Devil's Pawn

by SE Chardou

  Instead of saying anything at all, Max walked over, grabbed her hand and they both left their suite in silence.

  It was a difficult issue for him to address because although he knew most of the story, the only people who knew what really happened were Dimitri and Angelo. He knew they’d spoken over the years while Mags remained in captivity but he didn’t have any definitive proof they’d been in it together. Sure, he could deduce and come to his own conclusions but correlation was not necessarily causation; and a part of him desperately wanted to believe that Angelo was a better human being than his former stepfather. He didn’t want to believe he was capable of hurting Mags in such a cruel and malicious way but he couldn’t deny what she said made perfect sense.

  These weren’t the ramblings of a hormone-crazed woman who was out of her mind but the careful thoughts of someone who had analyzed her situation over and over again. There were parts that didn’t make any sense, especially when a man as powerful as Angelo Abandonato was involved. Even he could see that but voicing it could get them both killed and Max had no wish to die any time soon or see the woman he love suffer any more than she’d already been subjected to in her short life.

  “By the way,” he began as they walked down the stairs, “We have been invited over to the Gillespies for Christmas dinner. Edward held out the olive branch and bragged how great of a cook Miranda is so they would like us to come over if we can make it. Chantal and my father will also be there and I said I would drop by. It never hurts to have a Plan B in place.”

  Mags’ lack of words left him wary and on edge at first before she replied, “That sounds like a great idea. No offense but we spent all day with my side of the family yesterday. Two days in a row is just overkill. We’ll say our hellos and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. Until I get down to the bottom of my parents’ death and who’s truly responsible for it, the less time I spend in my uncle’s presence, the happier I’ll be.”

  Shrill female laughter followed as Max and Mags both looked Karina’s way. She was dressed inappropriately as usual in a black silk jersey dress so short, if she bent over, she would show all her worldly goods to anyone who bothered to look, and a pair of six-inch, stiletto shoe-boots. The red bottoms gave them away as an expensive pair of Christian Louboutins only she would think were appropriate for snow weather. To finish off her outfit, she wore a Chinchilla fur coat that came down past her dress. Not exactly animal-friendly when paired with a scarlet crocodile Hermès Kelly bag, Max thought wryly.

  She approached them both like a lithe sexual animal, her makeup subtle except for brazen red lipstick and blonde hair curled to Taylor Swift perfection. “Funny, I never thought I’d ever hear those words coming from your mouth. I assumed you had nothing but the utmost respect for the old man. What changed in such a short amount of time?”

  Mags glared at her future sister-in-law with icy gray-green eyes, much to Max’s dismay. “We work for criminals, and although there should be some kind honor among thieves, we know they break their own rules more than they care to admit. Just because you’re dating my brother, don’t think it makes you special or gives you some sort of carte blanche. If I find out anything I’ve said ever gets back to my uncle, I know exactly who to come looking for, and honey, I don’t extend second chances. You may be my future sister-in-law but you will be dead to me . . . in more ways than one.”

  “You mean like how you dispatched our mother?” Karina inquired, her blue eyes wide with mock-innocence. “What? You think I didn’t know. I’m seventeen years old but don’t you ever mistake me for just another American blonde ditz. I have grown up all over the world, and I am far more sophisticated than I look. You’re lucky I know what Mila did to you otherwise I would be gunning after you but alas, she was a duplicitous bitch who died the way she lived. It’s no great loss for humankind but don’t forget if you have something to hold over my head then I definitely have something to hold over yours.”

  Mags walked closer to her and stared her up and down. “Do you really? After all, Angelo ordered the hit—not me. Vincent and I were just following orders that if we disobeyed would have meant we met the same fate as your dearly departed mother. I’m a pawn in this game, the same way as you are. I might have a little more power but I can never forget I’m just as expendable as everyone else in Angelo’s kingdom. At the end of the day, my uncle cares about one person, and that, my dear, is himself.”

  “I’ll be sure to remember that.” Karina’s Ulysse Nardin chimed with Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” and she answered it promptly. “Vincent is here to pick me up. See you two at the Christmas party and don’t allow any of your sexual escapades to make you late.”

  As she walked out of the front door and slammed it behind herself, Max shook his head. “What am I going to do with her?”

  Mags walked over to him, grabbed his hands, and held them in hers. “Absolutely nothing. If Vincent is happy for the first time in his life then who are we to get involved? Karina is a wild child and there’s nothing we can do about her. I’m not so worried about her now but . . . what will she be like in five years? She’s a lethal weapon and the problem is she knows it, Max. It’s not your job to babysit her. I have a feeling that young lady can take care of herself better than you think.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. It’s just I can’t get this thought out of my head that her living with us isn’t such a good thing.”

