Chapter 35
EVER
Anger pulsed in the air the moment Bobby followed me inside José’s place. I step between a seething Tyler and a too-calm Bobby.
Doesn’t he realize how close he’s coming to getting mob-rushed and beaten up on by my brother and the guys? José can’t do much. He’s on crutches.
I cross my arms. “You will not touch him.” I look from my brother to the guys in the room. “He visited my father in prison and has his permission to see me.”
I hold back my smile of satisfaction when the guys’ eyes widen and Ty’s tense body relaxes.
“Bobby has new information on Carlos’s murder. He was there and went to see the detectives to give them what he has. So please, sit, eat, and listen.” I sweep out my arms. “Let’s help Bobby help the detectives solve Carlos’s murder. We all want closure.”
The guys grumble and give Bobby the death glare, but they sit. Having to feed fifteen-plus hungry guys, José caters Sunday brunch. Food gets set on the table, and we serve ourselves in silence. Bobby is next to me. Slate is seated on his side, and Gage is on my left. José and Ty are across from us.
We eat in silence. The guys eye us. I shamelessly wipe a piece of egg off Bobby’s beard. He’s growing out his facial hair after I wondered out loud what it would feel like to be kissed by a bearded mafia dom on my mouth and down there.
“I’ll give you bratva,” he said, having listened to a steamy part of an audiobook in my car when his truck was getting serviced. I smile. This guy of mine.
“Something funny?” Ty’s fork is in midair. There’s a piece of sausage on it.
Bobby speaks before I can tell Ty to stuff the sausage where the sun doesn’t shine. “Do you know your sis has a talent with napkins?”
Ty shoves back his chair and smacks his palms on the table. “Bring up what you do in the bedroom to the gathering table, and I’ll fucking cut your balls out with a dull butterknife before I feed them to you.”
Bobby smirks. “I take it that’s a no. Show them, beautiful.”
“They’ll laugh,” I say near his ear.
“I’ll fucking pop them in their faces.” Bobby isn’t shy with his volume or the murderous intent in his eyes when he looks around the room.
Resigned, I sigh and grab an unused cloth napkin. Ty sits and watches me with his normal skepticism.
My heartbeat loud in my ears and my hands trembling, I shape one into a swan and another into a rose. When I did this trick at a party, the college guys rolled their eyes and laughed.
The guys around the table look at me, smiling. Their arms are crossed. Some have their heads tilted, and others are nodding. Joey has a shit-eating grin. “Mi princesa, you are one talented woman.”
I make another and another until the table is full of hearts, flowers, and swans.
Bobby straightens in his seat with his chest puffed out. “That’s my girl.” He takes my hand and drops a kiss on the back of it. Rather than squeeze my eyes shut and hope and pray that they won’t harm Bobby, I stare down the guys until they avert their gazes.
Yeah, bring it. No one hurts my man.
José, being the more welcoming party, is equally eager as I am for closure. He asks Bobby for specifics.
“What did the detectives say? Why the fuck didn’t they call me as soon as they had something new on the case?”
“They would’ve, but they’re working short. I offered to fill you in.”
José’s eyes narrow. “How do we know you’re being truthful?”
Bobby shrugs. “You don’t. You’ll have to trust me.”
“I trust him,” I say. “Bobby and Carlos were friends.”
“What the fuck?”
“No fucking way?”
“He shitted on Red Dahlia on social media. Said the music was crap and no one should be caught dancing in a classless club in a shitty part of town.”
Ty’s words rise above the others’ disbelief.
“Tell them what you told me,” I say to Bobby. I didn’t believe him either when he told me.
“I met him when I was sixteen, in McMillan. I was driving back to Alexandria and saw a car broken down on the side of the road. It was Carlos.”
“What the fuck was he driving?”
I sigh. Ty is persistent.
“A second-gen white Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX. Satisfied?”
Ty nods. I beam. Bobby is a car guy.
“The battery on his phone died. His mother was in the hospital in Alexandria. She was dying, and he had to get to her. The car wouldn’t start.
I offered him mine. He could bring it back.
I couldn’t leave McMillan. I had something to take care of.
