The Following Week
“Did you hear?”
“What in particular? The moans from across the hall where Lever’s banging Enya? Gunner’s puking from that curry he ate last night or—”
Link grunted. “You don’t have to tell me how fucking noisy it is. I get it. But I meant ‘the news.’ About Monroe.”
Deep into the accounts for the motel’s construction project, it took me a minute to locate the name in my head.
“Monroe? As in Miles? The deacon Rach says is going to run for mayor?”
Link nodded. “I don’t think he’ll be running any time soon.”
“Why not?”
“He just got arrested.”
I blinked. “For?”
“Murder. Did Bear even know Monroe?”
“Dad? What does he have to do with it?”
“Kevin’s body was riddled with Monroe’s DNA.”
“What the fuck? How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know. Just telling you what José told me.”
“José made the arrest?”
“No. Edgewater cops did.”
“That makes no sense.”
“No, what makes no sense is that Nyx told me O’Donnelly got rid of the bones but they showed up again.”
“What? You think he planted the evidence on Monroe? Why the fuck would he do that?”
“How the hell do I know? You said it yourself after that meeting with him—he’s a headcase.”
Well, that was true.
After sitting through a Five Points’ fucked up version of a Sunday School lesson, I’d come face to face with the fact that Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. more than lived up to his rep.
By the time we left, I was thanking Christ that his sons were in positions of power because otherwise, we were all fucked.
“How would O’Donnelly even know Monroe?” Before he could answer, I raised a hand. “You know what… I’m not even going to worry about this. Nyx hasn’t been sent up for it; that’s all that matters to me.”
“Just keeping you in the loop,” Link said with a shrug. “They’re getting ready to crack the ground. Rach’s out there.”
“Rach? My Rach?” I asked doubtfully.
“Unless it’s her doppelg?nger,” Link mocked.
“Why’s she there?”
“Looks as if Giulia strong-armed her.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Those two together…” He whistled. “Hell in heels.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Shutting my computer down, I got to my feet.
“Are the bodies out of the ground yet?”
“No. Nyx is still trying to get to them in the mini digger.”
“Surprised there wasn’t more resistance to this,” I remarked as we headed into the hall.
“The men are uneasy about it, but no one really liked Grizzly. As for Dog, too many of the guys got sick of him sniffing around their women to really care.”
Link was the best at keeping his ear to the ground, keeping me apprised of the morale in the MC. If he said there weren’t too many grumbles, then there weren’t too many grumbles.
“Why are they uneasy then?”
He shrugged. “Probably because they have guilty consciences.”
I snorted. “Why?”
“In the future, will they be exhumed if some past crime comes back to bite them in the ass?”
“So, the key lesson here is don’t be a rapist fuck and your skeleton can rest in peace.”
He grinned at that. “I like that. I’m gonna steal it if I hear them bitching.”
Rolling my eyes, I trudged outside, muttering my annoyance when I stepped in a pile of dog shit.
This wasn’t the first time since I’d gotten back either.
“Since Quin came around, we got more animals than a zoo,” I snapped.
He cackled. “Wait until you see the graveyard.”
“Why?” I grumbled, swiping my boot against the gravel.
“You’ll see. Nyx is in denial.”
No longer trying to clean my boot, I started to lope over to the graveyard. It was definitely useful to have our own private burial site; especially when it came time for illegal exhumations.
I saw Nyx in the mini Cat, digging into earth that really should be left untouched but giving a fuck had long since left the building.
My woman and his, a couple of… No. Wait. The whole Posse was there too. They were joined by a tiny dog who hovered close to Giulia, and a couple yards away, there was a massive one. Big black fucker.
“Newfoundlander,” Link chirped. “It and the chihuahua won’t leave Nyx alone whenever he’s in the yard.”
“He’s got the same whacked shit that Quin has? The Dr. Doolittle crap?”
“Nah. The juju is only with those two.”
“Why?”
“Who the fuck knows.”
My brow furrowed. “Isn’t it dangerous to have two dogs off the leash when there’s heavy machinery around?”
“Nah. You go anywhere near them, they dart off, otherwise they’re like statues.”
“Why the fuck haven’t I seen them around?”
“You’ve been holed up in your office since you got back. If you’d been outside when Nyx is, you’d have noticed it. I think it’s hilarious. The least dog-friendly humans are the ones the dogs are magnetized to.”
