Cook (The Ridge MC Book 4)

Chapter 4

Cook

Damn, Maddie was acting like a brat during those last few minutes. Something happened in that exchange that made her a bit more satisfied than it should have, and it put me on a fucking razor’s edge. And I still didn’t have a goddamn answer.

I prefer sausage.Why’d she have to go and say something that forced me to bite my tongue?

I bolted as soon as I got outside, choosing my bike over the old Bronco for the ride to the Ridge. No one ever called church with this little notice, and for a first, I was going to be late. The club would be pissed and likely impatient as they waited, but what the fuck could I do about it with so little notice?

Then, the highway from Phoenix to Park Ridge was littered with cops trying to catch speeders.

I pulled around back at Bou’s shop and parked at the end of the row of motorcycles gleaming in the hot Arizona sun. I strolled inside, trying to keep myself calm about entering church late. At least it wasn’t the kind of church where lightning would strike me down for my sins.

Bullets were probably worse, and everyone in there was surely packing.

I’d never heard of someone getting shot for turning up late, but I tucked my piece in the back of my pants just in case. Heaven forbid that I would be the only one not packing.

Words fell quiet as soon as I entered Bou’s body shop. The silence was nearly deafening as people swiveled where they stood to stare at me.

Well, fuck.

Celt stood at the front of the group next to the Prez, Wilde. Celt, not wanting to be one of the people in charge, let the position go. So Wilde, having been the leader of the Diablo MC in LA, took the reins. It didn’t matter much anymore because we’d become one club over the last several months.

I scanned the room, noting how much we were starting to look like something official.

Many eyes dropped to my T-shirt as I came to a stop at the island in the kitchenette.

“What?” I held my hands out and stared down at my best friend since high school.

Celt shot me that half-smile of his. “Your shirt’s just a little on the mild side.”

I glanced down at the words—Four wheels move the body. Two move the soul—and shrugged. It did disappoint me a little not to get the standard chuckles and eye rolls, but not enough to tell them the reason I chose the least offensive shirt I owned this morning.

For this come-to-Jesus meeting, whatever the reason, a number of guys from LA came down, including Angel, the fucking giant Sasquatch, and the tattoo artist, Graff. Thankfully, there were several of my guys there too. Jackyl, Tice, and Celt. There’d been a TV installed on the wall above the little dinette, and the Warden stared back at us from the screen.

We were evenly mixed, though missing a few of our officers. When it came to church, only patched members were allowed, so none of the prospects or the ol’ ladies were present. Though Wilde often let Bou interlope on club business. Given her position, her relation to Celt, and her fucking prowess with her little iron buddies littered around the shop, not a one of the officers dared complain.

My tardiness, on the other hand . . .

“Where the fuck you been?” asked Celt from the front.

“I was riding,” I lied. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in this hell of a desert I was telling them about the situation with Maddie. I hadn’t told Celt that I was in Phoenix and planned to keep it that way.

Doc and Richardson couldn’t say shit either. Confidentiality rules governed them, right? Kimmers, though, wasn’t bound by the same red tape. When I’d gotten the call from Celt about church, I didn’t have enough time to make it by noon, anyway. But then I had to make sure Maddie ate.

That was on me.

Celt crossed his arms over his broad chest and narrowed his eyes on me. His cop gun was holstered to his waist. Here, he was as the law and executioner, yet everyone else in the room was surely packing as well.

“Traffic,” I said.

“Cut it. We got other shit to deal with,” said Wilde. “Ward?”

From the TV, Ward began, “We got a message today from the Gambinos. Vicenzo, to be specific.”

Angel piped up. “What did that motherfucker want?”

The enormous man, Sas, moved to Angel’s side, staring up at the screen. “Wasn’t our message at Barton Mill clear e-fucking-nough?”

Celt leaned onto the granite countertop, putting his weight on both hands. “The Don’s still sitting behind bars, so this has to be a last-ditch effort, yeah?”

Ward rolled his lips between his teeth and waited for everyone to shut the fuck up. It took a hot second for the rumbling to die down before he said, “We got a video message. Wilde’s seen it.”

“Play it for the others,” Wilde said. “We’ve gotta figure out as a club what the fuck we doing to get the mafia off our asses?”

