My Perfect Drug (Reapers MC: Ellsberg Chapter Book 2)

by Bijou Hunter

  My sister hurries to change out of the flannel pajamas she borrowed from Lily. The kids also get dressed. I stand in the living room, assuming they’ll be ready soon. Thirty minutes later, I recline on the couch while Lily helps them upstairs. I don’t know what the holdup is, but I suspect Sissy is on her period or one of the kids crapped themselves. I just know it takes for-fucking-ever for them to all appear downstairs.

  “That happened,” Sissy says, dressed in another set of Lily’s clothes. “Is it raining yet?”

  “Who cares?” I mutter. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s not good for Lily to get wet when she’s pregnant.”

  Frowning at Sissy, I’d point out how she spent the night outside in the rain when she was pregnant with Haydee, but reality isn’t my sister’s friend. Lily is, and Lily needs to be protected for Sissy to feel as if the world is in its place.

  “It’s not raining,” I answer.

  The kids take my hands and guide me out the door to the front porch. Behind us, Lily appears wrapped in a crocheted scarf she made early on in the learning process. Fighting laughter, I can’t believe she willingly wears the oversized mess. My guess is someone mocked the scarf, and now she must wear it to defy the laughter. Lily plays agreeable, but she’s secretly super stubborn. A fact her parents will likely come to respect one day.

  THE CHAPTER WHERE THINGS GO FROM BETTER TO WORSE

  THE PRINCESS

  I drive my SUV to the house Dash and Sissy moved into a few years back after Topher decided her kids pissed him off so much he might need to drown them like stray kittens. I still remember hearing them casually talk about his threat as if fearing for their lives was a regular, everyday occurrence.

  It’s well past time for them to leave Topher’s sphere of influence and enter mine. What their father wants doesn’t interest me, and I care even less what Cy expects.

  “This is fucking bullshit!” the drunk loser yells when Dash explains how they’re moving into my place.

  Dash rubs at his thick brown beard and shrugs in reaction to his brother’s declaration. “We’ll still be around to run the office.”

  “You knocked up that whore!”

  “Hey!” Sissy cries, forever protective of my not-so-fragile ego.

  Reaching for her, he screams, “Shut up!”

  Dash steps between his siblings and tells Sissy to get packing. Without looking at me, he adds, “Lil, take the kids out to the lot to play. They don’t need to see their uncle in his current state.”

  “Lil,” Cy mocks in his brother’s face. “Your whore has a stupid name!”

  Knowing the drill, Haydee and Hart grab my hands and pull me toward the back door. I frown at Dash who keeps his gaze on his sloppy-drunk brother. Meanwhile, Sissy disappears upstairs.

  “We need to go,” Haydee warns me and opens the door.

  Despite wanting to tell Cy Mullens how he’s the only slut in the house, I know my zinger won’t impress anyone. Besides, someone has to watch the kids while Sissy sneaks her things out of the house. A few minutes later, I catch sight of her tossing a garbage bag full of clothes out of an upstairs window. When she spots her kids and me, the goofball waves wildly as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.

  I follow the kids to the next-door lot where the Mullen family parks their used cars for sale. Ellsberg’s poorest come here to buy temporary rides because they lack the cash or credit for anything better.

  Haydee runs between the cars, hollering battle cries. Hart races behind her while I wrap my coat tighter to brace from the chill.

  My mind remains focused on the fight happening in the house. Occasionally I hear Cy’s screams, and I want to slap his stupid face. I don’t know if I’m fed up with the Mullen madness, or pregnancy hormones have made me especially violence-prone. Whatever the cause, I keep picturing Cy’s face going splat under various imaginary objects. Only the memory of Colton peeing on Cy’s motorcycle sates my anger.

  “I’m a fire truck!” Hart yells at his sister.

  “I’m a dog! Ruff!”

  Haydee turns to me and pants before disappearing behind another car farther from the house. As I hurry to catch up with them, I notice the kids hit their knees and hide behind a decades-old SUV.

  “Mullens!” a voice yells.

  “What now?” I mutter and squat next to the kids. “Who is that?”

