I’d felt dumb.
So fucking dumb.
But that was nothing to now.
Until my house of cards came tumbling down because Lodestar muttered, “Keira—”
And when I twisted to look at her, I came face to face with Cyan.
Torment was etched into her eyes, and I knew she’d heard every miserable, damning word I’d never, ever meant for her to know about the father she idolized.
Maverick
When someone grabbed my arm while I was asleep, I jerked up, ignoring the soft shriek of surprise as my spare hand went for the fucker’s throat.
A strong fist around my wrist, followed by the gentle caress of some fingers on my belly had me blinking, waking up to the fact that I was choking Nyx, and that Ghost was stroking me while crooning into my ear like I was a baby in need of a lullaby.
Although, granted, with her voice, God, she could command anyone to do anything she asked of them. I’d never heard a voice like it. I might stop taking the Valium on the worst nights and just have her lull me to sleep. The combination of that ghostly whisper and her ability to carry a tune was close to angelic—as much of an angel I’d ever get to meet with all my sins darkening my soul, at any rate.
Shaking off the shadows of the past, the screams that littered my ears, the memories that were more turbulent than a tsunami roiling around my head, I focused on Nyx as he shook off my grip and asked, “Haven’t I told you fuckers not to disturb me while I sleep?”
If I sounded like I’d been chewing on nails, well, so be it.
“It’s urgent,” he rumbled, his voice deeper too, thanks to my squeezing on his throat like he was a ripe orange in need of juicing.
“It always is with you bastards.” With one hand, I patted Ghost’s thigh, and the other I used to wipe at my eyes.
“Ghost, I need some privacy—”
“No. She stays,” I barked, my hand tightening about her leg. Not to the point of pain, but in warning. I didn’t want her to leave, not so Nyx could bring club business to me.
Nyx heaved a sigh. “Just a few minutes’ privacy, Maverick. For fuck’s sake. Please?”
I grunted, but directed at Ghost, “You need the bathroom, sweetheart?”
She hummed and scampered off the bed, barely jolting the mattress as she did so.
“Lives up to her name, doesn’t she?” Nyx asked, watching her until the door closed behind her before he perched on the side of my mattress. “Almost as bad as Cruz the way they whisper around the place."
I grunted. “Yeah.”
“Didn’t think she was sleeping in here with you.”
“Well, you know what thought did, don’t you?” I snapped, then with annoyance, I spouted, “If you tell anyone, I’ll gut you like a fish.”
He snorted. “Like I’m going to talk smack about your woman. I’m just surprised is all. I’ll tell Giulia because it will give her comfort to know you’re there for Ghost. You know the women have a soft spot for her.”
That was because Ghost was pretty fucking lovable.
Tatána and Amara were nice enough, but Ghost was easier to connect with because her English was close to perfect.
“What do you want?”
“I need to know if you have some kind of device on hand that’ll sweep for bugs and monitoring devices.”
Scowling at him, I queried, “Why would you ask that?”
His jaw worked. “I need to use one. And I think you might need to sweep the clubhouse.”
“I have the equipment, and I run sweeps every week.”
“Trust me, it might be wise to scan the clubhouse now.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Where’s this coming from?”
“This isn’t council business,” he rasped, but I could see he wanted to share.
“Brother, I ain’t going to tell anyone shit.”
“Good,” he ground out, “I don’t even need Rex to know this yet. I wouldn’t have involved you if it weren’t for needing your help. Indy… well, she killed her assistant.”
Thoughts flashed through my brain like it was a lightning fast processor. “David? That guy who works with her? The creep?”
“Him,” he confirmed, his mouth tightening.
“She killed him?” I repeated, confusion lacing the word. His nod gave no answers, save for a confirmation—it looked like he was just as confused as I was. “Why the fuck did she do that? Didn’t David come with her from Nawlins?”
“He did. Cruz—” His jaw hardened. “Cruz went to visit her and found David there on the ground.”
“Cruz and Indy?” I asked, brows surging in surprise because Indy’s distaste for Sinners was renowned.
“Apparently,” he grated out. “He’s going to clear up the body, but from what she told him, David’s managed to get eyes and ears around the clubhouse.”
“Impossible,” I grumbled.
“Not impossible,” he countered. “According to Cruz, the fucker followed us to the city. Took pictures of him with his mother.”
“Jesus,” I hissed.
“Yeah, you see my problem.” His mouth tightened. “We have a rat in our midst, because I haven’t seen David around this place, and I’m pretty fucking sure you haven’t, or if you had, you’d have told me.” He rubbed his chin. “Do you think Lodestar kept the fucker from us?”
I shook my head. “No. She has no interest in our personal security.”
Nyx rolled his eyes, but his temper was dramatically reduced at my less than sterling words.
Only a fool would mistake Lodestar’s reason for being here.
She was on the hunt while running from someone, and we could keep her safe. At the same time, we could protect Katina, she could get to know her sister, Ghost, and I was here—with a battalion of brothers who were willing to fight to bring down her enemies.
Why wouldn’t she stick around?
