“Don’t be silly,” I told her lightly, trying to reduce her angst. “You’ve already survived worse.”
Loulou zipped her mouth closed against the force of a sob and shook her head vigorously. “No, no. My man, my babies, and my sister. I couldn’t stand to lose any of you.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that today,” I promised as I raised my aching right hand, two fingers splinted against an obvious break, to touch her smooth cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her face collapsed into a scowl. “No thanks to Priest.”
“Hey!” The word exploded from my mouth like a dart. “Don’t you dare blame him for this.”
“Bea, don’t be ridiculous. He was literally the person who did this to you.”
“And Wrath,” Zeus added idly, some shadow in his eyes as he stared at us that I couldn’t decipher the meaning of. “He was the one to execute it.”
“Priest set it up. He did the legwork!” Loulou snapped.
Zeus cocked his head to the side and leveled a stern look at his slightly hysterical woman. “You don’t know all the details, Lou, and it’s not like you to make dangerous assumptions. Cool the fuck down, and you’ll see sense.”
My eyes darted to the empty doorway, wondering where Priest went. I ached to talk to him, to crawl into the embrace of his strong arms and feel safe once more.
I knew with certainty that the moments I’d spent held tenderly against his chest were the only moments of intimacy I’d ever share with him, and I wished, irrationally perhaps, that I’d been more lucid for the experience.
Zeus unfolded his massive frame from the plastic chair and approached, his mouth pressed tight, his eyes hooded. He was usually a fairly expressive man, but there was a tension to him I couldn’t understand.
Lou made room for him to bend down at my side, and he leaned so close, those dark-ringed silver eyes were all I could see. One of his massive hands gently pushed back my hair from my forehead, and when he spoke, it was in that low, intimate voice rough as gravel that he usually reserved for Loulou or his kids.
“This didn’t happen to you ’cause’a Priest. This happened ’cause’a my club and me. I’m the prez, so it’s me you gotta hold responsible for this fuckin’ tragedy, not Priest or Wrath, you hear me?”
I almost laughed at his martyrdom because it was so like him to take the blame on his monumental shoulders. It was easy to see where his son, King, who faked his own death to get Z out of jail, got it from. Sacrifice ran in the Garro blood.
“I’m not mad at anyone, Z,” I promised him. “I’m not half as dramatic as my sister, you should remember that.”
“Hey,” Lou protested, but there was a smile in her watering eyes that spoke to her happiness that I was well enough to tease.
“It’s kind of insulting, really,” I continued. “That you two want to place the blame anywhere but with me. I’m the one who decided to go out with Brett. Stupidly, I thought he was a good guy just because I always saw him wearing pressed trousers.” I grimaced. “Apparently, he just had bad fashion sense.”
“We’ll just have to get Lion to vet anyone who asks you out in the future,” Lou resolved, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “I won’t have you hurt like this again for any reason.”
“What’s the damage?” I asked, almost afraid to know because despite the drugs hooked up to my IV, my head pounded, and my body felt like a piece of overripe, badly bruised fruit.
“A severe concussion, four broken ribs, one of which punctured your lung, but it wasn’t bad enough to require surgery, two broken fingers, and a dislocated shoulder.”
“Yikes,” I breathed.
“Now you can understand why I’m so fucking upset.” Loulou scowled at me even as her thumb swept circles across the inside of my wrist just so she could feel the reassurance of my pulse.
“I can understand, but you can’t protect me from everything, Loulou.”
“Watch me,” she dared, baring her little white teeth.
I sank farther into the bed, feeling suddenly exhausted. “The truth is, when I thought Brett was a goody two shoes, he was dull. The second he showed his darker side, I was intrigued. I don’t know if you can save me from everything, especially my own mind. I think I like bad boys.”
“You do not.”
“Yes, I do.” I thought of Priest, and the way he’d slit Brett’s throat without remorse. The way he’d done it with quiet, loyal pride like a cat killing a bird for its master.
How could I resist a man who was so willing to kill for me?
