by Lake, Keri
He cleared his throat and set the pen on the desk, much to my relief. “I did have a family.”
“Did? As in, don’t anymore?”
“In my world, love is a liability. A weakness. The very thing that can destroy a family.”
Shifting on my chair, I frowned. “That’s funny. In my world, it’s the only thing that keeps families together.”
His stern eyes softened, and he sat back in his chair with what I guessed was a smile, though it was kinda hard to tell when the guy’s face always looked mad. “What I wouldn’t give for that level of simplicity once more.”
“Were they killed? Your family?”
His lips thinned and brows pinched together again, as he seemed to chew on the question. “In front of me.” He removed his glove from his hand.
My eyes widened at the deformity of his skin and the way every inch of it was wrinkled into some grotesque disfigurement.
“Where I come from, we’re punished for expressing love, because it is the only path to a man’s most valuable possession, and his most vulnerable wound. Therefore, it’s wise to keep it guarded at all times. Never let them know you have a weakness, and you’ll always have the upper hand.” Fingers splayed, he twisted his hand in front of me and smiled. “Do you understand?”
I did. Never love, and you’ll never know pain.
The change in scenery broke me from my musings, as Dax turned the car into the driveway of a small bungalow in an unremarkable neighborhood. Neither impressive, nor shitty. Just kind of there.
Dax killed the engine, and we both exited the vehicle.
From inside the small house, a dog barked incessantly—not the yip of a small animal, but the deep, hearty warning of a big one. It reminded me of Tesarik’s Presa Canarios he often set loose on his enemies. I’d once witnessed the male, Bane, chew the nuts off a man Tesarik believed had been stealing from him. The visual of the man bleeding all over the floor had left me running for the bathroom to throw up, and I’d grown wary of large dogs ever since.
Before I even realized it, I’d slipped my hand into Dax’s.
He paused midstride and looked down, then curled his big fingers around mine, and we strode up to the front of the house.
“Shhh, Ruger, it’s okay. It’s just Dax.” A woman stood in the doorway with a baby set on her hip. A little girl, with light brown curls and beautiful green eyes that beamed as we made our way up the stone stairs.
“Daya!” The baby squealed, and Dax let go of my hand and held his arms out for the child reaching back for him.
“How’s my princess?” he asked her, lifting the baby into his arms, as the woman smiled up at him. He brushed his beard against her face, inciting the kind of giggles that brought a smile to mine. “Taking care of the kingdom, baby girl?”
“She missed you,” the woman answered for her. “Where you been?” Her eyes landed on me, but not in an appraising way, as I’d come to expect. They softened with a real smile, not the fake variety most women put on around me. “And who might this be?” Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she raised her brows, as though it were some joke between them.
The dog trotted up to me, and just as I had the moment I’d met Tesarik’s dogs, I held out my open palm, allowing it to sniff me. After a few inquisitive probes of my hands and my feet, the dog retreated, allowing us to step inside the house.
“Been around. Lucy, this is Nicoleta. My friend,” he said, and at that point, I was pretty sure I understood the look she’d given him seconds ago. “And Nicoleta, this is my goddaughter, Soleluna.”
“Soleluna.” I repeated the name. “Pretty.”
“So, Nicoleta, I understand you’re sick of wearing ridiculously oversized men’s shirts and sweats, is that right?” Arms crossed, she glanced down at my outfit and back to Dax, shaking her head.
“I am.” The corner of my lip kicked up to a smile. Something about the woman was easygoing. Genuine. My muscles eased a bit around her.
“Then, let’s get you out of those.” She gripped my arm, stiffening my muscles all over again. At what must’ve been a frown on my face, she let go, and gave a wink instead. “Follow me.”
I glanced back at Dax, looking massive next to the baby in his arms, and at his nod, I followed after the woman.
“Hey, where’s Jase?” he called after us.
“Firing up the grill out back,” the woman said over her shoulder. She seemed so at ease, leaving her baby with Dax, while she led me along. “He decided to throw on some steaks!”
