Marrying Beast is a serious thing.
I look back at Sin.
“Just put it on so we can go,” Sin tells me as Beast starts up his bike, that violent purr of the engine making my heart pound.
A ripple of remembered agony rolls through me and I’m forced to close my eyes for a minute.
Turning the corner on Crown’s bike, pressing the brake, skidding, falling, bleeding, hurting, blackness.
I choke on the pain of that memory before opening my eyes to see Beast and Sin watching me carefully. There is no reality where my relationship with them works without motorcycles being involved; there is no reality where I remain a part of Death by Daybreak without motorcycles being involved.
Avoidance is a key symptom of PTSD.
I will not give into it; I cannot.
Reba needs me.
I slip my arms into the jacket—fully aware of what it means—yank my helmet on, and then slide onto the seat behind Beast. My arms wrap his muscular body, and I can’t help it, I press my cheek into the back of his t-shirt.
Oh, this feels good. Too good. Dangerously good.
We take off out the same gate that I escaped on with Crown’s bike.
It’s weird as fuck, like I’m seeing two versions of myself interposed on top of one another. At this point, the jury is still out on whether or not I would’ve been better off with the mafia over the club. Guess we’ll see how this goes.
The first few minutes of the drive are agonizing for me. I cannot stop thinking about that roadblock of mafia men, of waking up in a chair with Giulia smiling at me, of Grey and his espressos. That last part helps soothe me. That, and Beast’s comforting smell. Tea and books. Tea and books. Tea and motherfucking books.
The wind whips against us like a lash, stealing pieces of my dark hair from inside the helmet. I ignore it, my mind focused once again on Reba. On Fem. If I get there and find my dog dead … I stop that train of thought. Whatever happens, I have Sin and Beast with me; they’ll watch my six.
That’s what I tell myself as we make the drive toward town. On our left, the compound snakes along the road, surrounded by woods and guarded by gates. One of which is on fire. I assume the club has it under control or else Beast and Sin wouldn’t be here, doing this with me. They might’ve lied for me, but that doesn’t mean they don’t or won’t still uphold Cat’s orders.
As long as their orders don’t present conflict when it comes to me.
We arrive at Reba’s in fairly short order, and I wait with Sin near the road as Beast checks out the place and then texts to let us know it’s safe.
The Kellers live in a modest ranch home just outside of Ashbury, a squat single level with a typical three-bedroom, one-bath setup.
All of which is covered in blood.
There’s so much of it that when Beast opens the front door, it’s quite literally dripping from the ceiling.
My face blanches and I feel suddenly unsteady on my feet from the smell, but I don’t balk. I don’t run. I definitely don’t throw up.
“You okay there, sugar?” Beast murmurs, waiting with his big hand resting on the doorknob.
“I’m okay,” I reply, my voice stronger than my quaking knees. I step into the house, gagging on the copper smell, on the sweetness of fresh rot. Just three steps inside, I find Reba’s mother lying facedown on the floor.
Beast bends down and carefully rolls her onto her back, revealing a second smile that slices across the front of her throat, severing her carotid. That explains the spray then. The average layperson has no idea how powerful the heart is until they’re suddenly cut and bleeding, each violent squeeze of life from that muscle sending an arc of red into the air.
That’s what the marks are on the walls and ceiling.
“Jesus,” I breathe, thinking about poor Reba and her dedication to her family. Even if she survives this, she’ll never be the same. Because of me. This is undoubtedly, once again, my fault.
I traded Grey’s life for the Kellers.
Granted, Wesley Keller was a proselytizing loser who mistreated his wife and daughter and sowed hatred into the hearts of the local religious community. Mrs. Keller—sad as it is, I can’t remember the poor woman’s name—was an alcoholic who allowed her husband to drag their teenage daughter around by the hair, force her to scrub the floor on her hands and knees until they bled, and spend his evenings telling her what a cunt and a whore she was.
