“I figured if it wasn’t you who came through the door . . .” I faded off, knowing it was stupid, because nothing would have stopped one of those men from the other night.
“You’d what? Force them to wear heels and hang up your clothes?” He flexed his jaw. “What the actual fuck—?”
“It has potential,” Scotty said from behind Chris. I hadn’t even seen him there. “She worked with what she had, right?”
Chris said nothing. Just grabbed his pistol again, casually tucking it in his sweats. Only, it was anything but casual. “Why did you follow me up here? I told you to wait downstairs.”
Scotty laughed. “Having a sense of déjà vu, are you?”
Chris tightened his fists.
“Easy.” Scotty backed up a step, rubbing his jaw. He wore the dark brown leather jacket that the Sons always wore, and an easy grin. Too easy. “I just wanted to assure Molly here that I’d take good care of you. That nothing would happen to you.”
I stared at Scotty, taking him in. He had bright green eyes, reddish hair, and a square jaw that rivaled Chris’s for hardness. He didn’t have a dimple in his chin, like Chris, so he looked even tougher. He seemed ruthless. Cold.
Like he would stop at nothing to get his way.
Swallowing hard, I held on to the hanger tighter, all too aware of my lack of clothing. Thanks to Chris, I didn’t even have any panties on anymore. “Good. I’ll hold you to that promise.”
He inclined his head.
Chris flexed his jaw. “Assurances have been given. Can you go wait for me downstairs now?”
“Yeah.” Scotty backed up. “Sure.”
The second he walked out the door, Chris shut it. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Him.” He slammed a hand on the door, his body trembling with rage. “Don’t mistake this for anything other than what it is. A reminder that he can get to you anytime he wants.”
“Why would he want to hurt me?”
“He doesn’t.” He gritted his teeth. “Not yet, anyway.”
I hugged myself, still holding my “weapons,” and tried to make sense of all this. I failed. “But he’s a cop. A good guy.”
“Just because he’s a cop doesn’t make him a good guy, Princess.” He turned and faced me, and what I saw in his eyes—fear, anger, and resignation—chilled me to the bone. “Don’t be so naïve to think it does. He was reminding me that I had to cooperate with his plans or pay the price. He doesn’t trust me.”
“But you’ll die for him, anyway?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Yep.”
“That’s so—” I swallowed hard, dropping the crap in my hands, and stopped my argument. It was one I wouldn’t win. The hanger and shoe hit the floor, and I closed the distance between us, hugging him close. “Be safe out there. Come home to me.”
He closed his arms around me, hugging me so tight it almost cracked my ribs. Still, it wasn’t enough. I closed my eyes and breathed in his masculine scent—a combination of soap, woodsy cologne, and him. “What did I tell you?”
“That nothing short of a bullet to the head would stop you.”
He kissed my temple. “And I meant it. I’ll come home.”
I watched him dress and get ready to go, trying my best to act like I was okay with this, when I was the furthest thing from okay. As he shrugged into his leather jacket, I smiled and waved good-bye. He nodded, closing the door behind him after letting Buttons in. After the bedroom door closed, I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling empty.
Then, and only then, I said what had been sitting on the tip of my tongue that whole time. “But you see, that bullet is exactly what I’m worried about.”
CHAPTER 19
CHRIS
I sat silently in Scotty’s car the whole way to Tate’s downtown office, cursing myself out for telling Molly I loved her. Had she heard me? The bell had rung at the same time as I said it. Maybe I’d lucked out and it had washed out my idiotic confession. What the hell had I been thinking, telling her that I loved her? Love wasn’t something to be admitted. It wasn’t something you told someone else. It was something you hid deep down, like a shoe box in a closet filled with memories you didn’t want anyone to see.
No one had ever loved me back. Not Molly. Certainly not my pops. And if Ma loved me, she would have stopped him from beating the hell out of me.
She would have saved me.
