by Zoe Hill
He might have her now, but he’s never come up against me before.
The bear of a man might wear an enforcers patch for a two-bit, outlaw MC from Connecticut, but I was raised on the blood of innocents and trained by the Devil himself.
The Coalition doesn’t pick just anyone to become their chief executioner.
No, they only choose the finest killers to represent them in the underworld.
And, their best for the past fourteen years—me—hasn’t failed to cross a job off his to-do list yet.
Poppy is mine.
The Samaritan’s Soldiers MC is mine.
Harrison Greaves is mine.
No matter how much blood I need to bathe in on my way to his front door.
TWELVE
“Friends ask you questions; enemies question you.” ~Criss Jami~
POPPY
“What the hell are you playing at?” Bella hisses at me the moment we’re alone in my bedroom.
I quit rifling through my dirty clothes basket for a semi-clean shirt to change into so I can validate our flimsy excuse to take a moment together. Bella’s trying to get me alone to talk since I emerged from Seb’s room this morning, but we haven’t managed to get more than a few seconds together since then. First, Seb demanded that I ride back to New York on his bike for “protection” and my family agreed. Then we arrived at my apartment and getting more than three feet away from Seb and the two enforcers he brought to New York with him has proven difficult.
Facing Bella, I attempt to avoid answering her directly by feigning stupidity. I need to suss out her thoughts on everything before I confide the full truth to her. “Huh? Playing at what?”
“You and Seb...” she trails off, then stomps over to my doorway to look outside. After scanning the short hallway, Bella closes the door and leans with her back against it. “One alleyway fuck and you’re back together?”
“Well, no. Yes. Maybe?” Ruffled by her directness, even though I should’ve been expecting it, I sink to the floor. Once my backside hits the carpet, I draw my knees to my chest and hug them. The explanation she wants trips out of my mouth in a barely coherent ramble. “I don’t know what happened. Like, yeah... we fucked in the alley at the bar. That much, I remember. It was okay, but I’d already decided it was a mistake never to be repeated before I came back inside the bar.”
Puffing out a sharp breath, I continue in a tinny tone, “Apparently, my stupid vagina didn’t agree... I’m a bit fuzzy on the details from drinking too much, but Seb said we did it two more times when we returned to the compound. Then you woke me up in his bed this morning, and he was acting as if we were an item again.”
Bella scowls and clenches her hands into fists. “There’s no way you screwed at the compound last night.”
Sitting up straight, I arch an eyebrow. Optimism flares through my body and infuses my voice with strength when I ask, “How would you know that?”
“Because you passed out at the bar and I caught a taxi back to the compound with your drunk ass. Your dad and I put you to bed before the guys returned, then we had a quick brandy together to talk about the whole Harrison Greaves coming out of hiding thing.” Bella shrugs in response to my frown. “He thought that might be why you were so drunk. I set him straight... told him that we had a good night until you fell asleep standing up. Your dad’s cool, but he’s got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to you. I know that you’re strong as fuck, but your family still sees you as a broken seven-year-old. When I told him that, he wasn’t what I’d call receptive.”
“Ya think?” I snort. Bella offers me a grim smile. “They have to believe that I’m ruined. It’s how they live with themselves for taking the payoff.”
“Oh, that came through loud and clear. Broken Poppy equals validation. Functioning Poppy means the Greaves’ money they took is tainted and they chose wrong.”
Although I try to keep my expression passive and not react to her frank assessment of my family, my face refuses to cooperate. My lips droop and my eyes refuse to look anywhere but the floor. I love my family. I enjoy being with them. I appreciate every day that they backed me when I told them what was happening to me. I also find it hard to understand how they decided that taking money from one of the richest families in the world was sufficient justice for what happened to me.
“And don’t get me started on Mr. I’m a Big, Friendly, Teddy Bear out there.” My best friend flicks the lock on my door and plonks down on the floor opposite me. Her expression is deadly serious as she adds, “Seb has a lot of power in the club. Like, too much, if you ask me. I swear everything your dad mentioned started with, ‘Seb said’ or ‘Seb thinks’. It was weird... then the way he just carried you out of our room and into his when they got back from the bar... well, that just straight out pissed me off.”
