Chapter Ten
Chapters
Shiloh
Just when I thought the world couldn’t get any darker, it turned around and switched off the sun.
Years. That was how long I’d punished myself for what had happened to Josh. For frigging years I’d believed my horrible life choices had destroyed my brother in a tragic domino effect. But come to find out, the opposite was true. It was his horrible life choices that had destroyed me.
What was I supposed to do with that?
“Coffee.” I slammed mugs down in front of Josh and Romeo, who had crowded around the small dinette table I’d wedged into a corner of the apartment’s miniscule kitchen, then limped to the chair farthest away from both of them. Hopefully I hadn’t actually broken my toe when I’d kicked the gun out of my brother’s hand, but it still hurt, and that was just one more layer of misery I could lay at Josh’s doorstep. “Creamer and sugar’s in front of you.”
Josh grabbed for the creamer while Romeo went for the sugar. “Thanks.”
“I’m just trying to be efficient so you can focus on answering my questions.”
“Such as?”
Oh, where to begin. “For starters, how did you get into my apartment in the first place?”
Josh shrugged while doctoring his coffee. “I waited for someone going out so I could catch the front door. Then I picked the apartment’s lock. Your lock’s useless, by the way.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Romeo said casually before I could open my mouth. “I’ve already spoken with her landlord about fixing the front door, so I’m sure he won’t have any problems with me changing out her locks. I’ll have it switched out by the end of the day.”
“You talked to my landlord?” That was news to me.
Romeo nodded. “You were right about him, Shy. He’s a genuinely good guy who understands my concerns about a pretty young woman living on her own here on the first floor with a faulty door buzzer. The buzzer issue should be fixed by the end of the week.”
“Look at you, putting on this act like you actually care about my sister.” Josh sneered at him while I tried to pick my jaw up off the floor. “We both know she’s nothing but a scam to you.”
Romeo sat so still it was terrifying even as Josh’s words stabbed me somewhere painful. “Say that again.”
“It’s obvious, asshole.”
“How did you even know Romeo was in my life?” I asked, trying to diffuse the situation before these two knuckle-draggers used my kitchen as their own personal caged octagon.
“One of the Chicago Gravediggers saw you two together. Obviously he recognized you from when you were held in the Rumpus Room, and he couldn’t wait to tell me about it. After he told Hades, of course.”
“Fucking Radar.” Romeo’s lip curled. “You sure he told Hades?”
“Positive.” My brother hunched over his mug, gripping it so tightly I half-feared it would shatter. “But even if Radar hadn’t spilled his guts, Hades still would’ve found out about it. He’s got eyes and ears everywhere, you have no idea.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Romeo said, still not moving. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Why don’t you tell me about how you and my baby sister just happened to meet?” Josh shot back, rage once again bubbling to the surface, and I had to work at suppressing my alarm. This fury-filled creature sitting in my kitchen bore almost no resemblance to my easy-going brother. I barely recognized him as human, much less my sibling. “Out of nearly three million people in this city, you—a renegade Gravedigger who’s super-tight with Hades’s nephew Tyr—just happened to start dating my sister? I can’t even calculate the odds of that happening organically, so I know it didn’t. You targeted her. Why?”
“That’s a good question.” I glanced at Romeo while my stomach tied itself in knots. “I’m sure you have a good answer.”
“I’m not the one answering questions now, because I’m not the one who pranced in here waving a gun around like a damn amateur,” Romeo returned, turning a look of such contempt on Josh it was a wonder he didn’t shrivel up and blow away on the spot. “You could’ve shot your sister dead with moves like that, dumbass.”
Josh actually laughed, though it held no humor. “Don’t pretend you care about that.”
“Oh, I care. I care because she’s my woman, and no one puts what’s mine in danger. I don’t care who you are to her,” he went on, while everything inside me seemed to leap at his unbelievable statement. “If you ever put Shiloh in danger again, I’ll kill you.”
Josh stilled, the bitter humor draining from his face as he regarded Romeo. “Bigger badasses than you have threatened me with death, pal. You’re not even in the top ten.”
“But no one’s ever been more motivated to back those words up than me.” Romeo waited a beat, giving the promise in his voice time to sink in. “To be honest, it’s a damn shame you’ve thrown in with Hades and the Chicago Gravediggers, because you and I seem to be focused on the same thing—protecting Shiloh. You want to protect her from me, and I want to protect her from you and all your fucked-up shit. If you actually gave a damn about her, you’d give some serious thought to changing your life, rather than running her out of town when she hasn’t done anything wrong.”
A bitter scoff ripped from Josh. “Changing my life? You make it sound as simple as going back to school or changing jobs. You know goddamn well there’s nothing simple about this. You can’t quit the Chicago Gravediggers. You know this.”
“You can if you join our chapter of the Gravediggers. It’s in the bylaws.”
It was like a bomb went off in my little kitchen. Josh seemed staggered by the words, which in turn made me hold my breath. Anxiously I waited for him to explode or yell or something, but after a few moments all he did was slowly shake his head.
