Tension thrummed through my small kitchen for the second time in less than a week.
“Sander, you are not a fuck up,” I began, moving forward with my initial act of tending to him. As I was pulling out the gauze, the instant ice packs and the hydrogen peroxide gel, I told King. “I don’t really talk about Sander because he’s private. Seeing as I’m, um, dating you, I realize that maybe I should have told you more about him.”
Sander grunted at both my words and his pain as I pressed the ice pack to his jaw. “Don’t need anyone knowing my shit.”
“Tough fuckin’ luck,” King snapped.
He was leaning against the kitchen counter across from us in his school uniform minus the striped tie and navy blue blazer. It occurred to me that he should look like a schoolboy waiting for a ride to class. Instead, he looked like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a creature of violence and instincts and sex wrapped up in shiny packaging meant to make him innocent. Instead, it amplified his threat.
“What’s your beef?” King asked.
Sander glared at me as he reluctantly answered. “Second degree murder.”
King’s eyebrow rose as he coolly appraised the other man. “Bum charge?”
“No,” my brother shifted uncomfortable as I gently tended to his cut knuckles. “Did it, did my time for six years and got out for good behavior.”
“Why are you showin’ up at Cress’ door first thing in the morning lookin’ like you’ve been run over from a sixteen-wheeler?”
I was glad King had asked the question because I was dying to know the answer.
“Got caught cheating at cards at Lake Edge Casino,” he grumbled with a shrug. “Shit at cards and shit at cheating so it was a dumb idea but I needed the money. It’s not easy finding work when you’re an ex-con.”
I carefully tied the gauze off and tied it at the backs of his hands then placed a kiss on each of his big palms. “So sorry, Sander,” I murmured quietly.
He used one of those hands to cup my cheek for just a second before he dropped them back between his spread thighs. It was his way of telling me that he didn’t have any regrets.
“How much do you need?” I asked, still soft because I didn’t want to ask King to leave but I didn’t want him around for this particular conversation either.
Lysander had been my secret, my responsibility and my cross to bear for so long that I almost wasn’t ready to share him with anyone else.
“No,” King’s voice cracked across the floor between us harsher than the flick of a whip. “You are not givin’ him any of your hard-earned fuckin’ money, babe. You barely have any as it is.”
“King,” I hissed, because Lysander didn’t know that.
“The fuck?” my brother asked, his injured hands coming out to grab my waist when I tried to pull away from him.
“Get your hands off her,” King growled.
“Okay, okay, let’s lower the testosterone in the room for a second,” I suggested brightly, my nerves translating strangely into faux confidence.
“What is he talking about, princess?” Lysander asked me.
It occurred to me that I no longer liked the nickname that, ironically given their differences and estrangement, both my father and brother used on me. Queen and Queenie sounded so much better.
“William took my name off our joint accounts so I was left with nothing when I asked him for a divorce. It was why I had to ask you for the loan,” I admitted.
“You told me that situation was temporary,” Lysander accused, getting to his feet but swaying when he reached his full height.
“You’re sayin’ you care? From what I understand, seein’ you here right now askin’ for money, you’re just as bad as her scumbag ex,” King snarled.
I pushed him firmly back into the seat and held out a hand to an advancing King. “Stop it, both of you! King, go to the counter and lean on your freaking hands. I do not need you punching my brother when he’s clearly already received his beating for the day. Sander, calm down, you’re probably concussed and I don’t need to be dragging your heavy ass to the emergency room before I go to school. Which, by the way, King and I have to be at in forty-five minutes so we need to wrap this up because he also has a present for me, and no way am I missing out on that because you can’t cheat at cards!”
They both blinked at me and when a glared at each of them in turn they finally did as they were told.
“William has turned out to be, unfortunately, more than just a total bore, he’s a complete asshole,” I told my brother but quickly looked at King to see him smiling at my choice of curse word. “I was really lucky to have my job at Entrance Bay Academy already because, honestly, dad got it for me through his connections. It’s enough to live on but I wanted a place for myself and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get any money from William so, I asked you for the loan. I’m sorry if it put you out. You told me you were doing well and I believed you.”
I had. Lysander had started to be the one to treat me to dinners, to pay for my ticket to the movies and he’d even got me a really cool necklace with grim reaper etched on a silver medallion. I’d never worn it because it didn’t really suit me but the thought was lovely.
It was stupid of me though. I should have known by now, looks could be deceiving and just because he’d seemed to have more money, nicer things, didn’t mean he actually had the money.
I wondered where it had come from but that wasn’t the point of this conversation and was better delved into when King wasn’t there to witness it.
“I offered you the money,” Sander grumbled. “You couldn’t have known. I was working’ down on Vancouver Island for a bit but I wanted to move back here when you left William.” My heart ached with love for him as he shrugged like a grumpy bear. “Harder to find work than I thought it would be.”
“That’s why you asked for a job at Hephaestus Auto,” I concluded.
He nodded. “Heard about it through the grapevine. They aren’t afraid to hire ex-cons there and I’m good with my hands.”
“Honey,” I said moving forward to hug the only man who had ever really loved me. “You could have told me that.”
