Angel's Halo: Avenged

by Terri Anne Browning

  Hope for the best.

  Get the worst.

  I would have feared it was the end of the world if it were any different.

  Catching sight of my tear-stained face in the mirror, I washed it. My phone wouldn’t stop its annoying vibrations with Calvin’s every call. For a few seconds, I debated just blocking his number, but that wouldn’t stop anyone else from messing with me.

  I dropped the noisy thing into the toilet and flushed. The phone didn’t go down, but the drowning shut it the hell up. I left it where it was and headed for the bedroom door. Thankfully, the hall was empty. Somehow, I made it outside without any one of the dozens I passed stopping me. The entire clubhouse no doubt had been informed of my mother’s death, and I didn’t want any fake sympathy from anyone.

  Outside, the sky was clear, not a cloud in sight to hinder the view of the sparkling stars overhead. For a moment, it hurt to breathe as I imagined Mom up there looking down on the world from one of those stars.

  Then I realized she was probably only looking down at Calvin.

  Surprisingly, that didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had the day before. In that moment, I realized I lost my mother a long time ago. Way before the illness had started to take her mind, I knew she wasn’t really mine. She belonged only to Calvin. The times she gave me were only borrowed, filler for her boring life until she could see the man who was her sole reason for breathing.

  My lips twisted as I glanced around the parking lot in search of my car and found it by the gate. Reaching into my jacket pocket, I realized I didn’t have my keys. Kicking the right front tire, I headed for the gate. I needed to unwind. A drive would have been preferable, but I would settle for a walk.

  The gate wasn’t open, but there was a slight gap, barely big enough for me to squeeze through by contorting my body a little. I slipped by while the brothers on the fence weren’t looking and headed toward town.

  With the stars and a half-moon my only light to see by, I began to relax, comforted by the darkness of the night. It was quiet out here all alone. There was no traffic, no crickets or cicadas to chirp because of the winter temperatures, no barking dogs or yelling voices. There was only the night and me. I was used to being on my own. It was lonely at times, but it could also be peaceful.

  As I walked, my mind turned to the last few days. Hell, it was hard to believe that not even a week had passed since we’d come back from the cabin. With everything that had happened since returning, I felt like I hadn’t sat still at all. After helping Raven with Bubbles, dealing with my mother’s death, and now facing an unknown future, I was exhausted.

  I needed a vacation.

  Or a really, really long nap.

  For a moment, I let myself daydream about walking along the beach in the Bahamas or Hawaii on a starry night like this one with Colt beside me. His big hand engulfing mine, the warm breeze off the ocean caressing our skin.

  And him proposing for real.

  It would be romantic, and I wouldn’t say “Fuck no” this time. Or even “No” at all.

  I would laugh and throw my arms around him…

  And tell him I loved him back.

  But that was all fantasy. None of those things was ever going to happen.

  Colt and I weren’t meant to be.

  I knew that when I first met him. I knew it when I realized I was falling for him. I especially knew it now.

  But just the thought of walking away from him made it hard to breathe. It felt like something was sitting on my chest, pressing into me and making it impossible to suck in a deep enough breath.

  It was what I had to do, though. For not just my sake, but also for his.

  My desire to be with him was overlaid by the reality of the real world. My brand of toxicity didn’t mix with his poison. The results were explosive and dangerous for everyone around us.

  Besides, it wasn’t like he would even want to be on that beach with me, holding my hand and breathing in the warm, sea-salted air. He had his priorities. He had the people he loved and who came first with him.

  Kelli Murdock wasn’t one of those people.

  Maybe he did care. Maybe he even loved me.

  But those feelings didn’t go far. They weren’t deep enough to put me first.

  It was with that realization weighing heavily on my heart that I switched directions, retracing my steps toward the clubhouse.

  “Hello, Kellianne.”

  A scream broke the peaceful, quiet night as I came face-to-face with Calvin and the gun he was pointing at me with an odd calmness that terrified me.

