55. Torin
FIFTY-FIVE
torin
I can still smell her on my skin. The sweet taste of her on my tongue from when I ate her out before I left her house this morning.
I’d rather be doing everything we did last night over and over again than torturing some stupid motherfucker who was snooping around town asking questions about us.
Blood splatters all over my blue tee as the guy cowers over in his chair, grunting and mumbling shit I don’t take any mind to. He won’t give up on why he’s here, which only causes a sliver of anxiety to creep up my spine.
Always enemies.
Always someone up our ass wanting to either take us down or completely out.
However, there’s a more pressing matter that’s been bothering me since last night when Bay was riding my dick like a champ with nothing but my complete seriousness in her eyes.
Would you go to war for me?
The answer was as simple as breathing, except why? I didn’t fathom asking in the moment because—well, like I said, that beautiful creature was sucking my soul from my body and putting me in the most delirious and sated state, but afterward, when she started to drift on and off to sleep, it started to build.
Why would my girl want to go to war with both South Shore and The Landings?
Unless it was a trick question which, if it was, I passed off my own free will. If she wants motherfuckers dead for hurting or crossing her, all she needs to do is say the names and it’s done. I’ll even do the shit myself.
Because I am in love with that woman.
Everything about her; her mouth, those eyes, that fucking ass and the way she exuberates kindness, pettiness, and cockiness has me hard all the fucking time. She’ll always keep me on my toes. She’ll always be something I’ll chase after with how stubborn as hell she wants to be. Nonetheless, she’s forever gonna be mine.
“Name, asshole,” Reeve grounds out, delivering another punch to the scrawny asshole who’s supposed to be my full attention. “Next hit is going to be a bullet in your dick.”
“I can’t,” the guy weeps out, shaking his head back and forth. “He’ll kill me.”
“Newsflash, dumbass, we’ll kill you too,” Reeve clips back. “Better pick the best of two evils.”
“I-I…they have my mother.”
“Seriously, don’t give a fuck,” I vouch as I look down at my watch. I’ve been here too long, and I really want to get back to Bay so I can fuck her against the kitchen counter.
“But, if I’m not back with something,” the man sputters. “They’ll?—”
“You can tell them this,” I offer, peering up at the fear in his dark eyes. “The next motherfucker that I see in my town?—”
“Wildes.”
I glimpse over my shoulder to see one of my guys come striding into the large warehouse space with a solemn expression. “ What ?”
“You have a visitor, sir.”
I quirk a brow at his vagueness. “Does this fucker have a name?”
He nods hesitantly before saying, “Matteo De Leon.”
My fingers curl into a hard ball when Reeve immediately shows up at my side. “Say that one more time?”
I roll my shoulders, seizing a demeanor of calmness when our man repeats his fucking name again.
I’m not surprised.
Word that Bay is ours I’m sure has struck his side of the world. His ammo is to piss people off, and I’m sure this so-called visit isn’t going to be any different.
“Guess we better go find out,” I tell my best friend, nudging him to follow me, then to my man, “Watch this fuck.”
He nods, and we leave the area to get outside. The last thing I’m going to offer De Leon is a warmer spot from the winter months approaching.
My focus glazes over the surrounding SUVs that are ours before landing on Matteo, who’s bundled up in a black coat and matching cap. The rest of my guys surround him like a wounded gazelle that’s going to get peppered with metal if he came here to annoy the fuck out of me.
Leader of the Pistol Posse or not, he’s in The Landings.
“What can we do for you, De Leon?” I greet, watching him take another hit of his cigarette without a worry in the world.
His stupid-ass vibe pisses me the hell off. Not only did he lose the Titan fight with Cairo, but now he believes he can still walk around here like he has a right.
“You lookin’ to die today?” That from Reeve, allowing his irritation to feed through to his words. I don’t stop him, not that I would or ever have been able to. “Because it can be arranged.”
Matteo pays my best friend no mind, blowing smoke from his lips as he connects his dark brown eyes to mine. “I heard you’ve been having a few run-ins with Bay Astor.”
Bingo.
Reeve stands rod-straight but keeps his mouth shut, permitting me to carry this conversation because he doesn’t trust himself with what’s going to come out of his mouth.
“And?”
“And I was in your position once.”
