She didn’t want me to explode.
But she always knew it was going to happen no matter what.
“What happened then, angel?” I asked.
Belle stepped out of my reach.
“He started asking about you. About me. Just weird stuff. He wanted to know if I wanted to see his first tattoo. I said no. He laughed. Then he wanted to know if I wanted to see one of his secret tattoos. And even a piercing that not many people knew about. I said no again. I was sweating. Scared. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, it’s your favorite place to be, Ash. I thought maybe it was him just being him. Rocco being weird and gross. Like Hil is. You know? And then he reached for me. He touched my hand. He told me he wanted to tattoo me. But not with ink. He wanted to give me something special. Because I was beautiful and special. That he could take care of me in ways I never knew existed. He kept touching my hand. I kept pulling it away. And each time I did, he smiled. He laughed. He enjoyed it. He told me anything that happened between me and him would be our secret. He liked it that way. He liked secrets.”
“Motherfucker,” I whispered.
“Ash…” Belle shivered.
I reached for her but she backed away again.
I stood up and curled my hands into fists.
“He inched himself to the edge of the seat. I can hear the leather squeaking in my mind. And he leaned toward me. He put his finger to his lips. Then he leaned even closer to me. My right hand clenched… I told myself… hit him. But I just kind of froze. I wasn’t sure what he was doing. If he was just being goofy. Or flirty. And it’s your favorite place in the world… but when his lips touched me, I-”
“Lips touched you?” I asked.
Belle nodded. “Just for a fraction of a second. He tried to kiss my cheek or neck or whatever. I jumped away, Ash. I swear on my life, I jumped away and ran. I got to the door… and I forgot it was locked. It took me like three seconds to get the door open and then Rocco closed it. He shut the door and he touched my hips. He pulled me against him and said, ‘If you tell Ash, you’ll ruin the only thing he loves besides you…’. And then he let me go and I got out of the room. He left the room a second later and I ran back in to wait for you. I was confused. I was dizzy. I was scared and felt sick and…”
Belle’s teeth chattered.
I didn’t want to try and hug her if she needed space.
So I turned and took one step toward the door and Belle grabbed my arm.
I looked back at her.
I knew what my face must have looked it.
But the look on her face told me a whole other story.
“Ash… please…”
“Belle,” I growled.
“Listen,” she whispered. “Call Them to come back. Leave Mara and Vera here. I know what you’re going to do.”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry, angel. I wish you would have said something sooner.”
“I didn’t know what to do or say. That’s your favorite place.”
“No, it’s not. You’re my favorite place.”
“Can you do one more thing before you leave?” Belle asked.
“Anything for you,” I said.
“Hug me.”
* * *
Hil grabbed my shoulder. “We’ve got your back, bro.”
“Always,” Uly said.
It was almost like the old days.
The three of us together.
Ready to raise some hell.
Except the stakes were higher. Everything was different. This wasn’t some internal bullshit with BFH or HCH… or East vs. West.
This was about Belle.
This was serious.
And we had no idea what we were really walking into.
Rocco wasn’t someone you fucked with. And Tin… he was big and crazy. And if he took Rocco’s side… or he started throwing punches…
And then there was Iggy.
He used to ride with some serious bad biker guys.
If he took Rocco’s side too…
It doesn’t fucking matter.
And it didn’t.
Belle’s heart was worth everything about to happen.
Between this shit and the shit with Liam… and Mac and BC…
I growled as I gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“I can lighten the mood for a second,” Hil said. “I have something to tell you, Ash. Something you’re going to fucking lose your mind over. In a good way though.”
“Not now,” I said.
“Come on, bro,” Hil said. “It’s worth it. It’ll make you smile.”
“We’re not in the mood for any jokes,” Uly said.
“It’s not a joke,” Hil said.
“Shut up,” I growled. “We’re almost there. We’re going in and we’re going for him. No bullshit. No talking. Take him the fuck down in front of everyone.”
“And if others are there to get involved?” Uly asked.
“You’re either in or out,” I said. “I don’t care if I get every bone broken in my body tonight. I’m not letting Belle close her eyes one more time with this on her mind.”
“I’ll cut his lips off,” Hil said.
“I don’t care what anyone does,” I said. “Just give me the first hit.”
“He’s all yours, man,” Uly said.
I parked right out front of Ink-a-tat and we got out of the truck.
I ripped open the door.
“Hey, Ash,” Lark said.
“Where’s Rocco?” I asked.
“He’s in the back…”
I walked toward the wall of beads.
They opened and Hae was there.
“Oh, look at you,” she said. “Whoa, Ash, your energy…”
“No time for that shit,” I said.
Hae jumped out of the way.
I walked to the back of the shop.
Uly and Hil right behind me.
I saw Iggy and Kyan talking over a picture.
They looked at me.
“Where’s Rocco?” I asked.
Kyan nodded to Shuffle’s room.
“You look pissed, kid,” Iggy said.