“I don’t understand how I got so drunk,” I confess. “I can’t remember leaving the bar or getting home. The last memory I have is Seb handing me a beer after we came back in from the alley, then you were waking me up naked in his bed this morning.”
Glancing at the locked door, I pause to find the right words to explain what happened after she left us alone this morning. Bella follows my gaze, then looks back at me with fierce eyes. “I think your drink was spiked. I mean, you were fine when I walked you in from the alley. Did you take something from that dude you were talking to?”
“No.” I shake my head furiously. A strange protectiveness wells in my chest when Bella mentions Spenser. “It wasn’t him.”
“O-kay,” her voice is filled with doubt. “If it wasn’t him, then I think you need to look at Seb or whoever served him because I’m telling you... you went downhill fast. One minute, you were telling me that you needed air out the front, but I had to lie to Seb about you being in the bathroom, then the next second, your eyes rolled back in your head, and I barely had time to catch you before you hit the floor. The entire scene confused me. I’ve never seen you like that, and I basically had to threaten Seb for permission to take you home by myself. He wanted to tie you to him on the back of his bike. Thank fuck, Chester has a brain in his head and put the kibosh on that stupidity.”
The feeling that someone is walking over my grave shudders its way through my body and I shiver. I drag in a deep breath to steady myself. Everything Bella is saying matches my own thoughts. It also fills in some of the blank spots in my mind. Her description also makes me feel foolish for not voicing my doubts over to Seb’s version of events. I never questioned him. I didn’t say no outright when he started to take it too far. How dumb am I? My behavior since yesterday has been beyond amateur. If my Lieutenant could see me now, he’d recommend Chelsea goddamn Vertes for my transfer to SVD, and she didn’t even apply.
Swallowing down my growing pity party, I attempt to look at the situation rationally.
One scenario sticks out at me as the most plausible.
“What if it was Seb?” I whisper. Bella’s deep brown eyes widen. She gathers her long hair into her hands and haphazardly twists it into a knot at her nape. “I think he might have raped me this morning. He definitely lied to me, so even if I didn’t really say no, that still means that anything that happened after was under false pretenses—”
“What the fuck! He might’ve raped you? You’ve gotta be kidding me with this shit?” Bella exclaims, cutting me off. Standing, she stomps toward the bedroom door. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
I scramble after her and catching her by the wrist, I tug her to a stop. “Please, Bella. Stop. I said think... I’m not sure. You can’t kill him for something that was kinda my fault, anyway.”
When she whirls back to face me, I see that she’s blinking back tears. I open my arms and we hug hard. In my ear, she murmurs, “Tell me what happened. Don’t forget a thing.”
Once we’ve both calmed down, I lead her over to my bed. We sit, side by side, and I’m quiet for a moment as I try to find the right words. Everything I mull over in my head sounds ridiculous, so I decide to just
go with the truth as I see it.
“He said that Ollie was helping him with a plan to get me back. He said that we slept together after the alley. He,” I stop and inhale loudly, then exhale through my nose once my lungs are burning. “He said... all the right things. All the things I wanted him to say two years ago. I was confused. My mind wasn’t working properly, and when I tried to grab hold of the thoughts in my head, I couldn’t grasp them properly. It was like my brain was filled with blank pages and I couldn’t tell if he was lying or exaggerating because most of the things he said made sense.”
“So what?” Bella butts in. I drop my gaze to my lap and twist my fingers together. “It’s not like you’ve never heard him whisper sweet nothing’s before. The man is, by definition, known to be full of shit.”
“I know!” Warmth flares in my cheeks. “And that’s why your comment about my drink being spiked shocked me so much. I should’ve realized why I felt the way I did—an unwilling kind of lust for him that didn’t match where my muddled head was at then. I’ve learned all about the side effects of date rape drugs, yet it never even crossed my mind this morning.”