I don’t much care that Wesley is dead. Mrs. Keller was weak. Neither is a huge loss to me, but Reba … Poor Reba.
I rise to my feet and Beast follows me up, Sin at our back. We make our way into the living room, and that’s where we find Wesley. He’s on his knees, but slumped over, like he might’ve been begging or possibly praying before he was murdered. The carpet is soggy beneath my boots, and when Beast lifts the dead man’s head up by the hair, we can all see a mark on his throat that matches his wife’s.
“Where’s my dog?” I murmur, heart pounding. The boys humor me by checking the bedrooms and bathroom, and then following me into the backyard.
The Kellers’ property is about thirty acres, much of it flat and decorated currently with little more than brown grass and dirt, but there are about a half-dozen outbuildings to search. We start with the closest one, working our way out to the farthest.
Nothing in any of them.
No sign of Feminist. No messages from Grey.
I put my hands on my hips and let my head fall forward, thinking so hard that my brain begins to throb and ache with an incoming migraine.
“Have you found what you were looking for?” Sin asks me, his voice guarded but not entirely unkind. I look up to find his silver eyes watching me, dressed in tight denim and a cut that shows off his Americana tattoos. He is undeniably gorgeous.
“Not yet,” I tell him, trying to think like Grey, to think like Gidget. Because we’re the same person in different skins. If I were going to hide a message for him, how would I do it? Where would I go?
I look at Sin, at Beast. They’re both waiting and watching, giving me a moment to figure this out. Whether they believe me or not, it doesn’t matter. They’re giving me the chance and that’s what counts.
Grey would want to ensure that I could find his message, but that my father couldn’t. Whatever the message, it wouldn’t implicate the mafia so much as it would warn me. He isn’t going to sell his family out anymore than I’ll sell mine.
He’s heard me talk about my dog enough times that I just know Fem is alive somewhere around here. He has to be.
I start to pace, the dry grass crumpling beneath my boots.
Grey wouldn’t have come here alone. He’d be with a group of mafia goons no doubt—Ivan Wolfe, too, probably. He wouldn’t exactly have the time to type something up on a typewriter, pry up a floorboard, and tuck a secret note away.
He’d be rushed; he’d need to make it look like an accident.
I put my fingers to my lips and whistle, so loud and sharp that Sin cocks a brow at me. Turning toward the woods, I do it again. And again.
“Fem!” I scream, letting my voice echo around the empty space. Beast very clearly disapproves of the move, but he must be certain we’re alone here or he wouldn’t let me do it. “Fem-fem!” I move toward the edge of the trees, but Sin puts a hand on my arm.
“No closer than that,” he warns me, and even though it makes me want to stomp my foot and pitch a fit, I listen. I’m ornery and bullheaded, not stupid.
“Feminist!”
A clinking sound echoes from the direction of the trees, and I feel a wild thrill of excitement shoot through me, so violent that it actually causes my eyes to fill with tears.
There he is, sprinting out of the woods on three legs, but like he was born that way, like he doesn’t even miss the fourth. My scrappy husky launches himself over the fence and lands without a hitch, his black and white fur ruffling in the wind as he trots over to me.
He stops briefly to bare his teeth at the boys, p
ausing only when I drop to my knees and throw my arms around his neck, burying my fingers in his fur. We’ve been together for years, me and him. Us against the world.
Cat was actually the one that originally gifted baby Fem to me, walking in the front door with a ball of puppy fur in his big hands. He unceremoniously dumped the dog on the couch and grunted at me.
“Here ya go, girl. Give you something to do other than piss me off.” And then he walked away and never told me where or how he got the dog. Years later, when Gaz was having one of his fits, he sneered at me and told me that the dog had come from a family that the club had murdered. Whether that’s true or not, it’s a haunting reminder that everything DBD does is twisted and two-faced.
I lean back and check Fem for injuries. Finding none—besides the healed stub of his missing leg—I grab his collar instead. There’s something attached to the metal loop that holds his dog tags. It’s a key with a room number on it.
