I woke up to the sound of my dad’s voice.
This confused me because I hadn’t seen or spoken to my dad since the night he punched me in the face and kicked me out of my house.
Briefly, I wondered if I had died and gone to hell for my sins because only there would I find that voice again. Only there would I be punished like Sisyphus or Tantalus with the fruitless repetition of a single horrific act; begging my dad not to hit me over and over again, even as his fist crashed into my cheek.
I decided to open my eyes because anything was better than imagining that horrible possibility.
I opened them and realized that I wasn’t dead and, in fact, I wasn’t even harmed.
I was curled on my side in an empty room in a house. There was duct tape across my mouth, hands and feet and someone had taken off my dress so I was only in my skimpy black lace underwear. My pain ached but it was nothing I couldn’t handle after months of cancer and weeks of chemo. They hadn’t hurt me. In fact, I had the feeling they’d only tied me up this way to degrade me.
There were divots in the carpet from displaced furniture and the sharp scent of turpentine in the air like it had been recently painted. When I stood up to look out the window, I had a direct line of sight to Zeus’s and my house. I thought back to the drive home on the bike every night and remembered the bright blue beach house that had been on the market for months without any offers because the last owner had died of a heart attack in it.
That’s how they’d been watching us.
There was even a tripod in the corner.
I took a deep breath to center myself and remember that Zeus was coming for me. There was no way in heaven or hell that my guardian monster wouldn’t find me. He would find me and as was his habit, he would save me.
“This has gotten so far out of hand.” My dad’s voice was coming closer, up a set of stairs I could just see through the open door. “I can’t even comprehend how you fucking idiots could have let it come to this.”
“Javier told us we could have the girl.” Ace’s voice followed behind him and a second later they both appeared on the landing. “That was the deal.”
My dad wasn’t listening. Instead, his eyes were riveted on the sight of me bound up in the fetal position with silver duct tape at my wrists and feet where he’d normally placed only the most expensive bracelets, the most famous brands of shoes.
“Look at you,” he breathed.
I didn’t know what he meant by that. If he was horrified by how far his society princess had fallen or by the way his criminal associates had treated me, or if hope of hopes, he was disgusted with himself for his part in my situation.
I knew the answer a second later when my Armani suit-clad father rushed Ace and thrust him into a wall.
“What the fuck have you done to my daughter?” he shouted.
“Dude, chill, you know she’s Garro’s whore. She deserves worse.” Ace laughed with his hands in the air.
“She’s a Lafayette,” my dad said as if that meant everything.
And to him it did.
If my mouth hadn’t been taped shut, I would have told him I was a Garro now.
“She’s a Lafayette and she will not be hurt in this. Do you understand me?”
Ace blinked and from one second to the next his affability was gone. His face was rough and pockmarked like the face of a cliff, worn and creased from hard living. It grew jagged edged as he snarled, “You don’t got much say in things now, Mayor. Javier runs this show.”
“Javier runs this show because I let him. Don’t mistake that. Now let Louise go.”
Blackjack appeared in the doorway, pale and slim as a beam of light in the already sun-drenched room. The thin blade in his right hand sparkled as he stalked toward my dad with it.
I tried to shout behind my gag but the sound was muffled and ineffective.
Still, my dad heard it and turned to look at me just in time to see Blackjack clock him on the head with the butt of the knife.
Ace kicked Dad in the face hard with his motorcycle boot and spat on his prone body. “Tie this motherfucker up.”
My stomach clenched into a hard fist as I watched Blackjack strip him down and tape him up just as he’d done me.
Ace paced the room, running his fingers over his thinning, grease-smeared hair like a man who’d been high every day of his life.
And he ranted.
“Gonna get that fuckin’ prick. Gonna get ’im, gonna get ’im, gonna get ’im and string ’im up like a great old bear and skin ’im alive. Yeah, gonna skin ’im alive and take it slow so he can watch his pretty little bitch die slowly first. He’s gonna suffer, yeah, finally he’s gonna suffer.”
