“Fuck!” Hawk roared. “I swear to god, asshole, you and—”
Another bullet cracked through the air.
“Fine! I’m gone! Happy, you miserable shit?”
Happy?
Ha-ha-fucking ha.
Despite the awesome mental image of Hawk—six foot two, two hundred and thirty pounds of ripped muscle, arms heavily tattooed, and usually sporting a three-inch Mohawk—doing a bullet dance in the hallway, he was far from happy.
He hadn’t been happy in…how long had it been since Frankie Deluva carved him up like a fucking jack-o’-lantern?
Four years? Five? Who knew? And really, who cared?
It didn’t matter how many years passed, he’d still be missing his right eye, still look like he’d gone ten or twenty rounds with a mountain lion and lost, and he’d still be damn miserable because of it.
And now…he’d fucked Danielle West and was waiting to die. He’d been waiting to die all day long and when a man knows he’s going to die but doesn’t know when or how, it makes for a very unpleasant wait.
He would know. This was the second time in his life he’d waited to die.
Groaning, cursing the sun and his life and his stupid cock, Ripper pulled his pillow out from underneath himself and used it to cover his head. Holy shit, he was an idiot.
And he hadn’t just fucked her, he’d been all up in that shit, mouth and hands everywhere, doing pretty much everything a man could do to a woman with the exception of a few choice activities.
He’d fucked Danielle West.
And he was going to die because of it.
He knew Danny, she was a fucking chatterbox. She was always rambling on and on about music and clothes and some asshat named Chan-a-something Tater Tots. She was going to spill to someone and then that someone would spill to someone else and then he’d be worm food.
Halfheartedly, he rolled his body over and swung his legs off the bed. As his boots hit the floor, he made a concerted effort to sit up. No go. He tried again; palming the mattress, he was able to shove himself into a standing position.
He was standing. Sweet.
Tequila – 0, Ripper – 1.
Now, if only he could master the intricate art of walking.
And thus commenced his one-man stumbling circus show.
Tequila – 1, Ripper – 1.
When he finally managed to find his bathroom—which shouldn’t have been as hard as it had been in his meager nine-by-ten bedroom—and locate the toilet as well, he decided he was too drunk to piss standing up. Then he, a self-proclaimed drunken, gun-wielding, biker extraordinaire, plopped his ass down on the seat, tucked his dick between his legs, and pissed like a girl.
Tequila – 1, Ripper – 1.5.
Now, he had to stand up. Again.
Surprisingly, he made it to his feet but when the need for walking arose he fell forward, unable to bear his own weight, and went stumbling into the sink.
Gripping the edge of the counter, Ripper stared blurrily at his fucked-up reflection. Stared at the gaping hole where his right eye had been, the seven slashes across his right cheek, his mangled right arm, and…
“Why couldn’t you have just let me die?” he whispered to a god that obviously didn’t give two fucks about him.
He’d been ready to die.
But God hadn’t granted him peace; the fucker had given him hell on earth instead. And the face of a demon to match.
Ripper gasped as Frankie swiped his blade across his chest, tearing open his skin. Again.
Naked. Hog-tied on the floor of an old warehouse, bleeding from too many wounds to count, Ripper knew he was going to die and silently, albeit a little angrily, made his peace with God.
“Not lookin’ so pretty anymore, Horseman,” Frankie said, laughing. “Lookin’ pretty fuckin’ fucked-up.”
He blinked, trying to see through the blood and tears. “Fuck you,” he rasped. “Fuck you.”
“Sorry, fuckwad, you ain’t my type. But I’ll make a deal with you. You tell me what fuckin’ deal Deuce worked out with Bannon’s crew, how much profit he’s skimmin’, and I’ll let you jerk off before I slit yer fuckin’ throat.”
He choked back a sob. He didn’t want to die and he definitely didn’t want to die like this, at the hands of a madman who got off making people bleed and scream before he did them in. But there was no way in hell he would ever give up his club or his prez. No fucking way.