I wasn’t supposed to love anyone. But I did. I loved her. And I’d told her like the fucking idiot I was. Now she was going to leave me. That’s what love did.
It drove people away.
Shaking my head, I tried to pay attention to Scotty again, but he wouldn’t shut up. He’d been going on and on about all the shit we were going to say and all the things I needed to know, so there hadn’t been much room for talking on my part. And that was just fine by me, after that little stunt Scotty had pulled by coming into our bedroom.
Considering the fact that I’d done that same thing to Lucas and threatened his girl, the message wasn’t lost on me. If I dared to fuck over Scotty and his operation, Molly wouldn’t be safe from retribution. Whether she’d have the cops or the Sons coming after her, I didn’t have a clue.
And I wasn’t sure if one was necessarily better than the other, either.
Scotty glared at me. “Are you paying attention to a word I’m saying?”
I tapped my knee. Apparently it was finally my turn to speak. “Yeah. We go in, you’re gonna tell them you picked me up on the way in—not a lie. You’ll say I was in some bar in Southie with a whore on my lap—which is a lie. I smirk and say I was celebrating Lucas’s life the way he would want me to, and not mourning his death—not sure if that’s a lie. When Tate asks me if I was having fun, I tell him I was running recon, and I know a way in Bitter Hill’s clubhouse—again, not a lie. At which point we lead them into an ambush, without letting them know you’re a Boy—which we both know isn’t a lie.”
Scotty turned onto Birch Street, his grip on the wheel tight. “Do I sense sarcasm here, Chris?”
“No, you sense anger.” I stopped tapping my fingers on my knee. “I made it very clear I’m here to help you, so you didn’t need the veiled threats about Molly.”
Scotty stopped at a red light, tugging on his leather sleeves. “I didn’t threaten her. I was reassuring her.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I looked out the window. “You’re just a fucking saint, right?”
Scotty didn’t answer that. “Look, I need to know that you’re in this. If we go over there and you screw me over, I’m not only a dead man, but you are, too. And, yes, the cops know about you and Molly, and they know she’s been hiding you. They also know you’re supposedly helping me, so if shit goes south, the eyes will be turned toward you and her. That’s called assurance, not threats.”
“Funny. It feels the same to me.”
Scotty shrugged. “Call it what you want. You’re a guy that isn’t exactly the most reliable person to have in your corner. I’ve seen firsthand how you treat friends.”
I gritted my teeth and continued staring out the window.
Really, what could I say to that? Never mind that I’d been the one who went to see Lucas in jail every week, while his little brother had been too busy playing superspy.
I’d fucked it all up with one mistake, trying to be something I wasn’t.
My pops.
“I get that you don’t like me. I respect it, even.” I gritted my teeth. “But you need to leave Molly out of this. She has nothing to do with our agreement.”
“You’re wrong.” Scotty looked at me. The seriousness in his gaze wasn’t missed. “If she’s with you, she has everything to do with this. And you know it.”
I tensed, because he was right. And that was one of the million reasons why I shouldn’t be with he
r. But at least if I was by her side, I could protect her—or so I kept telling myself, anyway.
When Scotty turned down the road that led to the Sons of Steel Row clubhouse, instead of the swanky downtown office where the more formal meetings were held, I rested my hand on my gun. “I thought we were going to the office.”
“I lied.” Scotty side-eyed me. “Had to make sure I’d be avoiding an ambush. I need to ensure I’m not going to show up to a crew of Bitter Hill waiting to pop me. Forgive me if I’m not totally on board with the idea of you as a team player yet.”
I flexed my jaw. “I told you I’m in, and I’m fucking in. If I wanted to rat on you to Tate and get a promotion, I’d have done it by now.”
“So you keep saying.”
Being in this position, with one of my brothers not trusting me, only made me even more regretful over what I’d done. Why had I let my deeply ingrained need to prove to my pops that I was a bigger man than he was, no matter how many times he beat me or told me I was weak, sway my beliefs of right and wrong? How had I fallen so far, so fast, and not noticed? How had I let it get that far?
