Chapter 101
REX
“Do you think Quin knows this place isn’t a sanctuary for dogs?”
I cut Nyx a look. “That chihuahua just won’t leave you alone, huh?”
He huffed.
Because that was all he had to ‘say,’ my lips twitched in response.
Ever since the funeral, the dogs had become more of an issue. It was clear they were starting to believe this was their territory, and as a result, Nyx had two buddies that followed him from the compound to Rachel’s place.
I returned my attention to the window where the Newfoundlander was staring right back at us, jowls loaded down with drool, tongue lolling out of the side of its jaw. And where the big brute was, Lucifer’s chihuahua was close by.
“How many still to leave?”
“A couple from Montana who stuck around because they were too hammered to ride back. Storm’s chapter.”
“I’d prefer them to stay,” I admitted.
Link chuckled. “Then they’d be the New Jersey chapter.”
Sighing, I said, “I know.”
I missed having Storm around. When he wasn’t getting high, he was one of the few who could keep up with me. In the last couple years, getting high had been his MO though.
Ohio had done him good. Becoming Prez had been even better for him. Now he just needed to get back with Keira.
“You think they’ll make a go of it?”
I peered at Link who shuffled up beside me. “I dunno. I hope so. She danced with him at the funeral, didn’t she?”
Link cleared his throat. “Wasn’t sure if you noticed that.”
“Couldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t,” Nyx said, his tone forthright. “It was a tough day.”
Hell if he wasn’t right—and I didn’t like agreeing with Nyx about anything.
On principle.
I rubbed my chin. “I think she wants to be with him.”
Link heaved a sigh as he raised an arm and leaned against the wall.
The rev of an engine drew all our attention, and as he took in the flashy green hog that had graffiti styled into the bodywork, Link muttered, “I don’t like that dipshit Angelo. Who the fuck gets named after a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and then shortens it?”
“Are you more offended that he isn’t going by the full moniker Michelangelo or that he’s named after a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle when he’s a Sinner—” Before Nyx could finish his question, he was yelling, “That dumb fuck!”
I didn’t even see what was happening until it was too late.
The fucking chihuahua.
It came prancing out of nowhere, heading straight for the Newfoundlander.
Which just happened to require crossing into Angelo’s path.
“Fuck!” I shouted, dragging the window open and yelling, “Angelo! Stop your fucking bike!”
But he didn’t hear me over his engine, and apparently he was fucking blind because he didn’t see the dog.
Until it yelped.
Nyx got clipped as he dragged it into his arms, and he fell back on his hip, the chihuahua yipping its outrage all the while.
“Goddammit, stop biting me! I just saved your ungrateful ass,” Nyx boomed.
Link coughed. “We shouldn’t laugh.”
My lips would’ve twitched if I wasn’t too busy yelling at Angelo. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing riding when you’re still drunk?”
That could be the only reason why he hadn’t seen the animal.
Sure, it was tiny, but no way should he have failed to spot it.
“Huh, Prez?” Angelo questioned, shooting me a dopey look that just confirmed he was about to ride home under the fucking influence.
Nostrils flaring in outrage at his idiocy, that was apparently what it took for Angelo to finally realize he’d pissed me the fuck off.
I figured news had spread about Lever because he pretty much leaped off his bike and darted over to help Nyx who pushed him away, yelling, “You fucking asshole. Didn’t you see the goddamn dog in front of you?”
Angelo had the grace to hunch his shoulders. “I’m sorry, man. It blended in with the road.”
“The yellow dog blended in with asphalt and white stones?” Nyx punched him in the shoulder even as he was holding the dog by the scruff because it kept on trying to bite him.
“You fucking high or something? I get that you were drunk, but it’s either that you’re jacked up or you need goddamn glasses. ”
Content that Nyx was gonna rip him a new one, especially when I saw him demand Angelo’s keys, I left my VP to it, monitoring the altercation until I heard Nyx punish him.
Angelo, head bowed, slouched toward the clubhouse to help Giulia in the kitchen—might not have seemed like a hardcore punishment, but she was a bitch when armed with a cleaver.