I ignored Iggy and kicked open Shuffle’s door.
Shuffle sat on a stool with Rocco standing next to him.
Both were looking at something.
Rocco was in his nice pants and shirt.
Sleeves rolled up, showing off his tattoos.
He unbuttoned the sleeves on his shirt and slowly rolled them up.
Belle’s story rang through my head again.
“Motherfucker,” I said.
Rocco turned his head.
And the second he saw me and saw the look on my face, his nostril flared.
He knew he was caught.
And he knew I was coming right for him.
I ran as fast as I could.
I jumped up into the air and swung my right fist with all the force I could find.
“Holy fuck!” Shuffle yelled as my knuckles smashed into the side of Rocco’s face.
His head snapped to the side and the rest of my body collided into his.
We both fell into the wall.
He pushed me away and I swung again, hitting him a second time.
“What the fuck, Ash?” Shuffle yelled.
I grabbed Rocco by his throat and pushed him against the wall.
He punched me in the stomach and I lost my breath for a few seconds.
I let him go and hated myself for it.
He tried to swing at me but Hil was there.
Hil hit Rocco clear across the face, making his knees give out a little.
Rocco fell toward me and I jumped back.
Uly came forward and slammed his knee into Rocco’s face.
That left Rocco grabbing for the counter, wiping it clean of all of Shuffle’s supplies.
I grabbed the back of Rocco’s head and slammed his head into the counter.
Shuffle wrapped his arms around me and I elbowed him.
Then came Kyan, Iggy, and Ale
.
It turned into a war in the little room.
Lark and Hae were there too, covering their mouths.
I fought to get away to get another shot at Rocco.
That meant hitting Kyan in the nose.
His eyes watered up and I broke free.
I got to Rocco again and unleashed punch after punch to his face. I had no idea if he was knocked out, dead, or just taking the beating because he knew he earned it.
Iggy wrapped his arm around my neck and pulled me back.
“You fucking touch me, kid, and I’ll have you gutted and left on the side of the road like roadkill to be picked apart by the buzzards,” his growling voice said.
“He touched Belle,” I managed to say before Iggy applied more pressure to my throat, cutting off my air.
“He what?” Iggy asked.
I nodded.
Iggy let me go.
That’s when I saw Tin.
Stepping into the room.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” Kyan said.
“Him too?” Hil asked me, nodding to Tin.
“No,” I said. “Just Rocco.”
“Get the fuck out of here, Ash,” Tin said. “Take your boys with you. You better have a good reason for this…”
“He knows what he did,” I said.
Rocco was moving on the floor.
I spat at him.
Then Uly and Hil did the same.
Tin hurried forward and grabbed Hil.
“I’ll rip your fucking head off,” Tin said.
“I’ll still be alive and swinging at you, man,” Hil said.
“Get out of here,” Tin ordered.
I nodded to Uly and he pushed Hil out of the room.
“Just ask Rocco what he did,” I said. “See if he’s going to tell the truth. If not, I’ll be back again.”
“Out!” Iggy yelled to me.
As I passed through the doorway, I looked at Hae and she was crying.
“Sorry,” I whispered to her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Hae grabbed my hand and squeezed it once.
Then she let it go and turned away.
I met up with Uly and Hil at the front of the shop.
Hil kicked the door open and Uly went out first.
He turned and put his fist out for me to hit.
I hit his fist.
Hil grabbed my shoulder. “It doesn’t fix it, bro, but at least the truth is known.”
“Fucking right,” I said.
“Now you’ve got to face one more thing.”
“Meaning?”
“Things aren’t good between our parents right now…”
Chapter 18
My father sat in a large leather chair in one of his offices in the mansion. This one was on the first floor. And it smelled like a lawyer’s office. A deep smell of clean, leather, and expensive paper. The glow of his laptop hit his face. He reached for a bottle of scotch, skipping the glass on his desk with a decent sip still left inside.
He didn’t see me at first.
Not until he looked down to his phone.
His eyes made a sudden move and it was like time stopped.
“Here to start a fight?”
“No,” I said. “How bad is it?”
“We’re fucked.”
“Fucked?”
“Fucked,” my father said. He stood up and grabbed his phone. “This was a clear message. Those motherfuckers. I know exactly who it was and why.”
“Let me guess. Someone you dicked over at some point?”
“It’s business, Ashby.”
“Is it?”
“There was a small tech startup I got wind of five years ago,” my father said. He slowly put his hands into his pockets and walked around to the front of his desk. “It was all kinds of fancy coding shit and stuff. I didn’t understand a fucking word of what they did. But they made a lot of money.”
“Money,” I said. “So what did you do?”
“I helped them find funding,” my father said. “I made sure they were put on the right path to launch with success. They were going to fucking explode. But then I had to bury them.”
I nodded. “What does that mean?”
