Chapter Twenty
Victoria
The sound of the front door broke the spell we'd fallen under. Az gave my hand another gentle squeeze and pushed off the side of the cabin.
"Why don't you head inside and find something to eat. I'm sure Craig is up by now and cooking. I need to speak with Phil and see them off." He smiled softly.
The mention of Craig was like an arrow straight through our happy little bubble, bursting it around me and allowing all the irritation from the night before to come rushing back in. As if sensing the sudden shift in my mood, Az glanced at me, the corners of his lips pulled down slightly.
"Hey, don't be too hard on him, okay? Craig was just doing what he does best to try and make sure we can keep you safe. That shit he found about Benson, it hit him harder than he let on."
"When did you become so insightful, Mister Miyagi?" I snorted.
"If you haven't noticed, I'm actually a pretty sharp guy. Until a certain irritating princess gets in my head and makes me crazy." He laughed. "Seriously though, I know you're used to Craig running to you with every little thing like the lovesick pup he is, but when he gets a lead on something, he doesn't stop to think. He just latches on like a dog with a bone until he's got everything he can find."
"Two dog references in one go? I'm not sure that's a really flattering comparison."
"Well, they don't call him the ‘Bloodhound' in his weird tech circles for nothing." Az shrugged as we turned the corner of the cabin and moved toward the porch.
"Alright, well…" I considered my words as we stopped at the porch and squeezed his hand before letting it go. "I promise not to hit him in the head with a rock before we start arguing, how about that?" I chuckled and planted a quick kiss on the corner of his lips. "Go tend to your stuff."
"How about you just don't throw any more rocks, period." He snickered as his hand moved to my back, and he gently pushed me toward the door. "I'll be inside in a bit; go get something to eat before you hulk out on everyone else because you're hangry."
Phil and Doctor Nolan were standing to the side of the door as Az motioned for me to continue inside. The Doctor, to his credit, raised an eyebrow in question as if to ask if I were sure I was okay and remained silent. I gave him a slight smile and nodded my farewells as I moved past the men into the house. Phil, however, barked out a laugh, and I could swear I heard him ask Az if he just wasn't man enough to handle a hangry woman as the door closed behind me. Shaking my head, I made my way back to the kitchen in search of food.
Craig wasn't in his usual morning spot at the stove. Part of me was disappointed. I'd gotten used to seeing him cooking breakfast for everyone daily. The thought alone made my stomach growl, demanding to be filled, and I silently cursed the bastard for all but training me to expect a five-star restaurant meal in the morning. My rumbling stomach only seemed to make me angrier at him as I ripped open the cupboards to find something to eat.
Ripping open each cabinet, I became increasingly frustrated as I found nothing more than ingredients for various meals. I was ready to find a rock to throw at Craig for not including anything quick and self-serve on the grocery runs when I finally came across a ten-pack of mini-cereal boxes. The sugary marshmallow cereal wasn't to my taste, but I was starving, and it would have to do.
"Thank God for Leighton's childish taste in food," I mumbled to myself as I tore open the pack and snagged two of the mini boxes to pour into a bowl.
I ate quickly, some of my anger subsiding alongside my hunger. By the time I'd finished and rinsed my bowl in the sink, I was a little annoyed that Az was right about me being hangry, even if I'd go to my grave without telling him he was right. Craig still hadn't made his way to the kitchen, and I was starting to get a little worried about him. Deciding I should deal with the lingering hurt and anger from his digging, I made my way to the room he shared with Leighton.
My mind bounced between being angry and worried. It wasn't like him to not have come out of his room yet, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was alright in there. I paused outside the door, wondering if I should knock in case he was still sleeping, when I heard the soft clacking of keys on his keyboard.
"Craig, I think we should talk about–" I started as I pushed open the door, only to see Craig jump so hard that he almost slid out of his chair.
" Jesus , Bunny! Don't sneak up on a man while he's working. That's a good way to get shot in our line of business." Craig yelped as he righted himself. I raised an eyebrow at him suspiciously as I moved into the room.
"What's got you so focused over there? I hope you're not doing what I think you're doing…" I trailed off, closing the distance between us and craning my head so I could see around him at his laptop screen. I caught enough of the title to send my temper through the roof again before he slammed his laptop shut.
"Bunny–" Craig started as he eyed me carefully.
"Are you fucking serious , Craig?! You haven't done enough at this point?" I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes as I pinned my glare on him.
"Before you run off with your assumptions, maybe–" He started again, moving toward me slowly with his hands raised.
"First, you dig up my shit with Benson and lay it out for everyone to see without talking to me about it first, and then , you decide to announce to the house that I need more birth control again without talking to me first. What now? Maybe you could just save time and print out your bullshit tabloid article and hang it in the den where everyone can read it!" I found my voice starting to rise again. Part of my brain, somewhere in the back, had the passing thought that I was never a yeller until these men decided to walk into my life and stomp on every single one of my nerves. "Here's a headline for you, in case you fucking missed it. Benson Prescott spotted with bombshell blonde at Avante Bella having a cozy dinner. Has he finally ditched the Bristol Heiress? Spoiler alert, it was me that dropped his ass, and the blonde was his cousin Dahlia! So, before you go announcing the trash to the world, maybe it's good to remember that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet."