Everybody’s eyes were glued to the TV as our hacker rolled the footage. An old man in an opulent office with dark wood and burgundy leather came on the screen.

“That’s Enzo Gambino,” said Wilde. “Fucker doesn’t even introduce himself.”

On the screen, Gambino leaned forward, lacing his fingers, and looked into the camera. The man was old, and any of us in this room could take him down in a heartbeat, but he was going to sit in his wealthy office and address us.

Why?

Gambino’s message started:

Yesterday, I had to put my sister-in-law in the ground, thanks to your little motorcycle-riding gang. I can’t express the sorrow it brings me to lose our Amaranta. Perhaps you can imagine my state of mind as I film this message.

I presume you received our message about how serious la Famiglia is about your attempt to bring coke into our territory. I hope the little explosion we orchestrated conveyed our position on the matter.

The thing is, my brother’s capos and I aren’t quite sure we’ve made ourselves clear. The Gambinos run this territory, from Vegas to Phoenix to Los Angeles. Our men on the streets have orders to shoot your little bikers on sight if we see any of them so much as come near our operations again.

With your safety in mind, we suggest that you consider finding a home outside the Yuma Triangle.

The video went dark.

I swallowed hard as Angel threw his fist down on the counter. “Did that bastard just threaten us?”

Sas leaped off his barstool. “Sounded like he put out hits on all of us. Also, sounds like a declaration of war. We fucking lost hundreds of thousands in that explosion. What the fuck else do they want?”

Wilde, with his arms folded over his chest, said, “I’ve lived through too many gang wars, and my club’s not getting into that shit. Plus, the Mafia’s not like dealing with street gangs.”

The Warden came back on screen. “A written message came along in the email too, but it basically said the same thing. Death to anyone they see interfering in their drug biz or arms dealing.”

Sas growled. “Fuckers ever heard of fair trade?”

I laughed out loud. “Business with drugs and guns is anything but fair, Sas.”

The man circled the island and broadened his chest as he stared down at me.

“Listen, pup, you need to calm your tits,” I said.

Angel stepped between us, pushing against both our chests. “Sit the fuck down, both of you.”

My gaze met Angel’s as I leaned back onto the counter. He looked down his nose at me, and it was clear he knew something. I stared at him long and hard, holding my ground. How much did he know about Maddie? That I took her out of the hospital?

Probably, but she was a grown ass woman, regardless of what Angel or his ol’ lady said.

Technically, she’d freed herself from the hospital, so I had no cause for guilt. I just drove the getaway car. None of the girls were here, not Bou, Roni, or Melanie, and that made it a little easier.

“She’s fine. Healthy,” I said preemptively and under my breath.

Angel gave me a silent nod.

Celt barked, “We just got a death threat, right? What’re we doing about that?”

“We’ve been showing up places we didn’t used to be,” said Wilde.

“We still need a plan for bringing in more income,” said Sas, and most of the others fell silent, seeming to think.

Running drugs? We’ve done that ever since I can remember, but legalization of pot is definitely drying up that line of income. Human trafficking? Abso-fucking-lutely not. That was what the bitch who had Maddie did. Mafia shit: arms dealing, casinos, what else?

Sas got a connection with the cartel, so maybe that should be our next angle. But stocking them inside the triangle was obviously going to get our men killed.

“The last thing I’m looking for,” I said, “is any kind of war with the big guys.”

“Fuck,” muttered Sasquatch, throwing his fist into the fridge. It rocked. He pulled back his hand as blood dribbled out of a cut. He had made a dent in the metal door.

“Watch the fuck out,” said Wilde. “Bou will have your balls if you wreck her shop.”

“Calm down, Sas,” muttered Graff from where he sat off to the side, sketching in a notebook.

“We’ve gotta figure out how to get them off our backs,” Ward said from the TV screen.

“How?” asked Angel, finally seeming to join the business of the moment. “The Mafia knows we have the kids they were trafficking. They’ll want their merchandise back.”

A shudder ran down my spine at the thought of Maddie being called merchandise.

“Maybe they’ll want a trade,” suggested Ward.

Sas balled his hand into a fist again, and Graff and Teller shared a look.

“They’ll want to be paid off at least.” Graff ran his hand down his face. “We never should’ve gotten involved.”

“And left Lanie’s sister to rot?” growled Angel.

