After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4

by Darling, Giana

  There was a pause like the thick, buzzing quiet after a bomb strike, and then they moved. My brothers split into two factions across an invisible, impenetrable line. Us and them.

  It shocked the shit outta me that Bat moved first, standin’ up and crossin’ around the back of Buck at the head of the table to stand by me, startin’ a domino effect that included Boner, Curtains, Priest, Cyclops, Lab-Rat, Kodiak, Axe-Man, and finally, Nova, who hopped his ass up on the table and swung over the other side. My side.

  It meant I had the majority by two votes, and only then because Skell’d gone and gotten himself locked up.

  “Not feelin’ too hot today,” Smoke rasped from the far corner where he sat with his oxygen machine. “But I’d move if I could.”

  “Fuck,” Buc grumbled, scrubbin’ a hand over his face. “Hope you’re prepared to carry the full weight’a this responsibility, boy.”

  I tipped my chin. “Watch Z do it my whole life and I only intend to fill his fuckin’ mammoth shoes while he’s gone.”

  “Now what?” Boner asked, scratchin’ his balls noisily through his jeans. “I mean that was an epic stand-off and I hate to ruin the affect, but we good to roll out like this? Club divided.”

  “Family are the ones you love, and the people you’d die for,” Nova said, surprisingly somber. “Fallen’s a family tighter than most. We got this, brothers. King’s at the head of the hydra, but we got a fuck-ton of talkin’ heads to put together to figure somethin’ out.”

  “Let’s get to it,” I suggested as everyone re-took their seats and even the Old Guard quit their grumblin’.

  * * *

  In the days followin’, it became obvious every brother had a tail. The Entrance PD wasn’t huge, but it seemed most’ve them were corrupt because whenever any of the guys left the compound, a cop sittin’ in plain sight in a vehicle emblazoned with “Entrance PD” would tear out after them, another one in its place within the hour.

  The brothers could shake a tail and laugh doin’ it, but when Ormand, McDougal, and Peters made it their mission to follow Loulou, H.R., and Cressida, not to mention a handful of the other Old Ladies, we knew somethin’ had to change and immediately.

  So, even though Cress and me were supposed to spend the night at Donovan’s steak house celebratin’ a week until we said ‘I do,’ we were at Entrance’s resident strip club, The Wet Lotus.

  Wasn’t there to eye fuck the ladies, could barely tear my eyes off my own woman, decked out in biker babe finery. She sat beside me on the black velvet booth, leather pants up to her belly button and slicked to every inch of her curves while the little top, just an overlarge red bandana she’d found in the depths of my sock drawer, practically begged to be tugged off. She has the dark eyes, big hair, red lips that made me want to drag her to the floor and take her right there and then, but we had business to take care of before I could take care of her.

  The Lotus was Fallen owned, and we had a history with the place, given Zeus had met and been seduced by Lou there, but I hadn’t been through the lacquered black doors in years, and I was surprised again by what a classy joint it was.

  The only black spot on the club was the fact it was frequented often and drunkenly, by a large contingent of the Entrance Police force. Includin’ but not limited to, Staff Sergeant Harold Danner.

  He sat in the back booth, dead center like some kinda kingpin wantin’ to be seen and revered. There were two plainclothes cops at the table, their buzz cuts and posture givin’ them away as coppers, and about four barely clothed women.

  One’a those bein’ Paula.

  It was hard not to think back on all my interactions with the man over the years and wondered how he’d turned out this way. He’d be such a taciturn stickler for the rules in my youth and devoted to his wife, even if he’d been hard on his son.

  Where did a greed like his stem from? Was it inherent to his DNA, an extra chromosome, a genetic disease? Didn’t think so, given the way Lion was the exact opposite of that.

  Was evil, like Shakespeare hypothesized about greatness, born, breed, or earned?

  He’d noticed us, Cress and me at one table ostensibly on a date, Nova, Kodiak, Boner, and Cyclops at another drinkin’ beers loudly and generally makin’ enough of a ruckus that eyes would go to them.

