26. GIULIA
THE SCREAM WOKE me up first. Then I realized why I was screaming.
A nightmare.
Dammit.
I hated nightmares. I mean, I guessed they weren’t anyone’s idea of a good time, but still, they were a weakness, and I...
God, I hated being weak. Being weak got you nowhere fast, but the bitch about your subconscious was that you couldn’t exactly control it, could you?
When the bed beside me shifted, I stopped rubbing my eyes, and peered over at the poor bastard who’d been woken up every night this past week. He was armed, a sight I was getting accustomed to, and he was concerned—a sight I wasn’t.
When a tap sounded at my bedroom door, I grimaced, because that alone was further proof that things were still weird.
I screamed, and usually, my brothers ignored me.
Now when I screamed, they came to check up on me, to make sure that I was okay.
Well, I was okay, but I was just having a few issues with some things, and I really didn’t need them to be on tenterhooks around me. That just reminded me that things were strange.
Eying the glint of metal that came from Nyx’s piece—real hardware, not just of the genital variety—I huffed, “It’s okay, guys. Just a bad dream.”
“Okay. Get some sleep,” Hawk called out.
“I’m trying. Asswipe.” Sheesh, even when he was trying to be nice, he pissed me off.
Flopping back onto the mattress, I watched as Nyx, as silent as ever, maneuvered around on the bed and placed his gun under his pillow.
It comforted me to know it was loaded. But it comforted me more having him here in bed beside me, having him there ready to shoot the second I screamed out in the middle of the night.
Without a word, I turned on my side, and he hauled me against his chest. He pressed a kiss to my shoulder and, like every other night so far, he stayed quiet and began to rest.
I liked that he didn’t want to talk. I liked that he was okay with letting me process things the way I needed to. Of course, it fit that tonight, I didn’t want that. Tonight, I wanted to explain. Had to.
Six nights of successive nightmares? It was starting to look like a pattern was forming, and even if it was, I needed him to know that it wasn’t a regular pattern. I wasn’t loaded with regret, didn’t feel shame or guilt. That was why the nightmares didn’t make sense. I felt none of that shit.
And I refused to believe it could be fear. Fear that someone else had shown me how precarious my security was. Fear that, once again, someone could overpower me and?—
That train of thought was taking me nowhere. Fast. So I blurted out, “I don’t feel guilty.”
Technically, I had no reason to. But I didn’t want him to know that, did I? Not the specifics, anyway.
“Nor should you,” he assured me softly, his voice telling me that he was wide awake, even if he’d been going through the motions of falling asleep again.
It made me wonder if, every other night, he’d done the same. As I’d rested, he’d stood guard, and if that wasn’t enough to make any woman’s heart melt, then said woman’s heart was just plain mean.
I was talking Cruella de-fucking-Vil mean.
“I just didn’t want you to think I felt bad.”
“I didn’t,” he denied, sounding so calm that I believed him.
“Good.” I gnawed on my bottom lip, then muttered, “I tortured him.”
He tensed. “How?”
I could hear his surprise, not his disgust. “I needed the passcode to his phone. I twisted the knife in his chest to make him give it to me.”
A soft snicker escaped him, and it had pride winging its way through me at the sound. “Good girl.”
“I was rather proud of myself too,” I admitted wryly, then I swallowed, and asked about something I was desperate to know more of. “Why won’t you tell me what was on the phone?”
He didn’t have to move a muscle for me to feel the tension in his body. A tension that appeared every time I broached the subject.
A part of me, and God, I knew how stupid this was, but I felt sure that was why I couldn’t settle. That, and the fact that the cops were still investigating Lancaster’s death.
Rachel assured me there’d be no repercussions, not with the injuries I sustained, but it was like a shadow was hanging over me.
The investigation was just adding insult to injury, literally, and I’d be glad when I could just shove everything behind me. Lawyers weren’t always right, and I really didn’t want to be spending time in jail for a murder I hadn’t actually committed, but for a man who’d been on the brink of harming me more than just by rape.
I wasn’t sure what Lancaster’s intent had been that night, but I just knew it wasn’t only rape.
