Chapter 7 #2
Bandit sat back and hooked his boot across the opposite knee. “He’ll get struck and he’ll be young when it happens, like Bowie was. It’s like I always said, Stone men love hard, fast, and forever.”
I grinned because he was right; when we met our one, that was it for us. I was over the fucking moon that Wilder would have that. Though she’d either have to be a little bit cray-cray herself to deal with my boy’s antics, or an angel on Earth, ‘cause let’s face it, she’d need the patience of one.
“Believe it or not, there’s a lotta bad shit I did that I don’t regret,” Bandit went on.
“A lot of what I did was directed at people who deserved it. But there are things I did to good folk and family that I regret more than anythin’.
I never meant to pressure you. I just saw things so fuckin’ rigidly that nothin’ else penetrated my stubborn ol’ brain. You suffered for that, and I’m sorry.”
A lump formed in my throat, and wet hit my eyes.
Fuck me, I had no idea how much I needed that until he gave it to me.
“Give Elise a message,” he went on.
I froze.
“Let her know that what I did to her is my biggest regret. I’d just lost my Connie, and I thought I’d lost your dad in Kuwait.
My head was fucked, Cash, and I took it out on her.
It’s no excuse for what I did and the repercussions it caused, but my savin’ grace is that it was always meant to happen so you, your brothers, and Freya could be here. ”
I pressed my lips together.
Bandit had caused a lot of issues between Dad and Elise back in the day, the main one being that when she went to my grandpa for help because she was pregnant with my older sister, Sophie, he jumped to conclusions and sent her away, and he did that shit while almost shooting her dead.
It caused a chain reaction of events that changed lives, and not for the better.
Tipping my head back, I looked to the heavens, trying to make sense of everything. I still half expected to wake up from this weird-assed hallucination to find that I’d fallen asleep with my head on my desk, after having dreamed the entire goddamned thing.
“Is that what you’re here for?” I asked. “Absolution?”
“Fuck your absolution,” a deep, scraping voice answered. “I’m here for your head.”
My body snapped to attention, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
I suddenly noticed the air had changed; it was thick with static and so fucking cold that I could see the breath leave my body.
An icy draft sliced through me, settling deep into the marrow of my bones, and slowly, I lowered my head, the overhead lights flickering the instant I met the cold, dead face of Bear Rawlins.
My heart gave a hard thump, immediately starting to race inside my chest, and without thinking, I reached into my inside pocket for my Glock. The second I pulled it out, it flew out of my grip and smashed against the wall.
I leaped to my feet and made a grab for the motherfucker, but my fingers went straight through him as if he wasn’t even there.
“Sit, boy,” he ordered.
An invisible force pushed on my shoulders, and I slumped into my chair against my will.
“Stay!” he barked, and suddenly, I was paralyzed.
My shocked stare rested on his face, and bile rose through my throat.
He sat in the light, but his features were in shadow, with little flecks of blood and bone stuck to his scruffy-assed stubbly beard. He looked exactly the same way as he did the night I shot him in the face: one side caved in, the other grinning.
Strangely, I didn’t panic. All I felt was rage that this motherfucker dared stink up my space and my clubhouse with his nasty tobacco breath and his evilness.
His grin widened to reveal teeth sharpened into points, glinting in the yellow light. “Did you think you could murder me and then just forget I exist?” He laughed, the sound, low, demonic, and evil. “You always were a cocky little shit, hiding behind Daddy’s coattails.”
Every muscle strained against the unseen weight pinning me to the chair. My mind spun with everything that had happened. The appearance of Bandit and now Bear had put me in a chokehold, and I had no clue what the fuck was about to happen next.
How the fuck was I meant to kill something that was already dead?
“Bullshit, right?” he rasped. “Being strapped to a chair, unable to move, all while being at some asshole’s mercy. Been there, done that, read the book over and over, so I thought, just for a change, I’d give the great Cash Stone, Prez of the Speed Demons, a taste of his own medicine.
A big, meaty fist came hurtling toward me and smashed across my jaw. My head flew to the side, and pain radiated from my face.
It didn’t hurt the way a punch was meant to; it was worse. A spine-chilling coldness radiated from his touch, spreading through my body. It felt like ice tunneling through me, spreading like a virus until it got too much and I thought I was about to pass out.
“Had enough yet, murderer?” my own voice demanded.
I opened my eyes and stared into Bear Rawlin’s face, except his eyes had changed. Instead of being cold and dead, they were golden-brown and identical to mine.
My pulse stuttered because for a split second, I found myself staring into a warped mirror.
Then, the shape in front of me shifted into a distorted body with bending muscles, and bone twisting under the shadowed skin.
Bear’s large, foreboding body reappeared along with his fucked-up dead face, and the sound of his laughter filled the room.
A glint of metal caught my eye, and they flicked left to see the Glock that had just been wrenched from my grasp floating toward us.
My blood turned to ice in my veins.
The weapon slowly edged closer until Bear reached out a shadowed arm and grabbed the butt. His fingers went straight through it, but still, an invisible force brought it to my temple, and the barrel turned inward to butt against the side of my skull.
My life flashed before my eyes, and I froze in terror as Bear’s distorted, creepy voice demanded, “Any last words?”
“Fuck you,” I slurred, my tongue thick and my mouth dry as a bone.
I squeezed my eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable loud bang.
“Prez?” a familiar, deep voice yelled. “You in there?”
One eye cracked open.
I was alone.
“Cash?” Atlas’s voice bellowed. “Why’s the door locked?”
My eyes darted around the room, and suddenly I could move again. I leaped from my chair and immediately got into a defensive stance as I circled the room, looking for Bear’s ghost, except he wasn’t there.
“Open up,” Atlas called out.
Hands still trembling, my Jell-O-like knees somehow transported me across the room. I swung the door open to reveal Atlas, Breaker, and Layla, who stood there in a robe and slippers, looking almost as freaked as I felt.
“You okay?” Breaker asked, his stare falling over my shoulder as he surveyed the office behind me.
“No, I’m fuckin’ not,” I snapped, jerking my chin in a silent command for the others to enter. “I think we’ve got a problem.”