  “Relax, lover boy.” She slipped her hands out of his own and wrapped her arms around his neck. “If she and Vincent keep it up, I think she’ll be living with him sooner, rather than later. Let it go. She’s young and still immature. She thinks she knows everything when in fact she doesn’t know shit. You did the right thing—saving her life. It’s the least you could do after I took away the only parental figure that wasn’t psychotic and completely unhinged.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Max wondered in a quiet voice. “Mila may have not been psychotic per se but she was definitely unhinged. Why do you think Karina never went back to Miami after she ran away from her boarding school? She didn’t want to live with our mother any more than she would have wanted to be within the oppressive clutches of her father. I’m too soft. I don’t discipline enough and that’s because deep down, I know she has to be hurting as much as I am. We’re damaged people, and I understand Mila would have never won ‘Mother of the Year’ but that doesn’t mean an irrational part of me doesn’t miss her. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  “Actually it does. I miss my parents’ everyday. Sophia and Justin ‘Riggs’ Reynolds might not have been the most perfect people in the world but they were my world—the center of my universe. Not a day goes by I don’t miss them or think about them. Life is fucked up and I know that, but it doesn’t mean we have to accept the hand we’re dealt.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means we should start to get cozier with the Gillespie clan. There’s no tellin’ when we may have to jump ship, and be ready to embrace a new family. I don’t want to kill people forever. I want a home, a comfortable life, and you. Our world isn’t safe; especially if Angelo ever figures out I think he had something to do with my parents’ death. We have to play our cards right, Max. We always have to have a Plan B. Lucifer’s Saints isn’t looking so bad as a Plan B.”

  Max scoffed and shook his head. “You really want me to join a biker gang? You think that would make us safer?”

  Mags shrugged. “Safer than we are now. Angelo is just using us to do his dirty work and although it pays well and comes with great benefits, I don’t know how much longer I have it in me to do this. The occasional hit is different but day in, day out . . . I won’t be able to survive long term. Not when I have the baby and I know someone might be gunnin’ for me someday.”

  “I get what you’re sayin’—we need stability.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We do this hit on New Year’s Eve, and then talk to Angelo. Tell him you need an extended
break due to your pregnancy.”

  “And while I am on extended break, we need to cement the relationship between you, Edward, your father, and Chantal. It’s the only way.”

  Max looked into Mags eyes and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he knew she was right.

  They couldn’t play assassins forever. Once they were married and she had their child, they did need stability and who knew a biker gang could provide it? But in the end, it was safer than being a hit man for the same person who wished him dead.

  The chess pieces had all been moved into place.

  Now it was time for them to make their next move.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mags

  As much as I loathed going to see my uncle, I managed a flawless performance and he said nothing about Max and I leaving early to attend another function with Max’s side of the family. Instead he gazed at me every now and then with a peculiar look on his face.

  It was as if he knew what I was thinking, and it took everything inside of me to keep a straight face and not show the disgust and rage I felt for him. I would have tried to end his pathetic life myself if I didn’t know I’d probably wind up dead in the end and he would still be around. Once I was gone, Max truly wouldn’t have any protection, and I wasn’t willing to risk his safety. Not for one shot at ending a man’s life who’d caused me so much pain over the years.

  I had no solid proof; just my own instincts working overtime but that wasn’t enough in a situation like this. I needed definitive evidence he had something to do with it, otherwise it was merely conjecture and speculation.

  He would never reveal it to me, not even if I had the balls to take him on head-to-head. He’d deny until his final breath in this world because I truly believed he didn’t even want to admit he had a hand in the brutal murder of his half-sister, a woman he cared about more than anything in this world, including me.

  Max and I left the table after a light dinner and as he helped me slip into my wool coat, Vincent walked out of the dining room towards us in a casual fashion.

  “We need to talk,” he whispered to me as he embraced me in a goodbye hug.

  “About what?” I stared into his blue eyes and felt my heart skip a beat. They were the same color as my late father’s but that could have just been a remarkable coincidence. It meant nothing at all, or at least I tried to convince myself of this fact.

  “Listen, it’s not safe to say why and you know that. I have to bring Karina home later. She wants to move in with me and if Max has no objections, I want her to. We both feel like we are ready.”

  “For what? Marriage? You and your child bride?” I chided sarcastically.

  “She’s seventeen and I’m twenty-seven—what’s the big fucking deal? She’s an emancipated minor and has been fucking since she was fourteen. She’s hardly an innocent.”

  “I never said she was but don’t you think she’s a bit young for you? I mean, what on earth do you two talk about? Her obsession with Nick Jonas and how many people you’ve killed?”

  Vincent glared at me with hurt eyes. “Actually, she’s more mature than you think and she doesn’t even like Nick Jonas. She listens to a lot of Brit pop and hard rock but there are few American artists she likes and they are all in their early thirties.”

  “I’m sure you two are just fascinating together. A regular fireworks show. If it’s just about the sex though then are you sure you want to marry that fruitcake? Her parents were both crazy as hell and not the most well adjusted people,” I said before glancing at Max who kept tapping his Rolex watch.

  “Well, you’re marrying Max and I have never insulted him. I didn’t think he was all that well adjusted either, watching you suffer for years and not doing a damn thing about it—”

  “You have no idea what Max and I have been through so don’t you dare fucking judge me or my life choices. His life wasn’t all sundaes and happy fucking families. He’s suffered just as much—if not more—than I did. It may not have been by the demonic hands of the White Knights but Dimitri wasn’t exactly easy on him either so just give it a rest.”