How I knew that, I couldn’t say. And instinct wasn’t something you could hand over to a lawyer and expect them to get you off the hook with. It didn’t help that Nyx was uneasy about the investigation.
When I’d seen him almost cocksure about every other aspect of his life, in this, he was hesitant. Specifically around the cops, and I knew it was because he wasn’t sure whose pockets they were in anymore.
Which, of course, put me at even more risk.
Yay!
“You don’t want to know.”
His words were so long in coming, I almost forgot what I’d asked him. Because he was pivotal in my pre-sleep schedule, I didn’t kick him off the bed and send him to the couch in the living room. Instead, I asked, “Ever think that I need to know enough that it’s messing with my head?”
“What I saw really would be fucking with your head, Giulia. You don’t need that on top of all this other shit you’ve got going on.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one to make that decision?” I kind of liked that statement. I’d been using it a lot since the hospital, and as he’d done then, he conceded with a long-suffering sigh.
“Yeah, you’re the one who should be making that decision, and normally, I’d have no problem with it. It’s not like this is club business, but you have to trust me, baby girl. I’m doing this for you.”
Because I was touched, I wriggled around until I was facing him. “I know you are, and that’s why I’m not getting mad.”
He snorted. “You’re all heart.”
“I know.” My wry tone had him barking out a laugh. And the sound made something inside me settle, because those laughs were few and far between, but they were making more and more of an appearance, even with the aftermath of the episode at the bar.
“Please?” I whispered, pressing my forehead into his chest, and letting the few whorls of hair tickle me there.
He hesitated, long enough for me to think he wouldn’t answer, then he stated, “He had videos on there.”
My heart plummeted, sinking through my stomach and just plopping right onto the fucking bed. It didn’t take a mind reader to know what kind of videos a sick fuck like the Lancaster prick would have on his phone.
With my mind feeling like it had been in a Vitamix, I whispered, “Want to know something weird?”
“Sure?”
“I had to use his cell to call the cops. That was why I needed his passcode, and I changed it to all the zeros. But the second that I had it in my hand, it felt like that was why I’d gone through what I had. So I could get my hands on his cellphone. Strange, huh?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He cleared his throat. “The videos were of what he’d done to other women.”
“What he’d have done to me if he could?”
“Yeah.” He grunted as his arm squeezed tighter about my waist. “You had more of an escape than you even know, Giulia.”
“Trust me, I’m grateful.” I pushed my forehead harder into his chest and whispered, “Come on, hit me with it. What aren’t you telling me?”
“W-We think...”
“You think what?” I prompted, when his voice broke off.
“Fuck. We more than just think. We know he was holding two women somewhere. We’re trying to find them.”
He sounded so stoic, but I knew that staunch tone was hiding a multitude of emotions. Emotions that were probably cutting him up inside, thanks to his past.
“So, it did happen for a reason,” I stated bluntly.
“That you can even think of it that way pisses me off,” he grated out.
“I’d prefer for you to be pissed off and for you to know there are two women being held hostage somewhere, in a prison that... God, it’s been six days since he died, Nyx. That’s at least six days they’ve been without food.” I swallowed, and any sense of peace I’d found in his arms abated as I surged upright. “They’ll die soon.”
“Maybe.”
His wooden tone told me how bad the footage he’d seen was. It also told me that he was dying inside too.
My Nyx was a protector, and he’d not only failed to save me, but there were another two women out there who might die soon, two women who would lose their lives, even though our attacker was beyond us all.
Back bowed, I slumped over so I could press my face into my hands. What I’d gone through was nothing in comparison to what those women were enduring now, what they’d endured.
The thought of them just rotting away...
I scampered to my feet and pounded on the floor as I rushed to the bathroom. The second my head was over the bowl, I purged my stomach.
The act was violent, and my body ached with the dry heaves that came after, but it wasn’t anything likened to the poison still flooding my veins.
A gentle hand collected my hair into his fist, and I felt him comb it off my sticky forehead, making sure I didn’t get it in the bowl as I carried on heaving long after my belly was emptied.