  Haydee thinks I want her to find out, so she stands up and starts walking around the car. I nearly fall on my face in my rush to stop her. Fortunately, I get hold of the child’s coat before the new screaming moron notices her. Knee-deep in the mud, I shush the kids. Then I hear something that makes my blood run cold.

  “Lily!” the man hollers in a singsong voice.

  Hart crouches on the ground and checks under the SUV. “He’s coming.”

  “Who?” I ask, instantly feeling like an idiot since I know the child is looking at someone’s feet. I lower to my elbows to see what he’s seeing. Turns out shoes alone aren’t enough to ID a person.

  “He’s coming!” Haydee cries and grabs for her brother.

  I push the children behind me while I remain stuck on the wet ground. Then I hear the approaching footsteps, and I think to run, but it’s too late.

  “Lily Fucking Bitch Johansson,” the man growls as he moves around the front of the SUV.

  “Rudy?” I ask, fumbling with my purse. “What are you doing here?”

  Rudy Roche never stopped nursing his crush on me. He’s a disgusting cad, often walking around with pit stains in his shirts and other stains in his crotch region. His family somehow manages to be worse than the Mullens. Though this is partly because there are so many of them and not a single one possesses half the worth of Dash or Sissy.

  For years, Rudy Roche wanted to bang me—out of love, of course. He got so wound up on my disinterest he started a fight with Quaid and MJ months ago. A few days later, she was shot by Gary Lee, and half of the town still thinks one of the Roches pulled the trigger. I never believed Rudy possessed the testicular fortitude to commit real violence. Clearly, I underestimated the pathetic losers since he arrived here armed.

  “You were too good to fuck me, but you fucked that Mullen!” he hollers, punctuating each word by pointing the small pistol at me. He remains a few feet away, but there’s no outrunning a man with a gun.

  “What Mullen?” I ask, stalling for time. My hand feels around in my purse for my Ruger.

  “Does it really fucking matter, whore? You fucking slut!” he hollers, and I realize he’s been crying.

  “But it does!” I cry, gesturing toward the kids I still have corralled behind me. With no idea what this idiot heard through the Ellsberg grapevine, I figure the lesbian angle might work as a distraction. “Sissy and I are in love!”

  “What?” he asks, lowering his weapon. “No.”

  “I love her,” I say, holding my purse over my stomach as if protecting myself rather than leveling my shot. “It’s always been Sissy, but we couldn’t tell anyone. People wouldn’t understand.”

  Rudy blinks rapidly, seeming stuck in drug-induced confusion. For a second, I think he might actually believe my lie. Just accept my words so he can walk away without anyone getting hurt. Situation de-escalated. Mom would approve.

  Except Rudy knows how babies are made. Despite the sperm donor lie ready to go, I never have a chance to explain.

  “My babies!” Sissy yells, running from the house.

  “Mama!” they scream in unison and run for her.

  Rudy might not mean to threaten them, but he lifts his gun in response to their screaming and running. Pop once told me never to hesitate if I felt threatened.

  “Better they die than you do,” he said with complete sincerity. “If it turns out to be a bad shoot, I’ll fix shit.”

  So I pull the trigger. The bullet tears through my purse and into his stomach. I’m only momentarily startled by the sight of his blood soaking through his jacket.

  “Put down your gun!” I scr
eam when he doesn’t immediately drop it.

  Crying out in pain, anger, and likely some shock, Rudy refuses to drop his weapon. He even lifts it. He might notice movement back at the house. Perhaps, he sees Dash or Cy. Maybe he plans to shoot at them, or maybe he is just too stunned to think straight. It doesn’t matter what he’s thinking. This man is a threat, and Pop’s words repeat in my head.

  I fire again. Just once, though I consider shooting until my gun is empty. I could even reload and fire until Rudy Roche is mush in the same way as the vegetables were after Mom finished angry-chopping them. Rather than lose control, I remain icy calm.

  The bullet tears another hole in my purse, creating a wound in Rudy’s gaunt upper chest, near his shoulder. Finally, he drops the damn gun.

  Rudy falls to the ground seconds after his weapon does. He’s close enough to grab for it, and I prepare to fire for the third time. Using the SUV to stand, I sense movement behind me and swing around to point the gun at Dash and his idiot brother.

