by Callie Hart
"This," Rebel says, tapping his pen on the paper, "is a proof sketch for the prime number theorem, using big O notation. I'm gonna use this to try and solve Legendre's Conjecture.”
“How long will that take?”
Rebel, shirtless, absolutely covered in tattoos…Rebel, the leader of a motorcycle club, the man who refuses to let me go home to my family, shrugs. “I don’t know. Been working on it since I left college. I could prove the conjecture tomorrow. I might never prove it.”
“You’ve been working on this for years?”
He gives me a broad, reckless kind of smile. The kind of smile that makes women’s insides twist. “Only eight. My old professor’s been working on it for over fifty.” Turning around again, he starts scribbling at the paper, leaving a wake of marks and symbols behind him that are liable to give me a headache just looking at them. I’m beginning to feel really rather foolish. He’s obviously way smarter than I gave him credit for. Way smarter than me, and I accused him of never even finishing high school.
Oh god. He definitely did finish high school because he was just talking about finishing college eight years ago. I feel rather triumphant when I realize this gives me insight into a little tidbit about himself that he wouldn’t share with me earlier. I sit down on the edge of the bed, his bed, clutching one of his pillows to my chest like a shield. “Twenty-nine.”
Rebel glances over his shoulder at me, a bemused expression on his face. “Twenty-nine is not the correct answer.” He carries on scribbling, the muscles in his forearm, his tricep and bicep, across his shoulder blades and down his back all shifting beautifully underneath his skin. “It’s not forty-two, either. Might have worked in Hitchhikers but this is slightly more complicated.”
“Your age,” I say. “You’re twenty-nine. You finished college eight years ago, which means you’re twenty-nine.”
He doesn’t seem even remotely fazed that I’ve worked this out. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“And what if I went on a gap year to Europe with an ex-girlfriend in between high school and college? What if I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to major in and switched out courses halfway through?”
“Did you do either of those things?”
“Nope.” I can hear him grinning, even though he doesn’t turn to look at me. He doesn’t take his eyes off the paper in front of him and the ever-increasing spider web of mathematical figures. “Hand me that whiskey?” he asks, holding out his hand behind him. I pass him the bottle, wondering how alcohol is possibly the answer right now.
“Seems to me coffee would be more appropriate. I don’t think you’re gonna solve a super old math problem if you’re wasted.”
“Solving this problem isn’t the point. Solving my DEA/Maria Rosa problem is the point. I just have get my brain working. And since you won’t have sex with me, this is the next best thing.”
I can’t help but laugh. “You think you use your brain when you’re having sex?”
Rebel’s pen freezes on the paper. He turns, then, towering over me, my face level with his belt buckle. It’s as though I can literally feel the heat rolling off his body. He’s intimidating and overwhelming, his presence a powerful force to be reckoned with. “Oh, Sophia. I use my brain. Every time I sleep with a woman, I’m using my head to figure out what she likes. How she likes it. What I can do to have her screaming my name until her throat’s raw.” He takes a step closer, his perfect fucking abs pretty much filling my eye line. He knows how he looks. He knows how perfect all of him is. “I’m also thinking up ways for my partner in crime to make me happy, too. How she can defer to me, hand herself over to me, let me use her body for my own pleasure.” Gently brushing a wet strand of my hair from my face, Rebel makes a low humming sound. It sends shivers through me, making me feel shame for the first time in my life. I shouldn’t be reacting this way to him. I just told myself I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for my captor, and yet right now…
It’s so fitting that he just referred to his sexual conquests as his partners in crime; I get the feeling sex with Rebel really would be criminal. “If the guys you’ve been sleeping with haven’t been using every single part of their bodies when they’re fucking you, Sophia, including their heads, then they haven’t been doing it right.” He takes a drink from the whiskey bottle, and then he offers it to me. “Is Matthew the boyfriend not a very good lover, Soph?”
“That is seriously none of your business.”
“What you mean to say is, you’re a virgin.”
I feel like my face is on fire. “I am not a virgin!”
