The tape between my breasts itched but I tried not to wiggle as I sat in McClellan’s Bar waiting for Mr. Warren to show up.
He was the “Mitch” my dad and Danner had spoken about in the parking lot of EBA after the basketball tournament. We still didn’t know who Jack was but it was clear that everyone else at my parent’s frequent dinner parties were in on the plot to take down The Fallen using the Nightstalkers to do it.
Mitch Warren. It was stupid of me to have forgotten his first name but everyone, even his friends, called him Warren.
When I’d called him to ask him to meet with me and discuss my options for a future after EBA, to say that I was feeling hemmed in by my relationship with Zeus and that I wanted an out, he’d been thrilled.
Mr. Warren liked young girls and I was a young girl with a biker mentality. Catnip to pervs and rebels alike. Mr. Warren was the former.
When he showed up, he was wearing one of his stylish suits, this one navy blue over a blue, red and white plaid shirt with his signature bow tie, this one yellow, at his neck. His thick brown hair was pushed away from his forehead and he could have been handsome if his chin wasn’t so weak and his eyes weren’t filled with false pride.
“Wow, what a vision,” he said with an approving grin as I slipped off my stool to greet him and he got a full look at me in my short black dress, tight at the hips, thighs and ass but blousy up top to hide the lines of the wire beneath it.
I shook my curled hair over my back to give him a clean shot as he leaned forward to kiss my cheek.
He smelled like expensive deodorant but also a little bit like a teenage boy trying too hard.
“Warren, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me,” I gushed as his hand found my lower back and escorted me to one of the more intimate booths at the back of the bar.
I spotted Nova dressed in civilian clothes at one of the tables talking up a pretty waitress even as his eyes tracked us across the room. There was a man with a stern face and too-good posture sitting alone at the bar nursing something that could have been a gin and tonic but was probably just Sprite. Watchful eyes surrounded me, but I still hated Warren’s hands on my body.
“So,” he started as we settled in, “already tired of your walk on the bad side, eh? The filth getting to be too much for you?”
I smiled at him even as I thought he was a complete dumbass for hitting on the well-known wife of The Fallen MC President. He was either incredibly cocky or incredibly dumb. My money was on both.
“Honestly, Warren, I don’t know what I was thinking. He’s so…” I struggled to find something bad to say about Z. “Big, just like this big oaf, you know?”
He nodded sagely. “I could have told you that, Louise. I understand that he got to you at a vulnerable time but I thought I’d made it clear to you that I would always be here to help.”
He opened his hands on the table for me to place mine into.
I did so with a bright smile, calling on all my years as the dutiful daughter of Benjamin and Phillipa Lafayette in order to pull it off.
“If it was a matter of money, I know I’m a high school biology teacher but you should know, I’m a man of means,” he continued.
“Oh?”
He smiled slyly. “You obviously don’t care if it’s dirty as long as it’s money if you’re with Garro so yes, Louise I’m a man of means. I can keep you in the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to with your parents. Richer even, if things go right and my investments keep turning a profit.”
A server appeared without being asked with a bottle of champagne. We were quiet as the woman uncorked it then served us each a glass. He watched me the whole time with a small smile of self-satisfaction as if he had always known I would cave for him and it had only been a matter of time.
His thumb rubbed back and forth over my engagement ring and wedding band.
“What are we celebrating?” I asked as he handed me my glass.
“A return to the rightful order,” he cheered, clinking our glasses together.
I took a small sip and then put the glass down because I hated the sweet, bubbles enough that the taste made me want to gag.
“Did Garro even give you a proper wedding?” he asked me sorrowfully. “A girl like you deserves a big day, Louise.”
He was lecturing me about what I did or did not deserve, about what kind of girl I was. It was exactly this kind of pedantic condescension that I hated most about polite society.
I thought about my perfect wedding. Remembered the plastic tiara I’d worn that proclaimed Bride with a short veil that Harleigh Rose and Cress had found at the dollar store in town. The bouquet of beautiful red roses that Nova had splurged on from the hospital shop and the enormous red velvet cake in the shape of Clifford the Big Red Dog that Maja had bought off some baker who’d had a last-minute cancellation. Zeus had the rings because he’d sent King out to buy them, two black titanium bands that Hannah had just stoked at Revved & Ready.
My grandfather had done the service and it was beautiful in the way that forgiveness is beautiful because I knew my family would never really understand my love for Zeus and his world but it felt right that they should pass me over to him, to someone who always had and always would understand me better.
Afterward, after Zeus had kissed me as long as my grieving lungs would allow, someone put on old school rock music and everyone cracked open Coke and Sprite because there wasn’t any alcohol allowed in the hospital and we’d all eaten cake with our hands and laughed with each other until I was too tired to socialize. And then even though it was our wedding night, Zeus hadn’t copped even a feel. He’d just held me all night, stroking my hair and whispering to me about all the things we were going to do when I was well.
I looked up at Warren and tried to strip my voice of the sheer joy the memory held for me. “He tried his best.”
