Busted Steel: An Age Gap Stand Alone Romance (Steel Crew Book 6)
Page 4
“Miss Steel, I’m on a job, and I—”
“Your job was to come fetch me.” She pokes herself in the chest. “Me, a grown-ass woman. And look”—she throws her lanky arms in the air and does some jazz hands shit—“I’ve yet to be fetched.”
“And your breath smells like you’ve drank a few too many glasses of thousand-dollar a bottle champagne, so—”
“So what? My family’s loaded. That—”
“And clearly, so are you.”
“Am not!” she defends.
“I get paid to be observant, and you wobbling around like a baby deer trying to stand for the first time in six-inch heels—”
“You call these heels? They’re way more than heels; they’re—”
What the fuck is it with girls and shoes?
“I’m aware of what they are. The point is—”
“No, me first.” She crosses her arms over her chest, causing her ample cleavage to become even more so. “I’m not just coming off a Jax Teller hangover.”
“Did you really just Sons of Anarchy me?” I can’t help but chuckle.
“Um, duh,” she huffs. “The blue eyes, the cut, the freaking look. I mean, you have better hair but …” She clamps her mouth shut, scowls, and then her face scrunches up rather comically. “It was a phase. I’m not fifteen and in awe of some badass. And if fifteen-year-old me saw you right now, she’d have tossed her nose in the air and looked the other way.” She huffs, “Armani suit.”
Admitting that this is fucking amusing would be an understatement.
“It’s way more than an Armani suit.”
Her face turns from soft blush to full-on red. “You—”
“And you’re still the same Little Bit you’ve always been. So, how about you stop trying to figure me out and figure yourself out”—I reach past her and open the door—“after your sister’s reception?”
“You’re such a—”
“Brisa.”
Her father’s voice has her standing straight up and her jaw dropping.
“Is everything okay?”
I can’t even attempt to hide my amusement at this point, and she looks shook as fuck. Then she narrows her eyes and whips around to face him.
“I’m a grown woman.”
“You’re nineteen.” His words are intense.
“And I’m a grown woman, Dad.”
He arches a brow.
“If I wanna come out here with a whole slew of men, I can.” She throws her thumb over her shoulder. “I don’t need double-O badass to come save me.”
His jaw tenses, and he narrows his eyes.
Right now, I’m wishing I was in my recliner with some fucking popcorn.
“You’re still my little girl, Brisa.” His tone is as stiff as his stance.
“But I’m not. And I didn’t want to do this today. I was actually going to wait until the end of the trip, but I’m taking a gap year to travel.”
“Brisa, this is a discussion that needs to be had with your mother and me,” he says firmly.
She shakes her head. “You and Mom need to find each other again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, shocked.
“It means what it means. I’m not stupid, Dad. And I’m not trying to cause issues. Quite the opposite, actually. I don’t need your money. I have my own. I’ll be safe, but I want to see the beautiful things in the world before I go sit behind a desk for another four to eight years of my life.”
“Brisa,” he says, taking her hand. “You—”
She places her hand on his face. “Without you two, we wouldn’t be here. Stay strong, and so will we.”
“We’re solid, Brisa. We—”
“Dad, look at me. So am I. But solid doesn’t necessarily mean happy.”
“This conversation will—”
“Be happy for me. Trust me.”
“You don’t make it real easy when you follow a man like Hugo out the damn door in the dark.”
“He told me he lost a piece of jewelry. I didn’t know it was a wedding ring! I was going to try to help him find it. He’s family,” she insists.
“Fuck he is,” I grumble.
She whips around and glares at me.
I shrug. “Pretty damn sure none of your cousins would try to lay hands on you. Just as sure as I am that they wouldn’t have tried it a second time if any woman slapped them for getting handsy.”
“Oh my God, would you shut up?”
“He what?” Zandor snarls as he turns toward the door.
She grabs his elbow, just like she did mine between the rows of grapes. “Dad, Marcello doesn’t even like him!”
“You mean Matteo?” I correct her, because she used Tris’s ex’s name.
“Mind your business,” she snaps.
“Brisa, he put his hands on you after you told him not—”
“And look at me.” She raises her arms in the air again, just as she had when she went off on me, jazz fingers and all. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, yes, you are, because Ranger—”
“Oh my God, can I not get any credit? I was handling it. For Lord’s sake, I hit him—”
“Twice,” I interject.
She whips her head around, her hair smacking me in the face. “This is not your business.”
“True.” I push off the post that I’m leaning against and look at Zandor. “You got this.”
“Oh, hell no.” She pokes me in the chest. “I’m not done with you yet. Stay.”
“Should I sit and shake, too?”
“You … you … stay.”
She looks back at her father. “See those vines growing over there?”
“Yes, Brisa, I see the vines.”
“Well, they’re growing in whatever direction they choose, yet their roots remain as one.”
“That’s beautiful, Brisa. However, they’re still physically connected. They’re not—”
“Everyone is going in different directions, Dad. Tris is married and living in Italy—”
“With Momma Joe close by.”
“Amias was drafted. Patrick’s going to Boston, Justice is living with his girl, Truth and Tobias …” She pauses.