  I hadn’t heard his footsteps or even felt the presence of another person. I’d been too lost in my head, too stuck on the realization that Colt would never really be mine, to hear anything but my own inner voices arguing over the future I fantasized about with my biker. Too distracted to realize the danger that was right behind me.

  In the time I’d been walking the road, I hadn’t thought about Calvin. Never assumed he would come looking for me, despite his earlier comment to come out of my hiding hole. He was too much of a pussy to confront me face-to-face. If anything, I expected him to send someone to take care of me, to finally get rid of what he considered to be the biggest mistake he’d ever made in his life.

  I’d thought wrong.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, taking a step back.

  He followed, getting closer as I tried to backtrack. Moments ago, I was glad for the lack of traffic. Now, I was praying for someone—anyone—to drive down this road. My eyes were glued to the gun my father was holding, his hand steady as he pointed it at my heart. I couldn’t see his eyes, but the energy in the space that was getting smaller by the second was charged with his fury, making the cold air crackle with it.

  “Are you happy now?” he asked, his tone arctic cold. “My career is over. You robbed me of the only thing I had left to live for in favor of a whore who never wanted you to begin with.”

  “No. You did that to yourself when you started messing with Mom.” My own fury was rising, the pain of my mother’s loss hitting me like a ton of bricks. I forgot about the gun, and instead of backing up, I started walking forward. “You knew something would happen when you had Mom moved. You knew how dangerous that wing was. You probably even knew how crazy her new roommate was, and that was why you chose that room. You are the reason Mom is dead. You are responsible for all of this. Did you think I would let you just walk away? That I would let you keep everything you hold sacred when you took away the only person who ever meant anything to me?”

  His hand began to shake as I drew closer, my reaction unexpected. He was the one backing up now, shrinking before my eyes in the face of my rage. My hands reached out, my nails raking down his cheeks. Dark lines of blood welled up as he howled with pain.

  “You killed my mother, you sonofabitch. You killed the one woman who loved you more than life itself, and all you’re worried about is your precious career,” I sneered as I pushed him back, my hand slapping across his face, the sound echoing in the still night. “You are a heartless, soulless bastard who only ever cared about himself, you gutless, narcissist piece of shit.”

  I pushed him again and again. Moving us back toward the clubhouse, but we were still too far away. I must have walked for more than two miles without even realizing it.

  This close to him, I saw when his eyes changed. When the sudden fear he had of me reverted back to loathing and revulsion. “I never wanted you. I told your mother to abort you, paid her two grand to get it done. She didn’t want you either. But it was too late to get rid of you by the time she found out she was pregnant. She should have just given you away. Left you in a dumpster somewhere with the other trash.”

  His words didn’t hit me like he wanted. I didn’t feel them like a physical slash across my skin. They hurt, but not nearly as badly as he was hoping. I sneered at him as I pushed my face closer to his. “Kevin hated you. He told me the whole reason he did all
the shit he did was because he couldn’t stand you and wanted to make your life miserable. He wanted to ruin your career with all the stuff he did. But you always covered it up, and he would have to come up with something more extreme, more stupid. Half the things I fed the press today, he told me. He gave me the proof of your embezzlements. He sent me the files of your dirty dealings with the attorney general from six years ago when you covered up Kevin’s DUIs, his rape of that sixteen-year-old girl, him nearly beating that gay boy to death. He didn’t even care if he went to prison. All he wanted was for you to lose everything. That was something we had in common. He demanded I take everything to the press the day he gave me the files, but I refused. It wasn’t time yet. I knew there would be a day when all of that would come in handy, and I waited until it wouldn’t hurt Mom.”

  “Lying bitch,” he snarled, pressing the gun into my stomach. “You were always jealous of Kevin. You hated him for how much I loved him when I could never make myself love you.”

