Corrupting Cinderella

by Autumn Jones Lake

  “Prez, the fuck?”

  “I don’t like it any more than you, brother.”

  The more I think of the conversation, the less I like what I heard. My takeaway is this: Loco is a goddamn sociopath. While he might like me or even respect me in his own twisted way, he’d have no problem gutting me if I was standing between him and a slice of his favorite cake. The fact that he basically ascertained the only way to hurt me—through my loved ones—is also not sitting well.

  Suddenly any games Hope might be playing don’t seem as funny.

  I’m consumed with an urgent need to see her.

  “Listen, I didn’t like some of the shit he was saying. How he knows what feelers we got out there ain’t exactly making me happy. I also got the impression he tried to pry some info out of one of us, and since no one has stepped up and said anything, I’m concerned.”

  Z blows out a long breath

  “That’s bad.”

  His phone buzzes in his hand. “It’s Wrath.” He answers and puts it on speaker phone.

  “What the motherfuck, Z? I’ve been going nuts. Everyone whole?” his voice booms through the car.

  Normally, I’d have a good chuckle over his reaction, but I’m not feeling very comical tonight. “We’re good, brother,” I answer.

  “Rock, you dick. You coulda at least let me ride along.”

  “And do what, watch if Loco decided to blow us up?”

  “Fuck you. I’m not an invalid. What are you talking about? Loco came?”

  “Yeah. Wanted to introduce Gunner’s replacement.”

  Wrath snorts. “Knew that little shit wouldn’t last long.”

  “Also wanted to let me know he was onto our Western connection and that he wants it.”

  “Fuuuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You tell him yes for now?”

  “Of course,” I answer, throwing a glance at Z.

  “I’ll call everyone in for church tomorrow,” Wrath says.

  “I’ll do it, brother. It’s my job,” Z answers.

  “We seem to have flipped jobs, bro, if you haven’t noticed,” Wrath says with a glum laugh.

  Catching Z’s eye, I shake my head slightly. Let Wrath do this.

  “Thanks man,” Z says.

  “You guys comin’ back here?” Wrath asks.

  My hesitation says everything. “Fucking bring her with you, Rock. I’m sure Trin wouldn’t mind some alternate company.”

  I choke on a laugh over that. I’m sure she’d be relieved to hang out with someone else.

  “Tomorrow, I promise.”

  We sign off, and Z glances at me. “Is Hope doing okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He slaps me on the shoulder as he gets out. “Go give her a special wake-up call, prez.”

  “I plan to.”

  I do not plan to come home and find Hope’s car gone from my driveway. Storming inside, I find the place cleaned up and a note waiting on the counter for me.

  Broke phone. Running to mall to get a new one.

  Love, Me.

  So that explains why she didn’t answer any of my texts earlier. Maybe. Since it’s almost midnight and she’s not back yet, my stomach churns. The mall closes at ten. It’s less than five miles from my house. There is no way she shouldn’t be back by now.

  Maybe she came back and got pissed when she realized I was still out?

  Something’s wrong.

  I got that fucking conversation with Loco messing with my mind. Asking about my woman. Trying to get inside my head. He could have had his crew come here and nab Hope while I was at that bullshit meet and greet. I pull out my personal phone and call up the app that will give me an idea of where to find my girl. When I had Z install it on her phone, I swore I’d only use it when necessary.

  Now feels very fucking necessary.

  I get nothing. Nothing. No blip. No message saying “unavailable at this time.” Nothing.

  My eyes drift to the note. Fuckingfuck! The fucking app won’t be on her new phone. I try calling her, and it goes straight to a generic voicemail. Jesus Christ, this is the worst possible timing.

  I glance at the note and then my phone again. No.

  Maybe she needed to go her house for some reason.

  She’s not at her house.