“And his best wasn’t good enough. Honestly, I give the brute props for even thinking he stood a chance with someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” I asked, leaning forward and tucking my hair behind my ear.
His eyes tracked the movement hungrily. “A princess.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes and tried to get us back on topic. “So, say I did leave him. Say I did want to be with you—what would that mean?”
His eyes flared and his grip on my hands tightened. “It would mean I’d treat you right. Lavish you with money and attention.”
I pouted, flipping his hand over in mine to draw circles on the palm in a way that had him shivering. “What about those other girls?”
He frowned distractedly. “Other girls?”
“I’ve seen you with Lily and Talia. If we’re together, I don’t want to share and…” I leaned deep over the table to press my lips right beside his ear to say, “I think you’ll find I can keep you satisfied.”
He groaned. “You really are a minx, aren’t you?”
“I prefer fox, but yes, I really am,” I agreed with a winning smile.
“Well, no need to worry there. Lily and Talia are just two cogs in the machine of my alternative means of income.”
My pout deepened and I was glad I’d worn red lipstick when his eyes landed on them and stuck. “What does that even mean?”
“It means, pretty girl, that Talia and Lily are a means to an end. They deal product for me.”
I gasped in faux shock, hand flying to my heart only so I could define the shape of my breast beneath the fabric for him. My heart beat fast but it wasn’t with modest surprise, it was with adrenaline. He was staring at the catalyst of his demise and he was literally handing himself over to it.
I could have clapped, I was so happy.
Instead, I kept up the act by saying, “You deal drugs? Warren, I never knew you had such a dark side.”
He preened under my compliment and looked around the way a spy in a movie would to see if anyone was listening.
People were listening but they weren’t dumb enough to do it obviously.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a dealer, but I buy wholesale from a distributor and resell to the kids at EBA and Entrance Public. You’d be surprised by what a cash-cow partying teens can be,” he caught my eye and then laughed, “Or maybe you wouldn’t.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I admitted. “But I don’t understand. You can’t just go to Costco for drugs.”
“No, sweetie,” he agreed with a patronizing smile. “You go to the cartel or the MC.”
“Cartel?” I asked because something was sliding into place, something obvious and dangerous, the barrel of a shotgun clicking into place.
“Javier Ventura’s come up from Mexico to establish a base in Canada and he’s doing it from Entrance.”
Tell me more, you fool. Dig your own grave.
“Oh, that nice man who’s friends with my parents?”
“Looks can be deceiving. He’s really a poor wetback risen in the ranks, but yeah.” Warren spewed his cruel, racist words with the casualness of an arrogant man born white, rich and oblivious.
“So you buy it, use the students to deal it and then you split the proceeds with the cartel?”
There must have been something in my question that alerted him to my eagerness for information more than any eagerness for him. He frowned at me over the rim of his champagne glass.
“Why don’t we get out of here and continue this conversation at my place? We can get to know each other a little more comfortably there.”
I really didn’t want to but I wasn’t sure they had enough information on everyone to make the necessary arrests and there was no way in hell I was going to back off this before I bought vengeance for Mute.
So, I smiled at him. “That sounds wonderful. Just give me a moment to use the washroom?”
He tugged my hand in order to give me a brief kiss on the lips, his tongue touching my lips like a promise. I fought the urge to rub at my mouth when he pulled away and let me go with a smug tilt of his chin.
I rolled my hips side to side as I walked calmly to the bathroom, feeling his eyes on my ass. When I made it to the short hallway with the bathrooms, I unlocked my phone screen to text Zeus.
“Hey, Foxy,” someone said over my shoulder.
I startled as I whipped around then laughed when I saw Blackjack standing there with his hands in his pockets. “Jesus Christ, B.J. you scared the crap out of me. What are you doing skulking down here?”
He shrugged, his eyes wet and dilated as he looked over my shoulder then back at me. “Zeus and Danner sent me to tell ya that they got enough. They’re waitin’ for ya at the police station and I’m supposed to give you a ride.”
“Oh.” I looked down at my phone, at the text conversation with “My Guardian Monster” and pressed the Home screen to close it. “Cool, let’s go.”
He nodded as he led the way down the hall and opened the door for me. It disconcerted me enough to turn to look at him as I past and caught his pale brown eyes. Something jolted free from the back of my mind, something that had lain buried in my traumatized consciousness from the night of the incident at Zeus’s cabin. The night Mute died.
The night I’d looked into a pair of pale brown eyes and saw the evil intention to kill.
I saw the same thing now as I past him when he didn’t think I’d be looking, his eyes hard with purpose and his mouth twisted with malicious pleasure.
Fear catapulted through me as I froze. “I think I’ll just double check—”
“Fuck, what gave me away?” he asked with a nervous laugh then shoved me out the half open door. “I’ve gotten so good at hidin’.”
When I gained my footing, I turned to run only to be caught by Ace Munford who laughed into my hair as he held me against his chest and placed a foul-smelling wad of fabric over my nose and mouth.
“If only you’d come with us in the first place, maybe yer friend wouldn’ta died.”
I tried to pry my mouth away from his hold but blackness edged my vision until that was all I could see.
