I walked directly towards the open doors before they were shut behind me.
“Ms. Jackson, please take a seat. You know Sean and Brendan.” It was statement, not a question.
I smiled tightly as I nodded their way before I took my seat. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
“No problem at all.” He lit a Cuban cigar and blew the stream of smoke towards the ceiling. “What can I help you with, darlin’? Is Cillian giving you issues?”
I shook my head. “No. This meeting isn’t personal in nature at all but perhaps you do or don’t want your business associates to hear?”
“What are youse talkin’ about? If I can’t tell Sean or Brendan then it will be the end of me. They are more than my business associates. They are me friends and colleagues. Whatever you have to say to me, they are privy to. I’m sure you can understand that?”
“Okay.” I straightened my posture and looked at all the three men at the table before I turned my full attention towards Dizzy. “Cillian can’t be put into any kind of danger what so ever. That means no more runs, no more scores to settle, not being at a meeting because he is VP—nada. His case is already not looking that great and although I am confident the Feds won’t get him on murder, they can always come back with another charge if they so desire. Double jeopardy only applies that a defendant can’t be charged with the same crime in the same murder—not that he can’t be charged again for said murder.”
“What does that mean exactly? You get him off on Murder One and those Fed bastards can come back and charge him with Manslaughter?” Sean inquired as he dragged from a Lucky Strike.
“Well, yes. It is at their discretion. Most of the time they won’t bother but the Feds have this hard-on to put gangs out of commission and any gang member that comes up on charges, well, they’re putting them through the ringer and trying to find every loophole possible. We know once Cillian is put in the system, there’s a chance he might not make it out alive due to…um, other mitigating factors.”
“But we’re a motorcycle club, not a gang—”
“Dizzy, semantics aside, the Federal government considers any motorcycle club with nefarious activity records and ties to other organized criminal organizations a gang. It is simple as that. The Lucifer’s Saints are not a family club and the Feds aren’t stupid. No MC in Northern Nevada is considered anything other than a gang, the same way my father is considered a gangster. I’m just stating the facts.” I laced my hands together at the table while my heart thundered in my chest.
I wondered what would happen now.
“What are…my boy’s chances?”
My eyes met Dizzy’s crystal blue irises and he looked so much like an older version of Cillian, it was eerie. “Sixty-forty…I have paralegals and help at the law firm but I want to raise enough reasonable doubt that he doesn’t get off on a technicality. If that happens then they’ll most definitely try his case again under another criminal statute.”
Dizzy’s face took on an ashen quality as he stubbed out his cigar and stood to his feet.
“Desmond?”
He barely looked at me before he collapsed to the floor.
I jumped out of my seat and knelt before him while I tried to find his pulse. It was erratic and weak. “Call the ambulance!” I shouted at Sean and Brendan.
I grabbed my Samsung and voice dialed Cillian. He answered on the third ring.
“Meet me at Sierra Surgery Hospital. Your father has just fallen out, and I have a feeling it has to do with his heart.”
“When did this happen?” He yawned, the sleep still in his deep voice.
“Just now. The ambulance has been called but I know they are just going to take him to Birch Tree Hospital, stabilize him and get him ready to be transferred via Life Flight.”
“How do you know?”
Instead of answering his question, I simply ended the call.
Because the same thing happened to my dad, I thought to myself and the tears slid from my eyes down my cheeks.
The Past
“I’m pregnant.”
Cillian stared at me before his lips parted and he embraced me while rubbing my back over and over again.
“Shit. I guess we tell our folks? They can’t do anything. You turn sixteen in a few days and I’m already sixteen. Maybe they will sign off for us to get married.”
I laughed out loud. “Are you shittin’ me? My dad? Sign off on me getting married at sixteen?”
His crystal blue eyes turned glacier. “So I get it…I’m not good enough for you and your dad never wants you to be married to a Cox, is that it?”
“It’s more than that, Cillian…and you being a Cox has nothing to do with it.” We were in one of our favorite spots in the woods, spring was in the air the trees smelled delightful. The day was beautiful and I had to ruin it with my bout of bad news.
“Well then what is it?”
“Listen, my parents want me to go to Stanford and then Harvard Law School. My life has been mapped out since I was five. I don’t have a say in it. It was always his wish for us to have an attorney in the family and I’m it. My mother agrees.”
“What about the baby?”
“I don’t know. I guess I will have to approach them and find out.”
Cillian sat beside me on a blanket that covered up the forest ground. “I’ll go with you, all right? I don’t want them to think this was some one night stand and I’m not man enough to face my responsibilities because I am.”
I nodded and tried to hide my anxiety as he helped me up and grabbed the blanket.