Craig looked at me with an impassive expression before backing up to his desk again and opening his laptop. He pointed at a man's picture that struck my brain as vaguely familiar and sighed.
"This guy, Bunny. I was looking for information about him. He's related to Benson and mentioned in the article." He deadpanned. "I couldn't care less about what the rest of the article has to say, I just needed what was relevant to Trey."
I felt my anger deflate as if it was a balloon that Craig had stuck a needle in. My arms fell to my sides, and I couldn't think of what to say, so I just stood there looking between Craig and his laptop. Almost as infuriating as his actions was his calm demeanor and steadfast logic. I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again, and still nothing.
Okay, fine, maybe this wasn't all that bad. But I'd had stuff to talk with him about before I even came in here, so…
"My point still stands!" I snapped, putting my hands on my hips. "Even without this stupid tabloid article. You still put my information out to the rest of the group without even talking to me. You went digging into my past without telling me you were doing it!"
I found my footing again as I continued on. Craig's shoulders dropped, and he put his hands in his pockets and looked at me as if he were merely waiting for me to continue.
"Of everyone in the house, do you have any idea how blind-sided I was to find out that the largest invasion of my privacy that's happened to date came from you ?! I could have handled it from almost anyone else!" I wanted to yell about it, but as I kept talking, my voice started to return to a normal volume. Looking at him patiently waiting as I ranted was quickly taking the wind out of my sails a second time. Why the fuck was it so hard to stay mad at him. "Why are you so fucking calm all the time? I came in here ready to fight about this."
"Bunny… If you want to fight, go do it with Az." He said simply. "I'm happy to discuss things with you, but if you want to fight, you'll have to do it with someone else because I don't do that."
I stared at him for what felt like a ridiculously long time, unable to produce a response to that. "What kind of gangster doesn't fight about stuff?" I snarked eventually. It felt lame even to me as it came out.
The corner of his lips quirked slightly, but his passive expression didn't shift. "You know why, Bunny. But don't mistake the fact that I won't argue with you for the fact that I can't do what needs to be done when it comes to my job. And don't mistake my job for who I am, I told you once... We weren't always gangsters."
I fell into a stunned silence again, feeling all of the pent-up frustrations and emotions just seep away from me and be replaced by guilt. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, trying to figure out where to go from here, knowing I'd fully put my foot in my mouth.
"I'm sorry, Craig… I didn't even think about… I really came in here acting like an Az-hole." I said with a heavy sigh.
"It's really okay, Bunny. Honestly, I should have told you I was digging, and I'm sure not feeding you this morning probably added to your irritation with me." He replied with a slight smirk.
"It definitely didn't help," I responded with a mock sneer. "I ended up reduced to eating a single serving box of children's cereal I found in the back of the cabinet."
Craig's smirk deepened slightly, and he moved toward me, pulling his hands from his pockets to place them gently on my shoulders. "I can't promise you that more things about you you'd prefer we didn't dig into won't come up while I'm doing my job, Bunny." I opened my mouth to interrupt, and he narrowed his eyes at me. "But I can promise that I will come to you with anything that I find before I discuss it with the guys. We can decide together what's actually important and relevant for them to know so we can keep you safe, as long as you agree to accept it if I say that something you'd prefer to keep to yourself is absolutely necessary to share to keep you safe. Deal?"
I pursed my lips, considering whether or not to accept the deal Craig was offering.
"How about this? Why don't I tell you what I was looking for specifically just now and what I've found so far? You'll be the first one in the house other than me with that information." Craig offered.
"Okay, sure. That sounds…. fair." I replied, allowing him to guide me to sit on the side of one of the beds.
Craig slid his computer chair over in front of me and sat down with his open laptop facing me.
"This guy," he started, tapping on the man he'd pointed out earlier. "Is Trey Prescott."
"I know, he's Benson's uncle and Dahlia's father. I've never met him myself, but Dahlia and I got along well enough I heard a lot about him. Typical upper-class father, too busy for their kid." I spoke. "Kind of a miracle Dahlia turned out as sweet as she is."
"Well, that could be because he's involved with the Jackals. That's what this tattoo means, Bunny." Craig continued, pointing out the red spider lily tattoo barely visible above the collar of Trey's shirt.
"How do you know? What if he just likes spider lilies, or it has some other significance?"
"Well… Sure, I suppose there could be a chance of that. But it's not just the fact that it's the spider lily; it's in the color and composition of the tattoo as well. All of them have the exact same tattoo, it's how we identify each other." He answered before turning his head to the side and gesturing to a stylized moth tattoo that was a carbon copy of the one on Az's hand. "We all have this one, the Acherontia Atropos… though most people know it by its more common name African Death's-head Hawkmoth. Every man in our ranks gets one once they move from Associate to ranked Soldier."
"And everyone's looks like yours and Az's?" I asked curiously.