Rebel’s expression hardens a little, almost imperceptibly, but I catch it. “Didn’t Hector check you?”
“Yes, he did. And he wanted me gone, so he told Raphael I was a virgin. He said he couldn’t afford the attention I’d bring with me.” I shiver at the memory of Hector’s fingers inside me. That disgusting look on his face. Suddenly, I feel very sick. I snatch the bottle from him and drink. I drink deep, lighting up from the inside out as the explosive alcohol tears through me. Surprisingly, the burn dulls down after the first few mouthfuls. Rebel folds his arms across his chest, watching me swallow once, twice, three more times. I let my eyes drift a little, catching brief flashes of the ink that marks his skin. A skull sits over his ribcage, crowned in thorns, flocked by birds. A banner runs through the design, and on it, the text: Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned. Two full sleeves, bursting with color, scroll down his arms. The designs are filled with dragons and water lilies, Japanese designs mostly. The lines of them are harsh and dark, but they’re beautiful. On his chest, more birds—two swallows perching on top of the handles of two crossed guns, their barrels pointed downward. In the center of the design, a heart, bright red and bleeding. Live For Something runs along the top of the ink. Or Die For Nothing is written in cursive underneath. As he lifts his left arm, leaning against the wall, I see something else that catches my attention: Arabic script tracing up the inside of his bicep, leading toward his heart.
“You getting a good look there, sugar?” Rebel asks. Amusement colors his tone, to the point where I feel like kicking myself for being busted checking him out. And I was checking him out. I’ve seen Matt naked a thousand times, but I’ve never felt this intrigued by his body. Not even the first time we had sex. Our bodies just came together without any fireworks, whereas right now I feel like it’s the fourth of July inside my head and I haven’t even touched this guy. I resent that he can produce such a reaction from me. It makes me feel weak.
“Just looking for the prison tattoos,” I snap.
“Haven’t been to prison. Sorry to disappoint. Been arrested enough times, but they’ve never been able to pin anything bad enough on me to warrant jail time.”
“Until now.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe so.” He doesn’t seem to like me pointing that out. His shoulders are tense when he returns his attention back to his unsolvable mathematical squiggles. I drink more whiskey, trying not to feel anything. Not panic or terror or hope. Or the faint glimmer of interest I seem to be showing in this man, who I should fear with every bone in my body.
Now that I have the opportunity to look properly without him mocking me, I check out the ink on his back. I anticipate it to be the Widow Makers’ patch, but yet again I’m surprised. The ink Rebel has tattooed into his back has absolutely nothing to do with the Widow Makers, as far as I can tell. It’s a depiction of the Virgin Mary, hands clasped in prayer, head bowed low. She’s not what I would have expected from a man like Rebel. She’s beautiful.
And she’s weeping.
REBEL
Unsurprisingly, I don’t solve Legendre’s Conjecture. I make zero headway on it, in fact, just like I always do. It serves its purpose, though. It’s around two in the morning by the time the solution to my Maria Rosa problem reveals itself to me. Sophia sat and watched television for a couple of hours, drinking the whiskey I offered to her every once in a while, half pretending to watch the TV, half hi
ding the fact that she was actually watching me. Eventually she passed out at eleven thirty on my bed—a lesser man would have considered that an invitation and crawled up there with her—but I kept on working, feeling like I was on the brink of some conclusion and that at any moment it would come to me. And then it did.
I need to kill Maria Rosa.
Of all the crazy, half-baked conclusions ever dreamed up by a guy with a head full of whiskey, this is potentially the very worst of them all. But even once we’ve cleared this mess up with the DEA, the crazy bitch is still gonna be pissed at me. The only permanent solution I can think of that will keep the club safe and prevent any more civilian deaths is that Maria Rosa must die.
When I wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing I’m thinking: Maria Rosa must die. Couple that with the fact that I have a raging case of morning glory and a fuzzy head, and things are not shaping up well.
