Knox Brotherhood

by Knox, Elizabeth

  ***

  I kept busy that entire afternoon. I had a good bit of time to spend with some of the girls at Bubba’s. Maria and I were trying to teach a few how to make drinks since they expressed interest in working as bartenders, a couple others wanted to waitress, and to be honest, we needed the help. Ever since the shootout with the cartel, business has been booming. You’d think that would make people want to steer clear of us – but nope, the flies are coming to the shit pile.

  I just made it back through my bedroom door when my phone started ringing, and Wyatt’s name popped up on the screen. “Hey little man,” I say, and he laughs

  “You can stop calling me that, you know. I’m not a kid anymore, Jesus.” I can almost visualize him rolling his eyes at me. The mere thought of him doing it makes me smile.

  “Kiddo, I call you whatever the hell I want to.”

  “Jen!” He growls it out. Every time he called me Jen, it ripped me up. It hurt so much to know that my little boy would never call me Mom. At the end of the day, I knew that was the best thing for him, though. Sherry needed to be Mom, and she always would be Mom.

  “I’m not even sorry, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

  “Fine, I’m not even going to argue with your stubborn ass. Mom had to work a double, can you pick me up from school after football?”

  “Yeah, mhm, I can do that. I’ll see you then. What do you want for dinner, hibachi?”

  “Do you even have to ask?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” I laugh. “I love you Wyatt, I’ll see you at 5:30.”

  “Love ya, too, Jen.”

  I end the phone call with a giant smile on my face. I glance over to the clock, and it is a little past three in the afternoon. I grab my workout clothes and go into the gym. The girls are already there, sweating their little butts off. I turn the stereo on, and Red Lipstick by Rihanna blasts over the stereo. This has been our go-to song of choice since Elena’s impromptu bachelorette party at the bar.

  I grab the jump rope, jumping to the beat of the music, getting that heartbeat up. “I think Jen has something to tell us.” Michelle laughs, and I open my eyes and glare at her.

  “What is it!?” Elena and Daisy say at almost the same time. I can’t do anything to hold back the smile that is slipping past my lips. Dmitri makes me smile, and I mean really smile.

  “I’ve never seen you smile that big before,” Michelle adds. I want to curse at her and tell her to fuck off, but I’m in a good mood.

  “Oh my god, what was it?!” Elena asks, and I don’t say anything, I just go on the treadmill and start running.

  “You have to tell us what happened. It sounded really nice by the sound of it,” Michelle adds with a wink.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.” I laugh, running faster, and for a couple minutes the girls don’t bother me.

  “I saw Dmitri leave your room this morning,” Daisy comments. I shoot her a glare, letting her know to shut up.

  “You’re turning red!” Elena claps her hands together. “What happened? Tell us!”

  “What do you think happened, ‘Le? Dmitri’s been parading around telling every brother in here how I’m his woman and no one is to touch me. Put two and two together.”

  Seamus comes trampling into the gym. His girlfriend, Daisy, is a few months pregnant, but you’d swear she’s disabled with the way he treats her. I didn’t have to know anything to figure out he was coming in here for her. As soon as she locks eyes with the beast, she flips him off. I laugh as Seamus comes over and physically removes her from the treadmill beside me. “You’re pregnant, you shouldn’t be doin’ this shit!”

  “I’M PREGNANT, NOT DISABLED YOU ASSHAT!” Daisy yelled in his face. She’s the sweetest thing you’d ever meet, but damn does she have a mighty temper. Ever since she’s been pregnant, her hormones have made her very irritable.

  “Yeah, and you’re takin it easy with our kid in there.”

  “I’m pregnant, I’m not dying, it’s not like me walking around is endangering me or our child in any way.” Seamus puts her down, and she rubs her belly.

  “Yeah, yeah. My boy needs some food, c’mon, babygirl.” Seamus takes her hand in his, leading her out of the gym, leaving Elena, Michelle, and I still working out.

  “C’mon, tell me!” Elena whines. “Everything is SO boring with Reed and I right now, I need some juicy stuff.”