  “Fucking hell!” Cy yells, but Dash just does a visual check of me before he moves to Rudy.

  Kicking away the weapon, Dash glances back at me. “He isn’t dead. Wanna shoot him again?”

  “Are you messing with me?” I ask, wide-eyed.

  “No, I’m really asking.”

  Does Dash think I’m that cold-blooded? If so, he might be right because I’m very willing to murder Rudy Roche. My heart’s no longer racing, and anger replaces my earlier fear.

  “You fucking shot him!” Cy yells, now standing too close to me.

  “Shut up and get the fuck away from me before I add you to the body count, stupid drunken loser,” I demand, waving my gun at him.

  For the first time in my life, I understand the real power of being a Johansson in Ellsberg. Whatever happens to Rudy isn’t my problem. The people I care about are safe. Right now, I swear I’m ready to kill anyone I perceive as a threat. Cy, Topher, the entire Roche clan can enjoy a place underground.

  Turns out that both Lily and Delta Johansson possess a bloodlust. The world just became a whole lot more complicated—and exciting.

  THE LOSER

  Lily is on a mission when we arrive at the house, but Cy quickly pisses all over her big plans. Despite Saturdays being the one day a week he pretends to give a crap about his two sons, he’s drunk in the living room. The minute he sees me, the rage-filled rant begins.

  My relationship with Lily has personally harmed him. Not because I’m sleeping with the enemy. No, it’s more complicated. Cy can only exist in the gutter as long as he has someone below him. That’s my job. Sissy’s too, but she’s never been much of a threat to his ego. I’m the weaker version of him. I don’t get into fights. I don’t fuck lots of chicks or create bastard kids whose names I often get confused. Cy is a loser, but I’m a bigger one, and that's how he manages to get out of bed in the morning.

  My knocking up Lily destroyed Cy’s view of how the world works. He believed she was out of our league. Now he knows only he’s beneath her.

  “You fucked the pooch now!” Cy rants after Lily takes the kids outside and Sissy packs upstairs. “Topher will end you!”

  I guesstimate my brother is nearing his pass-out point of drunkenness, so I plan to keep him focused on me long enough for him to run out of steam. If I walked away, he’d no doubt go hunting for Sissy or scream out the door at Lily. They’d both take his shit personally while I barely mustered a fuck when he mentioned Topher might kill him the other day.

  “What do you think her father will do to you?” Cy asks, throwing an empty bottle at me. “He’ll fuck you up and don’t think I’ll help you.”

  Much like when Topher rants at me, I have two goals—dodging violence and keeping from going insane while listening to bullshit. Cy doesn’t even have a specific gripe or threat. One second, I’ve wronged the family and Topher will burn me alive. The next, I’ve pissed off the Johanssons and Cooper will bash my face in. If Lily heard his madness, she’d try to use logic, but there’s no sanity left in a man this drunk.

  “What do you plan to do with Sissy?” he demands when a garbage bag of clothes drop to the front lawn. “Will she be your fucking slave?”

  I don’t respond until I see him moving toward the stairs with the intent of turning his rage on our sister. “Lily wants someone to help her with the pregnancy.”

  Cy’s agitation returns to me. “Sissy’s a fucking idiot! What does she know? I’m surprised she didn’t give birth in the middle of the fucking street like a common whore!”

  The hardest part of listening to Cy rant is keeping myself from laughing when he says the stupidest shit possible. He once claimed he would drive a car up Sissy’s ass. Another time, he threatened to strangle a fucking squirrel as if the blitzed twat could even catch the damn thing. Cy just says words and sometimes they form sentences. Other times, he sounds as if he’s speaking in tongues.

  Another bag of what is probably clothes drops onto the lawn. I have no idea what Sissy’s packing since she could easily be stockpiling blankets or towels. Her brain often frizzes out when stressed. Already unable to see out of one eye and terrified of getting hit again, she might be upstairs packing Cy’s clothes for all I know.

  “You can’t ever be one of them,” Cy says while I lean against the hall doorway. “The Johanssons will never forget whose blood runs through your veins. You even fucking look like him.”

  I keep quiet until Cy again looks at the stairs. Like trying to distract an animal or child, I kick my heel against the wall and get his attention back on me.