“We know they’re shaking up at college, so don’t bother trying to come up with something.”
“Kiki and Bell are married and have kids. Max …” She scratches her head. “Well, he’s Max and going to be a senior with all those Westside Crew assholes.”
“Some of those assholes, as you call them, are family,” he says sternly.
“And my family, my Crew—Max—will most certainly make them his bitches, as they damn well should be. But I’m not gonna be the girl commuting to college and living at home when everyone else is seeking their place under the sun to grow and become who they’re meant to become. And not just for me either; you and Mom need at least a damn year to reconnect after the shitshow our lives have been.”
I see Tris standing off in the corner. She holds her finger over her lips, telling me to shh.
“You let Tris get married, Dad, but you’re trying to hold on so tightly to me that I feel like I’m freaking suffocating.”
“You’re different.”
“No, Dad, I’m not. But I could become a stripper, and you’d still see pigtails, glasses, and really jacked-up teeth in need of braces. Which, by the way, could have been put on at least a year before you allowed it to save me from some awful yearbook pictures and a lifetime of embarrassment. And seriously, when I have kids, I will not encourage them to smile big for the camera when they have buck teeth. That’s just not nice. I mean, Tris got braces before me!”
“You didn’t want them. You loved that they were different from everyone else’s, and I loved that about you, Brisa. You’re the one who believes in fairy tales, the one who sees beauty in everything, the one who always loved the damsel in distress in the movies and wanted to be her. You are gentle and kind, and so damn innocent. Don’t fault me because I want that for you.”
“Brisa!” he hisses.
“What? You liked him.”
Tris steps out of the shadow. “He liked Miles because he knew you still looked at him like he was your hero.”
Zandor closes his eyes tightly and mumbles something under his breath; a curse, I believe.
“You were a daddy’s girl whereas I wanted to be like him.”
I watch Zandor’s face take on a look of pain.
“You remind him of Mom, and I remind him of who he used to be.” Tris shrugs. “Your whole innocence thing—”
“I love you no less, Tris,” Zandor cuts her off. “I wanted no less for you. I’m so sorr—”
Tris laughs. “It’s not your fault, Dad. I took a different path. But, hey, look at me now. I have a hot as hell husband, who just escorted his brother off the premises because he saw him walk in and you standing out here.” She winks at Brisa. “He loves me and is amazing in bed. A real giver, that one.”
I’m waiting for Zandor to flip shit or hurl. He does neither. I would damn sure do both.
“Tris—”
She steps toward him, smiling as sincerely as I have ever seen her. “My life is good. Anything bad is in the past and caused by my own doing.” She pushes up on her toes and hugs him. “I love you, Dad. You were my first love, just like you were Brisa’s. And my last love, Matteo, is everything I ever dreamed of.” She steps back and places her hand over the vintage lace bodice covering her heart. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“I would,” he says adamantly.
“Well, that would be silly. You wouldn’t have had three kick-ass kids. Two who have been a bit less sheltered and one who’s about to be.”
She turns and looks at Brisa. “I need you to follow me around the world for a sixty-day honeymoon. Be my photographer and shopping buddy.”
“What?” Brisa gasps, while I want to shake Tris and tell her fuck no.
“Your social media is as perfect as your makeup. I need that. We need that. We’re not a hundred percent set on an itinerary, but we’d like to see a lot, and I’d like to shop a lot, too.”
She’s not wrong. She’s so fucking random, which doesn’t make my life any easier. But fuck this.
Trying to will Brisa to walk the fuck away, I repeat in my head, Say no, say no, say no, say no.
“I kind of have my own adventure already planned.”
“Girls, I think—”
“Dad, I want to see the Northern Lights. I want to walk the Great Wall of China. I want to stand at the top of Pulpit Rock in Norway. I want to hike the Incan trails in Machu Picchu.”
“Okay, the hiking thing, we may have to discuss.” Tris smiles at Brisa. “I don’t have the proper footwear.”
Brisa grins. “I want to feel tiny as I stand, looking at the Iguazu Falls, see the beaches at Mozambique, stand at the base of the Pyramids of Giza.”
“You know they suggest you travel with armed fu—guards there, correct?” Zandor snaps.
She rolls her eyes. “I want to swim in the Ik Kil Cenote in Mexico. I want to take a million pictures so that I can look at them anytime I feel the need to see that kind of tangible magic.” She stops and shakes her head. “I want to know the me I’m becoming.” She looks at Tris. “And I want to do all those things alone, to find my true passion, like you did with your music … so that I can love…” She stops. “I need to do this.”
I can easily feel every time she hesitates as easily as I assume her father and sister are doing.
“Tris didn’t do it alone,” Zandor states. “She had Patrick and a whole team. She didn’t go a month without your mother and I meeting her wherever she was traveling, and Momma Joe and Thomas in-between those times.”
“But she was sixteen, Dad,” Brisa says softly. “I’m nineteen.”
I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket and pull it out. “I hate to interrupt this, but it’s time to head back to the property.”
Tris nods. “Incoming?”
I shake my head. “No, but let’s err on the side of caution.” I push off the beam and go to move for the door.