It didn’t take us long to get to his Harley and I hopped up on behind him.
What I wouldn’t give for a razor blade and a soft white towel.
The last few months had been torture because all the sudden my parents were concerned about what I did after school. Even with all my extra-curricular activities and Kyra covering for me, they’d started watching me like a hawk.
Cillian and I were lucky to see each other once or twice a week and those were usual brief interludes filled with an abundance of teenage hormones. We’d stopped being so careful and just had sex because it took the pain away.
Other times, I felt like I was stuck in a bad remake of Romeo and Juliet. Kyra had told me about cutting and how it could ease the pain. All I needed was a straight razorblade and a white face towel. I started in places where no one could see like my inner thighs and my upper arms. Small surface cuts that barely broke the skin and could heal fairly quickly.
The more my parents cracked down, the worse I got until I was cutting almost every day. The same areas, re-opening old wounds and then putting a Band-Aid over the area.
My mother thought I’d become Ms. Klutz all the sudden and my dad didn’t care because he never saw me enough to see the bruises.
We arrived at my house and I jumped off the back of the Harley, typed in the code and hopped back on. In the process, my calf hit the exhaust pipe quickly and a brand new kind of pain registered.
I breathed through my teeth and held on to Cillian’s waist. We drove inside the gated community and came to a stop in front of my house. I got off the bike and looked down at my leg. A scarlet bruise appeared and although it wasn’t a bad enough burn to scar, it would hurt for days.
Cillian looked down at my leg before his eyes met mine. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said and refused to look him in the eyes.
He grabbed my arm and rolled up my long sleeved blouse. “This is what I’m talkin’ about, Sela! You don’t think I know a cutter when I see one? Why do you think I got this tattoo?”
He pulled up his left shirt and showed me toxic skull crossbones tattoo.
“What am I looking for?”
“Stop playing stupid. You see the raised skin? I went too fucking deep one day when I was cutting. My dad didn’t want my mom to find out and he said if I fucking liked pain so much, I should start gettin’ inked up. You know how
painful it is to have someone tattoo scar tissue? It hurts like a bitch anyway but that’s a special kind of pain.”
He slid his sleeve down. “Anyway, whenever I feel the urge to cut, I usually talk to my dad and he lets me get a tattoo instead.”
I knew the jig was up.
I had to come clean.
“Fine, I’ve been cutting myself but only because my parents are assholes and they won’t let us see each other. Hell, they won’t even let me drive my Land Rover unless I’m going to school and I have to bring it right back home. I don’t know…it’s like they know I’m seeing someone and the harder they clamp down on me, the harder for me it is to live this way.” I pulled down my sleeve and involuntarily shivered.
Cillian clasped my hand in mine. “C’mon, let’s go and get this over with.”
The next twenty minutes seemed like a dream with Helga opening the door and my mother striding toward me before she stopped in her tracks.
If I was good looking then my mother was beautiful and sexy with her perfect figure, creamy alabaster skin, long flaxen blonde hair and arctic blue-gray eyes. She had classic German features; she was only thirty-five yet her regimen was such that she looked like a young woman in her twenties.
She wore a black fitted Chanel dress and high-heeled Yves Saint Laurent shoes. “Gisela, what are you doing and who is this boy?” Her accent slight yet her tone was beyond condescending.
“This is Cillian Cox—”
“—listen, there is no easy way to break this to you because Gisela won’t work up the nerve to tell you but she’s pregnant and we’re going to have a baby.”
Both my mother and I looked at Cillian with mouths agape.
“Nein, das ist nicht passiert!” Mom exclaimed before she began to back away from the both of us. “Raymond!”
I breathed loudly. “That went well. My mother is now ranting in German how I’ve lost my mind. Cillian, go home. You don’t want to be here when my dad comes down the hall.”
He grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve gotta be here for you.”
“No, you don’t. He’s not violent…at least not with women. He’s never touched my mother or I indecently. You can say a lot of things about my dad but he won’t hurt me—”
“Yeah? You’re lucky because when I get home, I’m gonna get my ass beat so forgive me if I’m not exactly in a gung-ho mood to get back to the Clubhouse.”
My heart thundered in my chest for what seemed like an eternity before my father presented himself, my mother still by his side.
“Let go of my daughter’s hand before I break yours,” my father said in a deep, commanding voice.
Cillian let go of my hand albeit reluctantly. “Sir, I want to marry your daughter. I love her—”
“You…don’t know the first thing about love.” My father lit a Cuban cigar and dragged on it before he let the smoke billow out of his mouth. “This is what’s gonna happen, young man. Your father and I are going to have a long talk. Then, I’m going to find a place to put my daughter so she can see out this shameful pregnancy and the baby will be put up for adoption.”