I was on his side for this topic. Someone had to slaughter that bitch and stop the abuse.

“Fine,” said Wilde through his clenched teeth. “We never should’ve been caught.”

“We didn’t get caught.” Angel grabbed a beer from the fridge.

“Clearly, we got caught on camera or someone escaped and snitched on us. But we don’t have a time machine to go back,” I said. “So we’ve gotta figure out how to deal with this now.”

Wilde and Celt exchanged a look. Celt let the Prez position fall to Wilde, but he was honorary with all the men in the Ridge. The rest of us were there to enforce the decisions and carry out orders. I would’ve followed Celt to the end of the road, no matter where the fuck we ended up. We had been brothers long before we joined the MC.

I didn’t know Wilde well enough to guess where his head was, but he was Bou’s old man and father to her future child. Our MCs were now officially intertwined, and we were stuck having to deal with the apparent transgression.

“We need to come up with a plan,” said Celt.

“And hopefully not get capped in the process,” said Wilde.

Angel took a pull from his longneck and let out a sigh. “Really though, how many people can they have left to pull these strings? The Don, Tommy is in jail, Amaranta is dead. Who are the others we need to be aware of? Because that bastard,”—he threw a hand out toward the screen—“is easy pickin’s.”

Ward stuck out his bottom lip and nodded slowly. Everyone looked up at him as he said, “I’ll do some digging.”

Maddie

Trailing my fingers over the shelf, I studied an old photograph that was obviously cut in half. There had once been three people in the faded image, but now, only a hand peeked around Vivi’s shoulders, the rest of the person missing. I leaned in, making out Cook’s features on his boyish face. Vivi looked almost the same, but she had a few more threads of gray in her hair.

Cook’s bedroom was surprisingly clean, and for it to be where he grew up, it had very few childish things. It was orderly, as though Vivi expected Cook to come home from a war any day. Cook said he didn’t live here, but I wouldn’t know it by how Vivi acted. Or by how the clothes packed the drawers or hung in the closet.

I opened the closet and took a long, deep breath. It all smelled of Cook. His scent had washed off me when I took a shower this morning, and I was desperate to get it back.

To get him back.

Curling my fingers into one of his flannels, I held it close to my face and closed my eyes. If I pretended hard enough—like I had with my sister when Signora had me—I could imagine he was here with me. I could almost feel the weight of his arm around me again. He could weigh down my body, but I would still know he wouldn’t hurt me. If I asked him to back off, he would.

Daddy would.

Smelling his rich leather and cinnamon scent, I could pretend I had control of the situation when I had anything but.

Wasn’t that who I was? A pretender?

A fraud in this normal suburban house? No one as vile and impure as me should be free in this home that Vivi worked so hard to keep.

I dropped the sleeve of his flannel and shifted through the rest of the clothes in the closet. All his T-shirts had sayings scrawled on the fronts. Many quipped about motorcycles, but a good number of them were food-related and sexually suggestive.

Should that disgust me as a long-term victim of sexual violence?

Perhaps, but it just brought a smile to my lips. Those sayings made light of something I’d always viewed as dark and vicious. The humor behind those words broke my mind and all I believed. It twisted the concepts around and made me think there was something better out there than the depravity I’d experienced.

The hangers scraped against the bar as I moved the clothes aside. Something was on the ground and pushed to the back, so I swooped down and grabbed it. Stepping out of the closet, I held an old photo album, one of the few things in his whole bedroom covered in dust.

Sitting on his bed, I opened the photo album. The first page was a picture of two teenage boys, the one with shoulder-length black hair had to be Cook, but the other stood a few inches taller than him and had bright red hair. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside a house.

But not this house.

Perhaps it was where he lived before? I slid my finger over the two faces. The two boys wore timeless little smiles that said they were about to fuck up some shit. If I lived a different life and met them back then, would I have been attracted to one of them?

The redhead had a regal stance and his jaw was squaring off nicely, accenting his high cheekbones, but there was something deeper in Cook. Darker. Something he might not even know existed in himself.

I took the photo out of the sleeve and flipped it over. Scrawled in womanly handwriting was “Morris Celt.”

So the other kid was Celt. The two looked like best friends, if not brothers. I slipped the photograph back into the plastic holder and moved to the next page. The pictures were mostly of Cook and Celt in various teenage ages. They must’ve been inseparable back then.

