VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (16 page)

Flash breathed hard through his nose, shooting me a heated look when I tried to jerk away. He was beyond pissed.

But I couldn’t deny that part of me was still lit up by seeing him again.

Flash

In the garage, Emily showed me beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the person I was dispatched to kill. Hiding my reaction while she chopped meth, demonstrated her shipping techniques and broke down the entire operation was difficult. If it had been anyone else, I’d have killed them and been done with the whole thing.

But I wasn’t about to do that to
her
.

Tying her hands behind her back, I led her out to the motorcycles in front of the compound. Some of the guys stayed back to clean up the mess I’d left in the room where I’d found her and Dale. Shouldn’t have shot him in there, but seeing the blood on her face had been the end of him, even if he didn’t know it when he hit her.

“Get on in front of me,” I said, settling on the seat and helping her on my lap. Jesus, it felt good to have her tight little body against me again. “I’m not leaving your hands free to jerk me off the road and I’m not leaving you here, either.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said pertly.

“Except dealing meth.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot that selling cocaine was a noble endeavor.” She looked at me with disgust in her eyes and blood on her mouth. She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. “Don’t be the pot that calls the kettle black, Flash.”

“I don’t sell to children.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Neither do I.” Turning away from me, she clammed up and held herself stiffly away from my body. Perversely, I smiled when the momentum of my Harley moving forward pushed her back into my lap. Her soft ass ground against my legs and I used every ounce of restraint I had to not get an erection.

The longer we drove, the more she relaxed against me. Her hair smelled like lemons when it brushed my face in the wind. God, I’d missed her so much—even if she wasn’t the person I thought she was. All those thoughts of her being the brave, innocent girl I rescued warred with the truth of who she was: the meth dealer Manuel wanted to take down.

If she was, though, why didn’t he tell me that night at the villa? Why let Santiago kill her instead of taking care of it himself?
Why didn’t Emily tell me
?

Nothing was adding up, and all the questions burned a line through my chest. The club was going to have to convene and talk some shit over. If Manuel required that we kill the kind of maggots that dealt to children and killed harmless people, that was one thing. If he was setting us up to be his personal hit men, that was something different. We weren’t here to serve his vendettas.

No one used The Fallen.

Cutting a path over the dark highway, I could almost pretend that things were different between us. All the desire for her that I thought I’d mastered had burst into me in a flood as soon as she’d looked up and I’d seen her face. Those green eyes were still my undoing, even when they were narrowed with hatred.

Already I knew that if her death was the price of doing business with the cartel, I still wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

How was it possible that she’d been dealing meth since she was a child? Even though she’d walked me through everything they’d done—the coffee bags and candles were a touch of genius that I appreciated—it was hard to believe that she thought of it. But the boy who’d claimed to be the dealer had lied for a reason. His untruth was plain on his face. Why would he lie, except to protect a woman he claimed to love?

Emily said she loved him, too.

Even two years ago, things for the club had been so clear. Sell coke. Make money. Drink good liquor. Fuck beautiful women.

Now we were hunting down people who pissed off the Deleons.

It made no sense.

In the last six months, Manuel’s sanity had slipped even further. Two weeks before, there were rumors that he’d killed half the production line in Mexico to lower the cost of producing at home and take more cocaine from the Columbians. It hadn’t been confirmed—Mudd had driven down to Mexico to get a firsthand look at everything—but the idea of it made me sick.

Those men had been working for the cartel since I was a little boy. I’d played with some of them as children. The worst part was, the rumors were followed up by whispers that now he needed more help because so many other workers had defected.

How long would those people live?

Other insidious rumors were being traded behind closed doors too. Maybe Santiago’s death had broken Manuel and that was why he was splintering, but human trafficking wasn’t something The Fallen would ever condone. If it was true, we wouldn’t just cut ties with the cartel. We’d kill the man running it.

Mudd would be back soon with all the information. Then we’d convene church and take a vote on how to handle it.

Cutting ties with the cartel would mean walking into the war we’d narrowly avoided after I returned from Mexico. Fallen would die.

Not for the first time, I tried to figure out how Manuel was even aware of Dale and Emily’s business. Meth dealers were a dime a dozen, even if Piston did manage to keep the worst of them out of LA. Manuel had been bogged down with bitch work for Rafael for years; he’d never even crossed the border into California, as far as I knew. Emily had turned a barely profitable business into a small empire, but it still didn’t touch the money the Deleon Cartel made.

There was more to this, and I had an inkling that my Dad knew something.

When we pulled into the club, Piston stormed through the door and met me on the pavement.