“It means business, Ashby. Business. The CFO was a little cocky fuck. He refused to listen to me. No matter the work I did, he always had a problem with it. And when I wanted to be cut into the shares, he laughed in my face. He wanted to compare lives. I was worth more than him. I didn’t give a shit who he was.”
“And you couldn’t let it go,” I said. “Because if someone tells Samson Rivers that the sky is blue and Samson Rivers thinks it’s green, he will fight to the death to prove his point.”
“Is that a problem?” my father asked.
“It is when the sky is blue,” I said.
“Fuck the sky,” he said. “Fuck everything.”
“Is that how you feel about your wife too now?”
“Stay the fuck out of my marriage, Ashby,” he said.
“I thought Vanessa meant everything to you?”
“Do you think I want this guy walking free?” he asked. “I’ve exhausted everything I can here to put him back away. But there’s nothing I can do. He’s free. He’ll be free for the rest of his life, unless he fucks up again. So that’s that.”
“Yet you can’t let it go,” I said. “You’re going to ruin your life over it.”
“I’m trying to make it right. To you. And your mother.”
“She’s not here,” I said.
My father pushed from his desk and walked toward me.
I nodded. “Yeah, come on…”
“We weren’t perfect, but we were good together,” he said to me. “And Vanessa took that emptiness away. And now both have collided. I didn’t think it would happen.”
He looked ready to cry.
“What happened with that company?” I asked.
“I forced the CFO out,” my father said. “Took his position. Wanted to take the company public, cash in my shares, and walk away. I found out the CFO had some dirt on the CEO. So I said fuck it and just buried the company. I made sure they lost their funding and they bottomed out before they could go public. Ended up shutting down. And that was that.”
“But it wasn’t,” I said. “Let me guess. They had something to do with this, right? Someone who knew someone that owed someone a favor…”
“Close,” my father said. “Liam was up for parole soon. I always have the dates marked down. My guys know when to tell me what’s going on with that guy. But they snuck something through. An early release thing because of some funding issues. It’s all paperwork and bullshit. But it happened fast. And Liam is out. And that’s that.”
“You’re going to sit in here for how long then? Just get drunk and act like a dick to your wife, right?”
My father swung.
I needed him to swing.
A punch from Samson Rivers was different than a punch from Ashby Rivers.
It rocked my jaw for a second but it wasn’t anything a deep breath couldn’t fix.
“Feel better?” I asked.
“Jesus Christ, Ashby,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know…”
I rubbed my jaw and kept my distance. “That’s it then. Sit here and waste away. You let this happen. You lied to me about it too. You told me he was put away for the rest of his life.”
“I already told you…”
“I don’t care what you told me,” I said. “And if you fuck this up with Vanessa then I’ll hate you for the rest of my life. I’ll never talk to you again.”
“Since when do you give a damn about my marriage to Vanessa?”
“What the fuck do you think Hil and I have been doing?” I asked. “We’ve figured out how to be close. For you two. I consider Hil my brother. And we agreed a long time ago to keep things as peaceful as we can because of the way you and Vanessa were together. If you ruin that… you’re as dead as my mother is to me.”
My f
ather blubbered and grabbed for a chair.
His knees bent and he reached for me.
I backed away even more, moving slowly to the door.
The anger moved through me like a force.
I left my father in his office and I got the hell out of the mansion.
I drove down to my place and slowed when I saw the house and everyone there.
Belle was safe. And happy.
Maybe happy.
We hadn’t talked about what happened with Rocco yet. What I had done. And what the fallout was going to be with the tattoo shop. I already had that covered in my mind.
Fuck Ink-a-Tat. First off, it was the worst name I’ve ever heard for a fucking tattoo shop ever. Second, I’m starting my own shop. I have the money and the skill. And anyone who believes and doesn’t like what Rocco did could come to my shop to work.
I watched as Hil flicked his cigarette away and turned around.
He grabbed for the back of his jeans.
Uly jumped for Hil. He grabbed him by the back of his jeans and threw him off the porch.
Mara and Belle started to laugh.
Vera chased after Hil.
Hil landed on his feet and turned, racing back up the steps after Uly.
They tangled up together, playfully, before everything calmed down again.
Mara said something to Belle and she laughed.
I loved her laugh.
I loved her.
But I had something else to do tonight.
It made sense.
It was going to finish everything up.
At the end of it all, I wanted it to be Belle and I together.
With nothing else holding us back.
But if that couldn’t happen… at least I knew she had the rest of Them. And Mara and Vera.
No matter what, I’d never stop loving her though.
* * *
The knife in my hand didn’t even shake.
Liam’s eyes were wide as he jumped in the chair, making it scratch on the old, wooden floor. He got himself into a little bit of a rhythm too. Inching back again and again, but then he hit the end of an area rug. The chair made a small bump and when Liam tried to move again, he tipped the chair over.
He and the chair hit with a hard thud.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked.
Liam looked up at me. He nodded.
“You deserve this, right?”
Liam just blinked.
ASH: a bay falls high novel Page 17