“Do your fuckin’ worst, you cock-suckin’ piece of shit,” he choked out, cringing as he said it. You don’t tell a man like Franklin “Crazy Frankie” Deluva to do his worst and then expect anything but his absolute worst and Frankie’s worst was…
Ripper screamed as Frankie’s blade pierced his eyeball.
Sitting on top of his bound body, stopping him from thrashing, Frankie slowly twisted his blade.
Pure.
Scalding.
Fire.
He screamed and sobbed until, thankfully, his brain chose that moment to shut the fuck down and he passed out cold.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t deserve what Frankie had done to him; he knew he did. When you’d taken as many lives as he had taken over the years, inflicted as much pain as he had, without giving what he’d been doing so much as a second thought…well then, you didn’t have a right to be surprised when God decided to let karma fuck you up the ass with a pitchfork.
But that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
In fact, with each passing year he was growing angrier, more and more miserable, unable to forget but desperately trying. He was drinking more, tapping into shit he shouldn’t, doing whatever or whoever he felt like because…really…who gave a fuck what he did?
Ripper didn’t have any family left, didn’t have a girlfriend he gave two fucks about, and if his brothers knew what had really happened with Frankie, the real reason he’d been able to get away, they’d lose all respect for him.
So, yeah, that amounted to him having a whole lot of jack-fucking-shit.
And now he could add Danny to the long list of fuckups he’d made in his life.
Danny.
Deuce’s fucking daughter.
He’d fucked Deuce’s fucking daughter.
He was fucked.
He was so fucking fucked.
Maybe this was how his miserable life was finally going to end: death by pussy.
Which, when he thought about it, made sense. It was because of pussy that you came screaming into this world; might as well be pussy that took you out of it.
Staring at his reflection, Ripper started laughing, because, what the fuck, this shit wasn’t real. This couldn’t be his life.
And then he had to look away, because what grown fucking man wanted to watch himself cry.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deuce leaned forward on his handlebars, scanning the park playground until he found what he was looking for. Standing beside Kami, near the sandbox Ivy was playing in, was Eva.
Cox was about twenty feet away, tossing a ball around with Devin and Mary Catherine, looking every inch the devoted father to both his daughter and the son he hadn’t known he’d had up until…Jesus, had it been two years already?
Deuce had never been a devoted father.
He’d been a shit father.
Never home, always losing his temper, not giving a shit about what their bitch of a mother was doing, never knowing what the fuck was going on in either Cage or Danny’s lives.
He’d promised himself it was going to be different with Ivy, with Eva. And it had been. Shit had been real good.
And then…
In his peripheral vision, Deuce saw Frankie get up on his knees and lift Eva’s hips. Frankie’s hand snaked around her waist and dipped between her thighs. Eva lost her battle. Her breath caught, her eyes rolled back, even as tears streamed down her face. Her legs quaking, she went face first into the pillow, crying out softly through her orgasm. Frankie followed her down, groaning loudly, his body jerking. Then Frankie tu
rned to him. And grinned.
Deuce’s chest went tight. Fuck him, he couldn’t even think about it without wanting to kill someone. He’d been helpless. Him. Frankie had taken what was his, right in front of him. And laughed about it. And Eva, goddamned motherfucking Eva, had gotten off with another man’s cock inside her. Raping her. In front of him.
The whole fucking shebang made him sick to his stomach.
He couldn’t get past it.
He couldn’t forget it.
He’d stayed by Eva’s side through all her bullshit. Grieving Frankie, blaming herself, then shock had set in, followed by depression the likes of which he’d never seen before. For a while he thought she’d never shake herself out of it, and he was scared shitless because of it. Because, fuck him, he’d never loved a woman like he loved this woman, and the thought of losing her was unthinkable to him.
But he’d lost her.
She was right there. Maybe fifty feet away from him, but he’d lost her.