When, eventually, I put down the lid and cautiously reached for the flush, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and whispered, “I want you to do me a favor, Nyx.”
“The entire club is pooling all our resources to find them, Giulia. You don’t have to worry about that.” He sighed. “We don’t know if we can trust the cops. The detectives sniffing around you are dirty as fuck, and I don’t know what lengths they’re willing to go to in order to cover up for the Lancasters?—”
Before he could say another word, I interrupted, “I wasn’t worrying. I already knew you would be doing everything you could to get to them before it was too late.”
I blew out a breath as I shifted on the floor, my knees protesting as they rubbed harder into the tiles before I managed to get to my feet. When I washed my hands, I bent down to rinse my mouth out, then I looked at him through the mirror and whispered, “My favor has nothing to do with Lancaster…” With our eyes locked on one another, I stated, “Don’t you ever call yourself evil again.”
He reared back. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said, aware that I sounded fervent, but that was because I was.
He wasn’t evil.
I knew evil now.
It had touched me.
Been inside me.
And Nyx? He was twisted, sure, but he wasn’t that.
I let him process my words while I reached for the mouthwash. Wanting to bathe in the stuff, I rinsed out my mouth again, then began to wash my face.
After, and feeling marginally better, I held out my hand for his and tugged him from the room, back toward the bed.
As we climbed atop the mattress once more, I muttered, “I’m ready to get back to my regular schedule in the morning.”
“It’s too soon?—”
“I know what’s too soon for me, Nyx, and I want to be normal again. I’m a little bruised, some stuff is sprained, but he didn’t break me. I’m okay.” I grunted. “I put my alarm on for seven-thirty.”
“So, this is a courtesy conversation?”
I smiled into the pillow as he pressed his hand to my stomach and hauled me back against him. “Exactly. You know me too well.”
And that wasn’t a lie.
For two people who’d only been around one another for just over a month, he knew me better than even my brothers, because while there was a history we hadn’t shared, two separate lives we hadn’t had a chance to reveal to one another, deep inside, I got him, and he got me.
His demons were mine, and mine were his.
And that?
Fuck, that signified more of a union than a wedding ring could ever dream of.
The next day, with him glowering at me from the counter, I began to cook breakfast. It wasn’t that hard, but cracking eggs was, and he had to help me out.
Because I wanted to go easy on myself, I decided to make omelets. If the guys wanted to grumble, then they could grumble, and they could swivel on the birds I’d send them as they complained.
It felt good to get back to my regular routine. Sure, I hated cooking, but it was nice to hate something normal again. Just to be bitching at ungrateful bikers and stoves that didn’t get hot enough was a joy because it was bland, and sweet Lord, bland tasted mighty damn good right about now.
Yeah, my arm ached, my wrist felt like it had been twisted off entirely at the joint—which wasn’t the case—and my body was one big bruise. The constant headaches I’d been dealing with had only just stopped being as strong as migraines, and my concussion was something I was going to have to be careful with for the next month or so, but… I was alive.
I was free.
I was able to make breakfast for a bunch of badass bikers who cared more for the plight of victims than the authorities did.
Nyx was, I realized, right.
The compound was home, he was home, and this was my place—bitching over bacon fat that spattered me while grunting at Nyx as he told me to take it easy and to come and sit down if I got too tired.
Did I look like I was about to turn ninety-five?
“Can I help?”
The voice intruded upon our bickering over my taking a quick break, and when I peered at the door and saw Cammie of all fucking people hovering there, I wasn’t sure what stunned me more. The fact that she was the one offering to help, or the fact she was wearing clothes that actually covered her body.
In fact, scratch that, it was definitely the latter that surprised me the most.
Of all the clubwhores, ironically enough, she was the only one I hadn’t gotten violent with, and now Nyx and I were unofficially together, something the clubhouse couldn’t not know, considering he was like my goddamn shadow, I’d expected there’d be bad blood between us. So her offering to help made me wonder if she was a Trojan Horse.
Ever cautious, I mumbled, “No. It’s okay.”