  “Why is everything boring?” I counter

  Elena walks a few feet over against the cinderblock wall and slides to the floor. “You two better not say shit to anyone, but I’ve been off my birth control for six months, and so far, nothing’s happened, we’re trying to have a baby, and we try a lot.”

  “Sometimes, it just takes a while,” Michelle comforts.

  I nodded “Yeah, my one friend had to try for a little bit before her and her hubs got pregnant.”

  “We just don’t want to wait…” I nod, getting it. “Now, tell me what’s going on with you and Dmitri!”

  “We’re dating.” I am finally being honest, after this long, I think he and I were more than just “dating”.

  “What’s changed? You’ve never flat out said that before!” Michelle points out, stopping her treadmill and paying perfect attention to me.

  “Yeah. I finally accepted that Dmitri isn’t going to give up on perusing me, so I’m just gonna roll with it. I’m just gonna see what happens.”

  “It’s about damn time, Jen. You two are two peas in a pod. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about the two of you that just makes me think you’re perfect together.” Elena smiles, I don’t pay much attention to what she is saying. I know that there was some truth to it, and that frightens me. I can see it plain as day that something is lingering between Dmitri and me. It’s terrifying, but I also want to see where it leads. Even if I feel like I’m living a damn lie. Because I am. Aren’t I?

  I stop the treadmill and walk over to the “dancing” pole we had installed in the gym a while back, it’s a good workout tool, but at the same time, it’s super sexy.

  I start dancing, sliding from the top to the bottom, completing my usual routine. Dancing on this pole keeps me toned as fuck.

  “I just want to know how good it was. You woke me up really fucking early, it must’ve been such a good fuck.” Michelle giggles, whining at the last bit. She’s been a little sad since Max left a few months ago. She likes to think that no one knew her and Max were fucking, but it was kind of obvious. How could we not notice? They’d both disappear right after the other. They could’ve learned a few things from Seamus and Daisy, after all, they were hiding their relationship for a year.

  “He wasn’t using his cock this morning, babe.” I smile as I say it, grabbing the remote for the stereo from my bra and turning it up. Breaking Benjamin’s Angels Fall is pumping loudly through the speakers. I tie my legs around the top of the pole, fanning out, my back in the air, and do crunches.

  “You are such a fucking show off,” Michelle grumbles.

  “You’re just jealous!” I yell, the music suddenly shutting off. I open my eyes to glare at Michelle and see Dmitri standing next to the stereo. I don’t know why I did, but I loosened my legs and fell about eight feet down, my head slamming into the floor behind me. Oh my god, I have never been this embarrassed.

  “Ooooo that looks like it hurt,” Elena announced.

  “I cannot believe that just happened.” I start laughing, using the pole to get up, covering my face as my laughter keeps spilling past my lips.

  “It’s because you’re a FUCKING SHOW OFF,” Michelle snaps back at me.

  “You know, Michelle, I could really give you a few pointers.” She flips me off and leaves the gym with Elena who is laughing alongside her. Dmitri comes towards me and turns me around, putting his fingers in my hair.

  “What are you doing? Looking for bugs?” I’ve made jokes to him before about him being an ape. I thought he would find my little joke funny, appa
rently not.

  “Making sure you didn’t rip any of your stitches, did you hit your head?”

  “Yeah, but I’m good.” He moves my hair around for a minute until he is happy. Then, he comes around me, looking at the cuts that are still healing on my legs.

  “Don’t get on that pole again until these heal completely.”

  “That’s not the pole I’ll be upset about not being on,” I tell him, giving him a sly smile.

  Reed barges into the gym, “You tell her yet?”

  “No, not yet.” Dmitri counters, looking back to our Prez. I immediately know something is up, and that I am not going to like it.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Dmitri’s going to be teaching you self-defense. Your first session starts now.” I look at Reed and then to Dmitri.