“Mr. Jackson, please don’t do this to us…”
“Then, Gisela will finish high school, graduate from Stanford University before she goes to Harvard and she will receive her law degree. You understand that?” My father’s amber eyes never wavered from Cillian’s. “Say good bye to your friend, Gisela. You’ll never see him again. Not as long as I’m alive and breathing.”
My father, so handsome with his dark caramel skin, amber eyes, masculine pug nose and full lips was the ugliest human being on earth to me right now. Everything about him was hideous. From his close-shaven dark hair to the gray silk suit and shiny Prada loafers he wore, he was perfect on the outside and rotten on the inside. He represented every disgusting and inhumane thing with the world and I wanted to spit in his face and show him my scars.
The goodbye never happened. My mother was beside me, and before I knew it, she hurriedly marched me to my room. I just wanted to be alone and cry but she sat behind me and began to brush my hair like she’d done when I was a little girl.
“Don’t worry, liebling. This will all be like a bad dream. Just a few awful months and then you will be back here, all right? You couldn’t handle a child and go to university—it isn’t possible.” She paused and began to sing to me in German.
I tuned her out and just wished for this whole fucking day to be over.
“Let’s face it. No daughter of mine will ever marry biker trash, especially those Cox men. After how your father has treated you like a princess your whole life, do you want to be reduced to being treated like scheiße—”
“Herr Jackson…he’s fallen out!” Helga exclaimed as she threw open my bedroom door.
My mother stood. “You silly fool—have you called nine-one-one?”
“Yes!”
I hoped my dad would be okay but as I laid down on my bed, the only running mantra in my head was a wish for death.
The Present
I paced up and down the hallway at Sierra Surgery Hospital.
Most of the LS members were outside smoking while it was up to us old ladies to hold down the forte inside.
Dr. Carlson approached us reluctantly but once he saw me, he smiled. I’d managed to get his son out of a major drunk driving incident when they lived in Lake Tahoe. Once he was promoted and landed his job at Sierra, the family had moved to Carson City because it was easier for everyone and he wouldn’t have to commute.
“Gisela, how are you?” he greeted with warm green eyes.
“I’m fine, Dr. Carlson—”
“—shite on how Gisela is doin’,” Bronaugh interrupted in a cold voice. “How the fook is me husband?”
Dr. Carlson turned toward Bronaugh. “Not good. The man has undergone a triple bypass. He’s going to be held in the hospital for a while so we can monitor his progress—”
“How long’s a while?”
Cillian had snuck up behind me and his hands clutched my shoulders softly.
“We’re going to keep him in the hospital for about a week. He can go home but full recovery usually takes about twelve weeks. He’s going to have to change his diet, start exercising and he’s definitely going to have to give up smoking. This is a very serious surgery he’s been through and if he wants to be around to see old age, he’s going to have to be proactive in his own recovery.”
Bronaugh merely nodded before she turned and walked toward the hospital exit.
I turned to face Cillian and his crystal blue eyes were bright with unshed tears. “What brought it on?”
Did I really want him to know the truth?
“I went by the Clubhouse earlier and told him about how much trouble you could be facing and I guess the reality hit him harder than I imagined it would. Same thing that happened when my dad found out I was pregnant, remember?”
“No, I don’t because you never told me what happened.”
“He had an irregular heartbeat and fell out. They found out he suffered from high blood pressure and he’s had to watch his diet ever since. He was forty years old. I didn’t get a chance to tell you because so much shit was going on at that time. Believe me, I’ve been here before, and I know what you’re going through.”
I don’t know what I expected Cillian to do but when he wrapped his arms around my waist and tucked his face into the crux of my neck, I knew what was coming next whether I wanted it to register in my mind or not.
No matter how tough a guy portrayed himself to be, they were still emotionally weaker than us as women, even big alpha bikers.
Bronaugh had merely left the waiting room.
Cillian, who hated his father as much as he loved him, held on to me for dear life and sobbed silently into my neck.
I couldn’t do anything but help soothe his pain; it’s what I’d always been good at but I wondered in the end, would it be enough?
Chapter Thirteen
> Cillian
The following weeks passed quickly and once jury selection was over, Cillian’s case was brought before twelve of his peers—and six alternates—in Carson City Criminal Court.
The weekend after his trial started, a huge barbeque was held at the Clubhouse in honor of his father making a full recovery.
His dad’s good health regime went out of the window when he saw huge plates of sausages, fried chicken and steaks; potato salad, macaroni salad and mashed potatoes; Bushmills, Jose Cuervo and Jack Daniels; Becks, Heinken and Bud Ice.
Deadly Seduction Page 16