A scoff leaves my lips because we’re definitely not and haven’t been. But, as much as I would love to point that detail out, I don’t. “Was that all?”
Matteo lifts a dismissive shoulder. “People talk, Wildes.”
“But dead ones don’t.”
Matteo shifts his weight, showing the first sign of how I’m not going to play this fucking around back-and-forth with him. “Listen…I’m not here to fight you.”
“God, I hope not. I already saw you get your ass kicked.”
He glowers at me, jaw ticking in annoyance, but he’s on my turf. In The Landings and if ol’ boy wishes to make it out alive, he better watch how he rolls his next play.
Which, I’m sure is a ballsy one.
“I’m here to tell you about Bay Astor.”
This motherfucker…
“Get the fuck out of here, Matteo,” I leer through clenched teeth. “Before I rip open your ribcage and feed you to my dogs.”
“Hear what I have to say first before you start actin’ like a bitch, Wildes,” he barks back. “You might want to hear this.”
“Highly fuckin’ doubt it.” I jerk my head, immediately getting the men surrounding him to move toward him so they can drag him out. “I hear you say her name one more time, I’ll shove your cigarette down your throat and watch you choke on it.”
Matteo rolls his eyes, unimpressed by the closing in of my men, and pulls his cell from his pocket. “What’s your number?”
“Bitch, he’s not lookin’ to date you,” Reeve grounds out, but my interest are still piqued about what his intentions are toward Bay. And, in order to keep her safe, I need the insight of his game.
I point to one of my men. “Give him your number.”
He does, and Matteo begins typing away, testing Reeve’s patience and my curiosity.
“Sent.”
My guy immediately brings his phone over without a word and hands it over.
It’s a video, and my thumb immediately hits the play button through the blackness of the screen.
“I broke up with Mallory,” a male voice spits out, taking prompt hold of my next breath. I stare through the shadows of the video, trying to pull out more specific details of the man behind it. “I broke up with her for you .”
“You broke up with her an hour ago,” a female voice snaps back. “What am I supposed to do with that? She caught you cheating like she was doing to her, so good for you. I’m not going to leave someone who cares about me because all of a sudden you want me, Judah.”
Judah .
My brother.
The one who disappeared and was part of the Pistol Posse with the fuck standing in front of me. I’ve been told time and time again by Ramsey that he’s dead, he’s never coming home, but I’ve never believed it.
Never accept it.
There’s not been that space that lives in my chest that has told me otherwise. That I’m missing a brother. Lennox— Judah —hated Emilio so much that he went by his middle name and left The Landings with the promise that he’d be back for me.
And I’m still waiting on him to make good on his word.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Judah barks out, anger swelled up in his words. I haven’t heard his voice in years. Even in his rage, my gut twists because I never saw a body. Just pieces of one that were claimed to be Lennox’s. “If you would’ve had the balls to tell me before, I would’ve picked you.”
Reeve comes up to my side then, looking down at the video and flicking a hand for someone to take Matteo away.
He must sense my unease, or recognize my brother’s voice because he took the dude who could use anything against me to his advantage with the man on the video right now.
“Is that Judah?” Reeve mutters before I give him a curt nod of my head. “But why?—”
“Bay.” My whole body turns rigid and ice cold, a million and one thoughts slamming into my brain all at one time as my brother says her name like an unspoken prayer. “I’m good for you. I’d treat you like a queen. I’ve watched you for months get closer to Matteo and he’s gonna change, babe. He’s gonna lead this group into something violent and you’re not gonna wanna be around for that.”
“Matteo said he wasn’t,” she retorts, a sliver of the moon casting down on her. She looks different, younger, and sweeter. My girl. With my fucking brother. “It’s to protect South Shore and Shoreline Peaks from the Forsaken Crew.”
“He doesn’t give a fuck about South Shore,” my brother snaps, warning her of the dangers of the man even I tried to ward her from. “He only cares about himself and the power he’s trying to obtain. He’s not gonna get it, Bay. Emilio Wildes isn’t going to pay him any mind other than to play him. And if he gets in the way, Emilio is going to demolish him.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I know.”
And he did.
Lennox always knew that Emilio was a piece of shit. It’s why he left in the first place, never wanting to be part of the crew that our stepfather built with Lorenzo Black. He was building for me to have something to believe in. Something with fucking Matteo.