  “Okay, hold on.” I wave my hands up in the air. “So, Dmitri is my watch dog, and now, you want him to teach me self-defense too? He’s practically glued to my hip.” Not that I’d normally mind, but I don’t get a moment to myself. Dmitri surrounds me. He’s this constant shadow figure looking over my life. I know the man loved every minute of it, there’s a reason I constantly refer to him as “broody Russian”.

  “Didn’t sound like you minded it this morning,” Reed retorts, and he laughs when my mouth gapes open before he leaves the gym.

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?” I ask, and Dmitri shook his head.

  “Do you think I had to tell anyone?” Dmitri grazes his hand over my shoulder, causing goosebumps to rise over my skin. “Am I making you nervous?”

  “A little,” I admit honestly, starting to change the subject. “So, this defense thing is serious?”

  “Very, c’mon I’ll show you a few things.”

  We spent the next two hours completing routines. Dmitri showed me how to get out of many situations, things I wouldn’t have known at all before. I felt completely exhausted after the last couple hours, and I wanted a damn break.

  “One more, then we’re done.”

  “Dmitri” I whine, grabbing my water and chugging half of it down.

  “Jenna, you’re learning this shit. In fact, all of you are, Reed’s teaching Elena, Daisy can’t learn right now in her…condition but will later, and Michelle’s learning too.”

  “Fine, let’s get on with it,” I tell him, and he comes up right against me, his left hand getting a good hold on my hair. “I’m going to take you down gently, I don’t want you to hit your head at all, so just imagine you’re flying down, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Dmitri grabs onto my hair, hooking his leg behind mine as he pulls up and pushes me backwards with his free hand. I can see how this movement would throttle me backwards onto the ground. He lowers me to the ground, him situated between my legs. He holds my arms above my head, so I can’t move. “See how easy that was for me to get control over you like that?”

  “Mhm, now how do I get out of it?”

  “Fight me, get me off.”

  “Oh, I can do the latter part.” I wink at him, and he tries to keep his smile back, so when he tells me to take this seriously, I bite my lip, so I won’t laugh. I try to think of ways to get him off me in this stance, I just kept coming up short. Anything I can think of he could counter back and hurt me with.

  “Jen, do something.”

  “I’m thinking,” I growl.

  “You can’t think when this is real life, you have to act!”

  “You don’t think I know that?!”

  I try a few things, rolling my hips and pushing him off, but it doesn’t work, he threw me right back against the mats. I move my left leg, trying to kick him, but he grabs it before I can move any further. “C’mon, you’re smarter than that. You know how to get out of this.”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be lying on the ground talking to you like this.”

  I try a few more, each failing worse than the last. Dmitri grabs at my hip, “You would’ve been raped by now. Didn’t your father ever show you how to defend yourself?” He growls. His tone of voice is lethal, and it makes me so angry. I am furious.

  “He taught me how to shoot.” I snap. He loosens his grip on my wrists.

  “Your dad showing you how to shoot isn’t going to fucking help you in this situation. If he was a decent father, he would’ve showed you how to protect yourself.” I thought I couldn’t get any angrier with him, but I just did. He lets go of my hands completely, and he is sliding off me when I slap him with all my might. I rise, grabbing my water bottle, and he spins me around, so I am facing him. “We were done; what the fuck was that for?”

  “Were we?” I ask sarcastically, walking towards the door.

  “Jenna.” He barks, but I ignore him, I go into my room and take a long hot shower. I finally leave my room, dressed conservatively, or as conservative as I dress to go pick up Wyatt. A pair of black faux leather leggings, a gray V-neck tank, and a matching black leather jacket with black heels.

  Fuck Dmitri Petrov.

  CHAPTER 20

  She looked my demons in the eye and smiled. She fell for the very thing she thought she’d fear. - Vazaki Nada

  Dmitri

  In the back of my mind, I know what I said to Jenna was wrong. After everything we’ve been through over the past few weeks, I should have known not to bring up her father, especially given her horrible history. I didn’t know everything, and I knew that there were big pieces of the puzzle that I was missing. Call it intuition, but I just knew. Even though I knew she was keeping things from me, I wouldn’t pressure her to tell me anything that she wasn’t ready to.

