8. Dax
DAX
Dear Diary,
The love of my life is marrying a mob boss. Over my dead body.
My face throbbed like a motherfucker, and my eye was nearly swollen shut, but I dragged my ass out of bed and went to the shop anyway.
The temptation to just lie in bed all day was strong, but the shop had been my whole heart for a lot longer than any woman had been in my life, and I was damn determined to make sure it still ran long after she’d walked out.
It was almost ridiculous how much I gaslit myself, trying to believe that.
But I’d keep saying it, and maybe one day it would be true.
The lights were already on behind the window, Saint View Tattoo painted right in the middle of it. One of us painted it a few times a year, whenever it started getting shabby. And because we all had different styles, the window was an ever-evolving display of the artists who worked inside.
Roarke and King looked up from the kitchenette as I walked in. Roarke winced at the sight of my face.
But my youngest brother, only by the minute that separated him and his twin, just shook his head. “You idiot.”
I flipped him the bird. “Good morning to you too, Tim.”
Nobody called him that except our parents. And me when I wanted to piss him off, as was my right as the eldest brother. He went by our last name, King, always claiming it was ridiculous that I was Dax, and his twin was Roarke, and he’d gotten saddled with Timothy.
Truth was, my mother had named me and Roarke. And her taste in names ran on the slightly unusual side.
Our father had claimed naming rights over his youngest son. And since my mom had named me and Roarke, she couldn’t really say no when he’d come up with a much more traditional name for their last kid.
Roarke passed me a mug of steaming-hot coffee, black, just the way I liked it. “You get a doctor to do something about that cut on your head?”
“Do you see any stitches in it?” I asked.
“No, which is exactly why I asked. It looks like it needed a few, though it’s probably too late. That’s gonna scar.” He leaned in and prodded the swelling around my eye.
I flinched back.
Roarke just frowned at me. “At least take your fucking eyebrow ring out when you fight, you dumbass.”
King grinned. “Or fight better, so you don’t get hit in the first place.”
I sipped my coffee. “I won, didn’t I?”
Roarke put the milk back in the little bar fridge beneath the countertop. “Only because the other guy sucked.”
“Who needs enemies when you have brothers,” I muttered beneath my breath. I sulked over to my workstation and slumped into my chair.
The bell over the door, which was entirely too fucking chirpy for my mood at this time of the morning, gave its tinkle, and I didn’t even bother glancing over before calling out, “We don’t open ’til ten!”
A few months ago, I would have never turned away a paying customer who came into the shop early.
I would have been helpful and polite. I had never wanted some dark and dingy shop where anyone who wasn’t a biker or thug was too scared to even set foot in it.
So I’d spent the last ten years making my store bright and friendly and non-intimidating.
It had worked. We’d been busier than ever, with all sorts of clientele.
Moms who’d always wanted to get their kids names, to the sixty-plus crowd who were realizing that a tattoo was something they wanted before they kicked the bucket.
Saint View wasn’t exactly a highbrow sorta area, so we did our fair share of bikers and thugs too, but the goal of making Saint View Tattoo a thriving, mainstream business had been achieved.
Over the years, I’d been able to bring in both my brothers, and most recently, Reaper as our apprentice.
“Are you really going to make your mother come back during business hours?”
I spun around on my chair in surprise.
My mother stood in the doorway, all five feet nothing of her, but pride in her eyes as she gazed at her sons.
Roarke and King moved in to give her a hug, and I held back, because I already knew what was coming.
She held her arms out to me, and I leaned down, wrapping mine around her.
“Maddax Andrew King, you are going to be the death of me.” She pulled back, holding me at arm’s length and studying the damage the fight had done to my face two nights before. “That’s not the only black eye you’ve had in the last few weeks. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Roarke leaned his ass back on the front desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “Because he got dumped and he’s still in the self-destruction phase of the breakup.”
I shot my brother a warning look not to say anything more. I didn’t need my mom worrying about me.
But this was more than just a breakup.
It was the woman I loved, who I’d been planning to spend the rest of my life with, leaving without barely more than a word.
I didn’t have a broken heart.
I was just fucking broken.
I was sad. And I was angry. And fighting was good for both. A sharp punch to the ribs was a hell of a lot easier to bear than my mother staring at me with sad eyes that made me feel like shit.
She squeezed my fingers. “She’s just a woman. There will be others.”
“Nyah wasn’t ‘just a woman,’ Mom.” That was like saying the Mona Lisa was just a painting.
For a short time, Nyah had been my entire fucking world. And with her in it, it had felt beautiful. Sweet. Warm. Like a place I actually wanted to be, and not the hellhole it truly was.
She had made everything good.
And then she’d left.
My mom’s fingers froze around mine. “Did you say her name was Nyah?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face; just the sound of her name spoken out loud sent spears of pain through my limbs. “Yeah.”
My mom bit her lip. “What’s her last name?”
I sighed heavily. “Does it matter?” I’d wanted it to be King.
She clearly had other opinions.
My mom squeezed my hand. “It matters.”
“Matish,” I said eventually. “Nyah Matish.”
My mother dropped my hand like it was a cold fish and took a giant step back. “Oh no. No, no, no.”
