But a bombing?
That was new.
And, God help us, that invited the FBI onto our territory.
After what happened in this very studio, I knew the Sinners 'recycled' their dead bodies somewhere on the compound. Would the Feds do a search of the grounds?
Jesus.
David was there.
David... who I hadn't even thought about once. Not even to miss the fact he always made sure I was fed and watered, and who'd bled out on my frickin' workstation floor.
But when I thought of him, I didn't think of the guy who'd drop everything to do what I needed, or to get me what I wanted, I thought of the prick who'd pulled a gun on me.
Who'd tried to control me.
Who'd followed Cruz, who'd surveilled me.
Yesterday, Cruz had gone upstairs while I was working and had come downstairs with a brown paper bag full of something.
Because I trusted that he wasn't stealing my groceries, and because he hadn't mentioned anything to me, I knew what it was.
Equipment David had set up inside my apartment to watch me.
If I was going to cry about anything, it was that. Not that I'd killed David. But now, if the tears were gonna fall, then I was going to weep over the fact that his corpse was somewhere on Sinners' land and there'd be wall-to-wall Feds en route.
And then, I recognized how selfish I was being, how fucking horrible. My only defense was I was in shock, but it wasn't much of an excuse, was it?
For being selfish over asking about the people I loved?
Wanting to punch myself in the gut, I rasped, "Cruz?" I knew Nyx was okay, because he'd called. But Cruz's absence resonated in a way that made me feel queasy.
"He's okay. Broken ribs, couple of burns on his arms, he got knocked out by debris we think. He's unconscious, concussed. We won’t know until he wakes up when he'll be out of here."
"I'll be there in seven." Seven because it took fifteen minutes, and that was as fast as I'd be able to get there.
"Okay. Just head to the ER," she muttered grimly. "We're taking up every fucking bed."
My heart skipped a beat at that. "Giulia, any deaths?" I asked even though I didn't want to know. The last thing I needed was to be driving double the speed limit while crying my eyes out, but... shit, I needed to know.
"Yeah." A shivery breath escaped her, and I knew she was on the brink of tears. "I don't know how we're alive, Indy," she whispered brokenly. "In the clubhouse, anyone near the front was fucked, but toward the back, they were okay. Most of the council, by dumb luck, were over by the bar, getting served according to Nyx.
"It's the people near the window who got torn up some, we lost Jaxson."
I closed my eyes. "He died at his own fucking patch-in party?"
“Y-Yes,” she stuttered.
I hated this fucking world.
All my life, I'd done everything I could to avoid it, and when I'd headed to Nawlins, it had seemed like it was doable. I'd missed Caleb, missed him like a bitch, but to be away from the clubhouse, to be away from the organized crime, had been a sweet kind of bliss.
I often asked myself why I had come back, and the only reason I had was, family.
When Mom had died, Rex offered to help set me up with a studio, and only recently had I regretted it.
This past nine months had been some of the most stressful of my life, because of the Sinners.
And here I was, giving myself to one of them? Falling in love with one of them?
Was I a fucking moron?
Why the fuck was I getting involved when I'd known since I was a kid, that I needed to back the goddamn hell away from the life?
Stone and me had always tried, especially after Steel had treated her like shit. She'd gone to the city for her studies, and until I'd been of age, I'd stuck around New Jersey until I could head for Nawlins where the late, great Laruso had let me apprentice with him.
Only something like a death could haul me back, and with Rex’s offer, I'd just never left. Taking comfort in being one town away when I decided where to set up my tattoo parlor.
But, I recognized, that gradually, I'd been slipping back into the life. What with taking messages into Rikers for Quin from the MC, and then the need to protect the Sinners from David… I was getting more and more entangled, and it would only worsen now that Stone was living on the compound, now that she was Steel's Old Lady.
The MC contaminated everything, and I’d been fooling myself by believing I wasn’t already tainted.
I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering how I could be so fucking stupid as to get involved in this shit once more, shit that was like poison, that could infect anything and everything within a hundred-mile span.
"Indy?"
Giulia sounded worried, and I realized she'd been talking all while the white noise in my head was taking over everything else.
I'd heard though.
Jaxson, Matty, Kingsley, Jingles, Jojo. They were the five who were dead. But there were twenty with injuries that required, as a minimum, an overnight stay in hospital.
Bear was on the brink. He'd lost limbs, and was in a coma. As for the rest, no one was totally unscraped. Anything from concussions, to perforated ear drums, broken bones and the psychological trauma of being goddamn bombed.
As for my loved ones, Giulia’s shoulder was dislocated, and Nyx had burns on his arms, and his back was covered in wounds from shattered glass.
"I'll be there in seven minutes," I repeated dully, even though the second I cut the call, I didn't storm off to my car. No, I just leaned back against my desk, and tried to figure out what the fuck I was doing.
I'd opened myself up to Cruz, but that meant I was involved in the life.
Like a sticky spider's web, it had entangled me up in it once more, rolling me around in a cocoon that let me forget just how bad things could be.