  “You come from trash, and your kid will be trash,” Cy says and then laughs bitterly. “Assuming it’s even yours. I know stuff about that whore that would turn your hair white.”

  Stifling laughter, I can’t even imagine what sort of things this idiot thinks would turn anyone’s hair white, let alone mine. Besides, there’s nothing funnier than when Cy pretends to have inside knowledge when most people in town barely speak to him. Even the dumbest Ellsberg citizen knows not to tell gossip to a chronic drunk. Hell, even our sister avoids giving him too much info and she’ll tell anyone anything if they pay a little attention to her. Nonetheless, Cy gives me a conspiratorial wink as if he’s got great dish on my woman.

  “You don’t even care,” he says suddenly.

  Worrying he’s about to cry, I instinctively reply, “I care.” Drunken tears make Cy pathetic, and I’m not looking to pity the fucker.

  “You want to be their pet.”

  Realizing he means I don't care about Lily, I relax. I figured he was sad that I didn’t care about him. He wouldn’t be wrong, and I don’t know how much bullshit I could produce to prevent him from bawling like a baby if he straight-out asked if I cared if he lived or died.

  “They’ll kill you and shit on your grave!” he yells, pointing his finger in my face. “Use your grave as a toilet!”

  The sound of Sissy racing down the stairs in her giant tennis shoes distracts us both. The battered blond doesn’t even glance at us as she runs out the door.

  “My babies!” she cries as she reaches the porch.

  Instantly behind her, I never think to take one of the many weapons hidden in the house. Once my mind imagines Lily in trouble, I’m on the move.

  “My babies!” Sissy cries again.

  “Mama!” the kids call out and start running to her.

  Passing my sister, I keep moving to where the kids were hiding. Lily must be near the Jeep Cherokee, but I can’t see her. I do notice a particular white trash fucker standing near the SUV.

  The gunshot sounds freakishly loud as if someone fired it right next to my head. Sissy flinches, shoving the kids behind her as if her scrawny body will act as armor. No matter how fast I run, I can’t seem to get where I need to be. The muddy ground doesn’t help, but mostly because my mind shuts down to a single thought—Lily is dead, and my life is over.

  The second gunshot steals my breath. I’m lost in darkness as my mind imagine
s a bleak world where Lily no longer exists.

  A second or two passes before I’m offered a lifeline out of the darkness. The man topples out of sight as I reach the SUV to find Lily regaining her footing. I move past her to kick away the weapon and check on Rudy Roche.

  “Fucking hell!” Cy yells like an idiot.

  I scan Lily from the top of her lush hair down to her muddy booted feet, finding her perfect as usual. The light in the world returns, and I’m able to breathe again.

  “He isn’t dead. Wanna shoot him again?” I ask when I realize Rudy’s alive and literally kicking. The bleeding man thrashes on the ground like a tantruming child.

  Lily frowns at my comment. “Are you messing with me?”

  “No, I’m really asking.”

  Lily stares at me, and I search for tears. Based on how dry her big browns are, she won’t be crying any time soon.

  “You fucking shot him!” Cy yells, now standing too close to her.

  Lily swings at him and points her gun. “Shut up and get the fuck away from me before I add you to the body count, you stupid drunken loser.”

  I swear there’s nothing more fucking gorgeous than Lily going full Johansson. She calls it her Delta side, but the confidence I see in her right now is all Cooper. In fact, she’s actually wearing the same expression he did last night when he found me at Pickles in Paradise. Many people in Ellsberg have pissed themselves under that frighteningly casual “should I kill you or let you live” look.

  Once Cy backs off, Lily glances at me, and her confidence is gone. She holds the gun as if it’s too heavy and I notice she avoids looking at Rudy Roche.

  I wrap my arm around her shoulders but let her keep the gun. She’s better with it than I am anyway, and who knows if more people will need shooting before the day is over.

  “This was a legal shoot,” I whisper to her. “He had a weapon and came here to cause trouble. You defended yourself. The evidence is all there to prove you did nothing wrong,” I explain before pausing to kiss her sweaty forehead. “If you don’t want to chance it, though, we can finish him off and bury him. No one here will tell a fucking soul. You know we won’t. If you want, we can make Rudy Roche disappear.”