  I don’t have Sophie’s number on me, but I do remember where she lives. It’s really fucking late by the time I get there. No sign of Hope’s car. I struggle with whether I should wake Sophie up, but after that scene at the Judge’s fundraiser, I decide it’s wiser not to. She’s an extra complication I don’t have the patience for right now.

  God dammit. Instead of tracking Hope’s phone, I should have rigged her fuckin’ car.

  I swing by her office on my way home just in case, but the parking lot is empty. I manage to grab maybe an hour of sleep before I head back to Hope’s house and wait.

  At ten in the morning, she rolls into the driveway.

  Shock, clear as day, is written all over her face when she sees me.

  Her body is tight and controlled, even though she’s pretending to be carefree.

  I amble up to her. “Mind telling me where you’ve been?”

  “Oh, couldn’t you track me on your phone?” she questions in that angry-sarcastic way of hers that usually gets me rock hard in two seconds.

  Not today.

  “No.”

  She unlocks the door and miraculously lets me inside. Well, I follow her in so close, she doesn’t have a choice. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

  As soon as we’re inside, she whirls around and starts grilling me. “So you admit you installed an app on my phone to track me?”

  “Yes.”

  I figure honesty will keep her simmering anger from boiling over. She’s got me. No point lying.

  “How can you think I would ever cheat on you?”

  Okay, that’s unexpected. “What?”

  “I’m with you all the time—”

  “Baby, that’s not why. I’m worried about you.” Doesn’t Hope realize by now how much I fucking care about her? I know how loyal my girl is. I’d never spend a second thinking she’d step out on me. “What if Greybell had succeeded in throwing you in his trunk and I needed to find you?”

  She cocks her head.

  I try to explain it another way. “I worry about something happening to you—”

  Her face twists in anger. “This. This right here, Rock, is why I can’t move in with you. This scares me.”

  Thunk—the sensation of my heart free-falling into my stomach. Hope scared of me fucking hurts.

  “Baby, how can you say that? I want to make sure you’re safe.”

  “Because it’s fucking creepy!” she explodes.

  I can’t figure this out. “It’s not a way for me to spy on you. But if something happened and I needed to find you, that’s the only time I would use it.”

  “You should have asked me, told me, talked to me about it. Not just do it behind my back.”

  “I got enemies, Hope.”

  I don’t want to scare her, so I stop there. But this shit last night with GSC. Our beef with the Vipers getting stirred up again. The crash after the fight. Hope going out alone all the time to meet her clients. Clients fucking attacking her in her own damn office, for fuck’s sake...I need this extra protection on my girl. I can’t tell her all of this, though. I don’t want to risk her deciding it’s too dangerous for us to be together.

  “I’m not a fucking dog you can micro-chip, Rock. I’m a human being. It’s like you don’t respect me at all.”

  Now I’m pissed. I respect her more than any woman I’ve ever known. Love her more than any person—ever.

  “It’s not about respect. You’re everything to me, Hope. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  She falters, her anger disappearing for a second. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, so where’s my app? Where’s my way to track you down if something bad happens to you—which
by the way, is far more likely, Mr. leaves-the-house-all-hours-of-the-night-without-telling-me-why.”

  What she’s suggesting is fucking insane. Holy fuck. That’s all I would have needed last night was Hope—lovely, beautiful but reckless Hope—rolling up on Loco and his trigger twitchy crew during our bizarre friendly, but not so friendly, standoff. “That would be a bad idea, Hope,” I say as plainly as possible.

  “Of course it would be. You’d never want me to know where you are.” Her furious face is red but still beautiful, and for a moment I’m distracted. She waggles her fingers in the air between us, drawing my attention to her words. “We’re not equals in this.”

  “Jesus Christ! It’s not about that at all, Hope.”

  “Then explain it to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  She pauses and considers my refusal before asking her next question. “Would you do something like this to Wrath?”

  “What? How is that even relevant?”

  “Would you spy on him without telling him?” she persists.

  “I wasn’t spying on you!”