  “Got no reservations about takin’ part in this?” I said low to my woman.

  Cress smiled around the rim of her bourbon sour and winked. “Are you kidding? Paula and Cressida cat fight take two? I should be selling tickets.”

  I laughed, rememberin’ how my woman had once cut off Paula and her bitchiness at the knee for the entire clubhouse to see. If any’a the brothers had doubted my choice to date an older woman, and my teacher at that, they’d said dick all about it after that.

  “You know, there’s not a single fuckin’ thing I’d change about you?” I murmured, leanin’ over to wrap my hand around the back of her neck and kiss that red mouth. “Proud to be your man, babe.”

  She smiled against my mouth. “Ditto, honey.”

  I squeezed her thigh. “They’re both watchin’. Let’s get this done so I can getcha home to our bed.”

  Her giggle was more breath than sound as I suddenly hauled her clean across the booth, hand tangled in the back of all that gorgeous hair so I could pin her to my mouth. She moaned, then crawled on top of me, straddlin’ me in the booth like she was one of the dancers who worked there.

  Only none’a those women were worth a fuckin’ damn next to Cress.

  I slide my hands under her ass, lifting her with me as I stood and then droppin’ her down my body slow, like the trickle of molasses, so I could feel every curve.

  When we parted after another minute of long, wet kisses that would’a made me hard as steel if I hadn’t been so aware of our plan, Cress pulled away with a seductive little smile and strutted on her sexy as fuck red heels to the bathroom.

  Waited a beat, watchin’ the round ass sway, then took off after her when she rounded the corner to the back hall.

  There was no way I was leavin’ her alone in the club, not when Danner had flat-out threatened her and put his goddamn hands on her.

  And when I went, I noticed Paula got up to follow from the corner of my eyes.

  I strolled nice and easy across the room and made my way to the men’s toilets, pretendin’ to take a piss at one of the urinals while I wanted.

  Wasn’t waitin’ for long.

  The door pushed open with a breath of air behind me and then the click of heels and the somewhat familiar scent of cheap perfume before two hands smoothed down the back of my cut.

  “King baby,” Paula purred. “Long time no see and what a shame that is.”

  I tried not to stiffen against her repulsive touch, knowin’ she’d just had her hands on SS Danner.

  “Paula,” I rumbled, turnin’ around. She didn’t step back when our bodies brushed together, her big tits against my chest, offered up in her low top like overripe fruit. “What the fuck’re you doin’ in here?”

  “Couldn’t help myself,” she admitted with a low chuckle, moving her hands onto my chest, fingers smoothing over the patches on my cut, lingerin’ at 1%ers and the burnin’ winged skull. “Man like you’s hard to resist. Most beautiful guy I’ve ever laid my damn eyes on, you know that?”

  Grabbed her questin’ hands in one’a mine and grinned wickedly when the door sighed open behind her.

  “Matter of fact, I do. My woman tells me near every damn day.”

  And then Paula was ripped away from me, the momentum carrying her straight back into the door of a toilet stall. She tripped over her feet and fell to her ass. Cress stood over her, fists clenched, eyes wild like a mustang on the run.

  “Think I told you once before, you laid hands on my man again, we’d have a problem.”

  Paula swallowed thickly, eyes swingin’ back and forth between the two of us. “Listen, no harm done, bitch. I barely got my hands on him!”

  Cress squatted in fr
ont of her with an easy nodded, but there was coiled tension in every line of her slim form.

  “You’re right,” she agreed, but then a hand went flashing out, catching with a sharp crack against Paula’s cheek. “That’s for bitch slapping me back in the day and for trying to touch my fiancé now.”

  Paula tried to lurch off her ass to launch herself at Cress, and as much as I was a red-blooded male who loved a good cat fight, that was not the purpose of tonight. So, I stepped up between the girls and clamped my arms around Paula, pinnin’ her down at her sides.