  “I hated him because he was a disgusting bastard, just like you. I hated him and I hated myself, because I share your DNA,” I spat. “I prayed for a father like Hank.” His eyes dilated at the mention of the other man, but I kept going, uncaring what he said or did next. “I begged God for Hank to be my dad. There were times, after I realized just how revolting you really were, that I wanted to die rather than to continue to live with the knowledge that I shared the same genes as you.”

  His face suddenly went blank. It was my only warning before I heard the click as he pulled the trigger, followed immediately by the explosion of the gun.

  For a single heartbeat, I felt nothing. There was no pain, no burning, no tearing up of my insides. My brain seized at the realization that he had actually done it. He pulled the trigger. He shot his own daughter.

  Then the shock faded, and I fell backward, my head bouncing off the asphalt of the road as my feet landed in the grass and blood gushed out of me like a geyser, pooling around me in a spreading puddle of dark red.

  Chapter 24

  Colt

  After watching Kelli walk into the clubhouse, I debated going after her. But the sound of bikes coming up behind me gave me pause.

  Driving through the gate, I parked and waited for the others to follow after me. Bash and Jet pulled to a stop right beside Kelli’s car seconds before the SUV with Hank Badcock and his men pulled in.

  Shooting a glare at the SUV, I jerked around to face my brother and brother-in-law. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

  “Relax, little brother,” Jet ordered. “The man only wants to make sure Kelli is okay. And he may be able to help with the Italian situation. Feel up to doing a little recon?”

  My gaze went to the clubhouse. Kelli needed a little time to chill out, come to terms with the realization that I wasn’t just going to let her walk away. She would be fine in our room for a few hours. I had both sets of keys, so it wasn’t like she could run away anytime soon.

  “Where’re we going?”

  Bash nodded toward the SUV. “Badcock has some connections. Might be able to draw Fontana out. I want to check it out, make sure it’s legit before we move forward with working with him on this.”

  I glanced around, making sure no one was around who could overhear us before lowering my voice. “What’s it going to cost us?”

  I wasn’t talking about money, and he knew it. Money, we could pay. It was what else he might want as repayment that didn’t sit well with me.

  Apparently, it didn’t sit well with Bash either. “He hasn’t said yet. We can discuss that once we figure out if his information is credible. I want you to go with Jet and Spider. Stay vigil. Don’t trust anything Badcock tells you until you see it with your own eyes. And even then, question everything.”

  “We got this,” Jet assured him. “I’ll call you when we know something one way or the other.”

  “Stay safe,” he told us as we climbed onto our bikes.

  We waited for Spider to come out of the clubhouse to join us. After a nod from Jet, the SUV pulled through the gate, and we followed. We drove west, to the coast. It took just over two hours to get there, and as we drove past gated Victorian mansions, I became even more uneasy. The idea of Fontana being in Eureka, California, shacked up in one of these multimillion-dollar mansions pissed me off.

  After shooting up my bar, killing Uncle Chaz, and shooting my niece, the fucker came back to this place to relax? The need to torture, maim, kill the sonofabitch made my hands tighten around the handlebars of my hog until my knuckles turned white and my fingers began to ache.

  In front of us, the SUV circled around the block of the most expensive mansions and stopped. We parked behind it and walked up to the back windows as Badcock powered down the glass.

  “Two mansions back,” he informed us. “Fontana has been staying there periodically over the last few months. For the last three days, he’s been in there and hasn’t come out.”

  “How the fuck do you know that?” Spider demanded, leaning in the window menacingly.

  Badcock didn’t even flinch at the closeness of the lethal enforcer. “The mansion isn’t his. It actually belongs to a friend of a friend.” His lips lifted in the beginnings of a smile but dropped before it could form completely. “I have a lot of friends.”

  “This friend of a friend a client of yours?” I asked, remembering what Kelli said earlier about the man’s job.

  “No comment,” he said with the trace of amusement in his voice.

  “Right.” Jet’s eyes were already scanning the rest of the neighborhood. “I need proof he’s in there. You understand, right, Badcock?”