  “Answer me.”

  “Babe, no one is going to kidnap him. It’s not the same thing.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re being deliberately obtuse or you really are this dense. Either way, I need you to leave.”

  She folds her arms over her chest.

  “No.”

  She arches a brow at me. “No?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, Hope.”

  She strides over and opens the door. “Get out. You went too far this time, Rock. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. Please go.”

  Words fail me, so I walk out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  After Rock finally, reluctantly—very reluctantly—leaves, I flop onto my bed and collapse into tears. I am weak. I am such a girl. It hurts. It feels wrong to even think it, but the pain is uncomfortably close to how I felt after Clay’s death.

  How do people do this? How do they go on and survive after bigger tragedies than I’ve been through? I don’t know. I don’t have it in me, I guess.

  After a few hours of wallowing, I snap on the bedside lamp and stare at the bedroom. Clay’s side is still intact. I pull on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and finally do what I should have done months ago. Sifting through Clay’s clothes seems like the easiest place to start, but it’s not. Most of the things in his closet have a musty tinge to them from sitting so long, untouched. But a few sweaters still have enough of his scent clinging to them that I burst into tears. I set those aside for now and pack the rest into boxes. The criminal defense bar has a program where you can donate ‘professional’ type clothing for defendants to wear to trial—instead of the prejudice-inducing orange jumpsuits they might otherwise wear. That’s where I’m going to send Clay’s business casual clothing and suits. I feel good about myself once I make that decision, and the sorting and packing goes much smoother.

  When I run out of boxes and garbage bags, I stop. As I look around at all the bags and boxes, I’m thrilled with the progress I’ve made.

  Rock will—wait. Rock will nothing, because I told him we were over.

  It makes sense for me to get rid of these things. This house. Pare it all down to nothing and find an apartment. No other man I might want to date will tolerate the shadow of my dead husband hanging around.

  Other man? There are no other men compared to Rock. How can there be another man?

  He’s it, and I know it.

  I’ve been making him put up with all my grief and guilt. He’s done it and not said a word. Been very sweet and understanding, even though it probably kills him. That shows me just how much he does respect me. If I stopped my righteous indignation long enough to grasp it.

  Dammit.

  We still need to talk about this overwhelming need to protect me and go behind my back to keep track of me. I’m so not okay with that. If he’d just told me, explained it, I probably would have thought it was sweet, like the girl in the cellphone shop did. But by being sneaky, it made it ugly and infuriating.

  Still, there were better ways I could have explained it.

  Now he’s gone.

  I can’t stand going back to my house. If I catch Hope’s scent on my sheets, I will lose my fucking mind.

  Wrath spots me the minute I step in the front door of the clubhouse.

  “Where you been, fucker?” is his idea of a greeting.

  Through hell is what I want to answer, but I don’t.

  “Why you waiting around for me like a nervous momma?” I ask instead.

  Wrath curves his body to the side in an exaggerated movement. “Where’s your girl? Thought she was comin’ with.”

  My jaw clenches, but before I can come up with any reasonable excuse, Z thunders down the stairs.

  “’Sup, prez?” He also glances at the empty air behind me. “Where’s Hope?”

  Shrugging off my cut, I storm into the war room, ignoring both of them. I’m not about to sit down and talk about my feelings with my brothers.

  Not fucking happening.

  I can hear the two fuckers out in the living room clucking about my dickish behavior.

  Fuck.

  Both their heads snap up when I bump into the couch. I drop down opposite from where they’re sitting. “Hope’s a little pissed at me.”

  And isn’t that the understatement of the year?

  For the second time in two weeks, she told me to “get out.” Shouted it at me, actually.

  This time I don’t think there’s any repairing it. You went too far this time, Rock. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.

  “What’d you do now, Rock?” Z asks. He’s asking as my friend, not my VP.

  I look up, catching his eye. “She found the app I had you install.”