“You’ve got to be shitting me, pulling something like this.”
“What?” I looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand.”
“The Chicago Gravediggers was founded by Hades’s old man,” Romeo explained, though his gaze never left my brother. “Since he had aspirations of becoming as big as Hell’s Angels, he put it in writing that the Chicago Gravediggers must work out peaceful negotiations with whatever chapters the mother charter spawned, should any problems arise. Self-cannibalism can be a real thing in a club, given its nature, so the founder of the Chicago Gravediggers tried his best to guard against that. No violence is allowed amongst its own chapters. Just peaceful negotiation.”
“Like Hades is going to honor that,” Josh snorted.
“If he wants to keep his position as president, he will,” came the immediate reply. “Yeah, he’s got brothers who are loyal to him. But there are just as many who are loyal to the club itself and all it stands for. If Hades is stupid enough to openly tear down the foundation that the club is built on, he won’t be president for long. Come over to us, and then we can negotiate a peace that avoids open warfare.”
“And there it is, the reason you targeted my sister,” Josh said softly, his voice flat with cynicism. “You’re trying to recruit me through my sister so you can steal me away from Hades and his crew, yeah? Tyr wants me to cook for him now that he’s gaining in strength, right?”
My stomach clenched into a hard knot of ice, because what Josh said made sense. Horrible, horrible sense.
Romeo’s upper lip curled. “I don’t give a shit about recruiting you, or whatever the fuck that paranoid brain of yours has come up with. I didn’t even know what you did for Hades until today. What I care about is the position Shiloh’s in now, thanks to you and Radar making such a big-ass deal out of the two of us hooking up. If Hades values you, he’s probably keeping eyes on you. That means he probably knows you’re here at your sister’s, which might make that dick think she’s your Achilles heel. If that’s the case, the most expedient way to solve that problem, at least from Hades’s perspective, is to get rid of her.”
“What?” Suddenly my smoldering rage at the ridiculous scheming of the people in my life vanished, and I stared at Romeo in unvarnished alarm. “What?”
“Baby, I won’t let that happen, you hear me?” To my surprise, Romeo abandoned both his coffee and his chair to kneel before me, his hands coming up to frame my face so that I had no choice but to look him in the eye. “There is nothing on this earth that’s going to get to you, because it’d have to go through me.”
“But it would go through you, so that doesn’t make me feel better.” In fact, it made me feel a million times worse.
“Then I’ll burn the whole world down before it even gets to that point, so get that look off your face, yeah? I’m right here. That means there’s no reason for you to feel fear.”
That sounded beautiful. Better than beautiful. Except… “I don’t trust anyone to take care of me, but me.”
My voice was small, but steady. I had to be steady now. Life had taught me that no one was going to ride to my safety, no matter what Romeo said. For all I knew, he was just saying that to rub my brother’s nose in how useless he was when it came to protecting me. I couldn’t believe in Romeo. I wanted to. But… I couldn’t.
I just couldn’t.
“Shy. My Shy.” My inner defenses nearly crumbled when he leaned in to press his lips with aching gentleness to my brow, before resting his own forehead against it. “When I first met you, I figured out pretty quickly there was something broken inside you. Now I get what it is. It’s your ability to trust. You had assholes in your life who should’ve taken care of you. Cherished you. Instead they let you down and fucked you over. Left you to fend for yourself with no one to turn to. You survived, crippled, but you survived.”
His words… God, how they hurt. I couldn’t even begin to understand why. “I’m not crippled.”
“Baby, you can barely move. But that’s okay, because I’m here now. I’m going to make sure that the crippling blow they dealt you so long ago doesn’t become who you are. They don’t deserve that final win over you, and you don’t deserve to be shut down and alone the rest of your life.”
“She’d be better off alone.” I was so into those sea-storm eyes I almost forgot my brother was still in the room. I glanced over to find him watching us, or more specifically me, with eyes that looked like they’d never been alive. “Safer. You’re right. I brought shit into her life, but you’re not going to be any better. You might think I’m wrong on that, but I’m not. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t trust you. Maybe she recognizes that deep down, you’ll always choose your brothers over her. That’s how it is in the life—your brothers are all that matter. You’ll never—never—put Shiloh first.”
“Man, you really do need to get the fuck away from Hades.” Romeo spared him a pitying glance. “You’ve got this sad, beaten-dog way of thinking, but your sister’s not like that. Are you, baby?”
“I don’t know what I am.” That wasn’t quite true. I was pretty sure I was an idiot, because Romeo’s protectiveness—not to mention that sweet kiss to my forehead—was doing weird things to my pulse. “The only thing I do know is that I’m not interested in focusing on me right now, because I’m not the problem. I’m just over here trying to live my life, while the two of you come crashing into it like a bad biker movie.”
“I wouldn’t even be here if you had the sense to avoid anyone coming at you from the Gravedigger world,” Josh shot back, falling back to snarling. Apparently that was now his default setting. “But obviously you have a type, Shiloh. Or maybe you’ve just got a thing for being used and humiliated.”