Nyx, still holding the chihuahua, grabbed his cell from his pocket and tapped out a text. I half-expected it to make a phone ping in here but it didn’t.
“Must be texting Giulia,” Steel mused, watching everything from the table.
He had an ice pack on his eye because he’d apparently gotten into a fight with one of the Ohio Chapter about a game of cards. Asswipe.
Nyx hobbled across the path toward the compound. His limp was definitely pronounced, and from how he was holding himself, I didn’t think he’d only hit his hip on the way down.
“Think he’s okay?” Sin asked. “He’s just healed up from that beating at the precinct.”
“Angelo was going fast enough to clip him badly,” Maverick pointed out, and how the hell he’d noticed that when he was doing something on his computer, I’d never fucking know. “Reckon he’ll be bruised. Nothing broken unless he landed funny on his hand.”
Seeing how Nyx was holding the dog with one while texting with the other, I figured he hadn’t landed badly on either wrist.
The second Nyx set it beside the Newfoundlander, the chihuahua went for his boots. So, clearly, it was okay too.
Snorting, I murmured, “I didn’t know I needed to see this today. Better than a show on TV.”
“Well, much as I agree you needed something to cheer you up, I promise this wasn’t scripted,” Sin mocked, shaking his head as Nyx had to detangle the ‘beast’ from the cuff of his jeans.
“Not sure you can be ‘cheered up’ after a funeral,” Maverick mused. “You just have to get out of the headspace, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Woke up in a piss-poor mood, but Rachel was puking so, in the grand scheme of things, I chose life and made her some tea rather than stay wallowing in bed.”
Link grimaced. “She’s still getting sick?”
“The doctor said it’d get better now she’s in her second trimester. Got her results back from her latest bloodwork—everything’s fine,” I said with no small amount of relief.
“Fuck, you and Nyx are gonna be dads. It’s insane.”
“I’m already a dad,” I said tonelessly.
“Yeah,” Link groused, "but you’ve been a dad for like five minutes to me. I gotta get used to the notion. It’s freaking me the fuck out.”
I snorted as I picked up my cell. Seeing Wynter hadn’t texted me this morning, I sent her another.
Me: You doing okay, sweetheart?
I knew all wasn’t well with her, not with how quiet she’d been recently, but I was waiting for her to come to me about it. It was hard going. I wanted to fix shit, but it wasn’t my place unless she made it mine.
Deciding I’d talk about it with Rachel tonight, see if we agreed we should push Wynter to talk about whatever she was going through, I turned around as Nyx limped into the office.
“Did you see that fuckwit?” he growled.
“I thought you dealt with the situation admirably,” Sin said with a hoot, earning himself the bird Nyx flipped him.
When my VP slouched in his seat at the council table, he grunted, “That hurt like a motherfucker. I just knew I was gonna land on the goddamn dog so I had to twist out of the way. Otherwise, there’d have been no point in me trying to save the little bastard from Angelo.”
“Did you get Giulia to give him the shitty jobs in the kitchen?” Mav asked, his gaze drifting from his computer to look at Nyx.
“She says she’s got plenty for him to do,” he said with no small degree of satisfaction.
“You know, any other Old Lady,” Steel mumbled, “I’d say that wasn’t much of a punishment. Definitely not one worthy of drunk driving, but I wouldn’t wish Giulia on Satan.”
Nyx’s lips cocked up in a grin. “Yeah, she puts the Satan in Satan’s Sinners.”
Though I rolled my eyes, I watched as he rubbed his hip then checked out his wrist, stretching it as if it were tender.
“You okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You should adopt those dogs,” Mav commented. “The Newfoundlander would be a good guard dog.”
“What’d the chihuahua be? A lapdog?” Link teased.
“Not if Nyx wants to keep the one ball he didn’t give to Giulia when he branded her,” Sin joked.
“Fuck off,” Nyx muttered.