“What the fuck is going on? I told you to bring back two hands and instead you bring me a piece of shit pussy and this woman.”

“Can you get someone to take her inside, and then we’ll talk?” I didn’t want Emily to hear everything I had to say to the president.

His lips tensed, but he nodded and headed back through the wooden door. Moments later, he emerged with my mother.

“Mom?”

“I came by to get your father,” she said, furrowing her brow. “I needed help with the sink.”

“Can you take this girl up to one of the guest rooms?” Mom looked at Piston, who smiled at her thinly, then nodded. I yanked Emily forward, catching her when she stumbled. Damn it, I didn’t mean to pull her so hard. Mom narrowed her eyes at me and put an arm around Emily’s shoulders.

“What’s your name?” she asked, keeping her voice soft. When she surveyed Emily and saw the bruises forming on her face, her eyes widened. “Flash, what happened?”

“Her uncle hit her,” I said. Mom nodded and gently guided Emily forward.

“I’m Emily,” I heard her say as she and my Mom walked into the clubhouse. Mom turned back to me, a question in her eyes, and I nodded. Her face went softer and then they were gone. I was never going to hear the end of it now that my mother had a chance to meet
the Emily
.

“Emily?” Piston said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not the Emily from Mexico?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The very one.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“So you don’t think it’s a coincidence either.”

“No,” Piston said. He shook his head slowly. “Maybe that’s why Manuel asked me not to send you on the disposal.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, but I figured he just didn’t have faith in you. If it was me, I’d have wanted to be the one to go.”

“If I hadn’t gone, she might be dead.” I wasn’t sure that my brothers would have killed an unarmed woman, but there was a chance. A chance that Emily would be nothing more than sightless eyes and an empty shell.

Thank god I’d agreed to go.

“So why does he want her dead so bad?” Piston asked, giving voice to the very thing I couldn’t stop wondering about. “What’s so special about her?”

“I don’t think it’s just the meth,” I said. “Honestly, the lost revenue isn’t enough for him to kill them even, unless he has something against them personally.”

“I just figured it was another way for us to prove that we’re still loyal.”

“Same here. I mean, the money figured into it, but you were trying to get them out of LA years ago.” That must have been when Emily was a young teen, before they’d moved into the house in Malibu and disappeared off our radar. Picturing her as a young girl sitting at a table and bagging piles of meth was enough to send heat flaring through me again. I wished I could go back and kill Dale again.

“It didn’t matter that much to me that they were taking our business,” Piston said candidly. “Just didn’t like that they were selling to kids.” It was a hot button issue with him. Before my grandfather had died, the rule had been set, but rarely enforced. Once Piston took over, it became the kind of thing that could get a brother removed from the club—permanently.

“Emily says she wasn’t.”

“Maybe Dale lied to her. But their product was definitely going out to younger people, at least until this year.”

“They really cleaned it up since I got back from Mexico.”

“Why did they move out of Malibu?” Piston’s rapid-fire changes of topic were something we’d all learned to cope with.

“Still don’t know,” I admitted. “Best I can figure, she overheard us in Mexico.”

“Probably.”

“It explains why she shut down on me so hard.”

“I assume we’re not sending her hand down to Manuel.”

I flinched, then shook my head. “Not an option.”

“Then we need to get the guys together and figure out what to do next. Meeting tomorrow at 7pm. Mandatory. Tell Havoc to post a bulletin.”

“Got it,” I said.

“What should we do with the boy until then?” Part of me wanted to tell Piston to interrogate him, but the truth I’d seen in his face was that he was a junkie. A dumb ass junkie who was in love with the woman I’d claimed and then lost.

“Leave him. Don’t do anything, but don’t let him go either,” I suggested.

“Good call. And Emily?”

“I’ll deal with her.” Piston nodded and headed into the club.

Instead of following, I went back to my bike, started the engine and flew out onto the empty road. A ride would tamp down some of the rage so that I could deal with Emily again without scaring her. Then I remembered who she really was, and realized that I was probably the least terrifying threat to face her.

Leaning forward, I sped up and let the wind pull away all the churning doubts in my gut. Emily was a mystery and I needed to dig deep and figure her out. I’d been gentle with the girl I thought would leap from her own shadow, but this woman was someone different. Someone I knew wouldn’t break at a hard touch.

This time, she wasn’t getting away.

Emily

“Do you want me to cuff you to the bed?” Flash’s mom asked, smiling at me as if the question wasn’t ridiculous. Her short, straight hair moved as her head canted to the side.

