Where Souls Spoil (61 page)

Ball buster. She’s a fucking ballbuster, but I’d be lost without her. Layla hasn’t spent more than a night under this roof in the last five years and no more than a few months in the last ten. Always in and out of rehab and then out drifting. I’d be fucked if my mom wasn’t here to do all the domestic shit with Chey. A guy like me has to go when he needs to and not worry about finding a babysitter.

“Ruby’s ex wants his daughter back, and he’s got his men coming to get her. He’s not too pleased that we turned his house into Swiss cheese, and he’s probably pretty ticked off that we got his son now, too, and took down a few of his men in the process. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and I don’t know how many men he’s got coming out here. All I know is that shit is not safe. If I had the manpower to cover you, I’d send you and Chey down south to stay until it all gets sorted out, but I don’t. So I need you to do as you’re told so you don’t put yourself or anyone else in any more danger than you’re already in.”

Like the old hand that she is, my mother agrees and listens intently as I spell it out for her. No going out alone. No answering the door for anyone. No talking to or about anyone involved with this shit over the phone or outside of this house. The list is extensive, and by the time I get to the end, her eyes are glazing over. It’s not like we haven’t been through this before. It’s just that this time it’s not some petty beef about territory and clientele. This time it’s about revenge and family loyalty—two things that will always stir up dust in ways that nothing else can.

A floorboard creaks from the hallway. In a split second, I have my gun out and pointed at the noise. My mother moves behind me and curls into my back. There’s another creak and then an earth-shattering scream. Shit. Holly.

With everything going on, I’d totally forgotten that Holly would be in the house. I move in to find her sliding down the wall in the hallway. Her hands are up in front of her, waving me away. They shake just slightly in their movements. The sliding glass door rolls open and slams against the stopper, creating another commotion. From my side, Jeremy rushes into the room with a gun I didn’t know he had pointing out in front of him. With his other hand, he’s holding Chey behind him, blocking her. He’s shielding my little girl, and while his head is still on the chopping block, I think I’ll let him live for now.

“It’s okay,” my mother says, raising her hands to Jeremy and Chey. “We just scared Holly, that’s all.” Baby Boy lowers his gun and places it in the waistband of his jeans. Fucking kid didn’t even put the safety on first. Either that or he didn’t unlock the safety before he stormed in here.

“Who the fuck gave you a gun?” I ask. When we let Jeremy prospect at seventeen, he didn’t know how to drive a car, much less ride a Harley. He’s also still in high school—for now—and has zero experience handling a gun. The day he received his vest, he also received one of my old bikes to learn on. He’s been riding for a few months now and is getting pretty good at it. Still, we agreed no guns until after he turned eighteen.

“Trigger,” he says. I should have fucking known. Ryan got the name Trigger because back when he was learning to shoot, he’d shoot anything that moved. Unfortunately for his grandfather, Rage—a retired club member—Ryan’s first real shot was at the old man’s foot.

I motion for him to hand me the gun then check the safety. Sure enough, the safety isn’t on. I click it on and shake my head. “You’re gonna blow your fucking dick off.” I cast Chey a quick look to see that her eyes are on Jeremy. She’s got this look on her face like she thinks he just saved Tokyo from Godzilla or some other fucking amazing thing like that. I turn the safety back off and hand the gun over. “On second thought, go ahead and blow it off.”

When I turn back around, Holly is standing and rubbing her eyes. She looks from me to my mother to Jeremy and Cheyenne and then back to me. “I can’t handle having one more person pointing a gun at me today,” she says and blows out a shaky breath.

“What do you mean,” Chey asks. “Did that man at school have a gun?” Her voice rises with every word, and she’s growing panicked as the seconds pass. I don’t like to lie to my kid, but I can’t bring myself to tell her that all mobsters carry guns. The world hasn’t jaded her yet. She stills sees the good in people, and I don’t want to take that away from her. The rest of the world will do that for me soon enough. I don’t miss the sly admission from Holly though. She didn’t tell me the bastard pulled a gun on her earlier. We’ll have to talk about that, just not where Chey can hear.