“You’re moving out of our place this week, aren’t you?” I asked Nyx. “Might not be a bad idea. They’re clearly attached to you.”
He scowled at me. “You kidding me? What the hell would I do with two dogs?”
“Give ‘em somewhere else to shit other than here?” Link pointed out cheerfully as he sank into his own seat at the table.
Nyx grunted. “Great.”
“Ask Giulia,” I encouraged.
“I don’t want pets.”
“To be fair, you didn’t want an Old Lady, and now you’ve got one of them and a kid on the way.”
Nyx glowered at Sin. “You looking to get your ass kicked?”
“Seeing as you’re hobbling around, now’d be a good time to get into it.”
Though I snorted, I pivoted to give Maverick my attention. “Mav, you’re the one who called a council meeting today. What’s going on?”
“I checked Grizzly’s SS number. His death is officially recorded and since that date, his SS number has been inactive.”
I blew out a breath. “You think that means he’s really dead?”
“I do. We just don’t know what your dad did with his body.”
“That doesn’t feel like closure. He could be living under another identity. Social security numbers aren’t exactly hard to come by,” Steel pointed out, tilting his head and rubbing at his chin when the ice pack started dripping.
“That’s the best that I can do,” Maverick said with a shrug. “I’ve looked as deep as I’m able, but it’s like hunting for a needle in the US.
“Bear went ahead with everything as if Grizzly were dead. The undertaker bill was paid; public records were updated. Bear legally filed him as deceased. That’s not something I imagine he’d fake. Not sure why he’d even go to as much effort as he did.”
“Who the fuck knows what Dad’s capable of now,” I groused, staring back out the window, watching as the Newfoundlander settled down on the ground and the chihuahua climbed on him and lay down in his fur.
Though I’d heard it yip upon Angelo’s approach, it appeared to be okay.
“You need to remember who your dad was,” Link griped, drawing my attention away from the dogs and over to him.
“He made mistakes; ain’t we all made ‘em in our time? Won’t we make plenty fucking more before we die?
What he did don’t take away from how good a dad he was, Rex.
And he wasn’t just your father. You’re dissing on the man who was like a dad to all of us—”
“He has a point,” Maverick muttered.
“He does,” Sin agreed.
“Dead on,” said Steel.
“Yeah,” Nyx rumbled. “Bear fucked up, but you need to let it go, Rex.”
My mouth pursed tight, so fucking tight I must have looked like a goddamn prune.
Rationally, I knew they were right. Feelings, however, weren’t always rational.
And I couldn’t dismiss their words, not without dismissing their worth to my father.
He had raised us. Been there when these dipshits’ dads had either fucked off or done fuck all.
I didn’t want to hurt them, nor did I want to argue with them, so I just shut my goddamn mouth.
Fortune favored me because Lodestar changed the subject. The door slammed inward and, unapologetic as ever, she stormed in.
In her hand, she had a plastic file and she slapped it on the table.
“That fucker is on your dad’s murder board, Rex.”
“Which fucker?” I demanded, too accustomed to her inherent disrespect of my rules to care that she’d stormed into a council session.
“Francis Merriweather. The pedophile Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. wants Nyx and Harlow to kill—”
“Have you been listening in on council meetings again?” Steel groused.
She ignored him. “He’s a fucking Sparrow!” She balled her hands into fists and rammed them into the table. The boom jolted most of the shit on its surface, making them, in turn, rattle. “You know what that goddamn means, don’t you?”
It hadn’t been outside the realms of possibility, not with all the shit the Sparrows were into, but until now, I’d never heard anything about this… From her horror, she hadn’t come across it yet either.
Jaw working, I grated out, “The NWS dealt in kids too.”
Lodestar shot Nyx a look. “I want in on this deal you’ve got going with the Five Points.”
Fuck.
I attempted, “Lodestar—”
Nyx spoke over me, “You got it.”
She dipped her chin. “Tell me when, where, and how, and I’ll help.”
With that, she strode out as quickly as she’d stormed in, bringing war to our door. A war that, in all honesty, was impossible not to get behind.