I just stare at it for a moment before turning it over. On the opposite side, there’s the name of a motel that I vaguely recognize.
“The Palm Motel,” I suggest carefully, standing up and holding the key out to Sin. “Does the club use that place?”
“We wash money there,” Sin starts, frowning hard before he glances over his shoulder at Beast. “Do we call Cat and tell him about this?”
I’m not sure exactly what he’s picking up on. Maybe the mafia will blow the place up? Maybe Reba is there? Maybe … something else. I don’t know, but it’s something Cat will eventually find out about whether we tell him or not.
“How to explain it though,” I suggest, running through the options. It’s possible we could tell Cat we came here to look for Reba and found the key. He’d maybe chalk it up to Beast being too sweet on me, on him conning Sin into offering his help. But no. That makes both men look bad. “Tell him I fucked a guy at that motel once, that I recognized the room from Grey’s video call. He’ll like that.”
Both men give me such dark looks that I hold up both hands in protest.
“Really though? I won’t apologize for fucking guys in the past.” Lies. I probably shouldn’t, but I just can’t help myself. They’re both clearly bothered by the idea of me being with other men. “Get over yourselves.”
Sin grabs my arm when I try to waltz past him.
“Nice try, Gidge. There were a dozen men in that room who know the Palm Motel far better than you ever will and none of them mentioned that. The video call did not come from inside one of the rooms.”
He exchanges a look with Beast who offers a slight shake of his head in response to Sin’s original question. “For now, we can keep this to ourselves. If Cat has questions, I’ll answer ‘em.”
“Off to the motel?” I hope aloud, but Sin gives me a look.
“Not exactly.” He gestures with his chin toward the road. “Let’s go.”
I so desperately want to argue with him, but I’ve got my dog, and I’ve gotten Grey’s message. It’s probably best to let the club investigate … only, they won’t care if Reba lives or dies in the crossfire. The only person who cares is me.
“We have to go there,” I tell them both, thinking about Grey. Knowing he’ll want me to check it out myself.
Beast waits silently beside us, eyes scanning the horizon as Sin turns a grim look toward me, leaning down and putting that pretty mouth of his near my ear.
“Did you think you were going to come back after three months of making us suffer, and we were going to be nice?” He releases me abruptly, simultaneously pulling out his phone and typing something out with his thumb. I lift up on my toes to see who the recipient is and frown when I notice he’s texting Nellie.
“Gidge,” Beast warns, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “We ain’t takin’ you to the Palm Motel.” The look he gives me brooks no argument, but I’ve got to at least offer one up.
“Give me a gun. We’ll feel out the situation. Beast, I wasn’t meant to live in a box.” I’m pleading with him because I know exactly how things are going to go if I’m not there.
Reba will die.
“If you had a chance to save your sister,” I offer up to Sin, and he flashes me a warning look.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” he says, pointing at me. “Mark my words.” And then he snatches my wrist and drags me back to the bikes.
The Palm Motel is dead silent. I mean, at least at this time of day it is. During the night, it’s a hotbed of crime, hookers, and overdoses. Since most of the rooms are rented by the hour, and the hour isn’t right, the place is a dead zone.
“See anything?” Sin asks, waiting beside me on the roof of a nearby building. He had Nellie pick Fem up from the street near Reba’s house while I waited behind a tree. He also had her drop off something special for me: the Magnum that I dug out of the rice that day. Reunited all over again.
This is, essentially, my first time ‘in the field’ so to speak—and I love it. I hate how much I love it, but … I do. Fuck, I really was born ruined. It isn’t just a pretty phase; it’s shaped me. It’s the essence of who I am. With a strange, strangled sound from my throat, I run both hands up and over my hair.
“Don’t be scared, Gidge,” Sin offers, which should rightfully earn him a kick in the balls.
I slice a glance his way, fingers still tangled in my own hair. It’s curly today which I hate, but I didn’t exactly have time to straighten it, now did I?