“You wanna go back to him?”
I can barely breathe as I watch Bay look back at my brother and it hits me then that she knew him and never told me.
Maybe she didn’t know.
Lennox went by—not only his middle name—but a new last name as well. Anything he could do not to tie himself to Wildes. And I don’t expect Bay to have done a full background check or ask questions she wouldn’t know to ask.
“Yes,” Bay replies with a bit of hesitation, as if worried. “I need to get back.”
“Don’t you want to live and make it past sixteen, Bay? Matteo isn’t going to keep you around for that. He’s not going to make you anything but his whore.”
“ Really ? Do you think I’m gonna stick around for that? You think I’m going…it’s not going to be like that. I just want—” My brother moves forward, cutting into her next words.
I can hear the desperation in his voice, and it cuts right through me. The way he wanted to save her.
The way I tried to save her.
“What do you want? I can give it to you.”
“Judah, please leave me alone,” she says with a heavy and exhausted sigh. “For your sake and mine. I’m not even the type of girl you like.”
“And what’s that? You’re beautiful and smart. One day, you’ll fill out into something so fuckin’ killer it’ll be sick. And I’ll be there to protect you from everything. From the war between The Landings and South Shore. From men who will try to hurt you.”
Jealously rips through my chest then. I can hear it in the way he tries to safeguard and keep her. The promises he’s trying to instill—to keep her for his own.
“How would you protect me?” she asks, as if entertaining the idea. “You’d have to be with Matteo and the Pistol Posse to have support and?—”
“I have support,” Judah barks back. “I left the most powerful family alive to…to just get the fuck away from them. You’re the only thing I’ve seen since leaving that’d make me go back to keep you from harm. I can change everything. We—together—could be the most powerful couple in all of Rhode Island and the surrounding states.” The screen goes black, the moonlight disappearing and erasing my brother and Bay from the frame. “I can’t bear seeing you with him anymore.”
How fucking ironic is it that my brother was possibly in love with the same woman I am?
He couldn’t be, she’s mine.
Nonetheless, I’d have to be an idiot to believe such a feat. Lennox and I are similar. Having the same interest, in the same girl, wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. But the idea pisses me off just the same.
What if he got to her first? How would that change the dynamic of Bay and I? Would I be able to look at her like my brother’s girl and not have that itching need to make her mine?
“Don’t do this, Bay,” Judah warns through the darkness right before a gunshot violently rings through the air and slices right through my resolve. I flinch and Reeve leans closer to the phone.
“No,” he mumbles. “She couldn’t?—”
“You were meant…for so much more,” my brother chokes out and she couldn’t have…she wouldn’t have shot my brother. Not Bay. Not my girl. “You’re in…so much danger, Bay. I can…keep…you safe.”
Another gunshot rips through the volume of the phone, and I almost drop it.
This can’t be right.
Judah— Lennox —he’s not dead. I never saw his face lying in a casket. I always believed he ran off to go do something for himself.
That he’d be back.
I would’ve known. If my brother was dead, I would’ve felt it.
The gentle sobs of Bay’s voice come through the phone and my vision goes hazy. I feel her through the device but my brother…he’s silent.
“Grab him,” I order, my words barely leaving my throat as I try to latch onto my voice to speak.
I need to know what happened.
I have to find out how he has this.
Within seconds, Matteo stumbles toward me, and I want to kill him. I want to rip his fucking head off because he possibly just annihilated my whole future with the woman I just handed my heart to.
“How do you have this?” Reeve asks for me. “And why do you have it?”
“I have it because I never trusted her. Bay was always a fleeting soul. Ask your boy how easy it was to touch her when she was mine.”
I wouldn’t say easy.
I would have said linked, fated, and obsessed—on my end.
“One of my men saw her leave with Judah that night from the camp,” Matteo continues. “Your brother was always sniffing around her, but he flirted with anything with a pussy, and he was my second…so I had no reason to think Judah would betray me. He was more ruthless than me and even wanted the Pistol Posse to succeed more than I did. It was his idea. Judah just didn’t want the full responsibility of being the leader. And I had no problem bossing people around.”
“Get to the fuckin’ point,” Reeve snarls. “ Today .”