“Oh my god. What the hell?” Sophia’s shocked voice really just finishes the whole thing off. I grab the sheet around my waist, making sure she’s not exclaiming at my raging hard on. She’s not. She’s sitting up on the other bed, hair crazy and sticking up at all angles, staring at the wall. When I ran out of space on the paper last night, I just started writing directly onto the wall. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
“I hope you didn’t leave a credit card at the front desk,” she says, rubbing her head with her hand.
“Alex owes me more than a wall,” I inform her. Bastard owes me his life. I climb out of bed and hit the bathroom, cupping my seriously painful erection in my hand, not caring if she sees now. Pissing is pretty much impossible. I give up after about four minutes and find her waiting on the other side of the bathroom door, like she’s been standing out there, listening.
She looks guilty, but only for a moment. Even with her hair standing up like she shoved her fingers in a power outlet and her skin smelling of stale whiskey, the girl is fucking hot. Can’t be denied. She pouts at me, placing her hands on her hips. “I could have run,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“I could have run. You left me alone in here with the door unlocked, and I could have run.”
“How d’you know the door isn’t locked?”
“Because I just opened it,” she tells me.
“Huh.” She didn’t run. I don’t really know what to make of that. I haven’t exactly been the best kidnapper in the history of kidnappers; it would totally have served my ass right if she’d done a runner. “Should I be thanking you right now?”
“No. I’m just too hung over to even try it. You need to move the hell out of the way.” She shoves past me, elbowing her way into the small bathroom. From there, she pushes me out and locks the door behind her. My ears are greeted by the familiar sounds of someone who’s drunk too much the night before, throwing up as though their lives depended on it.
Neither of us are feeling particularly chatty on the remaining leg of the journey to Ebony Briars, the estate where I grew up. We stop for food once and a few more bathroom breaks so Sophia can rid herself of the remaining Lagavulin in her system. Aside from that, my foot is glued to the gas pedal, and the pedal’s glued to the motherfucking floor.
Five miles outside Grove Hill, Clark County, I pull over the Hummer and jump out of the driver’s seat into the dirt, my skin already itching with the need to fucking leave. Soph watches with curiosity as I pull the bag from the backseat, throw it on the hood and start undressing on the side of the road. “What the hell are you doing?” She leans through the open driver’s door, frowning at me. I’m down to my boxers by this point, standing on the side of the road, feet bare, boots thrown into the foot well. I scowl, yanking out a white button-down shirt from the bag, shaking it out. “I’m maintaining the illusion that my father’s only son isn’t a complete fucking reprobate.”
Sophia watches as I slide the shirt on, covering my tattoos, covering who I am, and all for the sake of peace. It’s always been this way. Ever since I was born. I may not have had ink all over my body back then, and I may not have worn clothes my father would consider common, but I’ve always adjusted the person I am on the inside. Truth be told, that’s far more complicated than throwing on a suit and covering the way I look. I’ve never been able to truly master the skill of not being me. Not being a disappointment. Hence all the arguing and the shouting, and the years of silence in between.
I catch Soph staring at me, her face half drawn into shadow as the light fades. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, shrugging. “I just…I don’t know. I guess you seem too strong willed to be the guy getting changed on the side of the road is all.”
I give her a grim smile, flashing my teeth. “If my father thought for a second that I was involved in any form of criminal activity, he’d be the one to hand my ass over to the police. His precious career is far more important to him than his son’s freedom. Believe me, it’s in my interests, the club’s interests, for him to think I’m an blue-collar businessman.”
“So that’s what I should say? If he asks me anything?”
Poor Soph. She really has no clue how this is gonna work. There’s an excellent reason why I haven’t spent the past two days coaching her about how she’s to tell people we met. Who we are to one another. Why I’ve brought her along in the first place. “I wouldn’t worry about that, sugar. He’s not gonna ask you any questions.”
She looks confused, her eyebrows arching upwards. “Won’t he want you to introduce him to me or something?”
I pull on my suit pants, laughing bitterly. “No. No, he won’t give a fuck who you are, I’m afraid.”