“Yeah,” he admitted gruffly. “Cause too many problems for you as it is.”
“I caused the worst one,” I retorted.
“Shut up, Cress.”
“Okay, Sander.”
We hugged it out for a long minute, our hearts beating in tandem the way they always did. We were two completely different people who came from a set of parents who were in turn completely different from us, but we loved each other despite of or maybe because of those divergences.
I pulled away to say, “Don’t want to see you get beat up anymore, okay? I have some cash on hand.” I always did just in case he needed it. “Wait a second okay?”
He nodded but his eyes cut over my shoulder to King. I ignored that and made my way upstairs to my bedroom where I kept Lysander’s emergency cash hidden in an old leather boot in my walk-in closet.
I knew without turning around when King entered the doorframe.
“I’m giving him the money, King.”
“Not happy ‘bout it, Cress babe, but I understand why you feel you gotta do it.”
I fell out of my crouch so my knees hit the carpet and I could turn my torso to look at him. “You do?”
His long, rangy form entirely filled the entry as he lifted both arms to hook his hands over the doorframe. The pose made his body into a piece of art, defined by ropes and lengths of hard, flat muscles from his pectorals to his groin, which peeked out from his shirt tails like sexual promise.
“I do. He’s your brother and you feel you owe him loyalty. The Fallen operates on that kind of faith, so trust me, I get it. What I don’t get and what I am one hundred percent not okay with, babe, is not knowing shit about his circumstances or how he affects your life. He comes to you for fuckin’ money? He gave you the cash to buy this house? Don’t like that, Cress. That guy fuckin’ scream bad news.”
I didn’t say anything as I rooted around in the boot heel for the wad of money then, finding it, tugged it free with a yank that send me flying backwards. King caught me before I hit the ground.
I looked back at him from upside down and said, “Thank you.”
He put me back down, stood back and slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’m this close to bein’ pissed off.”
“Okay, I get that.”
I did. His badass biker sense of morals told him that he was the man and I was the woman, therefore he needed to protect me and it was my job to let him. I hadn’t told him about Lysander and his terminal bad luck so he’d been caught unawares by a large, beaten up man on the front stoop of my house and he’d had no idea how to deal with it.
He nodded curtly, evaded my hand when I offered it to him but followed close behind me as I went back downstairs to my brother.
I gave the money to my brother without a word and watched him painfully swallow his proud before he pocketed it.
“I’ve got to get going, honey.”
“He’s goin’ with us,” King said from behind me.
I spun towards him. “What?”
He ignored me and locked eyes on my brother. “You want a job, I’ll get you a job. Want you around to keep my eye on you. My dad’s a fuckin’ brute so if you think you can pull a fast one of him, think a-fuckin’-gain. You want a chance, you get in your car and follow me and Cress to Hephaestus right now.”
God, in that moment, I loved King more than I’d ever loved anything. Even Elvis and Satan. Combined.
Surprisingly, Lysander grew pale and hesitated. “Wouldn’t want to put you out, you dating my sister and all. Looks serious.”
Before I could respond, King was handing me my school bag, shouldering his backpack and tucking me under his arm. “It is. Wouldn’t give you a chance otherwise. My Queen cares about you, I’ll make an exception.”
“To what?” I asked.
“To my rule. Don’t get involved with liars.”
My eyes flashed as I fought the instinct to defend my brother but Sander surprised me again by standing up carefully and saying, “Let’s go.”
We arrived at the characteristically busy garage, which I’d also learned was the biker’s base, something called the compound where they also had a clubhouse, the low brick building to the right of the business that had that wicked cool graffiti image of The Fallen logo spray painted on it. Immediately, the guys called out to us as we swung off the bike. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lysander’s beat up Ford truck pull through the open chain link gate.
“Wanna deal with this myself, babe,” King told me as he took my helmet off for me.
I nodded. “I’m okay with that. I’ll just go in and drop off the cookies for the guys.”
I’d made the men chocolate chip cookies the night before while I’d been waiting for King to get off work at the garage. He’d mentioned before that Maja was currently the Queen of the old ladies because she was Buck’s old lady and Buck was VP. If Zeus had a woman, it would be her or, if King had a woman, it could be her. There was no divine right to the Presidency of The Fallen, you had to work hard for that honor—bleed, sweat and let blood for your club—but there was something to be said about a biker family, especially one whose ancestors had founded the mother chapter. From what I understood, this fact coupled with King’s renowned intellect, made most brothers think that he would one day take the gavel from Zeus. Even though King wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he graduated, I wanted to make sure the bikers liked me (just in case).
I waved at a few of them while they worked on super fly cars as I made my way into the office.
“Mornin’, Queenie,” Nova greeted me as he leaned over the front desk talking to a gorgeous woman with big, curled black hair and a va-va-voom body that put my elfin form to shame.
“Ah, so you’re the famous teacher,” she drawled with an insincere smile. “Heard the Garro men are stickin’ their necks out for ya.”
Nova snorted. “Don’t think it’s any skin off the Prez’s back to pretend to be datin’ a woman as fine as Queenie.”