Brisa shakes her head. “No, I’m not done with you yet, mister.”
“Can we take a break from the ass-chewing before Efisto shows? All I need is three words.”
Her lips make an O as I grab the door.
“After you all.”
“Three words?” she asks curiously.
“Thank you, Ranger.”
“Oh my God, really?” she huffs.
“I only do real.”
She rolls her eyes as she walks in with a little less of a drunken wobble now.
I wait until Tris and Zandor walk in behind Brisa.
Tris kisses his cheek, and he whispers something in her ear that makes her face break out into a nearly blinding smile. Then she holds the skirt of her dress up, kicks her shoes off, and hurries across the room to Matteo.
“His smile matches hers, yeah?” Zandor asks me.
“Yeah.”
“You’ll tell me if my girl needs me, even though I’m not paying you anymore?”
“You gotta give her a bit of credit. She’s a ball buster. She has no problem asking for what she wants. Hell, she demands it. She’ll let you know on her own.”
He shakes his head. “I’m talking about Brisa.”
“She’s not my job.”
“She’s going to be. Tris will convince her to go on the premise she needs her. Brisa will go because she can’t say no when someone she loves needs her.”
“If that happens,” I say, hoping it doesn’t, “I’ll do what I can.”
“Do you think Marcello will be a problem tonight?”
I shake my head. “You’ll see no problems.”
He grips my shoulder. “I appreciate the hell out of you.”
“How about you do as your daughter suggested and go appreciate the hell out of your wife? Make sure you remind one another that you raised three good people, and you did it together, so fix whatever shit she’s seeing that you can’t.”
“Right now, I’m not appreciating you so fucking much.”
I lift a shoulder. “Bound to happen from time to time.”
I don’t wait for him to come back at me like he tends to. I get to work.
I pull up in front of the property, a fucking sixteenth century, three-story castle with eighteen bedrooms that Matteo rented for their immediate families. Tris had already rented one to surprise him, about five miles south of here. That’s now where her distant relatives will be staying for the weekend.
The guest house on the Castello property has four bedrooms, and that’s where my thrown-together team is resting up for what’s going to be a solid twenty-four hours of no sleep for any of us. Longer if Efisto shows his ass. The fact that they haven’t thrown him in jail pisses me off. The fact that Sabato, his father, and Zandor have been friends forever, that Tris doesn’t think he’s a threat and obviously still cares about him, is a hindrance. But when I’m raking in three hundred Gs a year, I’m not complaining … Well, not that much.
Hydration / Contemplation
Brisa
Standing at the sink in this insanely large and kind of creepy house, dressed in a tank top, sleep shorts and, yes, my glasses, I toss back two Motrin and guzzle water.
I drank a bit too much champagne and plan to try to head off a hangover and be fully hydrated so I’m looking extra good tomorrow.
I’m also definitely planning to wear contacts, because freaking Ranger is here, hotter than ever, and I didn’t even see him! I mean, I kind of knew he would be around. Apparently, he always is, but I haven’t seen him since that Sunday family dinner at Uncle Cyrus and Aunt Tara’s house, the day after the fight.
Four Years Ago…
An extra seat, a friend of Bella’s
husband’s joining us, all very typical.
When I hear Bella’s stepdaughter, Luna, as they walk in, I still have no clue that my life is about to change.
“But he needs a bunch of Band-Aids,” Luna says.
“I’m good, Little Bit.”
Little Bit? No way, it can’t be, I think.
“But you have whole bunches of boo-boos.”
“Hand to God”—he laughs—“it’s all good. But you know what will make me feel better?”
Luna asks, “What?”
“Eating whatever smells so good.”
“It’s basagna,” Luna tells him. “Come on.”
He chuckles, and my suspicion rises.
“Lead the way.”
Bella is the first to appear, with Luna behind her, still looking back. And then confirmation … a punch to the gut.
I kick Truth under the table to get her attention.
“Ankle,” she hisses.
I can’t even utter the word sorry. All I can do is watch the train wreck of a situation unfold before me.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
“What the hell is wrong—”
“He’s here,” I whisper to Truth.
She looks back and then at me. “We are so fucked.”
Kiki nudges her, asking, “What’s going on?”
Truth answers, “I’m sure you’ll know soon enough, and, Kiki, I’m moving in with you and Brand when shit hits the fan.”
“Jesus, man.” Uncle Cyrus stands up. “Luna’s right; you do need a Band-Aid … or twenty.”
“Big fall.” Ranger winks and gives Uncle Cyrus a bro hug. “Good to see you again.”
We’re screwed now anyway.
“Been a few years.” Cyrus steps back.
“Certainly has.”
Uncle Jase stands up. “And a few haircuts, too.”
“Jase,” Aunt Carly whispers harshly, scolding him.
Ranger chuckles. “Went from the military back to the streets for a bit. Did a stint in Haynesville, and then the show. Kept it tight back then. Figured that might have been the problem.” He reaches over and shakes Uncle Jase’s hand. “So, I’m letting it grow out.”
“I knew he was a criminal,” Truth whispers to me.