I’d never had any experience with craziness. I’d been sheltered until a few months ago and then what I had been exposed to was violence, sex and greed, but never full-blown whacked-out craziness.
That’s what Ace was.
Pure crazy.
I was so distracted by the two Munfords that I didn’t notice the dark man in the beautifully styled suit come up the stairs and into the doorway until he said my name.
“Louise.”
Javier Ventura stood in the doorframe flanked by two enormous bodyguards. He looked so incongruent in the modest home with two junky bikers before him that at first, I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me.
He walked toward me on his beautiful hand-tooled Italian leather loafers and pinched his slacks at the thighs so that he could settle into a comfortable crouch before me.
“Such a shame, zorra, to see such a pretty woman in such an ugly place. I wish I could help you out of this situation but alas, we make our beds and we must lie in them. It was your decision to lie in that bed with Zeus Garro and so it was your decision to die for him too, if it came to that.”
I tried to say something but the tape at my mouth muffled it.
Javier sighed and indicated for one of his hovering bodyguards to rip the tape off even though he could have done it easily himself. I was beginning to understand that Javier was the kind of man that did nothing if he could get someone else to do it for him first.
The tape left my mouth stinging as if I suffered third degree burn.
“What is it you were trying to say?” he asked me with mild curiosity, as if we were having one of our dinner party conversations.
“Any bed would be better than one you were in,” I repeated with a beatific smile.
He blinked at me before a lazy smile spread over his dark face like spilled molasses. “Such fire. I can see why you would appeal to a dark man like Garro. Such a burning flame you are, even in the darkest of times.”
He carefully replaced the tape over my mouth, drawing the shape of my lips through the material after he did so.
My father started to rouse as Blackjack finished his ministrations and pushed him up against the wall beside me.
“Ah,” Javier said, turning his attention from me to him. “I’m so happy he learned of you being here, Louise. Mr. Mayor has become a rather large pain in my side.”
My dad blinked open his eyes, saw Javier and immediately began to struggle.
Javier laughed, stood up and went to loom over him as he explained to me, “Did you know your daddy was involved in my plans, sweet Louise? He was so angry with Zeus Garro and the MC for ruining his town and ruining you. It made him so blind and ridiculously easy to manipulate.” He reached out to run a finger down Benjamin’s anger-reddened cheek. “I needed him to set me up with the right people, to help me get all those lovely legal problems out of the way so I could set up shop right here in pretty little coastal Entrance. And he did it so beautifully. I honestly thought I’d keep him around but”—he frowned and shook a finger in his face—“when you were hurt in that fire, he got so…protective. It was almost like he’d started to care for someone other than himself.”
Javier laughed gently, like the idea greatly amused him.
It was obvious he knew my father well.
Benjamin Lafayette cared for no one more than himself.
Dad turned his head to look at me, his eyes the exact same shade of blue as my own. They were filled with worry, fear and loathing. One for me, one for him and one for Javier.
“It’s such a shame but you have to understand from a business perceptive, I can’t have liabilities,” Javier said. “And Benjamin has outlived both his usefulness and his loyalty.”
He smiled kindly at my dad as he crouched down before him and leaned close. Benjamin shook his head frantically and then whimpered when Javier produced a gun and pressed it to his temple.
My breath froze in my lungs, crystallizing into an acute burn.
No.
“It’s nice this way,” Javier mused. “You two can go together.”
My dad stared at me with huge eyes, my eyes, as they filled with tears and spilled over. I struggled to yell under the tape, to wriggle out of my bonds but the tape only cut into my flesh and burned.
No.
I may have hated him, but no one wanted their father to die.
Javier leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to my dad’s forehead and murmured, “Be well on the other side.”
And then he pulled the trigger.
I screamed, long and rough in my throat as I squeezed my eyes shut against the flying blood and brain matter that sprayed across the wall, across me.