And though I didn’t put it past her to have some kind of listening device on any of us, and was well aware she was capable of spying on us because she’d somehow found out about Cruz’s Mom being a Fed—hadn’t that been a fucking joke talking her down from shooting his ass?—this just didn’t have her scent. I knew her too well. As much as anyone could know Lodestar, because I’d known her back before this goddamn world had ruined her.
Had ruined me, too.
Sorrow for us both hit me square in the chest, but I’d long since stopped feeling pity for either of us. What was the point? It changed nothing.
Nothing whatsoever.
“If it isn’t Lodestar, then it’s either a brother or one of the bunnies,” Nyx was saying, drawing me from my thoughts like he knew where they’d taken me when that was impossible. His mind was on the breach in our defenses as well as his sister’s welfare.
I reached for him, grabbed his arm and said, “Don’t worry about this. It’s my job and Sin’s. I’ll wake him up. You’re the VP now, you don’t have to deal with this shit, and you have a sister who needs you more than we do.”
He grimaced. “Is it shitty that I’d prefer to handle the security?”
“Probably,” I confirmed, surprised by the admission though I didn’t show it.
“I’ve never been able to get through to Indy. I doubt she even wants me there.”
“You’re her big brother, aren’t you? When shit goes wrong, when it hits the fan and splatters everywhere, don’t you want a psychopathic relative on your side?”
Though his mood was turbulent, his lips twitched at that. “Maverick, you’re so good for my ego.”
“Just saying it like it is.”
“I’m sure.” Ruefully, he smiled at me before he rubbed his chin. “I want to help her.”
“Then help her.”
“I don’t know how.”
“At the moment, I think she just needs to get rid of a body, and hey, that’s something we do on the regular.”
“Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, I guess she isn’t asking for too much from us, is she?” was h
is dry comment.
“Nope.” My grin died. “You’ve spent all your life fighting for the sister who died, Nyx, maybe it’s time to start fighting for the one who’s alive, hmm?” I spoke with caution, not because I was afraid of him or his reaction, but because I didn’t want to trigger something in him.
His uncle, his sister’s death, all of it had fucked Nyx up. But he’d never seen how his uncle’s abuse and the fallout had affected Indy, or Caleb for that matter. I highly doubted Caleb, AKA Quin, would even be a Sinner if it weren’t for Nyx. As it was, the kid was in state lock up and all because he’d been trying to impress his brother.
Uncle Kev had a lot of sins to lay at his door, but that didn’t mean Nyx had to compound them.
He cleared his throat. “Shit, you don’t really think that, do you?”
“Rarely say what I don’t mean, brother,” I told him softly, clapping him on the shoulder again. “Go on. Go and dig a metaphorical grave for your sister’s enemy. That should put you in a good mood.”
Laughing, he shook his head. “You’re a prick, Mav.”
“You and I both know it,” I agreed, smirking at him, but I watched as he got off the bed and started toward the door. He veered to the left, though, first, and I watched as, before his hand connected with it, he murmured, “I hope she makes you happy, Mav. You deserve that.” Then he tapped, and called out, “Thanks, Ghost. You can come out now.”
She didn’t obey, not until the outer door to my room closed and then she peeped out, staring at me with those big fucking eyes of hers that I felt certain could see into my goddamn soul.
To me, she was like an angel. While I was no monster, I was well aware that she deserved a man far better than me. But few would slay her demons like I would, and I had to take comfort in that. Take refuge in the fact that I could give her what few else could.
Sanctuary.
A home.
I held out my hand for her, even as I asked, “Can you grab my chair?”
“Is everything okay?” she queried as she hustled over to it, then pushed it my way.
As I clambered into the wheelchair, I murmured, “Everything’s fine, baby.”
It wasn’t.
A witch hunt had just begun, but I always worked at my best when I was under fire, and with her to protect, as well as Katina, under fire was an understatement.
Cruz
I expected him to smack the shit out of me the second he saw me, and I was prepared for it, even if I didn’t have time to be dealing with a fistfight, not when David was leaking evidence all over Indy’s fucking tiles.
It was my job to get rid of bodies, but this time it was personal.
Indy was going to jail over my dead body, so I needed to get moving.
Maybe Nyx registered my concern, my level of dedication to this particular cause because when he tapped on the back door and slipped inside, he didn’t say shit, just stared straight ahead at the body on the floor.
Donavan Lancaster had been much worse, and I knew, for a fucking fact, what my brother put his victims through was a lot grodier than this, but he still blanched.
Murder was murder, after all.
And with Indy’s past and ties, who the hell knew what could go wrong.
See, for most white folk the cops were a comfort. To others, they weren’t, and while Indy hadn’t done a damn thing wrong in her life, in their eyes, she was still the ‘red-skinned bitch’ who’d be judged and found wanting by those wearing a badge simply because her daddy had been a Sinner and her brothers were too. Throw in the fact that Quin was in fucking prison? That was just another nail in her coffin.
Suddenly empathizing with Steel because Stone had been in a similar situation, and look what had happened there? I knew someone had beaten the shit out of one of the detectives working her case because he’d treated her like crap…
“The sheriff is on our side in this town,” Nyx rumbled, like his thoughts and mine were entangled.
