I turned my head to him. “Not immediately, of course.”
By the dashboard lights, I saw him grin at the road as he murmured, “Of course.”
I shut up and looked at the street.
We drove in silence for a while before Joker asked, “How many you want?”
“How many what?” I asked, purposefully obtusely, scared, what with him already taking on one child (who, incidentally, was not his own) that this was way too soon for us to be talking about future children.
But more scared it would scare him.
Joker didn’t play my game.
He gave it to me straight.
“Me. Four. That includes Travis. And I don’t give a shit what they come out to be.”
I wasn’t breathing right when I turned again to look at him.
Therefore, it sounded funny when I asked, “You want four kids?”
“Including Travis.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“This goes the distance, you good to push out three more?” he asked.
I was good to push out seven more (okay, perhaps that was slightly overstating it).
“Yes,” I croaked.
He squeezed my hand. “Good.”
I stared at him.
Then I blurted, “All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mom.”
I watched him grin at the road again before he teased, “Shocker. No burning desire to be a grocery store clerk?”
“I lost my sister when I was six,” I whispered, and his hand tightened again in mine but this time didn’t loosen. “My mom when I was seventeen. Losing half my family, I know it can slip through your fingers so easily. So all I ever wanted was to spend every waking minute of my day taking care of my husband and my kids.”
Joker said nothing but the air in the cab was far from light.
I swallowed, thinking I read his thoughts, and looked back to the windshield. “It’s lame. I know. I should want to be a graphic designer or bank president or something.”
“Most important job in the world.”
I looked back at him.
“Not one fuckin’ thing lame about that,” he stated firmly, his hand still holding mine tight. I watched as he lifted it to his lips and brushed them against my knuckles. I was breathing strange again when he dropped our hands back to his thigh. “Not one fuckin’ thing.”
“Well, now, I kinda wanna be a stylist,” I shared.
“Then do it,” he said. “We’ll get you there. You want part-time and the rest of the time family, that’ll happen. You want full-time, whatever. Days where you didn’t get what you want are done, Carrie.”
“I can’t take night classes with my work schedule,” I told him.
He glanced at me again then back to the road before replying, “Day at a time. Week at a time. We’ll deal with your ex. We’ll be together and make the solid we got unshakable. Then we’ll sort it out.”
“It’s easy with you,” I said straight out, got another glance and kept going. “I didn’t realize how hard it was with him until you gave the easy of you.”
“Butterfly, I think we’ve both had enough hard. We could use some easy.”
I wished I was driving. If I was driving, right that second, I’d pull over and kiss him.
Since I couldn’t do that, I again faced forward, muttering, “Totally wish I could bronze that tire.”
Joker started chuckling.
Then he turned into the alley that ran behind Tyra’s house and let my hand go to lift his to the garage door opener I’d given him.
He parked beside the red wreck and shut down.
We walked to the back of the house with our arms around each other.
He let me go to unlock the door (obviously, I’d also given him keys to the house).
Joker waited for me to precede him, which I did. I tossed my purse aside and didn’t turn on the light since the switch was right by the door and I didn’t want to make him wait even a moment to make his way in. He’d turn on the light.
Except he didn’t.
I heard the door close, then with a quiet cry, I was tugged back and found myself pressed to it, face first, my hands up in front of me.
Then my skirt was yanked up and I felt Joker’s chest pressed to my back.
My breath caught.
His hand slid over my bottom.
“Saw these panties on the couch. Knowin’ they were on you, fucked with me all night.”
Okay, maybe he’d noticed my usual underwear, but since it came in a five pack and wasn’t exciting by any stretch of the imagination, like the pink, lacy, semi-thong I was currently wearing, he just hadn’t said anything.
He slid his finger along the edge of the lace that ran over the top of my cheek, and he didn’t stop even as it disappeared in my cleft.
I started panting.
“Dress off, Butterfly,” he growled.
Immediately, the area between my legs saturated with wet as I trembled against the door.
“Here?” I asked breathlessly.
“Now,” he answered.
In the minimal space provided, I pulled my dress off.
“Spread,” he grunted.
I shifted my legs apart and felt heat drench my private parts.
He slid his finger down, around, and through.
Oh yes.
My head fell back to his shoulder.
His other hand slid from my hip to my belly and up to cup my breast.
I turned my head and pressed my lips against his neck.
“Tonight, you gave good girlfriend to my friends, baby,” he whispered.
“Thanks,” I gasped as his fingers continued to glide between my legs.
“Now you’re gonna give it to me.”
“O-okay,” I stammered.
He rubbed my nipple through the lacy bra with his thumb and I whimpered.
Then he pulled away.
But only for a half a second before I was turned, lifted up, thrown over his shoulder, and he prowled through the dark kitchen, the dark house, to the bedroom, where he tossed me on the bed.
He turned the light on before he commenced fucking me.
But it was proved irrevocably true through those highly pleasant proceedings that he liked nice, cute, sexy underwear.
I was going to take back the outfits I didn’t wear. I loved them but one splurge was all I could handle.
But I was keeping the underwear.
All of it.