  “Listen up,” I told her. “Not into violence against women personally, but got a few friends who don’t care about gender and are mighty fuckin’ excited to meet Staff Sergeant Danner’s sweet piece. Now, nothin’ bad has to happen, Paula, if you go nice and easy, and answer our questions about your man and what you might’a been doin’, uninvited, in The Fallen clubhouse the night of Riley Gibson’s unfortunate passin’.”

  Woman stopped strugglin’ in my hold instantly, and I could actually feel the cold sweep through her, the way she shuddered and balked.

  “Wasn’t there,” she insisted, but her voice was threadbare with panic.

  “Like hell you weren’t,” Cress snapped, steppin’ up to point a finger in her face. “I saw you myself.”

  Paula didn’t breathe for a long second, and then, when she did, she screamed.

  I wrapped a hand around her mouth before she could get much sound out, but we moved quickly all the same. I dragged her to the door while Cress peeked her head out to check for customers or staff, then I hauled down hall out the back service door to the alley.

  Priest was waitin’ with a smile like an open wound, red and ugly as he took Paula from me and made quick work of tapin’ her mouth shut, then bindin’ her hands and feet. He laid her gently in the back of the van and then rounded to the driver’s seat, takin’ off without sayin’ a word.

  Phone vibrated in my jeans, and when I checked it, I had a text from Nova.

  Nova: Curtains will be there in a minute.

  I grabbed Cress and kissed her hand. “Goin’ back in to talk to the Staff Sergeant. You get home now, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “That was fun as heck, though.”

  I grinned at her, slapped her ass just to feel it move under the leather, and kiss her once more like a stamp of possession to her lips. “Want this on ya when I get home.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a sassy mock-salute I felt in my balls. “Be safe.”

  I nodded and watched her walk out of the mouth of the alley straight across the street to her parked car.

  A moment later, Curtain drew up in his obnoxious red Dodge Challenger, Bat already in the passenger seat.

  “Good?” he asked immediately as I slid in the back.

  I nodded. “Priest’s got her. How’re the other crews doin’?”

  “Heckler, Wiseguy, and Lab-Rat got that rookie Officer Windham, takin’’im back to Angelwood Farms now.”

  It was a simple plan really, divide and conquer the weakest links in Danner’s armour. He was goin’ after our women, so we got no compulsion about targetin’ him and his. Priest would work his dark magic, and I had no doubt that by the mornin’, we’d have two turncoats in Danner’s rotten to the core operation.

  I wanted it to be enough, but the word of a biker bitch and a rookie against the word of an RCMP officer wasn’t ironclad, not even a little, so we were on our way to Danner’s house to break in usin’ the alarm code Susan Hobbs had so kindly given us.

  B & E wasn’t somethin’ I’d add to my resume, but I’d been good with a set of lock picks since I was a kid the way most children were good at baseball and card games. There was somethin’ satisfying about findin’ the right combination of tools to open a locked door, a box filled with potential treasures. Zeus had locked up everythin’ when we were kids—his guns, his cash, his fuckin’ porn—and I’d made it a habit to get to all of it.

  So it was easy enough to break into the swanky apartment he was renting downtown with a view of the water. He had an office space, door locked, a desk with three locked drawers, and lock box hidden in a bench seat.

  Bat, Curtains, and I worked through everythin’ carefully. If we found somethin’ it had to be enough to know it was there or give us something tangible to go off to offer to the Internal Affairs Department in Vancouver that Lion and Officer Hutchinson were tryin’ to convince to look into the Staff Sergeant and his voice.

  We found fuck all.

  I cursed viciously under my breath as I packed Danner and Susan’s divorce papers back into their folder and shuffled a random list of seemingly random women’s names into another. My gaze nearly slid straight off the page again until I caught sight of two familiar names.

  Honey Yves.

  Lila Meadows.

  “Fucking fuck,” Bat cursed as he peered out the drapes into the front drive. “We got company.”

  Adrenaline sluiced through me, but I swallowed the metallic surge of it on the back of my tongue and finished puttin’ the shit away, lookin’ at Bat for a plan.

  He pointed at the bench, then back at me, turned to Curtains and motioned toward one of the two large gun cabinets on either side of the desk against the back wall.