He’d lost her the moment she’d tried to kiss him, touch him, be with him again, and he couldn’t.
He couldn’t because he couldn’t look at her without seeing Frankie. Without wanting to throw up. Without wanting to strangle Eva because, goddamn her, she’d fucking gotten off on it.
Kami saw him first. She nudged Eva, said something, and jerked her chin in his direction.
Eva didn’t turn right away; instead she looked down at the grass and her shoulders sagged, and he felt that shit all the way to his bones. She didn’t want to see him.
It was slow going as she dragged her feet toward him. She stopped a good five feet away from him but it felt like a mile, and his chest ached fiercely because of it.
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t blame her, that he was going to get over this shit. He wanted to tell her a whole shitload of things, none of which he ever said because he honestly didn’t know if any of them were true anymore.
He knew he loved her. But he’d never told her that either.
He should tell her, he could tell her. All he had to do was open his mouth and say three little words, and maybe shit could start moving forward instead of backpedaling into the ugly cycle the two of them always seemed to get caught up in.
It was on the tip of his tongue, he was going to tell her…
But then he found himself wondering why she had so much makeup on and why her sundress was so damn short and where the fuck she’d been spending her nights. So instead of telling her he loved her, he opened up his mouth and an angry, “Where the fuck you been?” came out instead.
“Kami’s,” she said softly.
He watched her eyes, waiting for some sort of sign that she was lying. But she kept those big gray soul-suckers trained on him, didn’t so much as blink, and he knew she was telling the truth. Which, for some ungodly reason, pissed him off even more.
“You give a fuck about Danny bein’ home all alone?” he continued, wishing the words back the moment they’d spewed out of his mouth.
“Do you?” she asked, and he internally winced.
“I got shit to do,” he shot back.
She stared at him and he stared back. Fuck, she was beautiful and he wanted her. He wanted to hold her, touch her, he wanted inside her, but the second he thought it, he saw Frankie…inside her…and his stomach cramped.
“Fuck,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, trying to think of something to say to her, something that didn’t result in her crying and him feeling like an asshole afterward. “Listen, D’s birthday is on Saturday. You gonna be there?”
She nodded.
“You bringin’ Ivy?”
She nodded again.
And, yeah, he was out of shit to say.
“I’m out,” he muttered, sitting up straight. “Got shit to do.”
And he left. Feeling like an asshole.
• • •
Feeling a chill that had nothing at all to do with the weather, Eva walked back to Kami with her arms wrapped around herself.
Things were bad, so very bad, and she didn’t know how to fix them. She wasn’t even sure that this time they could be fixed.
Which wasn’t fair. She and Deuce had gone through hell and they deserved some peace. And she wanted that peace with him. All she’d ever wanted was him.
“Aw, Evie,” Kami whispered after taking one look at her, probably seeing on her face how heartbroken she felt. “What are you going to do?”
For a moment she said nothing, just stared down at her daughter, the spitting image of her father with her white-blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and multi-dimpled smile. She viewed Ivy as a gift, the culmination of her and Deuce’s misspent years, the phoenix rising from the ashes of their devastation, the one good that shone so brightly against all the bad, it made the bad bearable.
She shrugged. “I’m going to wait. I’m just going to wait and hope he comes back to me.”
Because he had to come back.
“He’s a proud man, Evie. Men like him, they don’t…” Kami trailed off and took a deep breath. “What if he doesn’t get over this, what will you do?”
Eva swallowed hard. He had to come back.
There just wasn’t any other option for her. She loved him too much.
CHAPTER SIX
I wasn’t sure if Ripper was staring at me or glaring at me. Either way, I could feel his gaze burning holes in the back of my head, and because of it I had broken out in a cold sweat during a perfectly mild afternoon.
“You okay?” Eva asked me, touching her palm to my forehead. “You feel clammy.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Fine,” I choked out.