“Magnetized is coming on strong—”
“Magnetized,” Link repeated firmly. “If we don’t make any sudden moves, they should be okay.”
As our feet hit the lawn of the graveyard, leaving the gravel behind, I heard an audible clunk.
Nyx had uncovered one of the coffins.
The dogs in question yipped and barked before they scurried away, running into the land that bridged the compound with the Fridge.
“Rach, what are you doing here?” I questioned as I sidled up to her, a move Lily facilitated by edging over to Link. Sliding my hand into hers, I tugged her into my side.
“Giulia insisted,” Rachel groused, her gaze on her phone after she reached up and pressed a kiss to my cheek in greeting.
“It’s ceremonial. Therapeutic, too,” was all Giulia had to say.
“This is not my idea of therapy,” Tiffany chided, folding her arms across her chest as she huffed.
Because I didn’t exactly disagree with her, I kept my mouth shut.
“Not everything that’s therapeutic is in a textbook,” Giulia grumbled. “Anyway, this was inspired by someone else.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Saw it in the paper. Some fancy-assed graveyard in Brooklyn. A coffin had been exhumed and someone set fire to it.” Her lips tightened. “Some people just deserve to burn.”
“Everything okay?” I asked Rach softly when she jolted at Giulia’s words.
“Yeah. It’s fine.” She shot me a weak smile. “You don’t have to stick around. I’m sure you have plenty to do.”
I did, but nothing was more important than her.
Gently squeezing her fingers as I recognized her attempt to distract herself from what was going on around her, I released my hold on her so she could go back to her work.
Sliding my arm around her waist in supportive silence, I watched as Nyx continued digging until Dog’s coffin was revealed to us.
Behind me, I heard people congregating. There was the faint pop of Peach’s snapping bubble gum, the sound of Zippo lighters flickering to life, low murmurs.
“Need someone to get down there, help me get the bindings under the coffin,” Nyx called out over the engine.
Without waiting for a volunteer, I passed Rachel my cut then jumped down into the pit he’d made. Feet on the coffin, I angled to the side in the small space he’d created around it and did as he’d asked.
It was not only awkward, but messy. I’d need to be doused in bleach by the time I was done, that was for fucking sure.
After about five minutes, Link jumped down and helped me out. Two hands made lighter work of the task.
“Steel, grab the ends of the bindings,” I hollered as I tossed them up toward the ground.
Rachel’s gaze clashed with mine, and for the first time in a long while, I saw the ice in her eyes.
The wall was growing around her in the passage of milliseconds.
Her hands clutched at my cut, though her gaze returned to blindly staring into the grave.
I looked away, needing not to see that right now, and focused instead on helping Nyx get the coffin out of the hole, stabilizing it so that Link and I could jump out beforehand.
More minutes of grunt work passed as the earth did not want to give up its hoard, but we were out, still kneeling in the dirt though. Once the casket was free and clear, Nyx swung it around and settled it in an open lot with space around it.
Sweating from how labor-intensive that had been, I swiped the back of my hand against my forehead and turned to Giulia. “He’s out. What next? This is your show, after all.”
“Back the fuck off,” she called out, loud enough for the devil himself to hear.
Grumbles sounded at her call, but I backed her up. “Move out,” I shouted, watching as the guys did as I asked.
Rachel made to move, but Giulia snagged her arm. “No. You stay.”
“No, I don’t—”
“You’re staying, Rachel,” Giulia intoned, shooting me a warning glance when I started to argue with her. “She’s staying, Rex.”
I narrowed my eyes on her before I shifted my focus to study Rach’s pale face. “Get on with whatever the hell it is you’ve got planned.”
Nyx clambered down from the digger, pulling out a canister as he did so.
With a sigh, I watched as he doused the coffin in gas.
Giulia reached into her pocket and, to Rachel, murmuring, “You deserve to do this,” handed her what looked to be a pack of stormproof matches.
“I don’t want to,” Rachel said weakly, her hand still tightly clenched around my cut as she hugged it to her chest.
Her voice didn’t match her regular Ice Queen routine.
That stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
For a second, I stared down at the now-empty pit, and I realized I’d fallen back on old habits.
She froze me out.
I allowed myself to be frozen.
Annoyed, I moved over to her side.
Today was not last year. Hell, it wasn’t even last month. We were moving past this.