“Well, stop it,” Lou snapped.
Zeus’s loud, rumbling laughter interrupted our tiff. His head tossed back, all that long brown and blonde hair shimmering in the yellow artificial light. His beauty and amusement filled the room with simmering energy that instantly made me feel better.
“Stop laughing, Z,” Lou demanded, but there was a current of laughter to her own voice as she leaned over me to swat at his chest.
He caught her hand and pinned it on his chest over his heart as he recovered himself enough to say, “Gotta admit, Lou, you’re not exactly in a place to judge. You fell for me when you were just a girl. And I’m ’bout as bad as they come.”
“You saved me,” she reminded him, but her hysteria, her anxious edge of anger wore smooth under the weight of his loving gaze. “You were never a bad man to me. Just my guardian monster.”
I watched them, the way the entire world fell away as they looked at each other. My parents had never been very much in love. Instead, appearance and status were everything for them, and in the end, it killed my father and cast my mother into ruin. This, the love that radiated like a second sun between Zeus and Lou, this was what love should be.
Pure. Intense. A light that brought brightness to all the dark moments of life. One that could never be extinguished.
“You two have inspired me for years,” I said quietly as Zeus brought his wife’s hand to his lips to kiss before releasing it. “So if I like bad boys, it’s basically your fault.”
Loulou groaned, but Zeus winked at me, prompting me to laugh even though it ached in my ribs.
“Bea, honey.” My mum, Phillipa, swept into the room on a cloud of Chanel perfume, holding a tear-soaked silk handkerchief to her mouth.
Behind her, considerably calmer, was my grandpa.
I smiled as soon as I saw him. I always did.
He smiled back.
Pastor Lafayette was the only reason I didn’t change my name after my father was killed by the corrupt, criminal outfit he’d been colluding with. My grandpa was soft spoken and wise in the way of prophets and poets. He refined the complex world around him into clear paths and distilled emotions for his parishioners, and he never judged anyone, even the criminal who’d married his firstborn granddaughter.
“Grandpa,” I whispered, suddenly a little girl too shy to make friends who needed my grandpa to hold my hand.
“Sweet Bea,” he murmured as he moved to my bedside and leaned down to kiss my forehead.
He smelled of old paper, frankincense, and myrrh, the fragrance of the church and of my childhood.
Suddenly and strangely, I felt like crying.
“Move aside, Michael,” my mother demanded, hiccoughing through her tears, her hands fluttering and floating around me as if she wasn’t sure where to land. “Oh, my goodness, Beatrice, you’re absolutely wrecked. What would I have done if I lost you?”
“It’s not about you,” Loulou muttered. She’d never recovered from Phillipa’s negligence and couldn’t understand, as I did, that Phillipa was fragile. She’d been a show pony for so long that she didn’t know anything else other than being loved for her beauty and engaged with because of her gossip.
She was harmless, if a little annoying sometimes.
I hushed her now, as she bent to kiss my cheeks. “I’m fine, Mum, please don’t worry about me.”
“Of course, I’m going to worry. You are my daughter, and I am your mother
.” She sniffed, shooting a little glance at Zeus. “I’m just glad those ruffians aren’t crowding you. You need space to heal.”
As if on cue, sensing the drama of the moment, there was a swell of thunder on the air, rattling the cheap windows in their frames.
It was the roar of Harleys. Dozens of them.
Phillipa looked sharply at Zeus, who shrugged unabashedly. “Might’a told one or two’a ’em that Bea here was awake.”
My mother sucked in a breath to argue, but Grandpa beat her to it with a soft hand on her arm.
“They’re here to pay their respects,” he said softly. “They aren’t just Louise’s family anymore. They adopted Bea a long time ago. There is no space for judgment where there is love, Phillipa.”
His words made warmth soothe the ache in my limbs and swell in my heart until it felt overfull. One more word of love or praise and I felt I might burst.
We heard them before we saw them.