  “Perfectly. Take your time. Get all the proof you need. I’m headed home.” He pulled a card from his wallet and handed it to me. “Call if she needs anything. I don’t care what it is or how much it costs. If she needs me, I’ll be there.”

  I clenched the card in my hand, but I didn’t throw it back in his face. There was real emotion in his eyes when he spoke of Kelli. Remembering the way she had talked about him, I knew he meant something to her too.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Jet told him before stepping back.

  With a nod to Badcock, I waited for his window to power back up and the SUV to drive off before following my brother and Spider.

  In this neighborhood, the three of us stuck out like a sore thumb, so we had to wait for the sun to go down to do any real recon. We found a place to wait in town, grabbing something to eat and waiting for darkness to fall. It was just after six when we went back.

  Parking our bikes several blocks away, we snuck up to the gate of the mansion. Of the three of us, I was the leanest one, and shorter than Jet by an inch or so. It was only logical that I be the one to get closer for a better look.

  If Fontana was in there, the lack of guards outside told me he wasn’t expecting anyone to sneak up on him here. Cocky sonofabitch. I kept my eyes open for signs of cameras or any other security systems. Every window was wired, so that if they were opened, an alarm went off. And other than a camera by the garage, there was nothing else to be concerned with. Strange for a house of this size and expense, especially if a security-conscious mafioso was in there. Both Vitucci’s compound and Santino’s mansion were crawling with guards twenty-four seven. With enough cameras, even the Secret Service would have been impressed.

  But as Badcock said, this wasn’t Fontana’s house.

  Going around to the back of the mansion, I found a window that seemed to belong to the family room. I saw the silhouette of four people, and from the size of them, they were all male. I leaned closer, trying to get a better look and hear what they were saying.

  The windows were so thick, I didn’t catch a single word they spoke, but as one of the other men shifted, I caught sight of Enzo Fontana.

  He was right there, a smug-ass grin on his face, laughing at something one of his men had just said and not paying a lick of attention to anything outside of those four
walls. I could have lifted my gun, pointed it right at his head, and taken him out then and there.

  But a quick death was too good for him. It should be long, drawn-out, and as painful as possible. I wanted him to beg for the end, and to deny him the relief of death for days before I finally put a bullet in his skull.

  Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were on our way back to Creswell Springs. Now that we knew where Fontana and his men were, we could all come up with a plan to take the bastard out.

  --

  A few miles from the clubhouse, Spider screeched to a stop in front of us. He kicked down the stand so fast it was a wonder the thing didn’t break off, and started running.

  Jet shot me a look, and we both braked and ran after him, not sure what had the bigger man running like the hounds of hell were chasing after him.

  “Fuck,” he roared, dropping to his knees. “Jet, call 9-1-1!”

  My brother was already on his phone by the time we reached the enforcer. By then, I could see the legs of someone in the dim light provided by the moon and our headlights. “Are they breathing?” I demanded as I came around the bigger man.

  The second my eyes landed on the small figure lying there in a dark puddle of her own blood, her face pale and her breathing shallow, I lost my mind.

  “Kelli!” I bellowed her name as I dropped down beside her. My hands shook as I cupped her face. “Baby, open your eyes. Fuck! Look at me, Kell. Look at me!”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood, man,” Spider informed me as he felt her pulse with one hand and put pressure down on her abdomen with the other. “There’s so much blood, I can’t tell if she was stabbed or shot.”

  Tears blinded me. “Baby! Kelli, look at me. Talk to me. Who did this to you?” But she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, and my heart was breaking.

  Above us, Jet got off the phone with the dispatcher and was now talking to Bash. “We’re about two, two-and-half miles from the clubhouse. Kelli is half dead—” My mind was screaming at him to shut the fuck up. She wasn’t dead, but I couldn’t look away from her. Couldn’t stop begging her to open her fucking eyes. “I don’t know, man. Shot. Stabbed. There’s a lot of blood and she’s still warm, so it didn’t happen long ago if I had to take a guess.”