Chapter 17
Priest
My whole body was one giant ache. The throbbing of my head due to Bones’s hit only intensified as dehydration began to set in. Cricket had packed up his crap and left some time ago. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d stomped up the stairs, but it couldn’t have been longer than a few hours. The sun didn’t peek its rays through the cracks around the confessional’s doors, so I knew it was night. The doors creaked as they were thrown open, and two sets of boots thumped down the wooden stairs.
Ratched and Tank strode over to my chair, grim-faced and silent, and began to remove my bonds. They each grabbed an arm, hauling my body up and toward the stairs. We emerged into the warm desert night air. We were a little removed from the city out here, so it was slightly cooler at night in the summer than in town. I took a deep breath and felt Ratched place a hand on the shoulder of the arm he was holding, giving it a squeeze. He didn’t need to warn me. I could tell the moment I saw the solemn look on his face that what came next wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs. Retribution was coming my way.
Tank and Ratched walked me to our garage. Rusty’s was the official Los Cuervos garage in Sagebrush city proper, but all our guys usually did their own work on their bikes here. As teenagers, Bones and I, later joined by Cricket, hung out here all the time. I snuck my first drink in this garage and threw up out the back door a few hours later, drunk and oblivious. We snuck girls in to make out in high school and taught Ellis and Lennon to change tires and oil when they started driving on their own. The night Ellis’s body was discovered, I raged in that garage, decimating the bike I was working on and smashing everything I could find in my grief and guilt. If the clubhouse represented the heart of the Los Cuervos compound, this garage would be its soul. For the first time in my twenty-eight years, dread bloomed like a moonflower in my belly as I approached the building.
The double garage bays were open, but a firepit filled with crackling flames blocked one bay. An iron rod had been speared into the heart of the blaze, and my sense of foreboding increased. When I took Indigo, I knew my actions would have repercussions. I wasn’t a child; I understood that my words and deeds had consequences. I was confident at the time that I would get all the information I needed to prove she was a threat to our family, and Duke and Bones would see that I had been right and forgive me for the sins I had to commit to get it. Obviously, it didn’t work out that way.
All the Crows were gathered in the garage, even Prospect, who hadn’t officially been patched in as a real Crow. When he’d proven himself to the club and earned our trust and respect, he’d be allowed to become a full member of our family. For now, he wasn’t allowed in church and was kept out of certain aspects of our business.
Apparently, Duke felt that he needed the largest audience possible for my public punishment because even she was here. My eyes scanned her body where she was standing between Cricket and Bones. She looked exhausted and slightly frayed at the edges, her usual bubbly brand of crazy muted. Physically, she seemed fine, so she must have easily bounced back from what happened. I knew hurting her was a necessary evil, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt her, hurt her. I’d just valued my family’s safety over her well-being. Nothing personal, just business.
My brain told me this to justify my actions while my stomach tried to drop into my shoes. The feeling made me slightly nauseous, and I was uncomfortable with the fact that I couldn’t name the emotion. I knew I didn’t like it, though. Cricket tried to be stone-faced beside her, but the tightness around his eyes was enough to tell me he didn’t want to be there. I didn’t even need to look at Bones to feel the chill seeping off him, warning me that he was still livid. I swear that man could give you frostbite when he was pissed. I wish I could channel my fury enough to have the frosty control Bones seemed to exercise over his anger. My rage was fire, and unfortunately, it didn’t completely discriminate who it burned along the way.
Duke stood apart from the rest of the Crows, and Tank and Ratched delivered me to him. Releasing my arms, they took a few steps back until they were shoulder to shoulder with my other brothers. I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart and clasped my hands behind my back, looking straight into the eyes of my father. It wasn’t my father who looked back at me now; it was Duke, the prez of Los Cuervos Motorcycle Club.
“Priest, my VP and your brother-in-arms, has committed a crime against the club,” Duke’s voice boomed in the confines of the garage. I’d never heard him sound so angry and disappointed all at the same time. “I forbade him from interrogating Indigo for information about her past, but he went against my express orders.”
When my old man was pissed, he annunciated much more clearly than he usually did, pronouncing all the consonants in a word. I could always tell how much trouble I was in based on how his language changed when he was yelling at me as a kid. Forget to put oil in a dirt bike and lock the engine up? I got an ass whoopin’. Call my ma a bitch when I was a surly teenager? I got an ass whooping. Emphasis on the g. Tonight, those crisp-ending consonants… oh, Duke was seething.
