“She must have had an accomplice then. Maybe a family member abducted the kid and smuggled it into the asylum somehow?”
Laurent licked his lips. “There are eleven articles about this case in total. Social services ended up putting the child up for adoption. There are no DNAs left of the baby or the mother”
“DNA samples,” Gray corrected, without looking away from the game. “DNA is like a program inside a person that predicts how they develop. You can check it and compare with another person if you take a sample through blood or saliva. I can get you some basic literature about it. It’s a big thing nowadays.”
Laurent nodded with a sigh. “Do I have a DNA?”
“Everyone has DNA.” Jake snorted and looked up from where he kneeled in front of Knight, polishing his boot with the dedication of a bird cleaning a crocodile’s teeth. After shining Gray’s boots to perfection, it seemed like Jake wanted to do an even better job with Knight’s. Knight certainly enjoyed having his feet handled this way.
“If everyone has it, and everyone is different, what good would it do if they had it from the mother and the baby?” Laurent adjusted his glasses, looking as serious as a scholar in front of his notes and clippings.
“Because you inherit parts of it from your parents so you can trace relatives thanks to it. But this technology was only available from the 1980s. They couldn’t have done the comparison back then,” Gray said and lifted his hand over the chessboard, gently touching the tip of his bishop. Adrenaline started gently spiking in Knight, only to fall flat on its face when Gray took away his fingers, still undecided about his next move.
Laurent looked up at Knight with a wide smile. “Does that mean our DNAs would show our colligation?”
Pride swelled in Knight’s chest. “Obviously.”
“Does it say what happened with the baby next?” Jake asked, resting the heel of Knight’s boot on his chest and expertly rubbing it with a cloth.
“It says it had no navel.”
Jake hummed the theme tune from the X-Files. “Spooky.”
Laurent nodded, though he most likely didn’t get the TV reference. “I’ll put it in my folder of things to look into.”
Jake smiled at Knight’s boot as if he were about to kiss it. “Why are you doing this again?”
Laurent waved his hand dismissively. “Just a passion for the paranormal.” Which was the answer for Jake, but all the Kings knew that Laurent was collecting knowledge that could come in handy if some freaky shit started happening in their club again. Hopefully, that would never happen.
Light footsteps approached, and Knight raised his gaze to meet Elliot’s as soon as he entered the common room. Only a week into his stay at the clubhouse, Elliot’s body was already starting to fill up, and his gait seemed more assured. It might as well be that soon there would be a gazelle instead of a daddy longlegs walking the halls and sliding into Knight’s bed to suck some dick. The poor bastard had been starving himself, too proud to ask for anything when money was tight. At least he didn’t have any qualms about eating any unlabeled thing in the fridges.
As expected, Elliot made an instant turn for the kitchen.
“Will he be staying with us much longer?” Laurent asked in a polite voice that spoke of all the ice-cold feelings he had toward Elliot.
Knight exhaled. He knew the exact source of Laurent’s antipathy. Elliot’s love for Fane—the very same man who had assaulted Laurent in the past and triggered his pact with the devil—was constantly aggravating. “It’s a big house...”
Laurent leaned closer and spoke in a hushed voice so that his words wouldn’t reach the kitchen. “Yes, but the refrigerator is not bottomless. That man might look like he’s made of twigs, but he eats like a pig. Just the other day, I saw him eat spaghetti pasta with sauce, right out of the bowl with his fingers. Un-microwaved.”
Jake looked back at him with innocence painted all over his face. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to use the microwave.”
Knight noticed Gray bite his bottom lip hard to not laugh, but Laurent didn’t seem to find it funny.
“He most certainly does,” Laurent hissed and put away his notes. “On a separate occasion I saw him use the microwave oven to cook a banana. He then proceeded to mash it in a bowl with the hazelnut spread and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Is a banana not sweet enough already?”
Knight snorted and looked back at Elliot, who was in the process of diving deep into the fridge. “I mean, at his place he only had moldy bread. He’ll probably get better with time. It’s not like you’re the one paying for the food.”
