Duke broke through my inner thoughts, his voice harsh and his face set in a scowl. “Abso-fuckin’-lutely not. She’s not an enemy, and we aren’t going to question her like one.”
I slammed my hands down on the table. “We don’t know that! We need to know who she really is and why she’s here. I don’t trust her!”
Duke heaved a deep sigh, suddenly looking exhausted. “We do need answers, but I don’t trust you to get them from her.”The fuck?
“You don’t trust me?” I’d officially joined the family business as soon as I graduated from high school. I’d followed every order, been his right hand, earned my spot as VP, and my own fucking father, my prez, didn’t trust me? I’d lived and bled for Los Cuervos and to have my loyalty questioned felt like a punch to the gut.
Duke held his hands up and tried to backtrack. “I trust you with this club, son. But when it comes to this girl…you’re not thinking clearly. You need to take a step back. Let Bones handle her. She likes him, and he knows how to interpret her nonsense.”
Bones nodded to Duke.“I’ll talk to her tomorrow, try to see if I can get her to open up. Honestly, it might be a non-issue. Her van is almost ready. She may choose to leave on her own and take any hypothetical drama with the bratva with her. Remember, Priest, she never asked to be here. We were the ones who locked her in the confessional. We were the ones who convinced her to stay for a while. All she’s ever wanted was to be on her way.”
“Right,” I scoffed, “because a beautiful woman has never manipulated a man to think her plan was his idea all along.”
“It’s interesting,” Duke said over his shoulder as he went to leave the office, “I didn’t take you for the kind of man who was so easily manipulated by a pretty girl, son.”
“That’s not what I—” I never got the chance to explain it was Bones and Duke who had been taken in by the little snake because Duke was already gone and on his way back to bed.
“Don’t worry, brother. I’ll talk to her tomorrow. If she doesn’t open up or wants to get her van and hit the road, then she’ll be gone, and you can finally stop pretending you only watch her because you’re suspicious.”
I bit back indignantly, “Thatiswhy—”
“Uh-uh, honesty between us,amigo. That’s not why you watch her like you do.”
Huffing out an irritated sigh, I counted to ten and tried to calmly explain. “I watch her because there’s just something about her. I can’t stop myself when she’s in the room. My gut lurches. It has to be because something is wrong with her. We can’t trust her.”
“Yeah.” Bones snickered. “There’s no other possible reason for you to react so strongly. It couldn’t be because you want her.” Now I knew he was fucking with me.
“Psh, shut up, man. Crazy isn’t my type.” Bones tried to smother a laugh, but he wasn’t very successful.
“Right. I’ll remind you of that the next time you’re eye-fucking her when she does squats in the gym.” He playfully shoved my shoulder as I went to pass him and leave the office.
“I said crazy wasn’t my type, not that I was dead. Any straight man would watch that psycho bitch doing squats. I’m only human.”
We walked into the main room of the clubhouse, where Bones left me as he headed off to bed. When he took over the management of Rusty’s Garage, I thought maybe he’d get an apartment in town, but he wanted to stay here. A lot of the single guys lived here, and all of the married brothers and old-timers lived in single-family homes on the compound or in town. Lennon moved into the clubhouse a year ago because it was the farthest Sticks would allow her to go when she wanted to move out oftheir home. Just knowing everyone was upstairs peacefully sleeping made me feel claustrophobic. I walked out on the porch and down the steps into the night air. I felt too wound up to go to bed, so I lit a cigarette and smoked it while I gazed at the stars. Living surrounded by the club all the time could leave me feeling crowded, like I could never get a peaceful moment to myself. This small slice of solitude at two a.m. was as rare as it was sublime. I inhaled another lungful of poison, savoring the burn.
Ellis always hated it when I smoked. When she was in high school, she’d printed out pictures of cancerous lungs and taped them to the handlebars of my bike every day for two weeks. I’d quit because she’d been right but also because I wanted her to stop nagging me. You’d have thought I’d lassoed the moon based on Ellis’s response. She’d been so proud of me for kicking the habit. After she’d gone missing, I’d started back up again. Now I didn’t care if it killed me because I knew I deserved it. There were faster ways to end it if that was what you were after. At least this way, I’d suffer for a long, long time before the cigs did me in.