"Exactly like them." He replied. "All of our men go to Joey or Az for them, they're actually really good artists."
"I've… never seen them do one the whole time we've been around each other."
"You haven't really met any of our men, either." Craig shrugged. "And we don't let just anyone become a made man in our ranks. Any more questions, or are you ready for me to continue?"
I thought for a moment before I nodded and made a motion for him to continue, satisfied with his answers.
"So, as I was saying. I noticed the tattoo in a company photo and started putting the pieces together to dig further into Trey. From what I can find, his Jackal tattoo got an upgrade about thirteen months ago." Craig pulled up a second photo, doing something on his laptop so the two images of Trey were side by side. "There's more petals in this one, which for these bastards, means a promotion. But the weird thing is he went from Soldier to more petals than their Capos, which means he did something big."
I couldn't help the twinge of sadness that passed over me. Thirteen months didn't mean anything to me, but it was a reminder that my mother had been gone for over fifteen months now.
"You okay, Bunny?" Craig asked, noticing the shift.
"Yeah, just having a moment. It's silly, but hearing you say thirteen months made me think about losing my mom a couple months before whatever this means." I answered, waving my hand at the images on his laptop.
Craig sat his laptop on the bed beside me and leaned forward, pulling me into a hug. "I'm sorry, Bunny. Prudence was a wonderful lady; I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you to lose her. You know I'm here if you ever want to talk about it."
I leaned into his hold, taking a deep breath as I considered his words. My father had all but vanished on me after mom died; Tiffany had thought partying to keep my mind off of it was the solution, and I just realized nobody had ever actually asked me if I wanted to talk about losing her.
"That would be nice, actually." I started. "But we can talk about it later if there's more about this stuff with Trey you need to cover."
He leaned back and touched my face softly, gently rubbing his thumb across my cheek. "What I need to do is be here for you." he said, closing his laptop and pushing it away as if to make a point. "Those things can wait until later, you're my priority here."
I puffed out a breath and frowned. "There's not really much to tell. Pretty much everything the police could find was shared on the news. Mom stayed a little late at the center, Dad couldn't get out of some client dinner in time to pick her up, and some stranger saw an obviously wealthy woman and… it was a mugging gone wrong." I started. "They never found the guy. None of us ever thought something like that could happen to her even in Southside. Not with how loved she was there, ya know. But it did. For a while I was angry with Dahlia over it."
"Dahlia?" Craig asked.
"Yeah, Benson's cousin. The daughter of the guy you've been looking into."
"Right, I'm just not totally sure I'm understanding what she has to do with what happened to your mom."
"Oh, well she had called earlier in the day to see if mom could stay a little late for her to bring by a donation check. She never showed though, and I may have somewhat blamed her for mom even being in Southside when the mugging happened." The words started to pour from me as I spoke. It was like having someone to talk to about my mother's death was all I needed for the dam to break. "I did run into her about a month or so before the gala. Turned out while I was busy blaming her, she was also busy blaming herself because her car wouldn't start, and her father refused to let her take his to meet my mom. Blamed her driving record and made her call a mechanic, which is no small feat for someone in our circles. By the time she found someone to come out, the news of my mother's attack was already plastered on every news station in Sacona."
"I can't imagine how guilty she must have felt." Craig offered.
"I know," I sighed. "And I'm just the asshole that avoided her because I blamed her for something she had no control over. She wasn't the one that cornered my mom near that alley and then stabbed her to death over some jewelry and cash."
"At the risk of making you mad at me again, I have to tell you, I dug into the coroner's report. We didn't know you then, but we knew Prudence and all five of us wanted to find the guy that did that to her and put a bullet between his eyes. More, but I don't know if you want the graphic details of what we had planned if we'd been able to find anything to lead us to him."
It took me a second to put together why he was bringing up something he'd done before he met me before it dawned on me that he was being honest about it because I'd come in here ready to fight about his digging. I nodded, and when I turned my gaze to him, I blinked several times, realizing my vision had gone blurry from unshed tears during my rambling.
Wiping the few that fell away from my face, I sucked in a deep, steadying breath. "I appreciate you letting me know. I know how tied to the center you guys were; it honestly would have been more surprising if you'd said you didn't look into it." I rolled my shoulders to release some of the tension that had built there. "Would it be alright if I said I want to… move on to something else? I really don't want to dwell there anymore."
"Of course, Bunny." He said gently, running his hand over my hair in that soothing way of his. We sat there for a moment in silence, not sure how to shift the topic to something else, when he perked up suddenly. "You know what I realized not long ago?"
"What's that?"
"It's spooky season! Literally the best time of the year. I know that you're used to going to a fully loaded Halloween party, and it sucks we can't do that for you, but we can do the next best thing!" He beamed, a huge grin splitting his face, making him look so adorably excited.
It was infectious, and I couldn't help but feel myself getting excited. "What's the next best thing?"
"Go grab everyone else and meet me in the den. You'll see!" He jumped up and pulled me to my feet before planting a quick kiss on the corner of my mouth and sped from the room, leaving the door open behind him.