“I’ll catch up with you ladies later.”
Something about the experience felt surreal, as if I’d fallen into some strange sitcom where all the characters were friends and all of them could be trusted. Like I imagined a normal world to be, except I’d been so far removed from it, I had no clue how to act.
14
Dax
I sat on a patio chair, cradling a sleeping Luna in my arms, and stared at Jase, who sat with his elbows resting atop his knees, watching me with unseen accusations behind his eyes. Hands balling to tight fists, I shook my head. “Motherfucker, if you don’t stop looking at me …”
“She’s young, yeah?”
Nicoleta was about ten years younger than I was, and the tone of his voice suggested she and I had arrived as a couple, or something. “Unlike some brothers I know, I keep my dick in my pants.”
“Where you two off to tonight?”
My chest rose with an exasperated breath, and without disturbing Luna, I rolled my shoulders. “Woody’s.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“Fuck off, man. I’m following up on a lead.”
His brows winged up. “Tesarik?”
Tesarik had been responsible for murdering his wife’s father about a year before, and Jase had vowed revenge. He just hadn’t anticipated how demanding fatherhood would be, or keeping his family safe, for that matter. So the vengeance gig had been sat on the backburner.
For him, anyway.
I’d kept at it, refusing to give up my search for Nicoleta. “No. Had something come up.”
“Then, I’m picking up where I left off.”
“C’mon, Jase. You’ve got a family you need to think about now. I know where he’s going to be in a couple weeks. I’m just biding my time until then.”
“Doing what? Prom? Trying out for football captain? You told me to back off and let you go after him alone. And I did. But that bastard remains a threat to my family every day he’s alive.”
His comment drew my gaze to Luna, lying in my arms. How even I would kill a motherfucker if anyone ever laid a finger on her. I hadn’t gone lax, or given up, I planned to cripple the bastard first chance I got. “Nicoleta knows where to find him.”
“So, why isn’t she telling you?”
“She doesn’t work that way. She’s got trust issues. Who wouldn’t after the shit they put her through?”
“What kind of shit? She talk about it, at all?”
“No.” The confusion and frustration had to have been clear on my face, because he didn’t say anything when I paused to gather my thoughts. “But she gets these nightmares, sometimes, saying things in her sleep. Something about Pigman.”
“One of Tesarik’s men, maybe?”
“I don’t know.” I glanced around the small yard, taking note of the distance between the neighbors, and lowered my voice. “One of her friends ended up in a snuff film. She wants to go after the men who did it. Thinks they’ve got connections to Tesarik.”
“How?”
“Same clubs. She wanted in, if you can believe that shit.” I still couldn’t believe that shit, and neither could Jase, judging by the incredulous look plastered to his face.
“So, you help her find these men, she tells you where to find Tesarik?”
“Something like that.”
“She’s—” Jase’s eyes diverted from mine, to somewhere beyond me.
I craned my neck to find Lucy and Nicoleta standing at the doorway to the hou
se, and the air escaped my lungs for a moment.
The short spikes of Nicoleta’s blonde hair had been jelled up and styled. Makeup covered up the scars and yellowing bruises on her face and neck, and the smoky coal of her eyes gave a sultry look, like something from a magazine cover, or billboard, perfectly balanced against the deep red lipstick. Tight black pants paired with a black leather vest, and some kind of fitted asymmetrical T-shirt beneath, made her look fucking edible. Like a rock goddess coming to lay claim to my soul.
“The plan was to blend in, Luce. You got her looking like she belongs on a fucking catwalk.” I handed Luna off to her mother, as she rounded the patio chair with a shit-eating grin on her face. “Pardon my French.”
“Girls gotta hold her own walking into a strip club, Dax. What’d you think I was going to put her in? One of my maternity dresses?” Lucy waved Nicoleta over and slid onto the couch beside Jase, whose arm naturally wrapped around her. “She looks hot. You better keep your eye on her tonight, or someone might swipe her out from underneath you.”