He put his number in my phone, and we kept in contact over the years, including when I was deployed. ”
He stares straight ahead, seeing what’s in front of him but not actually seeing. I’ve seen this expression before when he shared something from his past. Bobby is reliving his memory.
I remember this story. The “something” Bobby had to take care of was a meeting with his father’s family. His father picked him up at the gas station and brought him over to the family home to meet his siblings. His brothers walked out of the house. Gwen stuck around.
The sad smile on his face when he spoke about that day .
. . I kissed him until his smile left his face, replaced with a low growl of need.
It’s interesting, hearing him tell the story again, that he left out the part about Carlos to me.
I wish Bobby had told me. I would’ve told him that Carlos came into our lives when we needed him the most. My first love was such a good man.
“I told him about expanding business to East Alexandria. The place was dead. No one was willing to touch it with a fifty-foot pole. A violent gang had a grip on the place. We decided to case out the joint—specifically, the warehouse. It had the shell we were looking for to collaborate and build a nightclub that could double as a concert venue.”
The guys listen attentively. I do too. The part about Carlos’s murder is coming up.
“The moment we stepped over the threshold, Carlos shoved me out of the way. A shot rang out. The motherfucker didn’t use a silencer. He wanted everyone in that shithole to know a murder was going down. I called nine-one-one, hunkered down, and guarded Carlos’s body until the cops arrived.”
“You slipped out using the underground tunnels.”
Bobby meets José’s gaze and nods.
“Why didn’t you stick around?” José asks. “Why the fuck did you run off without giving the cops a statement?”
Bobby tents his hands in front of his mouth.
He’s looking at José but not seeing him.
He’s seeing himself there with Carlos and reliving his grief and guilt.
I wrap my arm around his shoulders and pull him to me.
He leans into me for support, and my heart sings.
It’s nice to be strong for someone when they need it.
“I wanted to. Believe me, I fucking did. But duty to my country overrode common decency and loyalty to my friend and mentor. It’s a regret I live with every day.” He exhales a deep breath.
“He had a flight to catch,” I said. I remembered the date.
It was the day after Carlos was murdered.
Bobby shared his journal with me, which included the dates of his deployments and a quote under each one.
“He was sent to Syria.” The quote under the day after Carlos’s death was: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Bobby squeezes my hand under the table, a thank you for giving him time to regain his composure. I rest my head on his shoulder.
“The hit was personal, intended for me. The person aimed at my heart, not my head. That is fucking personal.” He threads his fingers through his hair. I slide my arm off his shoulders and settle my hand on his thigh. Bobby covers my small hand with his large one and squeezes.
“You saying a jealous or pissed-off ex put the hit on you?” Miguel asks.
“Yeah.”
“How many of those do you have?”
My body tenses. I slide my hand from Bobby’s. He tightens his grip.
“One long-term, a high school sweetheart who screwed me over, and one psychotic hookup who wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“I’m putting my bet on the hookup,” Joey says, before he looks to me with an apologetic expression. “Sorry, mi princesca. No one likes to hear about their flames’ exes.”
I shrug. “I couldn’t care less about the high school sweetheart. She was a monster. The one I worry about is the one who can’t take no for an answer. She sounds crazy.”
“She is.” Slate’s deep voice cuts into the silence and bounces off the walls.
Everyone looks at him with surprise. He’s been silent since he watched me and Bobby walk in. He has a stony expression and a dark cloud over his head. Slate is as moody as his cousin.
“Iris is unstable. I warned Bobby, but this guy has a soft spot for women in trouble. She was running away from a domestic abuse situation with her boyfriend. Bobby took her in, and the rest is history.”
Or it’s more like Slate didn’t want to say out loud and confirm what Bobby had already revealed. This Iris was Bobby’s casual hookup. They had sex.
I should be jealous, but I’m not. What stands out is that Bobby tried to help her and was wrapped up in her problems. He offered her his comfort, and she took advantage.
Didn’t I do the same when I asked for his help with Gwen’s overdue tuition and he offered five thousand in exchange for twenty-four hours with him?
Who does that? Apparently a guy with a soft spot for women in trouble.
“I spread the rumors, man.” Miguel stands up. He blows out a breath. Remorse lines his face. “Sorry, bruh. Joey’s my cousin. He told me first that you were the true owner of Crimson, not Dom. I was so pissed I wanted to hurt you. The best way to do that was to say you led Carlos to his death.”