“He deserves to burn,” I told her softly, not encouraging her, just trying to support her.
She turned to me, her bottom lip sucked in between her teeth as she nibbled it. Her eyes were bloodshot with tears that were on the brink of falling.
“I-I don’t need this.”
“Just because you don’t need it, doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it,” Nyx rumbled, stepping over to us. He slung an arm around Giulia, and when she nuzzled into him, I figured he’d gotten over his mad at her jealousy.
Them arguing and then boning each other until the early hours had been serenading me to fucking sleep for the past week.
They needed to find their own goddamn place.
Stat.
I watched Rach’s hand shake as she reached out to take the matches from Giulia’s grasp. “You don’t have to do this.”
“She does,” was Giulia’s stubborn retort. “She needs this. He took something from her, so she’s going to take this from him.”
I rolled my eyes at her drama. “He’s not going to know—”
“He will,” Giulia hissed, irritation snapping in her eyes.
“He’ll know because I don’t have to be a believer to know that this isn’t it.
The people we love, who love us, they watch over us.
They’re here with us. And the only people Dog loved were in this clubhouse.
So he’s here. He’s watching.” She grabbed Rachel’s arm again.
“He stole something from you. Steal it back, Rachel. Let him burn. Watch him burn.”
Rachel sucked in a breath and, carefully placing my cut under her arm, she opened the packet of matches with shaking hands.
Her gaze was fixed on the coffin; it seemed to absorb all her attention.
When she looked to be on the brink of doing it, I gently pulled her back. “Nyx poured a lot of gas over it, sweetheart. I don’t want you anywhere near the flames.”
She leaned against me, pressing heavily into me as if she were too weak to stand.
My brow furrowed because I was filthy, and she didn’t appear to care even though she was dressed in one of her power suits.
It occurred to me, as we resettled at an adequate distance and she remained close, enough that I felt the tremors running down her form, that I was going to have to relearn my woman’s reactions to things.
What I’d thought was her freezing me out, was her freezing the world out.
I was inside her icy walls now.
I got to see her tears.
Her weakness.
Standing straighter, I supported her as she finally struck the match and tossed it onto the coffin.
When the flames devoured the gas, the wall of heat had me dragging her further back as we watched Dog’s corpse be eaten away by the fire.
Whatever remained, Cruz would deal with.
Regardless, Dog wouldn’t have the honor of being buried among his brethren anymore.
It wasn’t enough, could never be enough, but it was something.
Something was better than nothing.
When she turned into me, I cringed at the prospect of her coming into contact with the dirt that liberally coated me, but she burrowed her face in my throat, not seeming to care that I was sweaty and covered in mud, just wanting to hide from the world.
I held her tightly, relieved that I was in Rachel’s inner circle now. No longer on the outside looking in.
Giulia reveled in the flames. She didn’t lean against Nyx. If anything, she’d moved away from him, but she held his hand, her fingers tightly clenched around his as her father burned.
The spectacle seemed to last a lifetime, but probably only went on for fifteen or so minutes. When it was done, when smoke choked the air, I directed her away from the fumes and led her toward one of the benches in the graveyard.
She slumped against it as I knelt on the sparse patches of grass in front of her.
I didn’t ask her if she was okay. She wasn’t.
I just stayed there, hearing the world continue to spin behind us and acting as a barrier between it and her.
The digger started up again, rocking over the terrain on the path that was purposely built for this machine, on its way to the section where my father would be buried, where Grizzly was interred now.
Twisting around, I settled on my ass beside her, my back to the bench. She placed her hand on my shoulder, not wanting to lose the connection. I let my dirty paws hang over my knees as I watched Nyx, Link, and Sin this time, retrieve my uncle’s coffin from the ground.
It seemed to take ages for Nyx to break through the dirt, but eventually, he cracked paydirt.
The only problem was that when Link jumped into the hole, he yelped. Loud enough to be heard over the machine.
“Stay here,” I directed Rach, pausing only to catch her nod of acknowledgment.
Running over to the gravesite, assuming my brother was injured, I demanded, “Link, are you hurt?”
Sin shot me a grim look that I had trouble deciphering.
Peering into the hole, I saw Link was standing there, one foot in the mud; the other had landed on the coffin and it had splintered the weathered surface that was brittle and weakened after years of being underground.
Bits of wood littered the area from the force of his landing, but what didn’t?
Bones.