Definitely.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Start and Finish
Joker
THE NEXT MORNING, Joker was in Cherry’s office pouring a cup of coffee and about to nab a donut when his cell went.
He put the coffee down, pulled out his phone, and looked at the display.
Tack had texted.
Slade. ASAP. No weapons.
Joker clenched his teeth and left the coffee where it was. Cherry was there but in the garage talking to someone.
Which meant he didn’t have to delay getting on his bike by saying goodbye.
So he didn’t.
He headed off of Chaos and onto Broadway, knowing what Tack’s text meant.
Slade was the nightclub Knight Sebring owned.
Sebring had heard about Heidi.
And he was pissed.
Knight Sebring was loaded. On the surface of it, and Joker suspected some of that leaked into his skin, he was also total class.
But if you hurt a woman, he’d slit your throat, do it personally, and walk away forgetting you existed.
Contradictory to this, he had a stable of call girls.
He was not a pimp.
He was a protector.
Joker was no financial genius, but he knew Sebring made his money off that club. A lot of money. The man sold more drinks in a night than any other bar or restaurant in downtown Denver. And even if his cover charge was insane, night after night, the place was heaving.
He took a percentage off his girls, but Joker knew the men in h
is crew. They were skilled. They were cold. They believed in Sebring’s mission. And they were not available to Sebring 24/7 for them to provide crowd control and keep drugs out of his club (something else Sebring had zero tolerance for). They were available 24/7 to protect his girls.
His team was large, and paying them and providing what he did for his girls, client vetting and a serious smackdown if a guy didn’t treat one right, would be a hit. The man had to take a loss on his side business because Joker knew his percentage was dick.
Rumor had it Sebring did this because his mom had been a prostitute, and she’d been that because she’d been an addict. He’d lived that life with her from birth, and it had scarred him.
Joker got that. He’d entered the underground fight circuit because he’d taken so much physical abuse he had to let it out, and the way he did that had to be as violent as the way he took it.
As jacked as what Sebring did was, when he was a kid, he’d been unable to protect his mom. So now, he did what he had to do to work out the powerlessness that had to have carved itself into his soul.
Yeah, Joker definitely got that.
He parked outside Slade next to Tack, Hop, and Shy’s bikes. He then went to the door that would have a fifty foot long velvet rope leading up to it that night. He put his hand on the handle and opened it.
Slade was where men who put shit in their hair and women who spent eight hundred dollars on shoes went to hook up. So the only times Joker had been there were times like this. When it was empty, silent, cavernous, a huge shell of opulence that was creepy by daylight.
As he walked across the massive space, he saw Tack, Hop, and Shy heading his way.
They stopped in the middle.
“Knight heard about Heidi,” Joker started it.
Tack jerked up his chin. “Needless to say, this didn’t make him happy.”
“Do we want him in this?” Joker asked. “When it comes to shit like this, he has no off button and he doesn’t mind mess.”
“Considering Valenzuela’s involvement and the fact Knight keeps his ear to the ground, when he heard about Heidi, he didn’t go gonzo and tip Armageddon,” Tack told him. “Which would be why we’re here now. And why Mitch and Slim are up in Knight’s office with Hank Nightingale and Valenzuela’s on his way.”
That was a surprise.
“You’re shittin’ me,” Joker said.
“No,” Tack replied. “He’s got somethin’ to say and he wants a sit-down to say it. Whatever it is, Knight agreed not to cave his head in and instead act as mediator.”
“What he did to Heidi, we’re here, we sayin’ we’re not gonna cave his head in?” Joker asked and went on before any of them could answer. “And if that’s true, why?”
“Knight says he makes a convincing case he didn’t do it,” Tack said.
“Bullshit,” Joker bit out.
“You know Sebring’s no idiot,” Shy said quietly.
He did know that.
Fuck.
But if Valenzuela didn’t do it, who did?
Joker looked to Hop and Shy before turning his gaze back to Tack. “This is the sit-down I think it is, not sure why I’m here, brother. I’m not a lieutenant.”
“’Cause a woman had your name carved in her stomach,” Hop stated, and Joker looked back to him.
That was good enough reason.
Joker nodded.
“Let’s go, but Joke,” Tack started and Joker gave him his eyes. “Knight wouldn’t lead us into an ambush, either verbal or otherwise. There’s a reason we’re here. But Valenzuela is a wildcard. He wouldn’t blink at fuckin’ Knight’s good intentions to do something to bare the beast in any of us. So whatever that motherfucker has to say, do not give the beast to him. Keep your shit tight.”
Joker nodded again.
They moved the rest of the way across the space and into a hall to a door that had one of Sebring’s boys, a man called Live, standing outside it. They made nonverbal greetings as the guy opened the door, and they headed up a set of stairs that led to Sebring’s sound-proofed office.
Like Tack said, Knight was there, as were Mitch, Slim, and Hank, as well as Knight’s right-hand man, Rhashan Banks.
Greetings were extended, and they just got done with that when Rhash’s phone buzzed. He looked at it and then to Knight.
“Valenzuela’s here,” he announced.
The minute Valenzuela entered the room with his soldier, the air turned stagnant. Not a single man there wanted to be in the presence of the two who walked in, and as copasetic as this was supposed to be, that was communicated.