It was only by circumstance that I wasn't at the compound tonight. If Laura hadn’t called then I'd have been there, and maybe I'd be one of the unlucky ones. I mean, why not? What about my life spoke of good fortune?
I swallowed at the thought, swallowed down the tears and the misery and the goddamn hopes and dreams that were laid to waste by the night's events.
For a second, I could do no more than process what the fuck was happening, what was going down with my family—one brother who’d just been bombed, a sister-in-law who'd dislocated a fucking shoulder, and a baby brother somewhere in a prison cell while still doing jobs for the goddamn Sinners.
My legs felt like mush, but that was nothing in comparison to my head. Brain whirring with thoughts and fears, I staggered to the floor, shoving my back against the desk, trying to find support there, but there was none to be found.
As crazy as it was, as stupid and as insane, I wanted Cruz.
I wanted his arms around me.
But in those arms, there was danger. There was violence. There was the life.
Eyes darting from left to right, I knew what it felt like to be a deer in headlights, because one part of me, the part who'd been raised with those people, was urging me to get my ass in the car and to drive like the devil himself was on my heels to make it to the hospital in those promised seven minutes.
Another part?
Telling me to run.
And not toward the hospital.
I gulped, wondering if I could do it, wondering if I could get away, but...
So many buts.
In the blank void of my mind, a place I hadn't visited since that last time Kevin had visited my bedroom, and what that meant was more terrifying than I could bear, a tinny ringing sound penetrated the vacuum.
I didn't notice it at first, barely registered it. Then, the vibrations of my cell started to hit my hand, I actually started to feel them, so a little dazed, a little like I'd been the one in the bombing, I turned my cell around so I could look at the Caller ID, and I saw Stone's name, and the picture of her where she was blowing me a raspberry.
I remembered that night.
I'd gone into Manhattan so, on the rare night off she'd had back in March, we could party. She'd drunk too many margaritas, eaten way too many soup dumplings, and had barfed her way down sixth and King.
My lips quirked at the memory, which was like an ice pick to the protective walls that were growing around me.
"Indy?"
Her voice had me clenching my eyes closed. So damn hard it hurt.
With a shaky hand, I reached up and rubbed them as I rasped, "Stone, why are we doing this to ourselves?"
She released a shaky breath. "Because they're family. This is our family, Indy."
"I don't want to be involved in this," I rasped. "I don't want to be in a world where someone can bomb you because you don't like—"
"Let me just stop you there, Indy. You think the Sinners would put their women in danger? Knowingly?"
I tensed up at the anger in her voice and knew I was only going to hear shit that defended the guys coming from her.
I got it.
She loved Steel. Had loved him for a lifetime, had spent a lifetime getting back to him, but she wasn't me.
I wasn't her.
Did I have Cruz?
I wasn't sure.
He said things, all the right things that made me think I did, but...
"I know you want to run, Indy. When Giulia told me you hadn't arrived yet, I knew what would be going through your head. That's why I wanted to be the one to tell you, but I'm helping out with the staff. They're not used to emergencies like this and, unfortunately for me, I am." She released a breath. "It's bad, but there's always worse."
"That's the only consolation you can give me?" I interrupted bitterly. "That, hey, it's not 9-11? The difference is you don't know what the fuck the Sinners did to deserve this, and those people were innocent. You don't know what the Sinners have done, and the bitch of it is, because you have a pussy, you'll never fucking know.
"You could die for the goddamn MC, you could lose your fucking life, your world, everything, but they'll always treat you like you're less because you don't have a fucking cock."
Silence met my answer, and a for second, over the pounding of my heart, the panting from my lungs, I wasn't sure if she'd hung up, then, she murmured, "You're right."
"I-I am?"
"Yeah. You are. It isn't fair, but nothing about life is fair.
"I got kidnapped by a psychopath, Indy. I was almost killed because I figured out she was hurting innocent people in a place they came to for help. To be cured, or if not that, to end their days in relative peace and quiet.
"That had nothing to do with the Sinners. One thing I learned, Indy, when I was in that goddamn hospital bed, some people are just like magnets. We're that way. We attract it because we were born into it, it's all we know. It's in our fucking genes."
Eyes awash with tears, I burst out, "But I don't want that!"
"You can't avoid it, sweetheart. It's who we are."
This time, I didn't just rub my eyes, I dug my fingers into them, because I knew she was right.
Hadn't I killed David?
Hadn't I done that as easily as fucking pie?
It hadn't even occurred to me to let him corner me, to let him have information he could hold against my family. And after, hadn't I been A-okay with letting Cruz and Nyx handle things? When their version of that probably involved a nearby pig farm or some godawful way of making a dead body disappear?
Not once had I felt remorse. Had I looked at the floor in my studio and seen the blood pooling around him, fanning out like some kind of obscene art.
Any other woman would have been traumatized.
But I was a Sinners' brat.
I was made of stronger stuff.
"Indy," she rasped. "You need to come to us. We need to be together."
I knew by 'we', she wasn't just talking about me and her. But the whole Sinners' family.
Which I, somehow, was a goddamn part of.
Lord help me.
Seventeen
Cruz
I woke up to chaos.