No matter what Scotty said, I had no way of knowing if he told the truth about not wanting to risk me letting Bitter Hill know who Scotty really was, or if he was about to turn me in to Tate for what I’d done to Lucas. If it was the latter option, I’d be breaking my promise to Molly. I wouldn’t be coming home.
“Is the rest of our story staying the same?” I finally asked.
“Yeah.” He turned to me. “You still have that bloody paper you fought so hard to get from Lucas? The will he signed?”
The one that claimed Lucas named me as his heir. The one that I almost killed my best friend for. Yeah, I had it. It currently burned a hole in my jacket pocket. “I have no intentions of using it. I don’t want it.”
“Bullshit.” Scotty stepped on the gas when the light turned green. “You killed Lucas for it.”
Every time he said that, I hated myself more—even though Lucas was actually alive and well. “Yeah. And now I don’t want it. You take his position, as you should. I’ll hang back and do my thing from where I currently stand.”
Scotty eyed me like he couldn’t tell if I was serious or not. “Why?”
“It’s blood money.” I lifted a shoulder. “And the position isn’t mine. It should be yours. You’re his brother, and it’ll help you gather more intel for your bosses. It’s win-win.”
Scotty clicked his tongue and pulled into the clubhouse parking lot. We both scanned it for anything out of the ordinary. All was quiet on the western front. “You’re sure? I mean, it was part of our deal. You getting this promotion. The fact that you’re reneging on the part of the deal that actually gives you something doesn’t sit well with me. You’ve got nothing to gain anymore.”
“It’s just a reminder of what I did to Lucas. I have enough of those.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled the bloodstained note out and handed it over to Scotty. “Burn it. Keep it. Show it to Tate and tell him what I did, and laugh as they rip me to shreds or jump me out. I don’t give a damn what you say or do. No matter what you do in there, your secret is safe with me.”
With that, I opened my car door and got out, smoothing my leather jacket. I glanced at the spot on my shoulder where Luc had shot me, another constant reminder of the wrong I’d done. But I was setting it right. And that’s the best I could do, dammit.
It was all I had.
“You can’t be serious,” Scotty said under his breath, closing his door of the Escalade. “If I turned you in, you’d rat on me in a second.”
“I’m not a rat,” I said through clenched teeth. “I made a mistake when I did what I did, and I’m making up for it. I shouldn’t have tried to prove”—that I was better than Pops; that’s what I’d been about to say—“take what wasn’t mine. I won’t do it again.”
Scotty walked beside me, scanning the parking lot the whole time. “All right.”
“You believe me?” I asked.
“Maybe.” He mussed up his hair, leaving it sticking up and sloppy looking—which made him seem a hell of a lot more boyish and innocent than he had moments before, when it had been slicked back and in perfect order. He was good. “Time will tell.”
“Yeah, it— What the fuck?” I waved a hand in front of me, coughing. “What the hell did you just spray on me?”
“Perfume.” Scotty grinned, tucking the small vial in his pocket. “If you’ve been fucking your way through Southie, you’d smell like it. You smell too clean. Like flowery fabric softener.”
My cheeks heated. “Fuck you.”
“Maybe later,” he said quickly.
His square jaw and red hair reminded me of Lucas. I missed him, and knowing he was out there somewhere, hating me, hurt. “Did Luc know about you?”
“At the end he did.” Scotty stood the collar of his jacket up, giving him a rakish appearance. He didn’t look anything like a cop anymore. “Not before.”
I nodded once. “Was he proud?”
“Yeah. I think so.” Scotty shoved his hands in his pockets, his gaze locked on the Members Only door straight ahead. “Try your best to look hungover and overfucked.”
I smirked. “I was hungover before you were out of diapers. I got this.”
“You’re four years older than me.”
