“Nyx is not whipped,” Giulia scoffed.
Indy snorted. “Yeah, he is. You snap your fingers and he comes running.”
Giulia’s lips twitched, but there was a fire in her eyes that flickered as she murmured, “That’s because you don’t see what goes on behind closed doors. He comes running because he thinks he can bend me over the nearest surface.” She raised her hand and blew on her nails. “And he’d be right in thinking that… Safe to say I’m usually bent over something by the time he rolls around.”
Indy groaned. “I didn’t need to know that.”
“You brought it up,” Stone said with a laugh. “You don’t wanna hear about your bro’s peen then don’t talk about it with his woman. You know for a fact we’re all curious as hell about his cock. No offense intended, Giulia, but he had some of the clubwhores dick-drunk for a looooong time. Before he started going all weird and fucking only one bunny for a while.”
“Monogamy, weird…” Tiffany shook her head. “Only in this world.”
“Hardly monogamy,” Stone argued. “They banged. That’s it. Not even sexual fluids were swapped because I know Nyx would have worn a rubber, they’re not supposed to go down on the bitches, and unless…” She hummed. “I guess these bikers are dumb enough to think they can’t catch an STD if they get a blow job from one of those skanks. Do you think I need to do an STD workshop?”
Giulia choked out a laugh. “If you decide to do that, then please, I want to be there. I might even pay you for a ticket.”
Lily laughed. “Me too.”
“Me three.”
“What’s an STD?” I asked, even though I could pick it up from context.
“Sexually Transmitted Disease.” Stone frowned. “Maybe we should all get tested. I really don’t think I could handle chlamydia right now on top of everything else.”
Giulia grumbled, “Already been stuck with more needles for blood work than I have with Nyx’s dick, and I’ve only known about being pregnant for three goddamn weeks. I don’t need any more tests.”
“Your guy wasn’t a manwhore though,” Stone rumbled. “Ours were.”
“Maverick wasn’t.” Despite myself, a shy smile curved my lips. “He hadn’t had sex in five years until…” I cleared my throat. “This morning.”
Giulia released a whoop that had me jumping in surprise. “Finally, you did it!”
A thought crossed my mind. “I should be tested though,” I whispered, my pleasure disappearing in the face of this conversation. “I could have anything!”
Stone shook her head. “I ran bloodwork on you all when you got back. You probably wouldn’t remember. You came back clean.”
A shaky breath escaped me. “Really? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“You have met Stone, haven’t you, Alessa?” Indy joked. “She doesn’t pull her punches.”
Stone grunted under her breath, but got to her feet and stormed off. Indy watched her go, evidently surprised her teasing hadn’t gone down so well, but when Stone returned a few moments later, satisfaction creasing her expression, Indy warily asked, “What did you do?”
“Had Brick, that new prospect, go to the on-call pharmacy to get some stuff.”
“Stuff?” Lily queried, her eyes wide.
“So I can take blood samples and get us tested.” She narrowed her eyes. “If they’ve given us something, I’m going to chop their dicks off. Steel said he always used a rubber, but—”
“Don’t you think they’d rather hurt themselves than hurt us?” Tiffany questioned, her tone uneasy.
“I’d prefer to be safe rather than to be sorry.” She frowned. “Although, your blood tests would have shown something at the hospital—” Stone looked at Lily. “Yours too.” She heaved a sigh of relief, a thought evidently occurring to her. “Mine as well. If you feel like a pin cushion, Giulia, that’s nothing compared to what I’ve been through the last couple of months. So, Indy, it looks like you’re the only one who needs bloodwork.”
“You don’t need to look so happy about it!” Indy retorted with a scowl, shoving her friend again with a pout.
Stone just snorted. “Consider it payback for not telling me everything. And I mean everything, do you hear me? You said you had, but it was BS. So, hoes before bros and all that shit from now on.”
Giulia snorted. “Seeing as you’re pricking everyone all the time, Indy, it’ll be nice to see you shed blood.”