  “Fuck, man, how? I buried it deep—”

  Poor Z’s gonna get himself all worked into a fit if he thinks he fucked something up. I wave my hand in the air. “No. The phone broke and she had to take it up to the store—”

  Z nods, satisfied it’s not his fault.

  Wrath has his face screwed into an incredulous expression. “Wait a second. You put a tracking app on Hope’s phone and didn’t tell her about it?”

  Surprised Wrath cares so much, I just nod.

  “Whoa. I mean I get why you didn’t ask her, but to not even tell her? Bro, that’s fucked up.” Then he turns away and mutters, “and everyone thinks I’m the asshole ‘round here,” loud enough for me to hear.

  “Big help, bro, thanks,” I tell him in my most sarcastic if-you-weren’t-my-best-friend-I’d-kill-you voice.

  “You jacked Trin’s phone,” Z points out to Wrath.

  His face transforms into one that has made lesser men shit their pants. Z is oblivious. “Technically you did, asshole. Besides, that’s different,” Wrath growls.

  “She’s club property,” Z says with a grin that is about to get his teeth knocked down his throat by the look on Wrath’s face.

  “It’s different because I told her we did it. She wasn’t surprised. But she grew up in this life and understands.” He swings his glacial gaze back my way. “Hope is citizen, Rock. You keep trying to integrate her into our world, but you’re not straight with her. Women like her get offended by that shit.”

  Anyone who looks at Wrath and assumes he’s all brawn and no brain is seriously fucking stupid. Brother is apparently smarter than I am. Well, sometimes.

  “How you gonna fix it?” Z asks.

  She gave me the way. It’s a pretty fucking big gesture. Impossible really.

  “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I'm twisted the fuck up and exhausted by the shit going on between Hope and me.

  So it's the worst time to get the okay for something I've been waiting on for a while now. The Superintendent of Southaven Supermax has finally determined I am fit to visit the only member of my charter currently inside.

  Because my Road Captai
n and Treasurer have nice, squeaky clean records, they usually make the trip out to Central New York to visit Grinder. But the old goat keeps asking for me, and the right thing to do is honor his request.

  My record is not so spotless, so like a good little productive member of society, I sought permission in writing from the Superintendent to visit my former sponsor.

  Permission granted.

  It's been a few years since we've had a face-to-face. We went into the slightly more pleasant Eastwood Correctional together. I did my damnedest to get the fuck out and never go back inside, while Grinder—well, he sought protection for us from some very expensive sources. The things they demanded of him are what got him the ticket to Southaven.

  So yeah, I've got a bit of guilt about the fact that I'm out free enjoying my life, while Grinder is sitting in one of the shittiest prisons—literally—New York State has to offer. Some of that guilt is offset by the fact that I never should have gone inside for what I ultimately got nailed for.

  But not much.

  Inside or not, Grinder is still a brother. Forever Kings, Kings Forever. We do what we can for him from outside. We keep his offender account plush so he can get whatever he wants from the commissary. His ol' lady, Rose, has nothing to do with the MC any more. Wants it that way. I still check on her from time to time. Make sure she has whatever she needs. She's not so fond of my face or voice. Any reminder of LOKI really. So she gets a check in the mail. They never get returned.

  We have a private attorney working on Grinder’s appeals, even though all of us know it's pretty much a dead end. He's done so much bad shit on the inside—hence the extended vacation at Southaven—that his original conviction could be outright overturned—null and void—and he'd still be inside for years to come.

  Since I've had a couple near misses in the last few years, maybe this trip to the Supermax will do me some good. Remind me why I work so damn hard to keep myself and my brothers straddling the line between legal and illegal, rather than falling headfirst into bad shit that might bring fucktons of quick, easy cash but also the potential for lots of years spent in places like this shithole.

  Christ, my rageful brother Wrath wouldn't last a day inside without beating the fuck out of someone and getting thrown in solitary for an extended vacation of his own.