The stomp of heavy motorcycle boots on laminate floors, the harsh metal jiggle of wallet chains, and the clamour of masculine voices speaking low but rough as they descended the corridor to my room.
I was lying in a hospital bed, broken and battered, but suddenly, it felt like Christmas.
I was already smiling when the first Fallen brother breached the narrow doorway. Bat Stephens, the sergeant at arms, beside Dane Meadows, our newly returned war vet, then Curtains with his flaming red hair shoved off balance by Boner who swaggered in after him. Axe-Man and Wrath both so large they had to pass through the frame sideways, then Skell, so skinny he looked like he should be hospitalized himself. Nova was there holding Loulou’s daughter, Angel, who stared up at him in awe because even at one year old, she knew beauty when she saw it, and King, sweet returned King, holding his new baby, Prince, in one arm, and Angel’s twin, Monster, in the other.
By the time the entire Entrance Chapter of The Fallen MC had filtered into the room, it was packed like a can of sardines with large men and the scent of leather.
They took turns touching me, making space to squeeze or pat the places of my body not encased in gauze or plaster. I didn’t respond to any of them because they were all talking over each other.
When they finally settled enough for me to speak, there were more people at the door.
Harleigh Rose and her fiancé, Lionel Danner, with Cressida and Lila, Cleo, Hanna, and Maja. My biker babes, the women who had raised me more succinctly than my mother ever could have.
They blurred in my vision, and I frowned, trying to blink away the obstruction only to realize I was crying.
No, sobbing.
Great tears of relief and joy that rolled through me like the waves off the coast.
Nova teased me for being a baby, and Boner laughed. Buck, the eldest member and the club VP, slapped him upside the head and told him to have some respect even though it was Nova who’d said it. Harleigh Rose shoved Loulou aside so she could press my hand to her cheek and study me carefully with her own eyes to make sure I was okay. Cressida grabbed my only free foot and squeezed it, her wide brown eyes filled with tears and love.
It was calamitous. Utter chaos.
I could hear a nurse in the hall trying to tell Lila that too many people were in the room making too much noise. That I needed peace and quiet after my trauma.
She didn’t know shit, Ransom, the prospect, said with a fierce glower. They were my family, and I needed them now more than ever.
I cried so hard, I thought my heart stopped.
Loulou’s sweet, sugared cherry scent enveloped me as she leaned forward to tug me into her arms.
“It’s okay, Bea,” she whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t stop crying for long enough to explain to her that this was what I had always wanted. Even with a mother and father, Loulou and I had never really had a family unit, not until a bullet connected her chest to chest with a man who would gift her not only his heart, but an entire community that would embrace us, and never, not through anything, let us go.
Maybe Lou thought she and The Fallen were the reason I’d nearly been killed, but I knew better.
They were the family that kept me alive and smiling every day.
The only essential piece missing was the man who’d quite literally saved me.
The man who distanced himself from his family, from me, as much as he possibly could.
I felt the emptiness in my chest, that small section I’d carved out as his when I was just fourteen, echo vacantly.
Priest McKenna had a home in my heart and I was aching to let him know it.
Priest
Rats like small, dark places. They like to hide, not run.
As any decent horror movie addict knows, you can always run, but you can’t hide.
Not from a monster.
Not from me.
I found Patrick Walsh a week after the car accident hiding out in Purgatory Motel, a rundown pitstop on the edge of Entrance painted varying shades of pink. I’d spent the past five days hunting down the lower elements in their fledgling organization before turning my sights on the patriarch. He was known for his cataclysmic rages, ruthless business dealings, and cheating on his wife. I’d had hopes he would be a worthy adversary.
Regrettably, it was so easy to find him, I took a moment to feel disappointed as I straddled my bike staring at Unit 9 where his outline was clearly defined behind the sheer curtains.
I yearned for a real challenge for a split second before I remembered how dangerous someone like that could be. Javier Ventura, for example, the notorious cartel boss, had terrorized the club for going on four years, and we still hadn’t been able to dismantle his organization or, at the very least, fucking kill the motherfucker.