Chapter 14

Grady

ALL IT TAKES
is my mother saying the words ice cream and Chey is wondering off to the kitchen. I don’t miss the way she bites her lip and bats her eyes at Jeremy when she asks him if he wants any. And I definitely don’t fucking miss the way he says he’d like some of her ice cream. That prick isn’t eating anything of hers. He’s eating
my
ice cream. I don’t remind him whose house he’s in only because of the look my mother is giving me. I already know my protectiveness over Chey is, apparently, a little unhealthy. And I’ll work on that one day. Just not today.

“That asshole at the school pulled a gun on you?” I ask Holly. Her hair falls over her shoulders and stops just a few inches down her back. It’s a messy rat’s nest right now, which is sexy as fuck. The doe-eye blinking thing she’s doing, and the stuttering as she tries to get the story out, and the hair… I’m not twelve anymore. I shouldn’t feel like I have to go into a bathroom and rub one out just to have a conversation with a chick.

“He didn’t exactly point it at me, but it was in a holder thing on his hip. He showed it to me,” she says. In a matter of seconds she goes from scatter-brained to annoyed, and she’s scowling at me. “I want to go home.”

I had a feeling she’d get here at some point. She wants to go home, but I’m not sure that’s the best place for her right now. I doubt Mancuso’s guy has anything on her, but I can’t be so sure. He had enough on me to get to Chey, and while he didn’t actually hurt either Chey or Holly—and he certainly could have if he wanted to—it fucks me up to think about either of them out on their own. The guy’s clearly got some resources, and until I know what they are, I don’t know that I’m good with letting Holly leave.

Wyatt suggested I let her go home and have one of the guys sit on her, but I don’t think we have enough resources for that. As it is, we’re stretched to the limit. We got guys watching the roads in and out of here during high traffic times, and we got guys watching Alex at Jim and Ruby’s. We had ten patched members, but that was before. Now we’re down to nine. I can’t see pulling anyone off of Alex. If I let Holly walk, then she’s going unprotected. And I still don’t know if I can trust her to keep her mouth shut.

“Follow me,” I say and turn around. When no movement sounds behind me, I pause and turn back to find that she’s standing in the same place with her lips pursed and her arms folded over her chest. Out of all the shit I could do to this woman—shit so depraved that she probably can’t even fathom it—and how goddamn patient I’ve been, she still doesn’t trust me.

“Fine,” I say. I let my feet carry me away from the kitchen and toward the far side of the house past the guest room. It’s not until I’m already in the garage that I hear her footsteps. When she appears in the doorway, it’s just her head and hands as she grips the frame and peeks around. Layla doesn’t enter rooms like that. She just kind of floats in. Always has. Elle doesn’t just enter a room. She fucking owns it. But not Holly. She’s not a part of my world, and I try to remind myself of that for the fiftieth time. I can’t expect her to know how shit goes when she’s never been a part of anything like this.

Ignoring her, I tag a couple of beers from the aging refrigerator in the corner near my bench saw and crack them open. I give her a brief glance over my shoulder and head over to the mess that takes up an entire car bay. Set atop a work blanket, I have most of the parts of the 1972 Shovelhead that I’ve been working on for the last few months. It’s a slow project, but one day I’ll get her upright and racing. Right now she looks like nothing more than a pile of crap—all dirty and scratched up—but she’s going to be a beauty when I’m done with her.

Taking a couple swigs of my beer, and setting the other one on the wooden chair beside me, I sit myself on the floor and get to cleaning the old oil out of some of the smaller parts. I hate cleaning this shit up, but the prospects never do it right. I keep telling them that to make something work well, you have to take care of it, and when you’re building a bike that means making sure her parts are in the best condition possible. But they’re all young and impatient and they have yet to learn how to give care to do something right.