“I know.” I stopped at the door and knocked three times, in quick succession, before opening it. “I stand by my words.”
We moved inside. The second we walked into the dark clubhouse, I felt . . . I don’t know. The same familiar dark wood-paneled walls greeted me, with the dark wood floors, but they felt different. And there were still three pool tables in the hall, a long, square bar off to the left with padded stools surrounding it, and a mirrored wall behind it. The same voices filled the silence, and familiar laughter rang out along with a few curses every couple of seconds.
In the past, coming here had felt like coming home.
The smoky room, with easy girls and even more easily accessible booze and smokes, had always been the one place I could go to when I needed to clear my head. When I needed to escape Pops and his never-ending beatings—and my life.
Even as a kid, I would come here and sit at the bar, my legs swinging in the air as the bartender told me crazy, far-fetched stories about all the men he’d killed in his day. I’d sat there, fantasizing about when it would be my turn, till Pops showed up, grabbed me by the ear, and made me leave. Then I went to Lucas’s until I had to go home.
This was my true home. My real family.
Yet now, I found myself craving a quieter home. One by the waterfront, with sunshine and coffee and pancakes—and my sweet Molly. That was what I truly wanted. What I craved most, above anything else. Power. Greed. Sex. I didn’t need any of it anymore. All I needed was her.
What the hell had happened to me?
“Phones,” Brian, Tate’s right-hand man, said, holding out a basket filled with iPhones and Samsung Galaxies. He eyed me as I slid my iPhone into the pile. “You look like shit, O’Brien.”
“Haven’t been sleeping much,” I said, not smiling. I had to play the part of the lost best friend, after all. “Been busy.”
Brian frowned. His light blond hair and dark brown eyes were always an unsettling mix, but today he seemed even more focused on me, and that couldn’t be good. He was a year older than me and was one of those guys who never let on what he was thinking. He barely fucked women, even though they all threw themselves at him, and seemed to care about one thing and one thing only—keeping his boss alive. “Doing . . . ?”
“Women. Lots of them. Some at the same time.” I clapped him on the shoulder. Scotty watched from behind me, like a hawk. “You should try it sometime, man.”
“What makes you think I don’t?” He relaxed and even smiled a little bit. “Some people just don’t feel the need to
announce it every time they eat a pussy. You should try that sometime, O’Brien. And you need to shower. You smell like a chick.”
Scotty snorted. “You know how he is, always chasing his next conquest. Hell, he’s worse than I am, and that’s saying a lot. But right now, he’s fucking his way through his grief. It’s a coping mechanism I can’t recommend. Too many pussies too close together is never a good thing.”
I glared at him, pretending to be affronted. There was only one woman I wanted now, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “How many chicks were in your bed last night when I stopped by?”
“Three. Just your typical weekend for me, my friend.” Scotty shrugged, playing the art like a damn pro. “But not all men can handle the responsibility like me. I have it down to a science.”
Brian held his phone basket out to Scotty. “Well, Mr. Scientist, put your damn phone in the basket.”
“Gladly.” He tossed his iPhone in, too, and ran his hand through his red-brown hair. “Any word on Bitter Hill?”
“We’ll get to that. Right now, we’re drinking in Lucas’s honor.”
“I can be down with that,” I said, watching the men at the bar. There were no women tonight, which meant we’d be talking here, in the main room. Tate was nowhere to be seen, but Tommy and Frank were sitting at the bar, drinking whiskey.
“I’m sure.” Brian set the basket down. “Hands up, boys.”
I lifted my arms, letting Brian feel me down for wires. When he slapped my ass, I walked past him, heading for Tommy. He was a lieutenant, like me. So was Frank. “Boys.”
Frank nodded to me. His blond hair and blue eyes were as bright as ever, but he looked somber today. He’d gone to school with me and Luc and had also gotten good grades in school. But, like me, he was in a gang, instead of out in the world making a difference. We hadn’t really had a choice. “Sorry for your loss, man.”
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