Laurent was visibly agitated, shifting in his armchair as if Elliot was his kryptonite and Laurent couldn’t even stand being in the same room with him. “He also doesn’t wash yoghurt cups after he’s done eating. He just throws them out. If we want the planet to thrive for future generations, if we want to have the pleasure of using beautiful plastic objects, we all need to recycle the plastic to be reused.”
Gray groaned. “Oh, no. Has someone told Laurent plastic is not as great as he thought it was?” With all the times Gray was away, he must have missed that traumatic day. Laurent had been sulking for a week before he picked himself up by reading up on recycling and proceeded to convince Beast to install several trash cans in the kitchen.
Laurent tensed up. “It is still ‘great’, it’s just a substance that should not be abused.”
Knight snorted. “Trouble in plastic paradise.”
Laurent frowned. “Anyway, if he’s your guest, can’t you just tell him to wash everything and put the recyclables into appropriate containers?”
Knight smiled. He never did that either. “Sure. Will do. But why don’t you just tell him yourself?”
“I am not on speaking terms with that Fane-lover.” The loathing in Laurent’s voice was so unmistakable Knight winced.
His gaze wandered to the kitchen again, where Elliot was making some crazy sandwich with practically every single savory thing he could find. He was smiling to himself, as if he were thinking of something nice. Maybe he was thinking of giving Knight head again. He was quite the cocksucker, and he didn’t mind looking through Knight’s family tree in the aftermath.
Knight had spent most of the past week away, negotiating terms for a large concert on the premises as well as taking two days off to see Mount Vermont and a re-enacting event in the area. Elliot kept in touch, demanding details of the sightseeing and even some photos. Knight found himself thinking that it would have been fun to have him around during those days. Then again, traveling with someone, especially one so annoying at times, could have ended with Knight deserting Elliot at some motel and returning home alone.
Instead, he had Jake report to him about Elliot’s movements, which turned out to be perfectly reasonable, even though Jake went as far as to tell Knight what exactly Elliot was taking from the kitchen. The one thing Jake was worried about was a video Elliot had made in the corridor in front of the room Knight allocated to him, but since there was nothing incriminating in that area, Knight told him not to worry. He half-expected nightly visits to the gargoyle statue, or Elliot attempting to somehow join Fane’s ghost in the cellar, but Jake said nothing of the sort, and he apparently installed a camera close to Elliot’s room to monitor him even as he slept. That was what dedication looked like.
And as Knight thought of it, he grinned at his blackened boots. Jake smiled back widely. “I’m finished. Is there anything else I can do for you?” Which was Jake’s code for ‘would you like your dick sucked?’.
For a moment, Knight considered getting some more polishing from their permanently eager prospect, but he’d only returned last night and kind of preferred the novelty of Elliot’s lips for now. “No. You did well. Keep that up and you might finally get that patch.”
Jake turned to Gray, but he dismissed him as well. “I’m good, Prospect, you can go.”
Jake sighed deeply but didn’t complain and got up, taking all the shoe-cleaning equipment with
him.
Once he was gone, Gray glanced toward the kitchen and finally moved one of his chess figures. “He doesn’t have any mirrors in his room, does he?”
Knight looked up at him. “What? No. Why?”
Gray leaned back on the sofa, now awaiting Knight’s move. “We don’t want him approached by that thing on the other side. What if he offers his soul to bring Fane back to life or some other reckless shit like that?”
Laurent’s eyes went wider. “That’s exactly something he’d do, isn’t it? Can we even risk having him here?”
Knight’s entire body went cold, and he fought hard so as not to attract any suspicion with his body language. Fane’s ghost had already been called, and if nothing had changed he was still waiting in the room he’d died in, like an ugly fat fly that refused to leave you in peace.
He was already breaking sweat.
“Look, the point is that he keeps publishing those ridiculous claims because he doesn’t know any better. I want your name clean as much as you do, but if we have him here, we can actually work on showing him the way.”