He slumps into his chair.
“Then the crew would hate you more when Joey gave up your identity.” He clenches and unclenches his hand that’s on the table.
“It’d be easy to convince José and Ty that violence and not keeping the peace and being patient with the detectives were the answer.
We’d trash Crimson and burn it down to the ground.
That’s how I wanted José and the crew to get closure. ” He hangs his head.
My chest aching, I go to him and wrap my arms around Miguel’s shoulders from behind.
“You loved Carlos like a brother. All of you did.” I glance around the room.
“Carlos was Bobby’s mentor. He helped him and Dom get the business off the ground.
Bobby wants to rebuild and revive East Alexandria in Carlos’s memory.
He can’t do it without your help.” I put the pieces from our past conversations together.
“I also have his old cars.”
My head snaps up. I stare at Bobby. “Wha . . . what did you say?”
“All the old cars that were sold for next to nothing after his death by the guy who owned the garage where they were kept. I found them, bought them all, and plan to get them fixed and running. In his memory.”
My eyes tear up. I hurry to Bobby. He meets me halfway and picks me up by my waist. I wrap my arms and legs around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I clasp his face in my hands. His beautiful, sea-glass eyes sparkle like jewels. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course I did, sweetness. His cars mean something to you. You need something to touch and look at to remember him by, just like the hoodie you put on when you get cold after dinner.”
“How—”
“It’s the same one he was wearing when he broke down on the side of the road.” He grasps my chin and brings my face near his. “Invisible strings, Ever. The strings have been leading me to you, sweetness.”
He walks us back to our seats with me wrapped around him. “Like a baby koala,” he says near my ear. I smile.
He pulls back my chair and sets me on my feet. Before he sits, he extends his fist to Miguel. “All’s forgiven, brother.”
Miguel nods. “Brother.” They fist bump.
I sit with my hands clasped in my lap. I cannot wait to get home and jump Bobby’s bones.
“Give us what the detectives have,” José asks. He gestures for the servers to clear the table.
“A new detective,” Bobby says. “Fresh blood who can look at the evidence with fresh eyes. He went over the report. Nothing in the report said the cigarette butt they found at the scene of where the sniper would’ve been, from the trajectory of the bullet, was sent for DNA analysis.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I don’t glower at Ty. I’m feeling the same intense anger and disbelief.
“Believe me, I asked the same.” Bobby unravels a heart-shaped napkin. “Detective Monroe sends his apologies. The cigarette butt is on its way to the lab.”
“But that won’t identify the killer unless his DNA is in the system, right?”
“Right, sweetness.”
“So how will they catch him?”
“I have a hacker friend. I gave him Iris’s and Jules’s numbers.”
I punch him in the arm. “I thought you deleted all the women’s contacts from your phone.”
Slate holds up his cell. “I have them, Ever. For safekeeping in case shit like this comes up.”
I relax in my chair and apologize to Bobby for my burst of jealousy.
“Forgiven, Ever.” He slides his hand under my hair and squeezes my shoulder.
“My friend is running a scan on incoming and outgoing calls on their phone. I’ll hand the list of names over to Detective Monroe.
I told him about Iris. He talked to her, and she has a solid alibi.
The only one left who would hate my guts for taking Iris from him is the ex.
Detective Monroe will bring in the guys on the call list and get their alibis. ”
“Can’t the police do that work?” Joey asks.
“They can, but they’re short-staffed and overloaded with new and old unsolved cases. My friend owes me a favor, and he’ll send me the list by tomorrow afternoon.”
José leans back in his chair with his arms crossed. He looks at Bobby and shakes his head. “Man, remind me not to ever fuck with you.” He stands and grabs his glass of water before lifting it. “Here’s to closure and justice for my big bro.”
Grabbing our glasses, we stand as one and toast.
“To closure and justice for Carlos,” we say in unison.
I look around the room, then at Bobby. He did this. For giving him my happiness in exchange for time with him and giving up control of my life in exchange for dominance once in the bedroom, he, in a way, has given me the strength to take back control of my life and live in happiness.
Like he said, happiness is important, and we should get it when and where we can.