“Gee, thanks, sister.”
“You’re welcome, sister.” Her eyes twinkled for a second before that gleam was doused like water on a fire. “That reminds me though… hoes before bros? That’s exactly right. So, we’re here tonight because of what Alessa told us, but also… I’m uneasy about this situation with Cyan and Keira. Neither of them seem to be doing all that well. Whenever I see them around Rachel’s place, they’re always really—I guess the word is sorrowful.” She shrugged.
“I hate to prioritize, especially with the situation being as it is, but Tink’s an active threat,” Indy pointed out softly. “If she can help someone try to bomb us, then she’s a danger to us all.”
“Especially since Lodestar’s still convinced that Martin London isn’t a pedophile but a retired pastor,” Giulia said grimly.
Indy shook her head. “I don’t see it. Not from the way he was looking at her.”
“Far as I can tell, Cyan has no means of contacting him. Keira limited her time on the laptop she uses for school, and she doesn’t have a phone or a tablet anymore,” Giulia informed us as she moved over to the wall beside the ornate fireplace, leaned back against it, and crossed her legs at the ankle and her arms at the waist—free to move now that she’d been freed from her sling yesterday. Somehow, she looked so effortlessly cool that I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or not.
It was like looking at a female James Dean.
Pre-crash.
I cleared my throat. “If she has no means of communicating with him, then is he still a threat?”
“Don’t you remember what it’s like to be a kid?” Lily asked. “If you want something, there are ways and means.”
“That’s true,” Indy replied, her tone edgy. “And after what I saw… she isn’t scared of London. That came across loud and clear. She wants to please him, but not out of fear.”
I shuddered. “This is disgusting.”
“Bet your ass it is.” Indy grunted. “Lodestar has to be wrong. I know the way he was… I recognized it. But it happened when I was stressed and under stress, so I mean I could have been wrong. I doubt it, but it’s a possibility.”
Giulia sighed. “Before we go, we’ll speak with Lodestar. I tried to talk with her earlier but she’s napping.”
Lily nodded. “She’s doing that a lot.”
“If she’s not one hundred percent, then maybe that’s why she hasn’t found anything yet? Maybe she’s too sick to—”
A part of me was ridiculously jealous of Lodestar, even after what Maverick had revealed to me this morning, but I couldn’t allow them to disparage her name or her work when I’d seen for myself how dedicated she was.
Not just to finding out the truth but to unraveling the group of horobtsi that targeted women in my country and brought us over to the States like we were merchandise to import and export.
“That isn’t fair,” I interrupted softly, keeping my gaze trained on my knees. “She works hard. She’s just slower than she usually is. Needs more rest.”
“Trouble is, we have no time for rest,” Giulia said uneasily. “We need to move fast.”
“Innocent or not, we can still teach the fucker a lesson,” Indy replied, and Stone reached over and squeezed her shoulder, which told me the memories were hitting her hard tonight.
Who could blame her?
Sharing a secret that old with a close friend had to be hard, so if it made her bloodthirsty, I considered it cathartic.
“Until we can talk with Lodestar… Tink knows who the sniper is,” Lily pointed
out. “You said she got into the truck with him after she opened the gates for him, Alessa?” At my nod, she hissed under her breath. “How did she even access the gates without anyone knowing?”
“They weren’t manned that night,” Stone admitted. “Steel told me that. Rex wanted everyone to party. Said we needed to let our hair down…”
“Jesus, I’ll never be able to do that again,” Giulia grumbled, rolling her eyes. “Especially not at a party.”
“They’ll figure it out so that we’re safe,” Stone replied, her lack of concern surprising. “There must have been a loophole to the gate system Tink figured out, that she overheard or something. She was one of Rex’s faves, so maybe that’s how, but she messed with the wrong people. You know what they’re like. Tangle with them once and their enemies might as well pray to Satan for salvation because once they have someone in their sights, they’re not getting away.”
“But first,” Indy tacked on dryly, “they have to find that someone to set their sights on.”