“Not particularly,” I said, “but my guess is that I don’t have many choices, do I?” The binds around my wrists were cutting into my skin, and I was losing feeling in my arms. All I wanted was to reach up and wipe away blood from my mouth, maybe gather my hair back.

“You can stay with your arms behind your back if you like,” she said with a shrug. It was so strange to have a housewife in a leather jacket telling me that she’d handcuff me for her son that I actually felt dizzy. Anxiety sucks. “I thought you’d be more comfortable sitting.”

I’d be more comfortable punching you in the face and high-tailing it out of here.

Shooting her a glare, I lowered myself on the bed and scooted closer to the post so she could clip one handcuff around my wrist and then attach the other side to the wooden bed. Once I was secure, she cut the binds Flash placed on me in Dana Point. I stretched out, letting my abused muscles flex and relax for the first time in hours.

“Are you enjoying this?” I asked. Instead of making her angry, it made her smile.

“Are you the Emily that made my son miserable for the last six months?”

He’d been miserable because of me? “Probably,” I admitted.

“Then I don’t hate it,” she said. “Even better, it gives me a chance to get to know the girl he fell for.”

“I don’t think he really fell for me. It was less than a week.”

“That’s how my son is. He can go for years without finding something he wants, but when he does, he settles on it fast. What I don’t know is how you feel.”

Unwilling to discuss my feelings with her, I shrugged. Conversation with an adult woman was a novel thing, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to participate. She looked nice enough, but good looks were easy, and often hid a monster. Being fooled by her guileless eyes and soft hands would be my second mistake of the day.

“I’ll be back,” she said, withdrawing into the hallway. I looked around the room while she was gone, studying the small space. It was mostly bare, but for the bed, a desk and a chair. There were a few framed photos of groups of men on the walls, but I couldn’t get close enough to see their faces. Idly, I tugged at my cuff, wondering if I could get out somehow. Even if I could, though, I wouldn’t leave. Tommy was still here somewhere.

I could save him. We’d leave together.

Maybe now that I was in charge, I could take the money Dale had kept from us and put Tommy in rehab, then we could both go to college. Maybe I’d meet someone new. Maybe I’d start a real business. If I could just get out of this alive, I could have the life I always wanted.

Even if it meant I couldn’t have Flash.

Even if I would lose the rush of selling drugs.

Tangling with meth had brought out a part of myself that I didn’t want to acknowledge, but had to. I liked doing something illicit, as much as I’d wanted to get out of Dale’s grasp. I’d never start my own drug empire, because the cost was just too high.

But I would miss it.

Sighing, I sat back on the sheets and raised an eyebrow at Flash’s mom when she walked back in with a first aid kit in her hands. “Let’s get your face cleaned up,” she said.

While she washed my face with gentle hands, she stared into my eyes, searching mine.

“I remember you,” she said. “You’re Jeremy’s little girl.”

“You knew my father?” I didn’t think anything else could shock me that night, but I was wrong. Finding out that my father was affiliated with a motorcycle club was a real shock.

“He and my husband used to be friends. They stopped speaking years ago, though.”

“Why?”

“It was prudent.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “How are your parents? I’ve missed seeing Jessica.”

“They died years ago.” Saying it still hurt, even after all this time.

“Oh.” Her face paled and her eyes dropped. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Car accident. Drunk driver…”

“God, Emily, I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I wish we’d known.”

“It’s okay,” I said, though remembering the accident shot a bolt of pain right into my heart. “You met me before they died?”

“You and Flash played together once,” she said. “Just once. It was when you were three and you’d just come to live with them.”

“Excuse me?” My skin chilled and I pulled away from her. “What do you mean came to live with them?”

“Nothing,” she said, trying to cover her mistake. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“I lived with them from birth,” I said. I shook my head and said it again, but all I saw in her eyes was pity.

“Emily, I’m sorry.”

“Was I adopted?” Her mouth opened and closed. Her hand twisted her necklace, always moving, while she refused to meet my eyes. I felt sick. “Was I
adopted
?” I asked again.

“Yes, but Emily, they wanted you so much. They were so happy to have you. Your mother lit up when you were placed in her arms the first time.”

“Why? Why didn’t they tell me?”

“You were so young when they died…”

“Dale wasn’t my real uncle?”

“No.”

“Did he know?”

“I think he would have had to,” she said. “Emily, I can’t talk about this. I’m sorry.”

“Can you leave me alone?” I wanted quiet time by myself to think, but her face made it clear that it wasn’t something I could get.