Fine. I was fine. It was a party and I was perfectly fine. I wasn’t freaking out or anything. So I’d had a one-night stand. What was the big deal? But usually when people had one-night stands, they never saw the person again, right? But those people probably hadn’t had one-night stands with a man fourteen years older than them who worked for their father, a father that would probably, no definitely freak out if he ever found out. So, what was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to act like everything between us was the same as it had been before?
Which had virtually been nothing, aside from an occasional random conversation that happened in passing.
Wat up, Danny girl?
Hey, Ripper.
That’s it, that’s all; no flirting, no overly long chats, and then suddenly we’d had sex and now what?
God, was I supposed to talk to him? And with Nikki here, his once-in-a-while girlfriend, hanging all over him, how could I? Suddenly, I couldn’t understand what Ripper had ever seen in her. Why he’d wasted years being with a club whore. She was fake and trashy and wore horrible clothing that did nothing but exacerbate how trashy she really was. And just like that, I suddenly hated a woman I’d never given half a thought to before.
Oh god, I was so uncomfortable, feeling oddly embarrassed and exposed and wishing I were anywhere but at the club and Ripper would stop stare-glaring at me.
Stupidly, I chanced a glance, and of course he was staring at me. Or glaring. I turned away and tried to concentrate on the conversation happening around me.
“Tegen,” Dorothy said, sliding an arm over her daughter’s shoulders and pulling her close. “Tell everyone your news.”
Dorothy’s daughter was a hot mess. Almost sixteen years old and she still hadn’t grown out of her middle school awkwardness. She’d inherited Dorothy’s flaming red hair but hers had more of an orangey tint to it. Whereas Dorothy’s was thick and long with soft waves, Tegen’s was just plain frizzy and usually sticking out all over the place. Her green, almond-shaped eyes were always hidden by a pair of thick black frames, on her teeth were a full set of braces that for some reason she’d decided looked good with bright orange rubber bands. And her clothing…
Despite Dorothy’s best efforts, Tegen refused to dress like a girl. Not that the tomboy look couldn’t be sexy, it was. On women like Eva. Tegen looked like an awkward little girl
swimming in ugly clothing two sizes too big for her.
“Tegen?”
Tegen didn’t answer, in fact she hadn’t even heard her mother. She was too busy staring across the lawn at…
I followed her line of sight. Cage.
I would have laughed if I didn’t feel so sick to my stomach. When she wasn’t sitting in a dark corner listening to Dashboard Confessional, she could be found staring at my brother.
It wasn’t any secret Tegen had a serious crush on Cage; she’d never hidden it and in my opinion, her following him around like a sad little puppy dog all the time was just sad. But more so embarrassing. For me.
“Baby?” Dorothy gave her a shake.
Tegen glanced up. “What?”
“Your news,” Dorothy repeated. “Tell everyone.”
Tegen’s cheeks turned pink. “Mom,” she muttered. “Really? It’s not that important.”
Dorothy gaped at her. “Your story was published in a national newspaper and it’s not important?”
Eva tugged on Tegen’s hair and grinned. “That’s so awesome, baby. I’m proud of you.”
Rolling her eyes, Tegen shrugged. “It was just some stupid contest,” she said and went back to not-so-secretly eyeing my brother. Dorothy and Eva continued their conversation and I went back to my cold sweat, because Ripper was still stare-glaring at me.
• • •
“Baby,” Nikki cooed, running her hand up Ripper’s thigh. “What is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with him? He was still waiting to die, that’s what was wrong with him.
Motherfuck, he was a mess. He hadn’t slept in almost a week, unless you counted passing out cold from alcohol poisoning.
Goddamn, what had she said to him?
Ripper, you’re still beautiful. So you’ve got some scars. So what?
She’d fucked him, both literally and figuratively. He’d been done for the moment she’d called him beautiful.
Jesus, he was only human.
With twitching hands, Ripper grabbed his pack of smokes off the picnic table in front of him, shook one out and, as he brought it to his mouth, turned his gaze across the lawn.
What the fuck was her game?