Stone winced. “True.”
“We need to find Tink,” Giulia said firmly. “We need to get her to talk.”
“The other clubwhores will know where she is,” Tiffany remarked. “We should ask them.”
I reached up and rubbed my bottom lip. “By that logic, I knew what Tatána was doing, and I didn’t. I had no clue what was going on. Amara only knew she was sneaking around, not why or with whom.”
“You’re not close at all, are you?” Lily asked, her voice soft like she was trying not to cause offense but was curious enough to ask anyway.
“I guess we should be considering what we went through together, but that isn’t enough to bind people into friendship. I’ve known you for far less time than I knew them, and I’m closer to all of you than I ever was with Tatána and Amara.” I hitched a shoulder. “On top of that, the… masters didn’t want us to be close. They worked hard to turn us against each other. It made it less likely that we’d try to band together and escape, I suppose.”
A soft whimper escaped Lily, and I turned to look at her, seeing the tears in her eyes, the horror etched into her features, and I understood and empathized with her. Maybe she should have been the one to comfort me, but I was the one who clambered off the sofa and met her on hers.
Huddling close to her, I sat by her side, both sets of our feet digging into the plush down cushions, and murmured, “It isn’t your fault, Lily.”
“I-I know, but I just… I’m sickened. I can’t believe—” She shook her head. “No, that isn’t right. I can believe it. After what Luke did to the maids, how he hurt them, I know that was in his nature. But it just makes me feel like I could puke. I should have done something. I should have—”
“What could you have done?” Giulia asked quietly, her tone lacking her usual aggression as she peered down at her shoes. “Truthfully, Lily, what could you have done? You were young yourself, abused yourself, terrorized yourself. It wasn’t like you were in any position of power, was it? Plus, your family was influential. It made it twice as unlikely that people would believe you.”
“I-I don’t care,” Lily whispered bitterly, her hands forming tight fists that she bounced against her knees. “I should have done something. Even if it only cast doubts on their reputation, it might have helped.”
I curled my arm around her shoulders. “There’s no point in thinking this, Lily. What’s done is done.” And I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “They’re dead now. They can’t hurt us anymore.”
When she turned her face into my shoulder and wept, I felt the palpable relief mingling with the sour tang of bitterness that came with regret. But I held her through it.
As I stared around the room, at the hodgepodge of women who couldn’t have come from more different walks of life if we’d tried, who came from rich backgrounds and poor, I recognized that somehow, the Sinners had done this.
They’d brought us together.
They’d created Giulia’s Posse.
I had to wonder if they were ready for the repercussions of that…
Thirty-Four
Maverick
When Rex wheeled Lodestar into the room, neither of them looked very happy.
In fact, shove two wet cats into a bag, throw them into the trunk of a car, then let them out again, and those pussies were probably less pissed than my Prez and my ex right now.
Still, it didn’t matter.
It was time for Lodestar to stop being such a sneaky cunt and for her to share all the intel she had on this situation with Rex. The Prez needed to know, and to be honest, I knew he’d avoided me because he hadn’t visited me in the hospital today.
That meant he knew his ears were about to be blistered for the colossal clusterfuck that had gone down yesterday.
With Steel, Sin, Nyx, and Link in the know about this meeting, I’d requested that I deal with both friends alone because getting Lodestar to open up was like trying to get molten gummy bears back into shape again. Leaving her with Rex was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Why the hell am I here, Maverick? I’m supposed to be napping. In fact, this prick woke me up.” She heaved a massive sigh. “This is really inconvenient timing.”
“She’s got more claws than a goddamn cat,” Rex grumbled.
Because that was too much like my own analogy, I had to stifle a laugh. “You both deserve the inconvenience, because you’re a pair of closemouthed lunatics.” If Rex didn’t love the hell out of Rachel, I’d wish Lodestar on him as an Old Lady. Jesus Christ, that would be a hoot. “What the fuck was that about yesterday, Rex?” I demanded.