Would Mel and I have been like that, given the chance?

“Hey, Maddie.” Vivi knocked on the open bedroom door and was already standing inside.

I curled my fingers around the photo album, caught looking at something I shouldn’t. But she would have to wrestle it from my cold, dead hands. There was more that I needed to learn about Cook, and I didn’t want to let go of this piece of him.

Vivi leaned away, a smile pulling across her thin lips. “I remember those pictures.”

Unfurling my fingers, I released my grip when it was apparent that she wouldn’t take the book from me. She wasn’t angry that I had found it and looked through it without permission. I should’ve felt bad about invading his privacy, but I just wanted to see Cook’s face again.

I wanted to know everything about him.

“Those were hard days,” said Vivi on a small sigh. “Do you see the smudges on his hands?”

I squinted at the photo. “I thought it was just the angle. Shadows.”

“No. Morris was a great artist. Wait here.” Vivi left the bedroom quickly, and I refocused on the picture before my eyes.

I looked at Cook’s juvenile hands covered in darkened smudges. I flipped through a few more pictures, catching sight of those dirty hands.

Cook, an artist? It was a talent I hadn’t considered him having. But I didn’t know him.

Vivi walked back into Cook’s bedroom, carrying an old camera—even I knew it was old when everyone had cell phones. There had been plenty of pictures taken of me in compromised positions, and all of them in the later years had been taken with a phone. One bastard made me look through all the photos he’d taken, one for every time he purchased my services from Signora.

Vivi also carried a couple of notebooks. The edges of the paper were gray. Even the top of the notebook had black ink and gray lead upon them. Anything else was probably more expensive. Even the camera looked older than what would have been new twenty years ago.

I remembered the clothes in the photos too. Cook’s jeans had holes in the knees, and I wondered about their ability to afford new ones. When I’d been a kid, things had been new, fresh, and large. Our house had been large enough that no one reached the room I shared with Mel before the masked man leaped out the window with me in tow.

A shudder ripped through my body, bringing me back to the now.

Cook’s mom flipped to the first page of the notebook on top and extended it to me. I took it and studied the first sketch. The scratched gray lines were mostly doodles, like he was drawing when he should have been paying attention in class. His math work and social studies were off in the corner. He had written over the numbers and places with black ink and gray lead from his doodles, which were really good. Animals and places and landscapes, like whatever he saw at the moment. He had even done portraits of other kids in a classroom setting.

“These are really good.” I turned to the next page. “Cook is really talented.”

Vivi smiled proudly her lips turned down at the edges sadly. “In another life, Morris would’ve gone off to art school or maybe would’ve been architect or a curator at a museum. Something important to keep art and beauty alive in such a corrupt world.” She dragged her finger down one of the doodles done over—what appeared to be—notes on algebraic theory. Her finger came away with a lead smudge.

I flipped over the next few pages of homework and then to more doodles. They were good, but darker.

Vivi suddenly leaned closer. “Go back a page.”

I flipped back to a portrait of a man who looked a lot like Cook does now without the beard and long hair. There was something twisted in the lines of this man’s face, a ghost of something that showed how tainted he was. The sense was subtle, but definitely there, and it made me feel like ants were crawling all over my skin.

“That’s Morris’s dad,” said Vivi with a hint of regret in her voice.

She lifted her hand, placing it under her nose, then closed her eyes and turned her head away.

Confused, I studied the man closer until I could see how the shadows moved across his face. The lines where this man scowled and wore his anger. There weren’t lines that shared a history of laughs and smiles, and the scars combined with the hollowed cheeks and deep shadows around his eyes to reveal something evil in this man.

I turned the page. More images of that man in different poses floated across the lined pages, and there was one with him standing over someone else—a boy curled in a corner. The evil man had his fist raised and a grimace on his eye-less face. From there, the beings Cook had drawn had no faces, only darkened limbs, like a monster.

It reminded me of the one I imagined under my bed or in the closet. After the first few times I saw them, I asked my father to put a lock on my closet door. Mel had thought I was being ridiculous, but Daddy protected me and gave me that lock. Daddy made me safe again, and Cook could do that for me now. At least then, I had somewhere to lock away the phantoms that haunted me.