I finished my smoke and decided to head over to Ellis’s spot for a bit before I headed to bed. I was a few yards away when I saw that I wasn’t as alone as I’d first thought.Shewas sitting in Ellis’s spot, hugging her legs with her face tipped up to the moon. She murmured quietly to herself, but I wasn’t close enough to make out her words. The swell of agitation I usually felt whenever I laid eyes on her was quickly replaced by the realization that I had been presented with a rare opportunity.
It was late, no one else was around, and everyone should be in bed by now. No one would see if I were to take her down to the confessional or the discount dungeon, as Indigo said. Maybe without interference from anyone else, I could get her to crack and finally give me some information on who she was. Duke and Bones would be livid when they found out, but I bet the information I’d gather would help smooth my way to forgiveness.
I slowly crept forward, doing my best to be as silent as possible. The gravel crunching beneath my boots must have alerted her to my presence. She looked over her shoulder from where she sat on the boulder with her knees hugged to her chest. She looked so small likethis, vulnerable in a way I’d never seen her. Used to my silent treatment and cold shoulder, she turned back to gaze at the sky. Resting her cheek on her bent knees, she turned her eyes up to the cold and distant moon…if I squinted my eyes, I could almost be Ellis perched in her thinkin’ spot, daydreaming about whatever girls thought about when they got all quiet and wistful.
The urge to pretend, for just a minute, that she was still here doing girly shit like gaze at the moon and not rotting away in a hole in the ground—it was intense. Even if she hated me and never forgave me for the things I said, I’d be the happiest man on earth just knowing that she was alive and okay and looking at the same night sky I was. I knew in my heart, though, the pain that would flood into my chest when the spell broke and it was not my sister before me…would wreck me all over again.
Steeling my resolve, I shook my hands out and struck before she knew what was happening. Coming up from behind her, I put one arm around her neck and the other on the back of her head to control her movements. She gasped my name and started to struggle, but as I applied pressure to the sides of her neck, her struggle weakened in intensity. It took a minute or two until she passed out. I gently lifted her into a bridal-style hold and started the walk over to the confessional.
Cricket monitored the security feed for our club, but I knew for a fact he was asleep. In the morning, when they realized she was not in her room, his office was the first place they’d look, so I did my best to stay in the blind spots. The confessional had a camera, but the feed was usually only monitored when we had a prisoner. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t think to check here right away. I’d need to work fast, though, and hope that whatever information I got from her was good enough to justify breaking Duke’s express order not to take her confession. Looking down at her peaceful face—sooty lashes sweeping over her cheeks and pink lips slightly parted—I almost regret what I’d have to do to get the answers I needed. Almost.
Indigo
Consciousness slammed into me rapidly. I went from blissfully unaware to awake in a blink of my blurry eyes. I scanned the room in dread, praying Uncle Roark hadn’t found me. My vision quickly zeroed in on the lone figure standing in front of me, leaning against the cellar wall. My breath came out in quick pants, and I was shivering. Oh, I was also strapped to a chair, one of my least favorite ways to wake up. I took stock of my situation and used my Sith training to quiet my mind and focus. It was not him. “ThankBob,”I said under my breath. Priest stood in front of me smoking a cigarette and looking stern.
“Secondhand smoke kills, you know,” I muttered as I rolled my neck. Sleeping strapped to a chair sucked the big one. It always gave me a terrible crick in my neck when Uncle Roark kept me tied or chained up in the basement.
Priest chuckles darkly as he exhaled in my direction and crushed the butt of his cigarette under his boot. “You don’t say. Tell me,” he said, “why do you thank Bob and not God? I’ve heard you say it a few times now, and it makes no sense.”
“Erm,” I replied, fidgeting a bit in my binds, “well, it’s a little complicated.”