“If you want the full story, dickhead,” Matteo chides through a glower. “Then?—”
“Where’s my brother, De Leon?” I cut in, boring daggers into the side of his head and imagined doing that exact thing in real life.
Matteo looks at me with a straight face. “You already know the answer to that question, bro.”
“I never saw a body.”
He shakes his head and plucks another cigarette from his pocket. “Listen, I’m not your therapist. I sent back pieces to your father to bury.”
“Then let me reiterate”—I step forward at the same moment Matteo flicks his lighter—“I didn’t see a face. That could’ve been anyone’s body.”
“Are you saying that I’m hiding him from you?”
“I’m saying that the video you just had me watch doesn’t mean shit.”
“Judah was right,” Matteo vouches. “She was in danger. Actually…she was the danger. She worked for Levi Wallace way before you got involved with your crew. She was working to grab all my intel, burn my posse to the ground, and it looks like she’s doing the same fucking thing to you.”
That’s a lie.
“Why the fuck do you care?” I snap, feeling a vein tick in my jaw. “It has nothing to do with?—”
“It has everything to do with me and mine when Bay hates me enough to destroy me. I wasn’t the perfect boyfriend, by any means. I’m not going to stand here and say I didn’t do some fucked up shit.”
“Which we should kill you for right now,” Reeve pipes back.
Matteo ignores him, still keeping his gaze glued onto mine. “But she holds more power than you, me, and your daddy combined, Wildes.”
“How?”
“How can you not see it? She’s practically looking to take over the world with her and Levi. That motherfucker wants revenge. He offered up his girl to fuck all of you to get close. There are no lengths as to what he’ll do to get what he wants and she’ll do it.”
“He broke up with Astor.”
A mirthless chuckle escapes Matteo’s throat. “You’re not that fucking stupid, Wildes. I heard he’s been up at the hospital with her there. Even when she wrecked. What ex does that? Did you see me there?”
No.
“Because she would put you in the hospital,” Reeve defends, always on the ready to protect our girl. “And just because she’s moved on from your small dick doesn’t mean?—”
“Get a grip, Stanton,” Matteo rebukes through knitted brows. “She’s Penn Northcott’s fuckin’ granddaughter.”
My eyes mindlessly widen because that’s fucking impossible. Emilio and Penn obviously aren’t related…so that would mean her mother?—
“That’s a fuckin’ lie,” I counter through a sneer, even though I don’t know for sure if it is one or not. I never looked Bay’s mom up, never needed to.
However, it explains why Emilio has been harping on obtaining Bay this whole fucking time like fly to shit. If Bay is the granddaughter of Penn Northcott, she’s the heir to the fifth Titan seat. The one who holds and protects the other four.
The Queen.
“Why would Judah give a shit if Bay was Penn Northcott’s granddaughter?” Reeve asks. “You weren’t and aren’t part of the Titans. The fuck does that have to do with you?”
“Everything when I’m a contender,” Matteo replies, to which Reeve scoffs his dismissal of De Leon being anything more than what he is now.
Scum.
Worthless.
Unorganized.
“I think Judah saw how Bay was never letting go of Levi. I knew I’d never be able to break her for it. And if Wallace found out why she stopped talking to him because of me, it’d start some shit that I wasn’t prepared for.”
“You’re still not prepared,” I deadpan, watching him take a long hit off his fag.
“And you’re not a full deck yet, are you, Wildes? You won’t take The Landings seat. Maybe Ramsey is prepping for it, I don’t care. You give Bay The Landings, you’re done. It’ll be South Shore, The Landings, and East Riverside against Wharf Bay all day long, and that’s not enough. Your boy who just beat me for the seat…he won’t be sitting on it long.”
Bay would never betray me like that.
Us.
I’ve seen the look on her face when she told me that she wanted nothing to do with the Titan seats. Not once has she made a move for it.
Would you go to war for me?
I don’t understand what she meant last night, and I’m really fucking confused today.
“Where’s Judah?” Reeve asks again, since we never received anything other than a vague answer from De Leon.
“He’s dead, dude.”
My head instantly begins to shake back and forth.
He’s not dead.
I would’ve felt it.