  Silently, heart pounded so loud and strong in my throat I thought I’d gag, we moved into hidin’.

  It took a few minutes for the door to unlock at the base of the stairs and the sound of feet clompin’ up the stairs, but I used the time to regulate the harshness of my breathin’ and get as comfortable as I could crushed down in the bench.

  “You and your husband made me promises,” Danner was sayin’ when he finally got close enough to hear his murmur. “I expect you to deliver.”

  “Ah well, Sergeant, I could say the same of you,” Irina Ventura drawled.

  A shiver ripped viciously down my spine.

  If one of the brothers so much as fuckin’ breathed wrong, we were all dead.

  Irina was the wife of Javier Ventura, the Canadian representative of the biggest Mexican cartel on the West Coast. She was fuckin’ beautiful, but she was also goddamn poison, the woman behind the man, the one running an underage pornography ring outside Entrance.

  “Staff Sergeant,” Danner corrected automatically, voice louder as he came into the office. “And I’ve delivered on all of my promise, Irina. You’ve been left alone to your disgusting devices for years. I’m only asking you now to rein it in or relocate because you’re drawing notice from other task forces.”

  “You let me worry about those, hmm? You just focus on keepin’ your lovely boys away from my site and keeping The Fallen occupied.”

  There was a long pause, but no movement. Finally, Danner sighed. “You said there’d be a bonus in it, if I got rid of Garro.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? I thought it would cut the head off the snake so to speak, but I think not. You better take care of a few more of those men, Sergeant, or their wives, whatever will break them the fastest.”

  Fuck.

  My heart thundered against my ribs, a caged man locked up in a burnin’ room beggin’ to get free. But I had to lie there, lie there and listen as they spoke about offing one of my brothers, one of our women.

  Danner hesitated, sighing then slumping audibly in his office chair.

  “You’re asking a lot of me, Irina. By the end of it, I won’t be able to stay in Entrance, let alone keep my badge.”

  “Oh dulzura, don’t you worry about that, hmm? I’m sure we can make something work.”

  “Cressida Irons is marryin’ Garro’s son soon. She’s an option, and obviously Loulou Garro and her twins,” he said slowly, the words draggin’ as he thought of the implications. “Those bastards would do anything for those two or Harleigh Rose Garro.”

  “The one dating your son,” Irina said slyly.

  “He’s no son of mine anymore.”

  “Good, good, well, I’ll leave it in your very capable hands, Sergeant.” />
  “I do this…I need a bigger cut of the profits.”

  A rattling silence like the warnin’ before the strike of a snake.

  “Do you?” Irina purred.

  “Twenty percent.”

  She laughed delightedly. “Oh, what balls you have! And what greed.”

  “Got nothing to live for now but myself if my wife doesn’t come back, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t live it rich.”

  “Yes, that’s fair.” She laughed again, softer this time, just to herself. “Well, if you bring me one of the girls or those babies, I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  * * *

  We got out easy.

  Danner let Irina go then fucked around for a while before he got a call and left. I lay crampin’ in that bench seat ruminatin’ on everythin’ they’d said.

  It was hard not to feel fuckin’ hopeless.

  Wasn’t the kind of man to take anythin’ lyin’ down, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Newly patched in, freshly crowned, and I didn’t have a fuckin’ clue.

  We couldn’t kill Danner without one or more of us going to prison and it wouldn’t absolve Zeus guilt and so he’d continue to rot there too.

  We could turn Paula and the rookie, got no doubt about that, but toward what end? Couldn’t put a brother on every single woman in the club so they didn’t get fucked by the cops of the Ventura’s, not forever.

  There wasn’t anythin’ I wouldn’t do to keep my people safe. Family were the ones who made your life worth livin’, yet the only people you would gladly die for.

  We emerged from the hidin’ places twenty minutes after Danner left and ghosted outta the apartment. Bat’s pale face was paler, eyes dark and haunted in his face, while Curtains couldn’t keep still for the reckless, nervous energy thrummin’ through him.

  We all knew now just how far Danner would take his vendetta against the club.