“Exactly my point.” Fucking hell, she may as well have sent up a bat signal to Tesarik’s men, for all the attention she’d draw in that outfit.
Nicoleta squeezed into the space beside me, her body stiff and guarded. We looked nowhere near at ease as Jase and Lucy together.
Not that we should have.
“Since when do you wear this stuff?” I directed my question to Lucy, who had on gray athletic capris and a North Face sweatshirt—a far cry from the BDSM-inspired get up she’d dressed Nicoleta in.
“You should see some of the shit she wears when you’re not around,” Jase said, nuzzling his face in her neck with a groan. He kept on for a good thirty seconds, even setting his hand beneath her chin as if to hold her steady while he went to town on her throat.
Awkward from where I sat, trying not to stare at Nicoleta’s thighs in those skintight pants. “All right, c’mon … fuckin’ puppies ain’t as cute as you two. You’re gonna have the neighbors reporting you for bath salts, you keep chomping on her neck like that, man. Get a room.”
With a quiet laugh, Lucy tilted her head toward Jase, and he pulled away. “Well, when I’m not being a frumpy mom, I actually wear cool clothes, Dax. So I set her up with something of a starter wardrobe. You’ll have to get her a different pair of boots. Mine are just a tad big on her. And some lingerie,” she added, sending a wink to Nicoleta beside me.
Which meant she wasn’t wearing a damn thing under those tight pants and that shirt. I tried not to think about her nipples popping through the thin material, or the glide of fabric across that panty-less ass. Or that every horny bastard up in that dirty strip club would be eyeing her like a pack of hyenas on an innocent gazelle.
A gazelle that could whoop their asses in a knife fight, no less.
“Thanks again.” Nicoleta’s soft voice broke my thoughts.
I nodded and cleared my throat, reaching for one of my cigarettes I’d abandoned on the coffee table while holding Luna. “I’ll be sure to get her whatever she needs.” I lit up, catching sight of Nicoleta’s thigh next to mine, small and delicate. At a flash of it slung over my shoulder, I clamped my eyes and blew the smoke off to the side, giving some reprieve to the pussy party going on in my head.
For fucks sake. The girl was barely legal and had been through some bad shit. Shit she might’ve willingly signed up for, but bad nonetheless. The getup she wore had my head spinning, and my mouth watering like a ravenous animal ready to tear into something soft and fleshy.
As if the asshole could read my mind, Jase sat forward, “Who’s ready for steaks?”
15
Nicoleta
Feet propped up on the dashboard and my arms wrapped around my bent knees, I sat in the passenger seat, watching Hamtramck morph into downtown Detroit. “Lucy’s nice.”
I’d never really been comfortable around other women, who somehow viewed me as not one of their own. The girls in high school had written me off as an outcast, the moment they’d learned I came from a scuzzy eastside trailer park. Anyone from waitresses to teachers, to the snotty bitches who worked in the office where I went for weekly counseling sessions, regarded me as something different. Something lower than them. Which probably explained why I’d taken up with hardened criminals. Men who looked like they’d just broken out of a Russian prison, with their tattoos and steroid infused bodies. Men who, for whatever reason, respected a misfit like me.
“She is. Jase is lucky to have her.”
“Her baby is cute.”
The corner of his lips kicked up, and I could see the very mention of that baby set his heart alight. Was kinda cute, in a way. “Luna’s my princess. Anyone who ever breaks that girl’s heart is going to have me to answer to.”
“I don’t know. Her dad looks like he’s kicked some ass in his day.”
Dax snorted, and the way he leaned against the console, stroking his chin, had me sliding my feet off the dash to cross my legs. Just as I’d had to do back at Jase and Lucy’s, when I’d caught him staring at my thighs. I’d become accustomed to that look. Of older men staring at me in ways that’d make my stomach turn.