“You trust him with her?”
Our gazes clashed, and he ducked his head, which gave me my fucking answer.
Reaching up, he rubbed his eyes before he muttered, “What went down?”
“As far as I can tell, nothing that would necessitate this level of force.”
He scowled at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That he didn’t rape her. But he did pull a gun on her.”
That had him snorting. “Then this level of force was exactly right. No one holds a gun on my fucking baby sister.”
“I’d ordinarily agree if it didn’t mean she was under threat. If she’d done this on the compound, I wouldn’t give a shit, but we ain’t on the compound. We’re in the middle of fucking Verona, and while the West Orange sheriff is on our side, who the hell knows if Verona PD is?
“Even with the law in our pocket, Giulia was still slated in the press by the Lancaster family, and I ain’t about to have Indy go through that, not when she’s already—” My words waned, dropping off before they had a chance to tumble on because I realized, then and only goddamn then, that Indy had never told Nyx the truth.
Not about her past. Not about that cunt. Not about anything.
Fuck.
“She’s already what?” he rumbled.
I shook my head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m just not willing to let her go through that kind of scrutiny, not after this shit with Stone. Not when we’ve seen what the cops’ll do to our women because of their ties to us.”
There was a malevolent entity in his eyes as he stared me, and I’d swear to fuck, he was possessed as a tidal wave of hate was leveled my way. “Our women?”
I tipped my chin up because I wasn’t scared. Maybe it took one monster to dance with another monster without one of them pissing themselves, but I’d been dealing with cunts since I was born.
Thanks, Mom!
“Yeah, our women.”
“You staking a claim?”
“Not staking shit without her say so.”
“We’re Sinners, we ain’t equal opportunity when it comes to our Old Ladies.”
My top lip quirked up to the side. “Yeah? Then Giulia is a lot more chill with you than Indy is.”
“Either that or you ain’t keeping a handle on her.”
I snorted. “You met your sister? I have plenty of a handle on her, just like she does on me. I’m not just doing this because you’re her brother, I’m doing this because she matters to me. We’re wasting darkness with a pissing contest that makes no sense because in three weeks’ time, she could decide to end shit because that’s what she does.”
“Yeah, she does. A commitment-phobe that’s my sis, but when it happens, are you gonna grow a pussy and start whining about what you’ve done for her?”
Maybe he saw that he wasn’t the only person with malevolence in his soul, because when I leveled a look his way, his eyes narrowed. “She’s safe with me.”
And that was all I was willing to say on that matter.
He got it, too, because he shut the fuck up and we got to work.
Both of us with the same task in mind—keeping Indiana Sisson’s ass firmly out of jail.
Him, because she was his baby sister.
Me, for more complicated reasons. Not just because I was boning her, or because she was turning into my sub—neither of which even quantified how much she meant to be—but because Indy would die in jail. I wasn’t talking about being shanked or shit like that. Nothing to do with her gang affiliations.
I was talking about her soul.
She’d die without freedom. Her spirit would wither away, and when someone came along like her, a woman with a soul as beautiful as Indy’s, it’d be a tragedy not to do everything in my power to keep her safe.
Eleven
Indy
I didn’t wake up with Cruz that following morning, which, I’d admit, made my heart sink.
More than when I realized why he wasn’t here. I mean, there were one of two reasons. He was still
working on getting rid of David’s body, or he was disgusted by me.
For obvious reasons, I preferred the original train of thought.
Dealing with Cruz’s repugnance was as hard as dealing with the potential truth that he was a rat.
As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as light flickered through the dreamcatchers I had hovering over me while I slept—dreamcatchers that didn’t work, I might add—making shadows on the walls, I tried to process just how evil I was if I didn’t care that David was dead, but I cared that Cruz hadn’t come to bed.
David had been a part of my life for a long time. A loooong time. Not of my choosing, obviously. Thing was, I’d always just dealt with him. Just let him hang around, never really thinking about him as a person, just as a thing. Like an accessory I didn’t want but had to have on me at all times.
That was David.
I’d met him when he came in for a tattoo. He’d surprised me because this weedy little guy had just stared stoically up at the ceiling tiles as I inked a sleeve on him, one that was dedicated to his mom. I’d pretty much read between the lines, seen that he was a Momma’s boy and that, likely, she’d died.
A strange memoriam for a man who looked like he worked an office job, never took one foot off the normal path, always doing the supposed ‘right’ thing. I’d been kind to him at the end, and that was when it had started.
An act of kindness.
He’d come in four times to finish off the ink, and that fourth time, he’d cried as he looked at the complete image. His mom and him in an ornate oval photo frame, and this was no word of a lie, on a tattoo of a wall in his house. He’d even brought the picture in, where it had markings of him getting taller, and pictures she’d framed that he’d drawn over the years.
I’d had weirder requests in my time, and it had been quite a challenge getting the shading on the wall right without it just looking like his skin was dirty, but after, when it was done, I’d hugged him, and I’d been paying for that hug ever since.
Nyx always said that it didn’t pay to be kind, and he was fucking right.
Cruz : A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 5) Page 18