“I’m not scared,” I scoff, the words like ash as I spit them into the wind. It tastes like it, too, the air does. The wildfires around here are only getting worse; I can’t stand it. It’s like the earth’s literally given up on us. “At least not of the situation. If anything, I’m afraid because I like this too much. This blood and bullshit.”
I step up to the edge of the building as Sin and Beast both refocus their attention to me. A huge gust of wind whips up, stirring flakes of ash from the roof and stinging my eyes. I sweep my dark hair from my face as I blink through the pain.
Unless we check every room—and there are fifty of them—then we’re not going to see anything from here. That much I’m sure of. My eyes lift up and look past the motel building, to the spire of a nearby church. It looks to be about four blocks away.
“Is that a Catholic church by chance?” I muse, and then I’m stealing Sin’s phone from his pocket and pulling up a map.
Santuario di Santa Gemma Galgani. That’s the name of it.
“The church is abandoned,” Beast drawls, turning to look at me with a spark in his eyes that says I might be onto something. “But it was once a mafia hotspot.”
I lift a brow, but this isn’t the time for history lessons.
“You can explain to me later how a church on this side of town was mafia-owned … and also how it became abandoned.”
I stroll past the two of them toward the stairs, but Beast slips past me before I can start down them, taking up the front while Sin guards my rear. And also reaches out to grab a handful, giving my ass a squeeze before stepping up close behind me.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten anything about this morning,” he warns me, and a thrill rockets through me. Exactly the words I want to hear, I think, wetting my lips with my tongue as I stomp down the steps after Beast.
We get back on the bikes and off we go.
It isn’t a long drive, just a couple of minutes, but it also isn’t worth being without our only source of transportation to walk. We park one block north of the church and then use the alley to access it.
When Beast said the place was abandoned, he didn’t just mean ‘without management’.
There isn’t much left of the place but crumbling walls and a statue of a saint without a head.
Ominous.
“Bombing here a few years back. Damn shame,” Beast says with a long sigh, putting his hands on his hips. It’s almost … dare I say, weird hearing him talk. Like, who is this man that I’m engaged to? That I fucked when I really shouldn’t h
ave. Whose baby I could’ve had.
I shiver as we walk the perimeter of the building. There’s nobody and nothing here.
At least, not at first.
I look at the Palm Motel key in my hand. There’s a number on it. Room two. There was nothing in there; Sin checked. We even had the office give us the names of the last few hookers who used that room with their clients. The men were listed simply as anonymous johns (is there anything more pathetic than a man who has to pay for sex?).
My head lifts up, eyes scanning the buildings around us. Mostly two- and three-story brick buildings with cute little storefronts underneath. This part of the city is gentrifying quickly, but the edges of the neighborhood are still rough. The Palm Motel, of course, is controlled by the club, so it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Still, this is exactly the sort of place you don’t make trouble.
Too many tourists, too many people in general, a prideful middle and growing upper class community, security cameras, thriving businesses. Beast even informed me that this neighborhood is run by cops who are, for the most part, just cops. That was news to me. Apparently, not every police officer is a bad guy or a mercenary who gets paid under the table; some are actually just what they seem to be. That’s what this particular area is like.
Again, not a great place to play the games of the underground. After all, darkness only thrives because of its very definition: the absence of light. Too much attention from ‘average’ people tends to ruin seedy deals and shadows.
So what are we doing here?
Damn it, Grey, why am I here?!
Room two. Is there something significant to that number? Two dead siblings—his and mine? Except, I have two dead siblings by myself. I bite my lip.
“Don’t worry too much, Gidge,” Sin assures me. “This isn’t just a puzzle you can solve. That’s not really how these things work. There’s nothing here.” He gestures around at us, at the people walking by who keep craning their necks to stare at three people dressed in leather and flying colors. If they’re local, they’ll know to stay away from us. If they’re not, they might not realize how near to demons they truly are.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 19