Duke slowly walked a circle around me, but my eyes didn’t attempt to follow him. I stared straight ahead, waiting for him to continue because I knew there was more.
“My own VP made me break my word.” He entered my field of vision again, and his eyes were steely. “MY FUCKING WORD!” he screamed into my face. I flinched, not because he was loud but because I understood exactly why this element of the fallout from my impromptu abduction and torture would have been the biggest betrayal to Duke.
His word was law. His word was gold. If he said it, you could take it to the fucking bank because Duke Abbott always kept his word. By making the choices I made, I had basically shit all over that. The wound went even deeper because while I angered and politically hurt my prez, I devastated my father personally. I didn’t know if he’d ever forgive me for making him forsworn, and my mouth dried up as I finally started to wonder if what I did was worth it after all.
“I swore to Indigo that she would be safe while staying here with the Crows. That no one would hurt her here. Now I’m a goddamn liar.” He stepped back from me, and I swayed as his disappointment washed over me. I thought, and not for the first time, as I bowed my head in shame that it was such a pity that he only had one kid left… and it was the wrong damn kid.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Duke crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes boring into mine. He stood silently, waiting to see if I’d word-vomit out excuses or apologies or justifications. I clenched my jaw and shook my head. He hadn’t spoken a word of a lie. Duke narrowed his eyes and nodded his head once. “Take off your shirt.”
I reached behind my head and grasped my shirt, pulling it over my head and tossing it aside.
“Kneel.” Duke spoke that one word, and my knees hit the ground.
“Uhm…” Indigo’s voice rang out in the garage, the only other sound now the stirring of coals and pops from the flames as Duke disturbed the logs burning in the pit. “Mr. President, what are you doing?” She looked from me in my position on the oil-stained garage floor to Duke, who turned away from the fire with a red-hot branding iron clutched in his fist. Her eyes widened and darted to Bones’s solemn face and then around the room. No one else batted an eye because everyone else in this garage understood that my crimes deserved a punishment. Club justice. It was the only way that worked with men like us. We all existed in a world wh ere disloyalty could get people killed, and disobeying a lawful order from my prez was disloyalty. Plain and simple.
Duke stepped up to me, and for just a moment as he looked down at my face, his President Duke mask slipped, and I saw exactly how difficult and painful this moment was for him as my father. It was only for a moment, but that was all it took to see his agony before his shields slammed back into place and his cold, detached Duke demeanor returned. He braced his hand on my right shoulder, poised to strike, when Indigo surprised the hell out of me by yelling, “Wait! Duke. This isn’t necess...” Her mouth snapped shut mid-sentence when my head snapped toward her, and she saw the look on my face.
“It is,” I gritted out, my voice raw and cracked from thirst. I turned to look my prez in the face as I clenched my jaw. Grasping my hands behind my back, I nodded. “Do it.”
The iron made a hissing sound as Duke pressed it into my left pectoral muscle. I grunted in pain, breath coming in short pants. The stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils, and I could feel my skin blistering. Blackening. Everyone in the garage was silent, and the only sounds heard over my heaving breaths were the sizzle of flesh and the snap, crackle, pop of the burning coals. After what felt like an eternity but was most likely less than fifteen seconds of white-hot agony, Duke pulled the brand away from my chest. An image of a crow skull was now seared into my skin in angry red lines.
“Crows never forget.” Duke tossed the iron to the ground, kicking it as he strode out of the garage bay door and into the darkness. My brothers began to slowly file out the door, having seen Duke’s punishment and the club’s justice carried out. Ratched grasped my elbow and helped me stand, going into nurse mode as he guided me to a chair and handed me a bottle of water with strict instructions only to sip it. He reached for his supply bag so he could begin treating my wound. Bones and Cricket ushered Indigo to the door, the latter murmuring something in her ear while the former refused to look my way.
I didn’t want to fuck things up so badly, but I just couldn’t seem to help myself. My best friend wouldn’t even look at me, and I knew I had epically disappointed my father. If only intentions could matter as much as repercussions did. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like an utter failure, especially knowing that I did what I did, and I still didn’t have concrete information on the threat Indigo posed to us. I didn’t, but apparently, others did. I wasn’t sure what she told them, but it must have made an impression on Duke, Bones, and Cricket because she was walking around a free woman and allowed to remain here despite it. It killed me to know they got the information when I couldn’t and were deliberately keeping me in the dark. I needed to get my shit together, make amends, and find out what it meant for Los Cuervos if she was here to stay.