Dad’s blood dripped down my face, stuck in my eyelashes. I screamed again, when his dead body slumped over and into my side.
Oh my God.
My thoughts arrested in my head, suspended in shock. This couldn’t be happening. Numb and reeling, I watched with blind eyes as Javier handed the gun to one of his lackeys then turned to smile blandly at me, grab my bloodied face in his hands and press a gentle kiss to my duct-taped mouth.
“I won’t see you again, zorra, as I promised these gentlemen they could kill you for sport, but I hope you know that I enjoyed our time together immensely. You were a worthy player.”
I blinked at him because all I had left was minimal body functions.
My mind was on lockdown.
There was no dead Dad pressed to my shoulder.
None of his blood dripping from my chin to my shoulder.
No more death.
No more anything.
I blinked and I breathed and I did not think.
Javier spoke with Ace and Blackjack then left with his lackeys.
Ace ranted some more about retribution, but Blackjack was surprisingly quiet, doing a few lines of coke off the windowsill then retreating to the corner. There were other bikers from the Nightstalkers in the house. They came into the room sometimes to check in with Ace, knives in their boots and guns tucked into pockets and waistbands.
The sun sank so low in the sky that long shadows shaped like ghouls floated through the room.
I didn’t know what they were waiting for, why they’d even taken me, and obviously, Ace was growing impatient because at one point, he came to kneel before me and poked at my forehead.
“You said she was pretty,” Ace accused as he kept poking me. “She looks like a dumb Barbie to me. Look, no life in her at all. Probably lies there while Garro plows ’er and pretends she likes it.”
“She’s a class act,” Blackjack said quietly from his corner, his head tipped back against the wall. “And she’s a real beaut under all that blood, trust me. Stops a man in his tracks, she does.”
“Huh,” Ace said, bringing up the gun he kept in his hand to scratch at his stubble with it. “Should I fuck ’er, you think, before he gets here?”
Blackjack straightened from the wall. “Fuck off, Dad. He’ll be here soon and we can get this shit rollin’. We’re after Zeus, not his fuckin’ woman.”
Ace turned his head to stare at him as he sucked his teeth. “You like ’er, that it?”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s why you don’t want to kill ’er—you like the slut! What, did she give you a piece of her sweet cherry pie?”
Blackjack was off the wall and in front of his father in a second. “I said, fuck off, old man. I’m in this for Garro just like you are. He fucked with the club, he killed your fuckin’ best friend and he’s taken all the fuckin’ glory from me. Won’t promote me to fuckin’ shit in the club, won’t tell me nothin’ of his plans. He gets the kids, he gets the shit hot wife and he deserves fuckin’ none of it.”
I watched detached as Blackjack flipped out, spittle flying as he yelled into the face of his father and I thought, okay, he’s whacked too.
The next minute, there was the all-too-familiar sound of gunshots.
Pop.
I wondered if I’d ever get used to the sound or stop thinking that it sounded so innocuously like a giant chewing bubblegum.
Pop. Pop.
Ace and Blackjack immediately went into action.
I watched from my strange third person perspective as Ace knelt behind the open door with a gun and knife in his hand and as Blackjack crouched in the corner with a bigger gun trained on the door. Three more bikers settled in, guns trained on the door.
We all watched the stairs.
The gunshots outside moved closer then echoed throughout the main level. There were shouts and thuds as violence swept through the house.
Then it was quiet.
The men in the room looked at each other but Blackjack held up a hand for stillness and we waited.
Then there was a roar at the base of the stairs and thunder as men ran up them. A crash sounded from a window on the landing and someone landed with a knife in his teeth amid the Nightstalkers set up outside the door.
Bat.
The three men turned to him but the ex-military man was already moving, dropping down to a lunge then coming up with his knife, slicing clean through the belly of one of the men.
His guts spilled out and he followed them with a thud to the floor.
A shot went off as they tried to get Bat in their sights, but he shifted at the last second like a dancer and the shot hit the Nightstalker behind him.