  “Fine. But we will talk when I come over tonight. It’s important and there’s information you need to know about me before you jump to your wild conclusions about what kind of person I am, and what a charmed life I’ve lived. I can assure you it’s the furthest thing from the truth,” Vincent explained in a quiet voice.

  I raised my eyebrows in an ambivalent manner and tried not to accompany this act with an obvious eye-roll. “Well, since you’re not giving me a choice, I guess I’ll see you tonight then.”

  Both Max and I waited until he began to walk away before we left my uncle’s palatial home. He opened the door for me on the passenger side of his Range Rover and I climbed into the buttery soft leather seat. Before I knew it, Max had climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car and we were quickly on our way to Birch Tree.

  I didn’t know why but all the sudden I found myself getting more and more anxious the closer we got to Edward’s house. Max had made the trip multiple times, and knew how to get to the gated development his brother lived like the back of his hand—after all, he’d once had a home there too. Unfortunately, we’d had to abandon it after a gunfight with some of Dimitri’s hit men who were sent there to kill us.

  That wasn’t what bothered me though. I could handle going back to the neighborhood. It was tranquil, and full of large family homes in an upper middle-class section of the town. It bordered a neighborhood for the wealthy to the east and other upper middle-class neighborhoods to the west and north. But it wasn’t the income status of the people who lived there but more about the MC that ran Birch Tree with an iron fist—the Lucifer’s Saints.

  Although their clubhouse/compound actually bordered both Birch Tree and Pine Bluff, they kept the town safe, the body count low, and crime to a minimum. Every long time resident knew about them but they believed a lesser evil was better than the greater evil—city crime and gangs infiltrating a place they’d moved to because they wanted simple yet quiet family living in the first place.

  Not much ever happened in Birch Tree and when the Lucifer’s Saints were involved in their criminal enterprises, they usually kept their business out of the town.

  However, it wasn’t even the MC itself that had me rattled as much as seeing Edward again along with meeting Chantal and Sean but under much different circumstances. Not to mention Edward’s old lady, Miranda, and their two children—I’d fucked the woman’s husband for God’s sake. I don’t think I would ever have been ready to face her, let alone meet her and carry on a conversation with her.

  I always secretly thought she suspected though she never said anything and the times we’d seen each other were very much in passing. We’d never spoken and although she seemed like a lovely person, the icy chill that came into her eyes when she’d looked at me pretty much confirmed what kind of opinion she had about me.

  To her, I was a hired gun, and a club whore when it suited me. Though I could attest to the first label, the second was a misnomer since I’d never whored myself out with anyone in the Saints except for her husband. I’d willingly slept with two bikers my whole life—Jake Decker, son of Nel Decker, and Edward. It was purely coincidence Max turned out to be his brother on my part. Had I known, I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t have stopped a relationship between us from developing but it certainly would have given me pause to explore why I was entering such a dangerously complex situation in the first place.

  As it was, we were now engaged and with me being pregnant, hopefully Miranda would no longer view me as a threat to her husband. If I was marrying another man then surely she understood although I wasn’t necessarily pro-monogamy, when it came to Max and me, there wasn’t a single other man who’d ever satisfied me as thoroughly as he did. I’d wanted to leave the door open to other partners but he’d firmly shut that idea down. When I truly thought about it, there wasn’t anyone else I would want to sleep with besides him. He truly made me
the happiest person alive and for the first time in my life, I was okay being a one-man woman.

  “Everything okay?” Max asked, interrupting my contemplation.

  I looked out the window and although the front yard was covered in snow, it didn’t take away from the cheeriness of the cream colored house that was at least three thousand square feet and accompanied by a three car garage. There were vehicles parked in the driveway therefore Max had chosen a spot right in front of the house.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled before I opened my door and stepped out tentatively on the snow-covered sidewalk, my breath leaving my mouth like billows of smoke. It was around twenty degrees outside but the slight breeze made it feel colder. I shivered involuntarily as Max walked around the Range Rover and grabbed my hand.

  “You’re not nervous, are you? There’s no reason to be.”

  “What are you talking about? I fucked this woman’s husband—your brother may I remind you—and now we’re supposed to play happy fucking families? That might just work on television shows but it doesn’t work in real life,” I said through gritted teeth, keeping my voice low.

  Max looked toward me before he walked us up to the door. “Miranda doesn’t know about you and Edward, Mags. She thought you were fucking some of the other guys in the club—Cillian and Cricket to be exact. That’s why she might have seemed a bit turned off by you. You know he’s a married man—”

  “Yes, I do. And if I’m not mistaken he recently married Gisela Jackson. That woman is one of the scariest human beings on earth and the last thing I would do is fuck her husband.”

  “Not now. I meant she thought you were screwing Killer while he was married to Brianna. Regardless how dysfunctional that situation was, she didn’t think you were making it any easier. Believe me, I picked her brain and she never suspected Edward and you. She said he’d never hook up with someone like you—you were way too classy for his taste. According to her, all the women he slept with were ‘blonde skanks’—you know the just-graduated-from-high-school type. Hang-arounds who were looking to land themselves a big, bad biker, and become an old lady.”