“What you’re saying makes no sense,” Reeve replies. “I heard a gunshot, but I didn’t see her pull the trigger. And you said you sent body parts?—”
“I didn’t notice Judah missing until the next day,” Matteo claims. His face twists in irritation that he’s being interrogated. “I wasn’t his fuckin’ babysitter. He’d run off with girls all the time and get his dick wet. That wasn’t something out of the ordinary.”
“Body parts,” Reeve repeats. “Why were there?—”
“They were in the middle of the woods , Stanton. I’m not sure what got to him, but I’m sure it was coyotes or black bears. Again, I wasn’t babysitting him.”
“What would be her reasoning for killing Judah?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe there’s more that Judah knew that I didn’t.”
“Why did you blame it on someone else then?” Reeve steps forward, taking the lead on questions I can’t form. “You turned a dude in for that murder.”
“Because I didn’t trust Emilio, for one,” Matteo claims placidly. “I show up with his son and, what, he’s going to believe me when I tell him a girl did it? And two, I wanted to see if she’d ever turn on me. Believe it or not, I loved Bay. I gave her everything she could’ve ever wanted and planned on making her my queen one day. She fucked that away when I overheard her on the phone with Levi. How they were waiting for the right moment to take what I built and burn it to the ground.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Reeve and Matteo both look at me as I stare at the rims of one of the Escalades.
There’s no way my girl murdered my brother.
He can’t be dead.
You’ve been in denial about this, and you didn’t even notice.
“Then let me know if you’re going to keep this going,” Matteo says matter-of-factly. “Because I’m gonna head south if you are. You didn’t think you were stupid enough to let pussy blind you, but maybe you are like Judah after all—” I lunge for him, ready to throw every ounce of rage into his body because how the hell does he know everything? My brain is ping-ponging everything that’s ever happened. The power plays that could be forming behind our backs, and I’ve done everything I said I wasn’t going to do with her.
However, De Leon is saved by Reeve’s mom-arming me to a stop from landing a punch.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” I spit out, saliva barely missing him in the process. “Just because she doesn’t want your dick anymore?—”
“Women like Bay are a dime a dozen,” Matteo barks back. “I don’t want someone like her within my midst. Especially when she has Levi feeding her the knowledge she needs to take everyone down. Did you make you believe that she didn’t want it? That Levi was just a phase? It’s your funeral. I lost the Titan seat to take her down with Wallace, but he will use her to take you guys and Emilio down. She is his daughter, isn’t she?”
“I didn’t see her pull the trigger,” Reeve retorts sharply.
“Well, sorry bruh”—Matteo scoffs—“but I couldn’t control the moon that night. If I were there, I would’ve stopped it. Judah was my other half. We had plans to intercept our own drugs to start rollin’ in dough that we needed. However, Wallace somehow got a handle of that information and stomped it out. I’ll give you one guess on who spread that.”
Reeve drops his arm, confident that I’m not going to move again. “Sounds like a personal problem, De Leon.”
“Not anymore.” He points at the both of us. “It’s yours now, or it’s gonna be. You all seem infatuated with her, and that’s cool, she’s a fun ride, but all she claims is how much she’s not a part of this world while lying through her teeth about it. My only regret is that Judah didn’t tell me what he learned. What kind of shit we were really in with her being in it. He didn’t go chasing her for nothing.”
“I still don’t get why you had an innocent man claim that he killed Judah,” Reeves says through my choked silence. “Makes no sense, dude.”
“Makes total sense when you don’t want to die. Don’t tell me you’re both delusional as fuck to not have seen how Emilio handles competition. Hence why I never ran through The Landings. However, now she’s the most valuable piece of it all. Emilio’s daughter. Heir to a Titan seat. Another one that Wallace already has. And what currently stands in his fucking way?”
Us.
Would you go to war for me?
“Get the fuck out,” I grind out, tossing the cell back to the man who handed it to me. “And don’t let me find you approaching us again.”
“Your funeral, Wildes. Why do you think I kicked her to the curb? She laid all my shit bare to Wallace, and if I would’ve killed her…let’s just say, I wasn’t built for that yet.”
He pivots, striding away as he puffs away at his cigarette and leaves me in a sea of turmoil. He knows that if he keeps speaking, I’ll snap, and it’ll be over.
Just like Bay and I are.