Another down.
The commotion on the stairs grew even louder but everyone in the room with me was focused on Bat as the remaining man leveled his gun at his face and fired.
A bullet grazed the outside edge of his arm but Bat was undeterred as he slammed the gun out of the man’s hands then slipped his big knife effortlessly between his ribs and up into his heart.
Third man down.
One of the men in the room with me hesitantly moved forward to engage him.
Before he could get the chance, a body flew through the air from the stairs and crashed into the wall with a horrific crunch.
Seconds later, Zeus appeared in the doorway.
From deep within my cocoon of shock, my heart began to thaw and my mind began to whir.
Zeus was there.
I tried to scream because there were about four guns trained on him the second he stalked through the door with Bat at his back.
Zeus didn’t care.
He plucked a dead body from the ground and used it as a shield as he walked into the room then roared like some great angry beast as he threw it into two of the Nightstalkers kneeling closest to him.
They fell back and before they could get up, Bat and Axe-Man, who had appeared out of thin air, were on them with knifes sinking through their butter-soft flesh.
Zeus took a step toward Blackjack, utter rage in every line of his enormous frame but before he could get there, Ace emerged from behind the door and jumped on his back, sinking the edge of his blade into Zeus’s trapezius.
Zeus bellowed so loudly, the room shook with it. I watched without breathing as he reached back with one of those mighty man-killing-hands I loved so much, grabbed the smaller man and flipped him over his shoulder. Then before he could land, Z picked him up by the throat and flung him against the wall.
There was a sickening snap as Ace’s spine broke on impact.
Vaguely, I noted that Nova had his knife at Blackjack’s throat and that Axe-Man was beside me, gently cutting through the tape at my ankles and wrists.
“Don’t have to watch this,” he mumbled.
I watched on as Zeus stalked over to the crumpled man, pinned him against the wall with a knee to the gut and cupped his face. Then with a quick, almost casual flick of his wrists, he broke Ace’s neck.
The man dropped to the ground like a broken toy, but Zeus wasn’t done. He proweled over to where Nova held Blackjack and smashed his head into the wall behind him.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Zeus shouted. “You betray your brothers like this?”
“You aren’t my brother,” Blackjack spat. “You never gave a shit about me or my problems. You fuckin’ promoted that Irish fuck Priest over me. There’s no fuckin’ brotherhood under a Prez who’d kill his own brothers.”
Zeus’s laugh was hard. “That what your dad told you, that I killed Crux for kicks? He was fuckin’ killin’ brothers, you motherfuckin’ idiot. He was killin’ brothers just like you killed Mute, for no goddamn reason other than that you’re fuckin’ sick.”
My system rebooted like it’d been jumpstarted and suddenly I was on my feet, so powered by rage my body vibrated with it as I moved toward the group huddled in the corner. I didn’t notice the blood drying my clothes to my skin or the fact that my dad’s body dropped to floor when I got up.
All I noticed was Blackjack and the words Zeus had just uttered.
The words I’d been thinking already.
Blackjack killed Mute.
Before Zeus or Nova or Axe-Man or even I understood what was happening, I was grabbing Zeus’s gun from the back of his waistband, lifting it with a steady hand and popping off a shot into Blackjack’s throat.
He watched me in shocked horror as the shot slammed him back into the wall and blood spurted like a geyser from the wound.
I watched him without remorse as he fell to the ground and slumped over, bleeding out like a stuck pig.
The Fallen men looked at me and they did it carefully.
“Lou, give me the gun,” Zeus grumbled.
I didn’t.
Instead, I flipped the safety, threw it to the ground and wrapped my arms around Zeus’s blood-drenched back.
A second later, I burst into tears.
My guardian monster’s arms came around me, his lips pressed to the clean side of my hair. “I got you, little girl,” he said in a voice as rough and deep as any monsters, while he held me like a guardian angel. “I got you.”