It was different with Dax. He didn’t make me feel dirty and cheap when he looked at me. I couldn’t even explain the difference, because I’d never allowed myself to enjoy that kind of attention before.
I felt desired. Maybe even beautiful, for once.
“Jay’s been known to lay someone out when necessary.”
“Lucy said you fought. On the streets? For money?” I’d gotten the lowdown from Lucy, who’d told me a lot of things about Dax. For one, that he had always been pretty good with his fists. And two, that, although he was something of a man-whore, he had a lot of respect for women. Apparently, they were his one true weakness.
“Kids do what they gotta do to survive, ya know?”
“How long did you live on the streets?”
“Most of my life, aside from some short stints in foster homes. Never really mixed well in the nuclear family unit. Was just me and my mom for a while, until she overdosed. They called it a suicide.”
“And your sister?”
“Yeah. Livvie, too. But I didn’t meet her until I was about sixteen.”
I remembered he’d mentioned her briefly, someone Tesarik had hurt, and from what I’d gathered, the reason Dax was hellbent on killing the bastard. “What happened to her?”
His eye flinched, but he continued to stroke his chin, drawing my gaze to the perfect square of his jaw. Like a Greek god, the man had a beautiful Roman nose and perfect lips, set below naturally stern-looking brows.
“Livvie suffered the same fate as your friend. They didn’t drown her, though. She was dumped in some abandoned shithole like trash.”
“I’m sorry.” I wedged my hands between my thighs, catching Dax’s quick downward glance. “They made a video of it?”
“Yeah. Found out a buddy of mine had been coerced into …” His jaw ticced and the flare of his nostrils told me a storm brewed inside of him. Whatever his buddy had done must’ve been bad, given the look on his face right then. “I beat him so hard and so long, couldn’t hardly make out his face afterward.”
“Then, you understand why I need to do this. Why it’s so important.”
“I understand. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. If something happened to you, Nic …”
Nic. Had we gotten to that point, where he’d shortened my name into something more friendly? Something familiar? And I couldn’t help but wonder what the second half of that threat might be. If something happened to me, then he’d what? Beat someone to a bloody pulp? Kill for me?
“So, these strippers …” I quickly changed the subject. No sense dwelling on something that would never be, particularly when my fate had already been laid out for me on a single path, from which I couldn’t deviate if I wanted. Something was going to happen to me. Captured, killed, or both. If it didn’t, it’d mean I’d failed, and I had no intentions of f
ailing. “They’ve got some pretty shady friends, then? Present company not included.”
His cheek twitched as though he might smile. “What makes you think I’m not just as shady as the rest of them?”
“Instinct.”
“Yeah, what kind of instinct?”
“The kind that tells me I could probably jump onto your lap right now, and you’d be more concerned with whether, or not, the steering wheel was pressing too hard into my back.”
The twitch of his shoulder and bob of his throat confessed the comment made him uncomfortable. “Just before I drove the two of us into a brick wall. I’m not all good, Nicoleta. Remember that.”
“You’re not all bad, either. I know the bad ones. You could kill a thousand innocent men and still be more worthy of redemption.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I’m touched.” The corner of his eye lifted with amusement, and he glanced up toward the rearview mirror and back to the road. “Do me a favor and stay in your seat, though.”
“Why? Are you suddenly feeling the urge to plow into a brick wall?”
“No. Cop just flicked on his lights behind us.”
As I twisted around in my seat to catch the lights of the police car behind us, Dax pulled the ‘Cuda to a stop into some closed down strip mall’s abandoned-looking lot, riddled with weeds sticking up from cracked pavement.
Shit.
“Were you even speeding?”
“Five over.” At another glance in the mirror, he sank into the seat and rubbed his hand down his face. “Fuck me.”
A lithe form strolled up to the driver’s side door, and when she bent forward, her tits popped over the top of her uniform she’d unbuttoned to her cleavage. Her eyes scanned me head to toe, before she backed up a step. “I’m gonna need you to step out of the vehicle, sir.”