It looked like Cook poured his monsters onto this page. I didn’t quite understand, but something told me Cook had the same monsters as me? I didn’t think so. His monster seemed to be one, and not interested in sexually depraved things.

Cook had one monster—his father.

My heart broke for him and for Vivi too.

I blinked at her as she still focused on anything else in the room but the notebook. When I closed it, she jolted and then sighed as though it locked away something no one should have to face.

And the change in her was too drastic. Like I had just watched her transform into another person and back to the woman I met yesterday.

“I got you this too,” said Vivi, smiling and holding out the ancient camera.

I stared at it, unsure what she wanted me to do with it.

“You can take pictures,” she added after a few long and awkward seconds. “If you want.”

Setting the photo album and notebooks aside on the bed, I accepted the camera. It was heavier than I expected and had been cleaned, mostly, but dust was stuck beside the lens and into the space between the metal dials.

I fumbled with the weight of the camera and the awkward angles. Vivi corrected my hold and then turned it on. I pointed the lens toward her and snapped a picture.

She blinked wildly. “Oh, geez, dear. You’re burning film on me.”

“Film,” I mused.

She chuckled. “Yeah, not something the kids know much about anymore. You’ll just have to toss that when you develop it.”

I put the camera back on my lap, and Vivi stopped shaking her head.

The doorbell rang, and I jumped to my feet as Vivi whipped her head around to look toward the door.

My heartbeat sped. “Who’s here?”

Cook would’ve just walked in, so had Signora found me? Come to take me back? Cook said no one would know I was here, but still, my body quaked. I rounded my shoulders as though I could melt into the bed.

There was not a chance in hell I would let myself be taken back. I wouldn’t be used like that again. Could I escape through the back door? I could run, but where would I go? I didn’t need to know that now. I just needed to get out of this house and away from here.

The photo album and notebooks fell to the floor with a loud splat.

“Fuck,” I muttered, turning to Vivi, or where she had been standing. She was gone.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” chirped Vivi from down the hallway in a comfortable and polite tone.

A male voice answered, but I couldn’t pick out the words.

The front door creaked shut. Everything was fine.

You’re okay, Madeline, I told myself as I balled my hands into my hair and sucked down a deep breath. I thought I was past this anxiety. At least I hadn’t had this electric reaction since Cook took me away from that place. Not since he saved me.

People entering my hospital room sent jolts of fear racing through my veins. Doctors and nurses told me I was safe, but I didn’t believe them. After all, I had been through, how could I believe them?

But that was done. In the past.

Cook rescued me.

Not in a prison anymore. Breathe.

When my heartbeat calmed, I picked up the photo album and notebooks and set them on the bed next to the old camera. The voices fluttered down the hallway, and I followed them.

Not captive. I could go where I wanted. People weren’t here to hurt me. I was safe.

I wasn’t a weak little girl anymore. I was strong.

The moment Cook saved me from Signora, I changed.

Vivi sat in the living room, across from a man. He had closely cropped hair that screamed of the military and a square jaw on his young face. Beneath the scrubs he wore, he had broad shoulders but a trim frame, and he held a clipboard in his lap.

He and Vivi were drinking tea.

“Come in, Maddie.” Vivi waved her hand at the tea service sitting on the coffee table. “Come meet Leo Finch.”

The man stood and faced me, smiling, and all the self-talk I had been giving myself proved wrong.

His smile, I could tell, was supposed to be kind, but it showed his teeth. His lips peeled back in a sneer. His pink tongue slithered out like a snake as he licked his lips. He would eat me alive.

I stumbled back a step.

“Maddie?” asked the man.

His voice echoed past my ears like I was stuck in a tunnel.

He reached out for me, his eyebrows drawn together. “Are you all right?”

I knew this man, didn’t I? I had seen his face before. Somewhere. His features morphed and changed, I thought, but when cast in darkness and dim light, every man looked the same.

My eyes cut away, toward the window. It was bright outside. Sunlight streamed through the parted curtains, reminding me I wasn’t back at the mill. There was no cage here. Leo Finch wasn’t here to hurt me, he just looked similar to those who raped me when I was a helpless kid.

It was Cook who looked nothing like the other men who came for me. Cook who was my safety net. I was in Cook’s house now. With his mom. Away from the men who’d held me down, who fucked me mercilessly, and who used blades on my skin.

But this pretty man . . . fuck!