“Thanks, Cammie. Yeah, you can take over,” Nyx stated firmly, overriding my words with a glare at me. “You know your hand is aching as much as I do.”
I glowered at him. “You in my body now?”
“No, but you know I will be the second your head doesn’t have a jackhammer living in it.”
His purr had my nostrils flaring, and I glowered harder at him. “I don’t have a headache.”
He chuckled. “Oh yeah? Tell that to someone who hasn’t had a concussion before.”
I happened to glance at the one woman I was probably jealous of most in the entire compound.
For some reason, Nyx had picked her to fuck, and she was the exact opposite of me. She was blonde and thin, had massive perky tits that told me they were silicone rather than natural, because natural tits did not bounce like that, and she was all lean and lithe, whereas I was forged on pasta. Plus, she was pretty, and she smiled and didn’t appear to have a shitty attitude.
Unlike me.
At that moment, again unlike me, she was gaping at Nyx, and I knew why.
He’d chuckled.
Yeah.
It was still rare enough for me to pause when I heard it, but I was getting used to the sound, which always came out rusty, like his body had forgotten what a laugh was.
Seemed like this was Cammie’s first time hearing him sound happy...
I really shouldn’t have felt so smug about that.
It didn’t take her long to shake off her surprise, because she stepped into the kitchen and offered, “Giulia, I’m not that great with cooking, but if you’d like to show me what to do?”
I frowned, wondering what her game was, then Nyx gently tapped me on the ass and said, “If you don’t want her to burn your eggs, you’d better show her.”
Grunting at his prompt, I twisted around to shoot him a nasty look, then headed over to the burner.
I pointed to the bowl of eggs. “Omelets are easy. You just whisk the eggs together and?—”
Which began an impromptu cooking lesson that made me feel less like Giulia Fontaine and more like Julia Childs.
I ignored the sad looks Cammie kept on sending Nyx, because he was totally oblivious to them. With his focus on his phone, he wasn’t interested in her, and when he did look up, he instantly cast his gaze over me, making sure I was all right, before he went back to whatever it was he was doing.
It was weird being cordial with her, but because he didn’t make me feel insecure, it wasn’t too bad.
I wondered, then, if my mom and dad would have had a better relationship if Dog had done shit like this. Reaffirming the connection he had with his woman, rather than acting like the?—
My mouth opened as the thought blasted me square between the eyes. “Nyx?”
“Hmm?” he asked, his focus on his phone.
“Is my dad called ‘Dog’ because he’s a manwhore?”
Nyx blinked at me, and I swore he blushed. “Well, I mean…”
“Fuck, that is why.” His non-answer was all the answer I needed. My brow puckered. “Mom never had a chance, did she?”
“Probably not,” he agreed, but his mouth turned down at the sides.
I stared at him, and he at me, and I felt the silent promise slither between us. It was like we made a vow to each other that we’d never be like them. That we’d do things right, do things better.
When I smiled at him, he smiled back, and the gesture was so unlike his usual smirk that I wasn’t surprised when Cammie, about ten minutes later as guys began to traipse in for breakfast, half whispered, “He seems happier.”
With his attention elsewhere, it was easier to talk, and I’d thought she’d take the chance to be a bitch, to slate me or something, and instead, she talked about Nyx.
The guy she evidently loved.
It bothered me that I felt bad for her, because I’d been raised to think nothing but bad juju about sweetbutts, but it was clear that her feelings for Nyx were one-sided, and that sucked for anyone.
Unrequited love was a bitch.
A bigger bitch than even myself.
“I think happy is too strong a word. He’s unsettled. We all are.”
Cammie fluttered her unnaturally large lashes at me as she stated, “You heard about the girls?”
“Yeah. I did.” My jaw tensed, and I looked away from her.
She stunned the shit out of me by pressing her hand to mine on the countertop. “He’ll find them, Giulia.”
I didn’t want her touch, didn’t want her care, but I didn’t pull back, instead, I just muttered, “I know he will.”
And I did, because for the first time in my life, I had faith in someone.
I had faith in Nyx.
?