“Motherfucker.” Before I could blink, Romeo went from kneeling in front of me to smashing a fist into my brother’s jaw, knocking him out of his chair.
“Oh, God.” I sprang out of my own chair, not sure if I needed to separate them or run for my life.
“I told you not to disrespect Shiloh again.” Chest heaving, Romeo tried drilling holes into my brother with the heat of his gaze alone. For his part, Josh groggily looked up at Romeo from his place on the kitchen floor, absently wiping the back of his hand at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “You might think you’re some badass tough guy just because you’ve survived this long under Hades’s rule, but all I’m hearing is a whiny bitch who wants to make everyone as miserable as he is.”
“Fuck you.” Josh bared teeth smeared with blood as he staggered his way to his feet. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“What I know is that it’s taking all I’ve got to not kick the dogshit out of you,” Romeo muttered almost to himself, his teeth bared. “Come at your sister again and I will. Don’t think you can stop me on that, Shy,” he added, glancing my way. “I know he’s your brother, and I know you love him. But he made a choice all those years back to let you be tortured by Marvel for three days—three fucking days—before giving Hades what he wanted. And he’s clearly made the choice to ride with Hades and the Chicago Gravediggers instead of trying to find a way to make his life worth living. That means he can’t be trusted to be anywhere near you.”
“You have the Gravediggers insignia plastered all over you,” I burst out, flinging a hand at his still-naked chest. It was a gorgeous chest, heaven knew, but it was tainted thanks to that image. “Help me understand. How are you different?”
“Different chapters, babe.”
“So?”
“So, different chapters, different worlds. The Chicago Gravediggers are seeing how deeply they can drive themselves into the ground by going for the fastest and most dangerous money—reason number-one they went hard on recruiting your cash-cow of a brother. I don’t discuss club business as a rule, and I’m not going to go into any detail about how many streams of revenue my chapter’s got coming in. But I can tell you that we’ve got plenty of legitimate businesses going on within our Gravediggers chapter, including a bunch of gentlemen’s clubs around town, a merch line, a top-rated brewery, and the biggest moneymaker of them all, a custom chopper showroom called Ride Or Die. We’re not into meth production.”
That sounded… not too terrible. “So you’re not a vicious gang of outlaws?”
“Oh, they are,” Josh said with a cynical scoff. “They’re just one helluva lot smarter about how they launder the money they get from running drugs, guns and prostitution through their many legitimate businesses. They’re actually trying to make a stab at trying to look like upstanding citizens, but they’re not.”
“Upstanding enough to live a life a man can be proud of,” Romeo shot back. “Can you say the same, asshole? You’re over there moaning about how goddamn awful your life is with Hades. But when offered a legitimate chance to get yourself an upgrade by coming over to Tyr, you don’t do shit. Fact is, you’re a failure at life, Josh McKeen, and deep down you know it. But at least you have Hades to blame for it, yeah? Jesus, with a built-in excuse like that, it’s no wonder you don’t want to leave the Chicago Gravediggers.”
“I can’t justleave,” Josh gritted, visibly vibrating with tension. “No one just leaves Hades and lives to tell the tale.”
“Let me walk you in, talk things over with Tyr. I honestly don’t know if you’re worth the trouble, but for Shiloh’s sake I’m willing to stick my neck out for you this one time. After that, you’re on your own.”
Josh scowled at Romeo, his breathing audible while a muscle worked in his jaw.
“Decide,” Romeo snapped, clearly ready to throw him out. “I don’t have all day.”
“Tyr.” Josh whispered the name, as if he thought he might get struck by lightning just for uttering it out loud. “He’s Hades’s nephew. Right?”
“That’s right. President of the Gravediggers chapter—a chapter that Hades can’t go to war with without breaking the mother charter. Something we all hold sacred.”
“Hades holding anything but himself sacred…?” Josh shook his head, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of wetness in his downcast eyes. “That’s something I can’t imagine.”
Dear God, Josh, what did they do to you? What did Hades do?
“Is…” Josh’s swallow seemed to echo in the tiny kitchen. “Is there any way at all that Hades can attack your chapter, without breaking the mother charter?”
“The First Blood rule,” Romeo said, lifting a shoulder. “If we draw first blood on him—which we won’t—he has the right to defend himself. And then it’d be war. But that still has nothing to do with you coming over to our side. If and when war ever breaks out between Hades and us, you’d be kept out of it.”
“Make the call.” Josh’s eyes lifted to Romeo, and for the first time since he’d shown up, I saw a flicker of life in their depths. “I can’t go to Gravedigger turf, but… I can meet Tyr here.”
“Here?” I blinked, brought out of my musings enough to wonder when my life had plunged straight into biker world. Probably when I’d taken a biker to bed. “Here? As in my apartment, here?”
“Better put more coffee on, Shy girl,” Romeo said, spreading his hands wide. “Looks like we’re going to have a visitor.”