Laurent gave one reluctant nod. “I suppose. There’s news about one of the recovered bodies. Both legs and arms of the man had been broken in several places. Maybe that is a good thing to mention.”
Knight raised his hand and waved at Elliot. “Come here! Did I tell you my first ever YouTube video has almost two thousand views already? Only a thousand more, and I’m winning that bet.”
Elliot’s mouth was too full for him to speak, but he promptly took his plate and marched all the way to the sofas. There was a spring in his step that had been missing before, and at least on an everyday basis he wasn’t wearing the makeup. It was for the better because his pretty, angular face was a treat to look at, even if half hidden under the bangs.
When Elliot got to their little group he sat on the sofa next to Knight. “You were supposed to make a man-bun in it, not take your shirt off on top of that. But if you play dirty, I can do that too,” Elliot said and took another bite of his monstrosity of a sandwich.
Knight groaned, completely distracted from the game of chess when Elliot’s thigh aligned with his. “And what does that mean?”
Elliot reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a necklace on a long rusty chain. “I’ve made a new video today, and I assure you it will top the popularity of the one about cannibalism. I found this necklace in a wall in one of the rooms. It has the initials ‘L.M.’ engraved inside.” He waved the simple, oval-shaped locket.
Knight snapped it out of his hand and looked at the thing. “How is that related to your content?”
“Well, I’ve made a video about this finding and how this necklace could be proof that Laurent Mercier and William were lovers. Despite knowing he was in danger if someone found out about his homosexuality, William still kept this gift from Laurent,” Elliot said with a smug smile on his face. Instead of finishing his first sandwich, he had a big bite of the other one on the plate.
Laurent got up ostentatiously, taking all his notes. “Excuse me, I suddenly feel nauseated.”
Knight looked at the necklace, then back at Elliot, completely blown away by the idiocy of that claim. “This necklace is not from the early nineteenth century. This is some cheap thing from the sixties!”
Elliot shrugged as Laurent left. “I said I’d be playing dirty. It’s not like it shows on the video. You will be my William Fane soon enough.”
Revulsion shot straight through Knight’s body. He wanted to say he would not play the role of another guy during sex, but then he remembered that he’d agreed to the bet and tossed away the necklace instead. “This is beyond playing dirty in a video. You have no respect for truth or history. I thought you were different!”
Elliot groaned. “I usually am. You know I really try to research everything, but I’m not going to lose and be banned from talking about William’s killer.”
“Usually? What does that even mean? It’s disgusting! This is not right!” hissed Knight, increasingly agitated. To think that just days ago he’d been contemplating that sightseeing in a historical mansion with Elliot would be nice.
Gray slid his boots off the coffee table and leaned forward, his eyes cool as ice. “I’m getting sick of this. You’ve never seen a dead body, have you? Killing isn’t rivulets of blood or other romanticized nonsense. It’s piss, and shit, and the odor of rotting flesh. There’s no honor in raping and killing vulnerable men, who are in no position to deny your request. William Fane was a coward. He wouldn’t ever risk doing the same to a man of his own position. No, he chose the easy route, and now you’re talking about him as if he were some kind of romantic hero.”
Knight stared. This was likely the most words Gray had uttered in a single sitting since his twin brother died.
Elliot froze, watching Gray with his cheeks flushing slightly. “I was the one to clean my dad’s brains off the floor once the cops took away his body, so don’t talk to me about blood and guts.”
Knight swallowed, shocked by this admission. Elliot never mentioned he’d actually had to deal with the corpse. Only that his father was dead and not missed.
Gray smirked. “Really? I heard your ex was just as pleasant as your dear Mr. Fane. Maybe you just misunderstood his intentions after all? You should go back to him to relive the experience.”
“Maybe I will,” Elliot grumbled, but then turned to look at Knight. “Have you been telling everyone about my shit?”
Knight swallowed and finally moved his rook to get that bit closer to getting rid of Gray’s queen. “Had to give them a reason to accept a liar like you in their home!”
Elliot stuffed his face with more food and leaned back on the sofa without a word.