“What happened after I left?” My best friend chucks me under the chin, tilting my head until I meet her eyes. “I can see his finger marks on your neck.”
“You know what I like,” I mutter as my face heats to an inferno.
“Yeah,” she snorts. I look up again when she touches my throat. “And this shit, ain’t it. There’s a difference between rough play and force. The red bite marks you had last night were fun, and these bruises are abuse.”
“What am I going to do? I don’t want to hurt him. He’s confused and that’s my fault.”
“Bullshit. You know better than that... you’ve been trained to see through these excuses,” Bella snaps. My face flames with an atomic level of embarrassment when she drives her point home. “If a young girl came to you with this scenario after you join the SVD, are you going to tell her that the man who assaulted her is confused and that what happened is her fault?”
“No. Of course not.”
My best friend eyes me with a hard gaze. I blink back the liquid shame that tries to spill from my eyes. “He’s not confused, he’s taking advantage. This is just like before... it’s Seb’s way or no way. Don’t fall for that crap again, Poppy.”
“I don’t understand why he would do this. He’s not a monster.”
“That was true. It might not be anymore,” she admonishes. “Time has a way of changing people. It’s also known to dull your memory and make you forget why things didn’t work out in the first place. Being dumped back into your old life can cause all the red flags you’ve forgotten to start flapping in the wind again.”
Lifting my eyebrows, I scoff, “Tell me about it.”
“This trip to New Haven was a shit fight from the start and the whole thing has left my Spidey-senses tingling,” Bella proclaims. Holding up her hand, she ticks her forthcoming points off, a finger at a time. “The MC is hiding something from you and Violet, there’s the ‘let’s keep Ollie’s death a secret’ thing, and now Seb is acting like a bigger creep than usual. If my son was murdered, I wouldn’t be more worried about making some public announcement and rallying the other chapters to go to war... some motherfucker would be dead already. And if you had been killed, I wouldn’t be worried about getting back with my ex like Seb is. He’s more worried about locking you down than he is about the death of his closest friend. So yeah, I’m gonna call shenanigans on the whole thing... starting with how Ollie died.”
“Holy crap, really?” Bella nods in response to my mostly rhetorical question. “Every time I entered a room, they stopped talking. I thought it was just me... because they were talking about Harrison. Do you think my mom and dad are part of it?”
Before she can answer, someone rattles my doorknob. I turn to Bella and plead, “Please, promise me you won’t say anything to anyone. I need time to think—”
“Flower girl,” Seb yells indignantly from the other side of the door. “Why’s this door locked?”
When my best friend mutters what sounds like a death threat under her breath, I urgently declare, “Let’s humor him for the time being. We don’t know what’s—”
The sound of wood splintering invades the room. Me and Bella jump to our feet and rush out of the way as my door explodes inward then falls to the ground. A large figure that is quickly identified as Seb barges toward us in a cloud of wood chips and splintered wood. He curses, brushing paint chips and dust off him.
“What the fuck?” Bella shouts as we both assume a defensive stance. “Seriously, Seb? I should kick your ass.”
Instead of replying to Bella, Seb turns his attention to me. A possessive sheen darkens his usually jovial gaze. This look is the same as the one that flooded his face in bed this morning. It instantly makes my mouth run dry and I have to force myself not to react with anger to him as visceral loathing ripples through me.
“Why was the door locked?” Seb repeats his question in an identical tone to the one he used before he tore my door off its hinges. “Are you hiding from me?”
“God,” I scoff. Forcing myself to roll my eyes, I work to infuse my voice with humor. “If I was, it wasn’t successful.” Pointing at the remnants of my door, I tilt my head to the side and raise my eyebrows. “I hope you plan to pay for that?”
He has the good grace to look a little sheepish. “I guess I’m a little on edge with all that’s happening.”
“I think you should attempt to explain exactly what’s going on.” My comment is snarky, and I know it’s probably not the right way to handle him if I want to keep him my side, but my nerves are frayed. “If I wasn’t already worried that you were keeping things from me back in New Haven, your overreaction has definitely grabbed my attention.”