Indigo
I tossed and turned in my bed, trying to let myself slip into sleep, but something kept pulling my mind back from the brink of dreaming. I channeled my inner crooner and sang myself a lullaby. “ Without Me ” came tumbling out of my mouth as I wrapped my arms around myself comfortingly, but before I knew it, I was almost to the end of Eminem’s song. I gently hummed out the last few words, but sleep was still a finicky bitch, and I was no closer to getting rest than I was the moment Bones and Cricket dropped me off at my door.
A hush had fallen upon the clubhouse the moment the last door closed after Priest’s punishment. The drama of the past twenty-four-plus hours seemed to cast a pall over the entire club, and everyone had either gone home or to bed as soon as Duke stormed away from the garage. I felt so bad for poor Duke; I hoped Lorna was holding his hand and giving him snuggles after such a heart-wrenching scene.
Duke hadn’t wanted to hurt his son, and Priest hadn’t wanted to let his dad down. I sent a silent prayer to Bob that the bond between them was only bent or battered but not broken. They were so lucky to have each other, it’d be the worst kind of tragedy if something as small as a light torture session came between a father and his son. Or a prez and his VP. Regardless, I hoped Duke was getting some much-needed comfort. Priest…well… I knew exactly what he needed, and it wasn’t snuggles.
I crept on my tippy-toes through the living area and over to the business section of the clubhouse for supplies before heading back up the stairs and straight to Priest’s room. When I tested the handle, the door was unlocked, so I ever so carefully opened the door to his room and slipped inside. I closed and locked the door behind me and turned to scan the room. His room was similar to mine, but it looked more lived in. Priest had pictures on the wall, small mementos lined his dresser and nightstand, and clothes were everywhere. It looked like Priest was a bit of a slob. I placed my tools onto his nightstand and gazed at him where he slept on the bed.
Shirtless, Priest lay sleeping on top of his blankets in a pair of gray sweatpants. He was on his back, his right arm up with his hand tucked under his head. Dark, thick lashes swept his cheeks, which were slightly flushed under the rough stubble that covered the lower half of his face. The bandage on his shoulder stood out in the darkness as my eyes swept over his broad chest, down to his inked and toned midsection, to the trail of dark hair that led into his sweatpants. I cocked my head to the side, taking the opportunity to really look at Priest in an unguarded moment.
I wasn’t trying to be creepy, but ever since he’d had a fit over me wearing his sister’s old clothes, I tried to avoid him as much as I could. Of course, I saw him daily since we lived in the same space, but I usually tried to ensure my eyes skipped over him and focused on the people here who didn’t hate me.I sighed, wishing things between us didn’t have to be this way, but he seemed dead-set and determined to paint me as his enemy. I didn’t want to paint him the same way; if I could paint, I wouldn’t waste my time on enemies. I’d be painting happy little trees and shit.
Anyone with eyes could see that Priest was an exceptionally attractive man, but he looked even more appealing while he slept. Sleep smoothed away the constant crease between his brows and his ever-present scowl, leaving his handsome face serene. Slowly, being careful to distribute my weight cautiously so as not to wake Priest, I climbed onto his bed and positioned myself over his hips. My thighs held most of my weight as I got settled, about to give Sleeping Beauty exactly what he needed to wake his ass up from his enchanted sleep. And it wasn’t a kiss, either.
I gripped my butterfly knife firmly and placed it under his chin, careful not to touch him with the blade. With my left hand, I reared up and slapped him directly on his newly acquired burn and simultaneously dropped my weight onto his hips. Priest’s entire body tensed under me as he was ripped from slumber and his eyes snapped open. His first reaction was to grab my hips to shove me off him, but the cold kiss of steel against his Adam’s apple caused him to freeze.
“Uh-uh-uh, Growly Gus, I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you. Wiggle-worming would be ill-advised right about now.”I wagged the finger from my free hand at him, urging him to make good choices and not test me. Priest breathed heavily through his nose and glared silently at me with eyes that looked eerily gray in the darkened room. I gave him a moment to acclimate to reality because I’m nice like that, and I didn’t want him to think this was a dream. I nodded, reassuring him that I was, in fact, real and not a fabulous figment of his dreaming imagination.
Priest lowered his hands and laid them palms up on the bed with his arms bent at the elbows, showing himself unarmed and proving he could follow directions.
“Good boy.” I gave Priest a smug little grin, and if looks could kill, I think I’d be dead on the spot. “Now, if you recall, the last time you and I had a little spat, I warned you what would happen if you ever touched me in anger again. Do you remember what I told you would happen?”