Men took seats at Sebring’s conference table by the window that overlooked the club and Joker watched how this happened so he could be where Tack needed him to be.
Knight sat, as did Tack, Mitch, Brock, Hank, and Valenzuela, at the table. Shy lounged on Sebring’s couch. Hop sat on the arm of the couch. Valenzuela’s soldier stood close to his back. Rhashan leaned against the door.
So Joker took his seat on the arm of one of the chairs in front of Sebring’s desk.
Valenzuela started it.
And he did it with a surprise opener.
“I come to barter.”
“Barter what?” Knight asked, looking displeased because whatever he thought this was, that was not it.
“I know who killed Heidi. I give that up, you…” Valenzuela’s eyes went to Tack, “retreat to Chaos.”
“And how would you know that?” Mitch asked.
Valenzuela looked to Joker. “I got birds who sing too.”
Joker’s back snapped straight, but he kept his seat when Hop’s eyes sliced to him.
“We’ll consider our territory eight miles around Chaos, you give us the name,” Tack said.
Tack was giving up two miles for Heidi.
Said a lot about him but it fucked their cause.
It would be worth it.
Valenzuela looked to him. “Retreat to Chaos,” he stated. “By that I mean Ride.”
Shy shifted from ass in the couch to ass on the edge of it and Hop took his feet but hung back.
They did this because that was an insult. Heidi’s life was worth a lot, but Chaos giving up what they’d given blood for, which meant giving in, giving up, and letting filth infest their turf was asking too fucking much.
Brock, who had more experience in a very real way, living among scum like Valenzuela when he was undercover for the DEA, stood. “This is a waste of time.”
“Don’t be hasty, detective,” Valenzuela urged.
“Then make an offer that isn’t bullshit,” Brock shot back.
Valenzuela smiled. “I give you the name, you give me Monk’s fights.” He looked to Tack. “And a marker.”
Shit.
Fuck.
Owing Valenzuela.
Joker hoped like fuck Tack did not give that.
And they didn’t have the fights. The boys had voted it down. They’d let Monk swing.
Weirdly, Valenzuela didn’t know that.
Brock sat back down.
“You been talkin’ to Monk?” Tack asked.
He shook his head. “He says that goes through your fighter,” then he tipped his head to Joker.
Goddamned shit.
They’d let Monk swing and he still was using Joker’s name to keep his shit free of Valenzuela.
“You got the fights,” Tack gave him something they didn’t have, which meant it didn’t cost to give it. “No marker.”
Valenzuela shook his head again but said, “No marker, then I’ll take the two miles.”
“That’s off the table, seein’ as you showed disrespect by startin’ the way you did.”
“Then no name unless there’s a marker,” Valenzuela volleyed.
“Right,” Tack shot back. “Marker with conditions. No bitches. No drugs. No felonies. Nothin’ fuckin’ illegal. Which means no enforcement. No transportation. No muscle.”
“This leaves selling cookies, Tack, and I don’t sell cookies,
” Valenzuela returned, his voice turning impatient.
“It leaves you havin’ a month of Chaos turnin’ the other way. And you wanna jump on that, Benito, and I know you get me,” Tack retorted.
Joker knew Valenzuela got Tack. Brock and Mitch were there for that reason.
Chaos was keeping their patch clean.
They were also keeping tabs. Anything they heard was fed to the cops.
Valenzuela just couldn’t know what they were—or weren’t—hearing.
The truth was, the majority of lowlifes on the street were scared shitless of Valenzuela, which meant Chaos usually got dick.
But Valenzuela didn’t know that.
“You do know,” Hank butted in, “that I’m listenin’ to this bullshit as a courtesy to men I respect. But I’m also the investigating officer on the homicide in question. So if you know a name, make your deal real fuckin’ quick and say it or you’ll be in handcuffs for obstruction of justice.”
Valenzuela’s mouth tightened and Joker dropped his head as he fought back a smile.
Hank being there would not have been his call. As much as Lee straddled the line of the law, doing what he had to do to get done whatever job he had to get done, Hank was like Mitch. A straight shooter. He could easily give up his badge and make wads of cash with his brother.
Instead he protected and served.
Valenzuela had assumed incorrectly that Hank was one with their crew.
Tack had brought in a ringer.
So that shit that just went down was funny.
“At those fights, Chaos recently sent a message.”
At these words from Valenzuela, Joker’s head came back up.
He felt a chill slide down his spine when he saw Valenzuela’s eyes on him.
“I knew about Heidi,” he said in a creepy, low voice. “Thought you were the man who’d get her out of the life. She’d do anything for you.”
Joker’s throat closed.
He didn’t know that. He did. But he still didn’t.
Valenzuela wasn’t done.
“I let her do what she had to do. It made her happy, and Heidi did better work when she was happy. But everyone knew what she was up to. Everyone.”
“Jesus, give it to us,” Tack growled.
“Vendetta. Against Chaos,” Valenzuela declared. “And who’s left in Denver who has enough history to know about the calling card a former Chaos brother used to leave who also has that kind of vendetta and who is not me?”