“What are we doing in here?” Holly asks from behind me. I can’t tell where she is in the room, and that puts me on edge. I should be able to track her movements. Having spent years honing my senses, I should be capable of following the subtle hints that tells me where she’s gone and when she goes. Little things like the scent of her perfume drifting past me, the quiet little murmurs of clothing as pieces brush against each other, and the careful pitter patter of her feet against the cool concrete floor. But her voice feels so close and yet so far at the same time. It’s like she’s closing in on me and dulling my senses.

“Building a bike,” I say then clear my throat to rid my voice of its hoarseness. “And having a beer.” I clear my throat again, but still, it sounds so gravelly and unnerved even to my own ears. What the hell is wrong with me?

“I don’t drink beer,” she says. Her voice is closing in now, and her jean-clad thighs swish as she approaches. It’s the wrong visual—now I have the image of Holly, spread bare and tossed over the open tail gate of the bed of my truck that takes up the second bay of the garage. I’ve never been all that patient, and I’ve always struggled with being told no. Once I want something, I have a hell of a time not having it. And the more time I spend with this woman, the more I want her, and the less I’m willing to accept that she won’t let me have her. Until I can see for myself, her thighs will haunt me.

But more importantly, who the hell doesn’t drink beer?

“Why’s that?” I ask, opting out of bullshitting with her and just being direct.

“I just don’t like it,” she says, her voice even nearer now. She sounds so serious with her words not so much clipped as they are decided.

“Wine?” I ask. My mother keeps wine on-hand with the excuse that Chey and I are too much of a handful not to imbibe once in a while. Holly shakes her head no.

“I don’t drink,” she says in a small voice.

When I hit Gonzales up for a profile on her, she practically shit her pants. Didn’t want to give it up, and didn’t want to even look into her. Miss Holly Mercer is the favorite niece of Harry Mercer, a half-genius sergeant for the Fort Bragg P.D., who happens to be Angel Gonzales’s supervising officer. Angel’s done a lot of shit for the club over the years, and she’s never complained about it, but this favor cost me more than I’d like to admit.

Despite the cost, when Gonzales got me the intel I needed on Holly, it told me everything from her GPA upon graduation from high school—3.1 average—to her brief stint at Humboldt State, her subsequent departure, and then her relocation to San Francisco. Somehow Gonzales even managed to find out innocuous things like Holly’s preference for vanilla over chocolate and her fear of butterflies. I can’t even process what the butterfly thing is about, but every little piece of information in that report did more than just give me a snapshot of who I’m dealing with. It told me a story of a woman who is neither a goody two shoes nor a hard ass. In the short time I’ve known her, she’s shown herself to be neither fearful nor particularly brave. By now I’d normally know everything I need to about a person of interest, but with Holly, the more I know the more I realize I don’t know. Like how she apparently doesn’t like to drink—at all.

“That a court-ordered deal?” I ask. She comes around and sits down with her legs crossed beside me. Her proximity practically suffocates me. She’s all soap and sweet smells. Not over-powering like my mother and Chey, but just right. Inviting. It’s a welcome change from all the body odor and oil and cigarette smells I get from my brothers. It serves as one more reminder that even an asshole like me could use a little sweet in his life.

She looks down at the fuel line insulator and pile of bolts and washers I have set aside to build the carburetor. Horror fills my gut as she reaches out and picks up a bolt and a washer. It’s not the end of the world, but I like to lay out my work area with all clean parts before I get started.

“I asked you a question.”

“And I didn’t answer,” she says. She slips the washer over the bolt and watches as it slides down catches on the head. She’s got a quarter-inch bolt with a three-quarter-inch washer that is far too large to fit properly.

“There a reason you won’t cooperate?” I ask, set down the part I’m holding, and grab my beer. I should be angry with her, flat-out angry that she is being difficult. From the moment she came to in my guest room, she’s been a pain in my ass. I’ve tried to bully her into submission, and it didn’t work. I tried to threaten her, and that didn’t work. She doesn’t lash out, and she doesn’t cower. Gentle didn’t work and neither did mean, so all I have left to work with is being real and hope she responds to that.