“It’s nothing,” Seb ventures. Bella snorts. He glares at her, his gaze softening when he looks back in my direction. “Honestly. Isn’t Ollie being killed enough of a reason to exercise caution?”
There is no way I can answer his absurd question without giving away my disdain for him, so I concentrate on grabbing a kinda clean shirt and stepping around him. Bella follows me down the hallway to the bathroom we share with Seb bringing up the rear.
“Do you mind?” Bella asks when it looks like he might enter the bathroom with us. “We need to get ready for work.”
“Sure thing.” As we enter together, I spot Seb observing us with mistrust on his face. His hands are jammed on his hips and he doesn’t look happy to be separated from me. “Be quick, flower girl.”
Nodding, I slam the door shut. I flip on the shower, then beckon Bella over to the far side of the room.
“I think you’re right.”
She grunts. “I know I’m right.”
Together we strip down, then hurry to dress in the work clothes we’ve brought with us. Usually, we’d dress at the precinct, however, the only excuse that allowed us to be alone was saying that we needed to get naked. Seb still tried to veto it, but I persisted.
Good grief, my stupidity over the past four days is unbelievable.
How can one person—a detective, no less—miss so many red flags?
“What am I going to do?”
“Call Renee,” Bella advises. I incline my head, a little annoyed that I didn’t think of contacting my old CO myself. “She’ll be able to provide a clear insight into Harrison Greaves and if the Samaritan’s Soldiers have been going up against the Coalition in New Haven or wherever the fuck your mom says they got to Ollie.”
Wracking my brains, I frown. “You know what? Mom never gave me any specifics. That’s weird as hell... normally my family would be pressuring me to look into things for them if they didn’t have the details. If she knew, then she’d be beating me over the head with it as justification for rallying the chapters to retaliate.”
“Oh, man.” Bella buttons up her lilac work shirt and starts applying her lipstick. I can hear the cogs in her brain turning
as I swipe my mascara wand through my eyelashes and brush my hair down. Once we’re as put together as we’re going to get, we perch on the edge of the bathtub and stare at the tiled wall opposite us. “I hope Mama Tennyson hasn’t gone to the dark side. That’d fully fuck up my belief in her theory about the difference between right and wrong being shades of gray rather than black and white.”
“She wouldn’t...” I attempt to defend my mother but trail off when the words taste hollow. “Dad’s always stopped her taking it too far.”
We lapse into silence. So many things aren’t adding up and I can see that it’s eating away at Bella as much as it’s nagging at me. On top of my niggling worry that my family is in over their head and won’t admit it, I’m also struck by the lies they’re telling me. I’m used to being on the outside. I chose that life when I decided to join the force, and we’ve had our fair share of disagreements since then, but I’ve never felt ostracized like this before.
“Speak to Renee,” Bella breaks the quiet to reiterate her previous point. Grabbing my hand, she squeezes it. I return her pressure. “I’m going to see if I can get anything out of Chester. He asked me to ring him after work, so I’m going to use it to my advantage.”
“What’s up with you and my brother?” I ask, almost absentmindedly, as I roll up my sleeve and reach into the shower recess to turn off the water we’ve been using to conceal our conversation. “You looked pretty cozy at the bar.”
Bella grins in a way that lights up her entire face. “I like him. He seems to like me. But the other night was about commiserating over Ollie. Who knows where it’ll go? Right now, I’m not worried about what my vagina needs... I’m concerned that we’re either being played by your family or kept in the dark by them, and I don’t like either scenario.”
For my best friend, her explanation about Chester is pretty close to a bout of verbal diarrhea. She’s intensely private like me. It’s one of the things that initially drew us together. And, ever since we met—way back on our first day at the Academy—Bella has been cagey about men. Bearing all the hallmarks of a woman who was burned hard by love, I’ve never pressed her for an explanation because I know how much it sucks to be pushed when you don’t want to speak. For her to even answer me about Chester, tells me she’s put some serious thought into him.