Clenching and unclenching his jaw, probably trying to rein in that fiery temper of his, Priest finally gritted out, “You said if I touched you in anger again, it’d be the last time I touched anything.” I settled my weight more firmly over his hips, getting more comfortable and giving my thighs a rest now that he was awake.
“Exactly. So which hand would you like to lose? Are you a righty or a lefty?”
Priest’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, Growly, I never bluff. Slowly turn your head and look at your nightstand.” Priest turned his head, and his eyes widened ever so slightly when he took in Ratched’s emergency kit of medical supplies. I had ( ahem ) borrowed it from his room when I was collecting what I’d need from the clubhouse earlier. I had also gone into the club infirmary to add a few bits and bobs to round out his supplies. Really, you could never be too prepared for an amputation.
“Now, while I do not bluff and am completely down to cut your hand right the fuck off, I’m also not unreasonable. Tonight can go one of two ways, and I’m good with whatever you decide.” Priest’s hands started to slowly lower toward my knees as I spoke, causing me to dig my blade into his neck just a little bit more. If he didn’t quit playing with me, I’d end up skewering his Adam’s apple. The pressure reminded him that he wasn’t in a position to argue, and his hands relaxed back on the bed. “Okay, so, like I said, one of two ways. Option A, I sedate you with the handy-dandy thiopental I found in the infirmary, slap a tourniquet on your forearm, and cut that bitch off at the wrist.” My stare bore into his eyes, and Priest stared up at me. “Option B, which would be easier for me, is that you tell me why you hate me so much so we can work it out and get on with our lives. I won’t ask why you’re angry…that seems pretty obvious to me, but since I’m gonna be around for a while, I think it’d be best if we found enough common ground to get rid of all this tension between us.”
“You—” Priest started to say through clenched teeth before I could interrupt him.
“ Have to be the most magnanimous woman on the face of the planet ? Thank you for noticing, Priest. That’s very astute of you. I know I don’t have to give you a secondary option after I promised to remove your hand for laying it on me. Like I said, I don’t bluff. Keep that in mind for the future, though.”
“I didn’t put my hands on you in anger, angel.”
My eyebrows rose into my hairline in disbelief, and I scoffed, “Well, you sure didn’t put them on me for a tickle fight. You seemed angry enough in the confessional and more than willing to light me up with that taser.”
“That wasn’t personal. It was just business.” Priest looked stone-cold serious, yet I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Okay , Mr. Coreleone . From my end of the taser, it seemed pretty personal.” I put the pointer finger of my free hand to my chin and hummed, “Hmm, does this mean you choose option A?”
A huffed breath escaped Priest’s lips. “I meant I didn’t take you down there because I was angry. I wanted answers, not cathartic bloodshed. You’re dangerous, and I need to know what threat you pose to us here. I’ve been trying to figure you out, and I keep coming up with nothing.”
I roll my eyes. “You absolute goober. You did everything you could to figure out who I am and what I’m running from, did you? Did you try”—I shrug—“oh, I don’t know…asking me? Or trying to get to know me so I’d maybe open up and share with you? No, of course not. Why bother earning something if you can just take it by force instead?”
Glaring up at me, Priest gritted his teeth together, probably in an attempt not to say something that would make me feel stabby.
“Go ahead, Growly Gus, say what you want to say.” I inched my knife back slightly, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Whatever he was about to say wasn’t easy for him.
“I failed to protect my family once when it really mattered. A threat I hadn’t anticipated swept in and broke us in a way I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. I…” Tension seemed to flow out of Priest suddenly, his body relaxing back onto the bed. Sorrowful blue eyes met mine. “I can’t let it happen again on my watch. If I had spent more time watching over and protecting my sister, maybe she’d still be here. I’d rather dig my own grave than be blindsided by tragedy again.”
My knife arm relaxed a bit, and I gazed down at my left hand where it rested on Priest’s chest. “We don’t have to be friends if you don’t want to. I promise I’m not out to cause problems, and I wasn’t sent here to spy or wreak havoc, or whatever it is you think I’m trying to do. I’m sorry I got to Hoodie Guy before you could kill him, but I’m not sorry for doing what I had to do to survive. I’ve always done what needed to be done, and I can’t apologize for it. Ellis deserved vengeance, and you deserved to be the one who exacted it. But I didn’t steal it from you.” He nodded his head once to acknowledge my statement but remained silent, waiting for me to continue. I licked my lips, quickly deciding what I could share with him when we were at a place of absolutely zero trust. “You saw, on the camera, when I was talking to Duke and Bones in church?”