  I was still unable to put a finger on exactly what my feelings for her are. Long ago, I thought that I couldn’t love, that I was voided of that emotion. Almost as if it was ripped from me because of the experiences that I’ve gone through. I wouldn’t be wrong in thinking it, there were things that I had went through that I don’t wish upon anyone. Thinking deeply on it, most of my life is what people would have nightmares about.

  I can only be thankful that I was strong enough to overcome the obstacles that were put in front of me. They weren’t painless, although they did shape me into the man I am today. Whether that’s a good or a terrible thing, I will never know.

  I’m pulled out of my own self-reflection by the awful sound of my phone going off, this sound is specific, and it takes me but a moment to realize what it is. When Reed insisted, or ordered, whatever you want to call it, me to stick near Jenna, I attached a GPS tracker to her car, knowing very well that there would be a day where she’d get pissed and just run off. It seems to be that today is that day.

  I open my phone, watching the little dot that represents her car driving away. She may not be right in front of me, but I still have eyes on her. Once she stops, I’ll go peek and see exactly what my girl is up to.

  “Dmitri!” I raise my eyes to Reed who’s just charged into the main area. I’m sitting comfortably on the couch, still maintaining focus on my phone. She’s peaked my interest, where would she be going? “Dmitri!!” Reed’s voice echoes louder. I can hear his angered footsteps as they approach me quickly.

  “Yes?”

  “Jenna just peeled her ass outta the club. What the fuck is that about? You’re supposed to have eyes on her, not sitting around on your damn phone doing whatever the hell it is that you are.”

  “Why is it that you think I don’t have eyes on her?” I hold my phone up to Reed, showing him the flashing dot on my screen. “I know exactly where she is, and once she decides to hunker down, I will be going to pay her a visit.”

  Reed chuckles softly. “If I had known you put a tracker on her I wouldn’t have come in so fired up. Smart move, Dmitri. Let’s just hope she doesn’t find it.” She won’t find it. I did an excellent job at hiding it after she’d fallen asleep one night. Jenna would have to rip the bottom of her car apart to even see the small bug I planted.

  “Tell me where you got that, we should really get the trackers for all of the wo
men. As a security measure.” Reed winks at me as he says the last bit, and I can’t help but scoff. He is a good Prez who values his members, but he is also the type of man who wants to know exactly what his woman is doing. I know that his people are important to him, but I can’t help but wonder if his question is selfishly motivated.

  “Call Lucien, I’m sure he’ll hook you up.” Reed smirks as he walks away, no doubt towards his back office to give Lucien a call. I shake my head, knowing that he is probably going to drive Elena crazy over the years unless she tames him somehow. If anyone can, it will be her. But I also know because of the way he is that she will be safe. She will always be safe with Reed. How could I ever wish for anything else for her when that wasn’t always her life?

  I look back down to my phone following the dot with my eyes, the dot that will lead me to Jenna and another one of her secrets, no doubt. A hard knot forms in my stomach, and while I feel anger over another one of her reckless defiant moves, I also feel nervous about what I might see when I find her. She has been trying to warn me there are so many fucked up things about her I still don’t know. I don't think she can make me not want to be with her, but when it’s just a big blank, who knows what it looks like filled in?

  I see that Jenna has stopped moving and head out to the parking lot, getting in my car to follow her. Oddly enough, this GPS tracker is telling me that she is at some school. Why would Jenna be at a school?

  Unsure of what I may find, I take off at top speed, wanting to get to her before whoever is after her does. But as I finally get to the spot where she stopped, she has moved again, and I am forced to follow. What is she up to? Why does she have to be so damn stubborn? I am going to make it clear that, no matter how pissed she gets, she can’t do this.

  I find myself at a restaurant, a nicer one than what I found her in last time. I am not sure what I am going to find, but I make my way inside quietly staying out of her line of sight as much as possible as I find a seat. She is sitting with a boy, a young one at that. He might be 16. I can’t tell for sure, but I am more confused than ever. I have questions, and she will answer them.