“Is there a reason you haven’t asked me what I want?” she says, clutching the bolt and washer in a closed fist. With a shake of her head and a heavy breath, she turns her body toward mine. It’s a simple gesture, the turn of her body, but it’s enough. She’s talking. I can work with that.

“How much do you know about my club?”

“I know enough,” she says. Only, with that kind of answer, it’s clear that she doesn’t.

“I know you don’t like my methods, and you don’t understand our ways, but you need to understand this—what we do as Forsaken is always in the best interest of the club. We’re no different than your Uncle Harry and his boys. I will always protect my brothers.”

“I guess that makes me collateral damage then,” she says, nodding. Her shoulders slump in resignation, and she hunches forward just slightly.

“Yeah,” I say. “I got a job to do, and you’re making shit difficult at a really bad time.”

“I’ll take the money then,” she says without taking her brown eyes off of mine.

“Good,” I say and toss back half of my beer. I should leave it be, but I don’t. It’s that niggling desire to figure her out that forces the next words from my lips. “Why don’t you want it? Someone in your position should be clawing at the chance to get their hands on that kind of money.”

“It’s not worth it,” she says. Her eyes follow my beer as I lift it up and finish it off. When I set the empty bottle on the concrete, she keeps her eyes glued to it for a moment before rolling her shoulders and looking everywhere but at me. “That kind of money would help, sure; but it’s not worth what I’d have to give up.”

“You’re not answering any of my questions, and I’m losing patience,” I grit out. My muscles are tensing. There isn’t enough beer in the fridge to keep shit calm if she keeps this up. I haven’t had to listen to anyone give me the runaround in conversation since the last time Chey missed her curfew. It was all one big web of excuses and no actual answers. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can ground Holly for not being straight with me—not that it works so well when I try to ground Chey. I would, however, like to spank her again.

“Hey,” she snaps. She leans forward and slaps at the ground with her free hand. She’s close, so close I don’t know if she intends to or not, but she’s in my space. If I thought her presence was insufferable before, I was wrong. I breathe in her scent, and it’s so strong this close. Undiluted. Her lips part, and her tongue sneaks out to lick her bottom lip. I glance down for half a second to watch, but it’s too late. Her mouth forms a hard line, and I return my gaze to her eyes.

“I said I’d keep my mouth shut and I have. That short guy you got following me everywhere can tell you that I’ve kept my word. I don’t want your money, but it’s not because I’m going to rat on you. That’s all you need to know.” Her eyes are narrowed, and she’s breathing heavy. It’s sort of hot the way her chest heaves and her cheeks flush. I wonder what she would do if I just leaned over and told her I was going to fuck her until she couldn’t argue with me anymore. But I don’t. Women like Holly have expectations, and they’re a complication that I refuse to bring into my life. I did it once, and I won’t be doing it again.

She’s mouthing off—it should be pissing me off.

But it’s not.

Because, like with every other time I’m around her, I’m off my game. The only thing that’s pissing me off right now is that she caught Squat following her. Stupid fuck isn’t going to earn his top rocker at this rate.

“Why don’t you drink?” I whisper. My eyes quickly glance down at her lips again. I’ll bet she tastes as sweet as she looks.

“Why won’t you let me go home?” she whispers back. The anger in her voice fades and is replaced with a soft murmur.

“Why don’t you drink?” I repeat.

“I have enough trouble with making poor choices without alcohol, okay? Now, why won’t you let me go home?

“Because we’re building a bike,” I say.

“Bullshit,” she says. There’s a defiant little bite to her tone that brings a smile to my face. She scowls at me, but it’s more confused than angry. “You want me to be honest, but you don’t want to be honest with me.”

“That dickhead at the school today? He’ll kill you.” I’ve never had a problem with keeping my mouth shut before, but I told myself I’d be real with her. Real is an uncomfortable territory for me. It’s my job to protect my brothers and safeguard our secrets. Part of that is keeping club business within the club, but the other part is information management. I haven’t done such a great job at managing Holly so far, and if I don’t get it under control soon, someone is going to start demanding that I take more drastic of measures to seal this shit off.