I studied her as she backed up across the room and sank down onto the bench in the waiting area. Her aged fingers twisted around themselves, bony and a little gnarled from decades of cleaning and cooking and gardening.
Roarke sat next to her and picked up her hand before she twisted them into pretzels. “What’s wrong?”
But she couldn’t even look at her middle son. Her gaze was too firmly stuck on me.
And all I could see was the horror in it.
A sick feeling swamped me. “What?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know if I should tell you. But of course, now I have to, don’t I?” She clutched her stomach. “I think I met your girl. Nyah.’
I squinted at her, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. She’s gone back to the city, to be with her family—”
“Carlos Guerra is marrying a woman named Nyah Matish,” she blurted out.
I blinked, sure that sentence didn’t make any sense. “What?”
Her mouth formed an unhappy line. “She was delivered to the house yesterday. Luca has come home for the wedding too. It’ll all happen in a few weeks’ time.”
I shook my head, hearing the words in plain English but their meaning suddenly completely foreign. “It can’t be the same woman…”
And yet, pieces started clicking together in my head.
I knew Nyah’s family in the city had Mafia connections, though she’d told me they’d moved from New York so I’d just assumed their associations were in that area.
And I knew my mother had worked for the Guerra family, at their mansion in Providence, for the entirety of my life.
She never talked about it much, at least not in a long time, other than the obligatory, “Oh, work is good. I made a flan this week and pruned a dozen rosebushes.”
She was a housekeeper. What more was there really to say?
I remember once, when I was really young, there had been an argument between her and my father over her working there, but I’d never heard another word about it since, so I guessed they’d gotten over whatever reservations he’d had about her working for a well-known Mafia family.
I suspected how well they paid might have had something to do with that argument becoming a non-event.
My parents had a very nice house on the edge of Providence.
It was definitely no mansion, like the Guerras’ home, but it was a comfortable size to raise three boys in, much nicer than the houses of my friends growing up.
We’d never gone without. As an adult, earning adult money, it had occurred to me that my parents, my dad a janitor and my mother a housekeeper, could not afford the house they lived in unless my mother was paid a lot more than a regular housekeeper’s wage.
I hadn’t given it another thought. Until now.
And then something else my mother had said rang in my head like an alarm bell. “What do you mean, ‘she was delivered?’”
She sucked in a wobbly breath. “I don’t know. She was dropped off by a car, with her things. They took her upstairs and put a bodyguard on her door. I haven’t seen her since. Mr. Guerra—the senior one I mean—isn’t home right now and—”
Without even thinking about what I was doing, I picked up my keys and strode for the door.
“Dax,” King warned me.
But I shook my head, glaring at Roarke when he stepped in front of the door. “Don’t think my busted knuckles will stop me from laying you out if you don’t move out of my way,” I said quietly.
There was a darkness in my tone. One I hadn’t even known I was capable of a few months ago.
But losing Nyah had brought it out.
And I knew that as much as I loved Roarke, if he stood between me and Nyah, he was going to end up on the ground.
He realized it and stepped aside, but his words trailed after me. “If she’s Carlos Guerra’s fiancée, you aren’t going to get within a hundred feet of her. She’ll be under lock and key.”
I stopped, because he was right. I turned to my mom.
She shook her head. “Dax, I can’t get you in there! I’ll lose my job!”
I didn’t want to jeopardize her income, but I also couldn’t just leave Nyah in that house alone either. If she was back in town, in that house, I had to see her. There was no way she had willingly chosen Carlos Guerra over me. I refused to believe that.
Mom must have seen the look in my eyes, because she did a double take. Her hand fluttered to her mouth. “Oh, Dax.”
I knew she could see it all. Every sleepless night. Every waking moment of loss and need. Every ounce of agony that her leaving had put me through.
I’d known something was wrong when she’d left. I let myself believe she was really just going back to the city to take care of her sick mother, and that being around me was too painful after losing the baby.
But I’d never truly believed she hadn’t felt the same way I did.
For the shortest time, we’d been everything to each other. I was old enough to know that feeling didn’t happen twice.
She was it.
And now she was marrying someone else.
Over my dead fucking body.
I shook my head at my mother miserably. “I have to get in there, one way or another. If they don’t let me in the gates, I’ll climb them.”
Panic filled her expression. “They’ll shoot you! They’re the Guerras! When their signs say trespassers will be shot, they really mean it!”
She wasn’t being dramatic. I knew that. I’d heard the rumors. That they had bodies buried all across Saint View and Providence, but nobody could ever pin anything on them. Probably because they had the cops well and truly in their pockets.
But I also didn’t care.
My mom caught my hand before I could get out the door.
“Eleven-ten-nine-three. That’s the gate code.
It’ll get you in. The house probably won’t be locked, but you’ll need to have a reason to get past security…
” She nodded, the plan clearly coming together in her mind.
“Stop at my house. Get the tiramisu out of the refrigerator and take it over there. When they ask why you’re there, you can tell them I asked you to deliver it.
” She frowned at me. “That will get you in the house, but after that I cannot help you. She’ll be up in one of the bedrooms, which are at the top of the stairs that start in the foyer, but there is no reason for you to be up there.
So you’ll have to work it out from there. ”
I bent and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”
“This is a very bad idea.’
“I know.”
But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except making sure Nyah was okay.
And then getting her back.