“If you’re going to have this conversation, I don’t think I should be here.”
I scowled at Lodestar. “You said it yourself last night—our HQ was bombed. You’re a Sinner, whether you like to think you are or not.”
Her chin tipped up, but though I saw the usual attitude etched into her features, more than that, I saw a strange warmth that I only registered because I’d seen this woman in all kinds of states. Orgasming, crying with laughter, sobbing with tears over fucking puppies in a commercial, joyful as she dove into a pint of Häagen-Dazs, bitter with grief, distraught with the lives she’d had to take as part of a mission.
I knew her, whether she liked it or not, and I knew that my words made her happy.
She huffed, which was confirmation I was right, and I had more confirmation when she stopped bitching and just sat there, in a wheelchair, her arms crossed.
In fact… “Is that my wheelchair?”
“Wasn’t like you’re fucking using it, prick,” Rex grumbled as he placed his hands on the footrail of the bed and leaned over it by resting his elbows on it next. “Anyway, it isn’t. Yours didn’t survive the accident.” He squinted at me. “What the fuck is going on with you anyway? You’re back to being the pain in the ass we know and love?”
“As if you’d know anyway,” I retorted. “Wasn’t like your ass visited me all that much while I was sick.”
He winced. “I was with Dad.”
“I know. I’m just giving you a hard time because you deserve it for yesterday’s stunt. What were you thinking, man?”
He released a breath but gave Lodestar the side-eye, which told me he was about to keep quiet when the pair of them really needed to start sharing more. If they did, maybe we’d get somewhere and we wouldn’t end up dead before we all hit forty.
“No side-eying her, Rex. We gotta start sharing. As it stands, I’m semi in the loop, but not totally because of how I’ve been… but there are things you have to share so we can survive this attack.”
“We’re safe for the moment. If any cunt thought we were weak, they know differently now.”
Over the course of the day’s treatment, I’d spent a lot of time on my phone, discussing shit with Steel and Sin so I knew the state of play. Knew that Rex had gone into a summit, a meeting that hadn’t been called in decades, and with the Irish on his side, had taken out the two men who were vying for
the position of head of the Famiglia as well as the consigliere to Don Fieri. A man who, after those two, could have slipped into the position of power with ease.
Talk about a goddamn home run.
How his ass wasn’t dead was something we owed to the Irish, but I was pretty fucking pissed at what he’d done because, Jesus fuck, if that wasn’t suicidal, I didn’t know what was.
I rubbed my hand over my chin at the thought and rumbled, “Safe or not from outside attacks, that doesn’t take out the main offender, does it?”
Rex’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe we should start at the beginning?”
Lodestar heaved a sigh. “The beginning goes way back when, Rex. You can’t handle how fucking far it goes back.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Star. Explain it to him. Exactly how you did to me.”
“You mean when you didn’t believe me?”
“I listened enough to let you make me a ghost, didn’t I?” I snapped, and my statement caught Rex’s full attention.
“What?” he boomed. “A ghost? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Lodestar’s mouth tensed, but she rumbled, “Back in the seventies, when it was a mobster’s wet dream to be alive, this group of law enforcement agents got together to try to level down the corruption in NYC. That’s how it started. As with everything, it came from a good place. The Italians and the Irish especially were butt-fucking the city, and what with the president’s ties to the mafia hinted at… well, they were concerned. Rightly so.
“They worked together to stomp out crime. Using each other’s agencies to get the information required to pin crimes on specific criminals to take them out of play.”
“They Caponed them,” Rex replied, his eyes wide with interest. I should’ve figured he’d find this shit fascinating. Something he only validated by moving around the bed to the seat Alessa had vacated earlier. As he slouched back in it, he waved a hand. “Go on.”
“Yes, fucking, sir,” Lodestar retorted with a scowl, but when I growled under my breath, she rolled her eyes. “They took a lot of bad people off the street, but over time” —she shrugged— “as it does, corruption infected them too.
Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Page 27