******
The monstrous old colonial building looms out of the dusk like a ghost ship. My grandfather told me once my mother loved the place because it looked exactly the way it did when it was built in eighteen fifty-three, a constant of Clark Country history that would never change. It’s a beautiful old house. Shame I can’t look at the place and see anything other than the brutal childhood I spent here.
Sophia sits forward in her seat as we make our way down the long, lit driveway. Lightning bugs flicker everywhere, small darts of glowing orange rising drunkenly from the gardens on either side of us as we approach.
“Well, this is pretty much the last thing I was expecting,” she breathes, her gaze drinking in the grand columns and the prestigious, eight-foot-high entranceway. “You grew up here?”
“I grew up here,” I confirm. The words grind out between my clenched teeth.
“Incredible.”
In the distance, I can make out Cade’s family home, lit up like a bonfire against the darkening horizon. Nowhere near as ostentatious as Ebony Briar, the Preston’s property is still vast and completely over the top. I’m pretty fucking certain the only reason I never tried to murder my old man as a teenager was because I could escape there whenever his back was turned.
The front door is already opening as I park the car outside the house. Carl, who must be in his late fifties now, is my father’s longest-serving employee. Twenty-one years. The guy deserves a medal just for surviving this long. He sidles out of the house, barely opening the door, and jogs down the steps to meet us.
The first thing he does when I’m out of the car is pull me into a bear hug. “You’ve arrived in the middle of dinner, you crazy son of a bitch,” he says, smiling. Holding me at arm’s length, he shakes his head, as though I’m different somehow. As though he’s trying to marry up some mental image of a past, younger me with this older, more life-worn me. It may have only been four years, and I may not look all that different in my polished Italian leather shoes and my sickeningly expensive tailored suit, but Carl is the kind of guy to see people. Really see them. I wonder, when he looks into my eyes, if he can see the souls of all the people I’ve killed since we last met.
“So good to see you, Jay. So very good to see you.” He grips hold of my shoulders, squeezing tightly. The light’s still on inside the car; Carl sees Sophia still sitting
in the passenger seat, looking really fucking uncomfortable, and his whole face lights up. “Who is this?” He hurries to open her door—good job, since I haven’t had the chance to unlock it from the inside yet. He holds his hand out to her and helps her out of the car, shooting disapproving daggers at me as he does so. “Seems your manners have abandoned you since you left Alabama, boy.”
My manners aren’t the only things that have abandoned me since I left the south. I left my moral compass on the side of the road somewhere along the way, too. “I know,” I tell him. “I’m just the worst.”
Carl rubs Soph’s hand in between his, the old bugger clearly rejoicing in the fact that I’ve finally brought a woman home with me. “What’s your name, darlin’? I wait for young master Jamie to introduce me and I’ll die of old age, seems.”
Soph’s eyes flicker to mine—the name’s obviously stumped her. This will be the first time she’s heard anyone call me Jamie. The first time I’ve heard anyone call me that name in a long time. Only Cade is privy to that information, and he knows better than to call me that. Ever.
She also looks smug, as though she knew someone was going to want to know her name at some point during this visit. “I’m Sophia,” she says. “Sophia Letitia Marne.” She doesn’t realize how weird it is to give someone her full name like that. She’s still trying to reinforce it in her head, so it must seem smart. For me, the guy who knows she’s still lying about who she is, it’s a pretty obvious tell.
“I’m Carl. A pleasure to meet you, sweet girl.” He kisses the back of her hand, still giving me disapproving glances. “You come on inside now. I’ll come back out and gather your bags in a moment, once you’re settled.”
I give Carl a hearty slap on the back. I’ve missed him badly. He grins at me, leading Soph up the stairs and into the house. I wait a beat, taking a second to gather myself. I never thought I’d be back here. Never thought I’d be climbing these steps again. And the fact that Soph’s here? Yeah, the fact that I’m heading inside with a girl I technically bought as my sex slave at auction isn’t helping how surreal the whole situation is, either.