So I’d take easy.
Besides, maybe he would end up being stronger than I thought, a wily fighter who would take more than a single punch to knock down.
The excitement I felt at being let loose to murder was a mental thing. It did not leech into my body, accelerating my heartbeat or coaxing a sheen of sweat to my skin. If I’d been hooked up to a heart monitor or a lie detector, I could have fooled experts without trying.
It was this dissociative behaviour that one of the nuns, a very, very long time ago, had told me made me such an easy sinner.
My body could perfectly execute what my mind allowed without trivial emotions ever sullying the waters.
So as I stalked toward the motel, I felt only calm, cold and controlled. My mind cycled idly through the weapons on my person. The gun in my waistband was for contingencies only. I preferred to work with knives, and those I had in abundance. The bagh nakh slotted over the fingers of my left hand like brass knuckles only tipped with blades, the machete I wore strapped to my back beneath my cut, the set of throwing knives I had strapped to my left calf, the curved hunting knife I had clipped to my belt, and the Bowie I wore on a chain around my neck.
I’d learned young it paid to be prepared for anything.
I’d learned early, too, I liked the intimacy of knives.
With a gun, you could kill a man at a hundred and fifty paces without ever seeing the details of his expression.
With a dagger, you could feel a victim die, his breath feeble on your face, blood pooling rich and wet over your hand, how their body went hard then soft as their pulse weakened.
I was looking forward to carving up Patrick Walsh.
It had been so long since I’d been able to let loose. A year since I’d sliced and diced up the motherfucker Staff Sergeant Harold Danner for trying to kill King.
My fingers itched to draw blood, and my mouth watered.
The door was flimsy enough, when I kicked it in, that it exploded into splinters, the heft of it flying back into the room with a force that knocked Patrick on his back.
He’d been praying.
There was an old, black leather-bound Bible on the pink bedspread flipped open, the nearly sheer pages torn by his hand as he fell.
“Fuck,” he cursed as
he scrambled backwards on his hands and arse.
“Where are you goin’?” I asked with faux curiosity as I stalked him deeper into the room. “There’s no back exit. If it’s escape you want, you’ll have to go through me.”
“You’re one’a them arseholes who killed my son,” Patrick growled, recognizing the flaming winged skull on my cut.
This seemed to energize him into finding a shred of courage. He lurched to his feet, wildly searching for a weapon.
To move things along, I tossed him a knife.
It clattered to the hard, thinly carpeted magenta floor at his feet.
He stared down at it, chest heaving with fright, then up at me.
I jerked my chin. “Go ahead.”
“You’re giving me a dagger?”
I adjusted my leather gloves and rolled my head back on my neck until it cracked. “You don’t deserve to die quickly.”
Patrick’s fleshy, florid face, a typical Irish man if ever I saw one, crumpled like a sweat-stained napkin as he bent to pick up the weapon. He held it ham-fisted, completely incompetent.
He attacked straight on, hoping his weight would be enough to surprise me into fumbling. It was a method of brute force and idiocy.
I sidestepped slightly and braced. He impacted hard with my shoulder, which knocked him sideways so he went flying onto one of the beds.
It was so tempting to end him there against the bed, but it was all too easy. The insatiable darkness inside me was a black hole, voracious for more, and I was helpless against the need to feed it.
So, I wrenched him by the ankle off the mattress and his heavy weight thwacked loudly against the floor. Before he could right himself, I flipped his leg into the air over my shoulder and dragged his considerable weight easily across the floor into the bathroom.
It was easier to clean blood off laminate than carpet.
“Fucking Canadian cunt,” Patrick spat as he tried to leverage his arms against the bathroom doorframe.
I cocked my head, studying him as he fought my grip, then swiftly kicked in his left arm with the heavy heel of my motorcycle boot. The snick of snapping tendons and the crack of bone was nearly as satisfying as the following roar of pain that ripped from his lungs.
Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6) Page 4