“Checkmate,” Gray said, knocking Knight’s king off the board in a move that this time only took seconds.
Bastard.
Chapter 11
Elliot put down the keg of beer on the floor, huffing and sweating already. “Can’t they make them smaller? Christ!” he hissed to Jake, who was showing off by carrying two at once. The fucking things had to be at least twenty gallons each, and they were still far away from where the actual party would be taking place.
Jake grinned. “Think of it as a workout.”
“I hate working out,” Elliot said with a sneer and sat on the keg in the end. Regardless of the smile, Jake wasn’t here to be friendly. He was Knight’s spy, and that was the only reason why he always hovered around Elliot and asked about the videos, pretending interest.
Still, Elliot didn’t question his presence. He supposed he hadn’t done enough to be considered very trustworthy just yet. He hadn’t made many friends either. Those were some of the reasons why tonight, before another one of those big biker parties which seemed to be the norm at the Kings of Hell clubhouse, he offered to help them out.
Bad. Fucking. Idea.
Knight was too busy with some important shit and wouldn’t even see him carrying those kegs, so what was the point of sweating like a pig?
Jake snorted. “You won’t keep Knight’s attention for long looking like this. It’s just friendly advice.”
Elliot’s eyes went wide, and he glared at Jake from head to toe. They were nothing alike. Jake was blond, tanned, blue-eyed, with well-defined muscles, and smiled more often than Elliot pondered death. He also had this annoyingly pleasant voice and was happy to do chores for the bikers all day long. Elliot had even seen Jake make Knight a sandwich.
What the actual fuck?
Elliot could make a fucking sandwich for Knight if he chose to. Thank you very much.
“The fuck?” he growled in the end, his entire body tensing in preparation to fight off an assault.
Instead of getting in Elliot’s face, Jake exhaled, and got more serious. “Look, I don’t love you exactly, but it seems you’ll be staying for a while. Don’t get your hopes up with him. He’s hypersexual. Doesn’t do monogamy and doesn’t date guys.”
Elliot raised his
eyebrows and crossed his arms on his chest, though he was livid on the inside. The fuck did Jake know about this thing between Elliot and Knight? “And you’ve found that out the hard way?”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Grow up. I’m not interested in anything more than sex. But I’ve known him far longer than you,” he said and walked along the corridor, holding the two kegs with both strained arms, as if they were bottles.
Elliot stood up and grabbed his only keg, unwilling to be left behind like the weakest gazelle in the herd. Just like he was unwilling to let go of trying to have a shot with Knight. Or communicating with the ghost of William Fane. That poor, tormented man was still trapped downstairs with not a soul for company. How degrading it was for someone whose earthly life had been so grand and interesting.
“But he’s had girlfriends, so he can control himself if he wants to,” Elliot said, panting again as he struggled to keep up with Jake when they entered the busy common room. Just because Elliot had known Knight for a shorter time, didn’t mean he had any less chance with him.
A sneer of disbelief twisted Jake’s face when he looked back, and seeing the mocking in his blue eyes aggravated Elliot to the point of considering dropping the keg on Jake’s foot. And he wouldn’t have stopped at that. Adrenaline would pump into his muscles, and for that brief moment Elliot would have enough strength to slam the heavy container down until Jake’s head was just mush with crumbs of bone.
“He was never exclusive with anyone. I’ve been blowing him throughout all his ladies. They go, and I stay,” Jake said, his eyes shining with pride. Before Elliot could answer, Jake walked past one of the little pole dancing stages, which was being disguised as a sexed-up Christmas tree to kick off December.
From Elliot’s understanding, tonight’s party would not be open to the public. Whether it was because some of the patched members wanted to keep the size of their dongs secret or because the Kings didn’t want public outcry if the wrong people actually saw one of those infamous orgies in real life—Elliot had no idea. But the usual participants must have started to find the group sex parties boring if the female hangarounds decided this kind of evening needed a theme.
My Dark Knight (gay biker romance) (Kings of Hell MC Book 2) Page 13