Her eyes studied me from head to toe but she remained unsatisfied. I had the feeling she wanted to stare at me under a microscope until she could identify every single strand of my flawed DNA. Of course, I didn’t think someone like her would know how to use a microscope even if she had one, so I didn’t worry about it too much.
“Just came to drop off some cookies for you hardworking biker boys.” I put the big Tupperware on the desk and evaded Nova’s arm as it lassoed out to catch me around the waist.
In the last week, he’d been caught being too familiar with me by both King and other brothers but even after King had threatened him with castration, Nova didn’t seemed to be fazed. So, I was careful around him even though I knew he was harmless.
“Names Paula,” the awful woman from behind the front desk told me with a saccharine smile. “I’m a real good friend of King’s.”
Violence ignited in my belly, great gusts of hatred billowing up my throat tasting like ash in my mouth.
“Name’s Cressida,” I mimicked her with an equally sweet smile. “I’m King’s old lady.”
Her lips thinned instantly and she turned to Nova as if he’d betrayed her. “She’s what?”
The biker shrugged, rolling an unlit cigarette between his pink, pink lips. “You heard ‘er.”
“The fuck?” she asked.
“We do,” I agreed, nodding somberly. “A lot.”
Nova burst out laughing but Paula turned beet red. I decided to cut out while I was ahead and waved at the biker as I turned to leave.
“Can’t wait to see you at the party this weekend, Queenie,” Paula sneered at my back. “We can really get to know each other then.”
I let the glass door shut with a slam behind me and made my way over to Bat, who was working alone on a bike out front. We spoke while I surreptitiously kept an eye on the side wrought iron fire escape that led up to Zeus’s loft-like office overlooking the garage bays from inside the massive warehouse.
Bat was a good guy. He was married to a ‘Grade A bitch’ (according to Harleigh Rose who was my biker life encyclopedia) but he loved his twin boys more than anything and he talked about them all the time. I was going to meet them at the BBQ and I couldn’t wait because they sounded like badass bikers in the making. He entertained me with stories about their antics on the weekend, how they’d stolen a poor neighbor’s bike, painted it with chrome paint they’d begged their dad to bring home from the shop, and tricked it out with a bell shaped like a skull, and then they’d anonymously put it back in the kid’s yard.
My heart melted into a puddle.
So, I was in a good mood when I heard King call my name from across the asphalt.
I wouldn’t be when I turned around to see him standing beside a little white Honda Civic with a black hood.
“Like it?” he shouted when my gaze landed on it.
“Um, sure?”
Bat chuckled as he stood up and wiped his hands on the rag he kept in his back pocket. “Queenie, it’s your car.”
“No,” I said slowly. “My car is a dirty white Honda Civic from 1989.”
“Get your sweet ass over here, babe,” King called again, his body halfway in the driver’s seat with his torso hanging over the opened door.
Reluctantly, I made my way across the lot as most of the men abandoned whatever work they were doing to step into the spring sunshine and watch the unfolding drama.
And I was fairly sure the situation that was unfolding would involve drama because I was not happy.
King didn’t seem to pick up on that as he jumped off the car and rounded the hood; already talking about what he’d done to the car, how he’d modified it so it could go from zero to sixty in under thirty seconds, that he’d added a sunroof but also updated the A/C so it would actually work and how he’d put seat warmers in so I wouldn’t be cold on the drive to school in
the winters.
It was badass biker sweet again, which was too bad because I needed to say what I needed to say and he was most definitely not going to be happy about.
“King,” I murmured, aware of our audience. “Stop.”
He paused in his excited ramblings, his gorgeous face the picture of Christmas morning joy. I loved that doing something nice for me made him so happy, loved how boyish he was in his enthusiasm for the project.
I told him so then added, “But I told you before I even brought my car in, I cannot afford repairs, let alone all this extra car bling.”
His lips twitched, fighting back a smile. “Babe, the ‘car bling’ was necessary. You’re dating a Garro. There is no way a Garro would let his woman drive around in a piece of shit car. You’re lucky I could work with what you had. Thought about takin’ her to the junker.”
“You thought about taking Betty Sue to the junker?” I repeated, in a significantly higher voice than King had.
Finally, his expression flickered. “Yeah, like I said, it’s a piece of shit. But some of the guys helped me in their spare time and now it fuckin’ purrs, babe.”
“That’s great, King. Hopefully you can get a good price from it.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he demanded, affecting the same stance as me but with a lot more intimidation factor. We faced off with our arms crossed and feet braced apart like sailors on rocky waters.
“I told you, I can’t afford whatever plastic surgery you’ve given Betty Sue! You knew that so I don’t understand why you felt the need to go behind my back, keep me from my only method of transportation for weeks and pour thousands of dollars of my nonexistent money to my car.” I’d forgotten about our audience even though they’d crowded closer, and my voice had risen to a near shout.
“And I told you, I can’t have my woman drivin’ a piece of shit car,” King returned, badass biker voice in full force. “And if you try for one fuckin’ second to argue with me about being my woman, Cress, I swear to fuckin’ Christ that I’ll take you on the hood of this fuckin’ car just to prove it.”
Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1) Page 21