“No,” she said, gentle but firm. “I’m going to make sure your face is okay and then sit with you until my son gets here. Tell me about what you want to do with your life.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but she wasn’t going to answer them and I was already frustrated and scared, so I let her minister to me. As much as I wanted to hate the woman, I couldn’t do it. She smelled like roses and her hands were gentle on my skin. They reminded me of Rosaline, comforting me in Mexico, so I didn’t bade her go again. Instead, I let her gently touch my face. Her hands were soothing and her soft voice asked me questions that lulled me into complacency.

I almost forgot Flash was returning.

Then I heard the door open.

“How are you two doing?” He walked into the room and put a hand on his mother’s shoulder. “Sorry I made you stay here for so long.”

“It’s fine, honey.” She rose and kissed his forehead.

“Dad should be back soon. Piston sent him on a supply run.”

“Oh, god,” she moaned. “I hope he gets the good maple syrup and not the fake sugar crap.”

“I’m sure he’ll get everything, Mom. Emily and I need to talk.” He shot me a poisonous look over her shoulder and I cringed. Flash wasn’t offering me any of the kindness he gave to her.

“I’ll go. I’m sorry about your uncle,” Flash’s mom said, looking at me before shooting a quelling look at her son.

“It’s okay,” I said. “He wasn’t a good man.”

She left. We were alone.

“Why did you leave me at the hotel?”

I tried to bury the happiness I felt at seeing him up close without an immediate threat to my life. He slid into the chair his mom vacated, crossed his arms and stared at me, waiting for an answer I wasn’t ready to give.

“Where’s Tommy?”

“He’s fine. He’s currently puking up his guts.”

“Why? What did you do to him?”

“You and your uncle fed him meth until he was an addict, then got him to mule for you.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “His father was an addict.”

“You love him?”

“Does that make you angry?”

“Fuck, yes, it makes me angry, Emily. You fucked me in Mexico and held me like you’d never let go and then you ran home to him.”

“I didn’t go home to him. He just happened to be there.”

“Have you two fucked?”

“Would it matter?”

“No,” he said, but his eyes told a different story. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Why?”
Why do I want it to matter
?

“Because no matter what you say, Emily, no matter what shit you pull or who you’re with, you’re mine. I tried being gentle with you and you ran away in the dead of the night to push more drugs with a man who beat you.”

“You were going to kill him.”

“I did kill him,” Flash said, satisfaction spilling over his face. “I’ll kill every man who leaves a mark on you.”

“That’s not why you were going to kill him in Mexico. You didn’t like that we sold meth in your city.”

“I don’t give a fuck about where you sold meth. Piston was after him for selling that shit to kids, but he wasn’t going to kill him until Dale kept it going after warnings, then fucking disappeared.”

“We didn’t sell to kids.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I told him—.”

“What makes you think he gave a single fuck about what you said, Emily?” Flash was pure violence now, like I’d never seen before. He wasn’t my uncle with his weak hands and mealy mouth. No, Flash was black rage funneled into the shape of man.

“Because I was the one who kept us going,” I snapped.

“Good job running a fucking meth line.”

“Good job running coke for a psychopath,” I quipped, flipping him off. His eyes widened and he reached out and wrapped a hand around my finger. His big palm slid down my skin to my wrist, grasping it firmly. Reaching into the nightstand, he pulled out another set of cuffs. They made an audible click when he hooked one around my free wrist and then put the other one around the bedpost.

“You’re not going to flip me off again, Emily,” he said, his eyes like a pure gold storm. His hand lingered on mine.

“What are you going to do, Flash?” His hand slid down my finger until it was draped loose over my fist. “Hit me? You won’t be the first man to hit me today.” I stuck out my chin, willing him to punch me once so that I could walk out and never think of him again.

“I’m not going to hit you,” he said, disgust in his eyes. “I won’t ever hit you.” He moved closer until I had to crane my neck to look at him.

“What do you want from me?”

“Why did you help Dale?”

“It was better than being a punching bag for all the junkies who showed up at the house.”

“How old were you when you started?”

“Twelve, but I had no control until I was 13.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“No money. No family. No paperwork. What was I going to do?”

“You could have stayed with me.”

“And everyone in Malibu would have died. The people who worked for Dale weren’t evil, Flash. They were just like the people here—they did some illegal shit and they didn’t deserve the death sentence for it.”

“We wouldn’t have killed everyone.”

“That’s not how it sounded to me.” His hand was stroking my skin, lighting fires that hadn’t burned since I’d left him behind. The more he touched me, the more fury fell away from his face, replaced with purpose.

“I would have protected you and anyone you wanted.” The truth in his words made me regret leaving him, even if just for a moment.