Priest gave another nod, and my heart sank into my stomach at the thought that he heard what I’d confessed. Sensing my rising panic, Priest lifted his hands to my hips, giving them a steadying and reassuring squeeze before he added, “I heard what you said to a point. The audio cut out when you were about to explain whatever it is you’re running from. Cricket listened on headphones, but I couldn’t hear what you told Bones and my father.” My face crumpled a bit in relief before I remembered why I was sitting in the dark with Priest in the first place. “I told them…enough…so that they would understand what I’m running from and why.” I suddenly felt nervous and shifted my hips, causing Priest to grip them harder as he let out a soft grunt. I wondered if I was hurting him, which caused me to snicker, considering everything that had gone down between us. I woke him with a knife to his throat, and now I’m worried about accidentally hurting him?
Suddenly, I felt evidence that I was very much not hurting Priest. In fact, I started to get the impression that he didn’t mind me sitting on him at all. Thanking Bob for the darkness that hopefully hid the blush spreading across my cheeks, I lifted myself off Priest’s hips and scrambled off his bed. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea; I was looking for peace with Priest, not a piece of Priest.
“Your dad and Bones, and Cricket too, know what I escaped. They know why I’m hiding and who’s looking for me. They think it’s okay if I stay, so you’ll have to trust their judgment for now.” I folded up my knife and tucked it into the band of my sleep shorts. Grabbing Ratched’s medical kit from the nightstand, I backed toward the door as Priest sat up in bed. His feet hit the floor, his elbows resting on his knees and hands steepled beneath his chin as he watched me approach the door. I grasped the doorknob behind me with one hand, clutching Ratched’s bag in the other.
“I’m glad you chose option B, Growly Gus. If I’d had to amputate your hand, it would have made this next part a little awkward. I know you don’t like me, and to be completely honest, I’m not your biggest fan right now. However, I’d like to suggest a truce. You resist the urge to choke me out and torture me for information, and I’ll behave myself and promise not to do anything to cause problems for the Crows. I can’t guarantee my past won’t catch up with me, but I can promise that I’ll do anything within my power to keep my past life far, far away from Los Cuervos.”
Priest let out a deep breath and rose from his rumpled bed. He slowly stalked toward me where I was pressed against the door, and for a reason I couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine, I froze on the spot. He stopped inches away from me, and because of our height difference, I had to tip my face up to meet his eyes. He braced one forearm on the door, leaning into me and bringing his face down to meet mine. His lips brushed against the shell of my ear as he murmured, “You’ve got yourself a deal, angel. Truce.” He pulled back andI couldn’t stop staring at the lips that caused goose bumps to erupt all over my body when they simply brushed my ear. What would it be like if he…
I fumbled the doorknob with a palm suddenly slicked with sweat and gulped as I nodded my head. “Can I ask you something?”
Priest nodded his head.
“Why do you call me angel? Angels are good, and I’m… not. I’ve seen and done a lot of bad things.” Shame rolled through me.
“I called you angel, but I didn’t say what kind.” I looked into Priest’s eyes, confused as to what he meant. My expression made him chuckle.
“Demons were angels once before they fell from grace. They fell and were damned, but that didn’t destroy their beauty. That’s the kind of angel you remind me of; wings tattered from the fall, but still a fucking angel nonetheless.”
I took a shaky step back through the doorway once I got my sweaty palms to twist the knob and started to walk back to my room when I heard a hissed “ psst ” from Priest. I looked over my shoulder and raised a brow in question.
“Just so you know, the next time you wake me up straddling me, our conversation will end very differently, angel. I don’t bluff either.”
I stood blinking owlishly for a few seconds after Priest’s door snicked closed as I processed his words. I let out a shaky breath and shook my head. It would take me ages to untangle my thoughts and feelings over what had gone down in the past forty-eight hours, and I needed sleep before I even approached my interaction with Priest in his room. After a quick pit stop to drop Ratched’s bag back into his room— seriously, these guys really should lock their doors —I returned to my room and slipped back into my bed. Where to go from here was an issue for tomorrow-Indigo. Settling in, I shuffled through songs in my mind.Choosing one of my favorite lullabies, I began to hum to myself, but before I could even get to the second verse of “Angel of the Morning,” I was already asleep.