The green curtains that separated me from another ER bay were pulled, and I had one of those crappy blankets covering my legs. As I peered at myself through groggy eyes with a head that was banging from all the noise in the hospital, I saw I was wearing one of those wanktard gowns which always sent the worst drafts up your ass crack. From the compression bandage on my chest, I knew I’d fractured some ribs, and every breath felt like I’d swallowed a knife.
Fun.
Worse than that though was my foggy brain, like I'd been walking through clouds and instead of plummeting to the earth, I'd just started flying higher and higher.
Had I smoked weed or something tonight?
The last time I'd felt this crappy was when I'd eaten some funky pot brownies.
A groan escaped me as I finally got my eyes to stay open, and when I did, I saw her.
She sat there, tired, weary, hurting, not physically but clearly emotionally, and still, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Her eyes were downcast, and I realized she was on her phone, swiping left like she was looking at photos.
Amid the manic panic of the ER, she was an oasis of peace. Of calm. Something I wanted to dive in, bathe in.
Was it a crazy moment to realize that I actually loved her?
Or was it the right one? The most perfect timing of all?
Maybe.
It wasn't like I was going to tell her, but I just needed to admit it to myself.
Something drew me to her like a moth to a flame, and had done ever since that fucking night.
She'd gone from being a brother’s sister, AKA hands off, to being a sexual entity. A woman who was on her hands and knees, scrubbing like it was four PM and not four AM, trying to make her best friend's place nice for her before she came back after a long stay in the hospital.
She'd been sweaty, grimy, tired, and it had all just flowed like a lightning bolt directly to my cock.
Even now, battered and some parts definitely broken, my dick responded to her. I figured when I was eighty and her tits went down to her knees and my balls hung just as low that I'd feel the exact same way.
Everything about her resonated.
It was just... right.
Perfect.
"I can feel you staring at me."
"Yeah? Then why haven't you said hey, huh?" I rumbled, wincing at my voice. It was dumb of me to figure out, just then, that I had a goddamn oxygen mask on, and my lungs were feeling pretty fucking incinerated.
Dumb fuck.
She looked at me though, her eyes red from crying, and I knew that not only had the worst happened, but people had died.
Family.
Brothers.
I sucked in a sharp breath, then regretted it when I started hacking my guts up and agony splintered my chest, keying me into the fact that I’d either fractured or broken some ribs. She jumped to her feet, rushed over to my side and pressing her hand to my lower back, reached for some water that was on a small stand beside me, and hovered it in front of me for me to take when I was ready.
The pain in my chest had me cringing because I knew there'd been smoke damage. I was enough of a chemist to recognize a blast when I was in the goddamn epicenter of it, which meant someone had the audacity to bomb the Sinners' compound.
Inwardly, I reeled at the act of outright warfare, but outwardly, I knew I had to keep my shit together.
My spidey sense was telling me two things.
One, Indy was reeling from this. Badly.
Two, it was the kind of reeling that would see a person run away in the middle of the night.
She wasn't a runner, she was a fighter, but more than that, she had common goddamn sense.
Why, in her right mind, would she tangle herself up further with the likes of me? Not only was I a biker, I was just a lowly one. Not on the council, not pulling in the big bucks.
Throw in the fact my h
ome had just been bombed and that someone was literally gunning for us, she'd have to have a death wish before she'd willingly tie herself to me.
I reached for the plastic cup with one hand, and with the other, I reached for her fingers. As I tangled them together, I murmured, "Means a lot to wake up with you sitting next to me."
She kept her face downturned, and I knew, just fucking knew, she was already walking out the goddamn door. If not physically, mentally.
I could feel her checking out as I sat there, tied to a goddamn gurney with all the tubes and shit coming off my body.
I had to act, and I knew I needed to key into something fast or she'd leave, on the pretense of going home and getting some rest, and I'd just never see her again.
The prospect hurt worse than the daggers ramming their way into my chest from the smoke damage.
If breathing had hurt before, that was nothing to now. Nothing to the sheer agony of contemplating a future without her.
With her fingers knotted into mine, I rested the cup on the gurney, uncaring if it spilled, and tugged down my mask.
"You need to keep that on," she chided gruffly.
"No, I need to talk to you without sounding like I'm underwater, Indy." I reached up and cupped her chin. "A smart woman would run out the door without a backward glance. We both know you're more than smart, Indy. We both know you're an incredibly intelligent woman."
"Yeah? Well, I don't feel so smart at the moment."
"I can guarantee that you don't, and I get it. Totally. One hundred percent. You'd be a fool not to be thinking about leaving and walking into the fucking sunset, but—"
When I hesitated, she looked at me. Didn't look at my chin, at my nose, at my fucking eyebrows, she looked me in the eye.
"But, what?"
"I'm gonna ask that you don't do that."
"Why?" she rasped, her jaw tensing.
"You know why."
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Things changed tonight, Cruz. I don't know what you guys are involved in, and I don't want to know, but the fact that it could lead a bomber to your goddamn front door tells me that I'm not safe with you."
"You are safe," I denied.
Cruz : A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 5) Page 24
