27. Chapter 27
Itry to stuff my growing panic over Paulie’s safety down. Be Mr. Cool, I tell myself. Get it together. The brothers are already making snide comments and if they see my agitation, they’re gonna know it’s related to X, then they’re gonna to jump to conclusions I don’t want them to. Even if X and I have a future, the way it unfolds has to be on my terms.
I stride across the room, catching X’s eye. “Stay here,” I tell her in a voice so dead, vultures are circling it.
A growl comes out from deep in her throat.
As I walk down the hall, I hear Hangman snarl at her, “Stay there.”
She growls again.
Before I get the door to my truck open, Hangman catches up to me.
“What the fuck are you doing? I told you to take Red.”
I take a deep breath and turn around, making sure my eyes are as dead as my voice. “Going to pick up X’s dad and bring him back here. Don’t need Red for that.”
Hangman is a fucking animal, but he’s also logical despite the front he puts on. “How about the friends? They seem to know more than anyone else.”
I agree. “After I deal with Paulie, I’ll grab Red and we’ll try to find one still breathing.” I motion to the clubhouse with my chin. “I’m leaving X here, but she’s not gonna like it, so she might throw a fit.”
“She’s not going to throw a fit, because she’s coming with you.” X’s angry voice slaps at me as the front door bangs behind her. She walks up to us, brushing by Hangman like he’s not there. “Since we aren’t anything, I figure you don’t care whether I live or die, so I’ll go with you to get my pops and then you and I will track down my hopefully still alive ex-friends.”
“You’re gonna fucking stay here!” Hangman sputters. I doubt he wants her to but he doesn’t like being contradicted.
She turns to him. “Why? Sure, I’ve brought a kilo of coke to you, but you’ll find the owners and give it back, no worse for wear. So there’s no other reason for me to stay. Maybe we’ll never see each other again, Prez. That’d make everyone happy.”
“X,” I say like I’m approaching a spooked horse. “I’ll pick up your pops, bring him here. I don’t need you to do that.”
Hangman glares at X, fueling the fire, not helping to deescalate it. “Here’s a solution to save time. Call your fucking pops and tell him to get his sorry ass over here.”
X sucks in a breath as she places her fists on her hips and returns Hangman’s glare. “First, he doesn’t take orders from assholes like you, so he isn’t gonna just show up because you want him to. Second, I don’t know his number because cell phones and contact lists have made us all idiots.” She clenches her teeth. “I kind of left the phone behind with the coke when I was trying to escape your little house of horrors, so even if you so thoughtfully retrieve it for me, I expect it’ll be dead.”
“X,” I say in a warning voice.
Her head sweeps back and forth between me and Hangman. “Did anyone think to grab it?”
“I gotta solve all your problems?” Prez snarls. “Don’t give me that shit about not knowing Paulie’s phone number. Use my fucking phone.” Hangman digs in his vest and tosses his phone at her, which she doesn’t even attempt to catch. It crashes to the ground.
“I can’t imagine why you think you know me so well, but unless you have my pops number in your phone, I can’t.” Her chin juts out. “Maybe you’re too old to understand that phone books are a thing of the past.”
I grab X and shove her behind me as Hangman’s face flits between murderous and more murderous. “Don’t,” I say to him between gritted teeth.
He looks at X, whose head has popped out from my right side.
“I’m not gonna. It’s in the fucking charter.” He stabs his finger at her. “Doesn’t mean I can’t drop you in the chamber and let you rot.”
“At least I’d have my purse.”
“Jesus,” I say to her as any lingering thoughts of her in my future come screeching to a halt. “Can you stop talking for five minutes.” To Hangman, I say. “She’ll come with me. I don’t want you alone with her. I’m worried what she’ll do to you.”
She throws Hangman a superior look as she breezes by me. “Let’s go get my pops.”
If I wanted her to stay, I’d make her stay and I don’t really have to worry about Hangman. He’d just lock her in a room and put Stark on the outside. Still, despite her crazy, I know full well, I’d rather have her with me. I reach for the handle to open the door, but she shoves my hand away.
“I got this,” she snaps as she hauls herself up on the seat.
I close the door on her, then circle the truck and open mine. She’s so far away that I miss her warmth already. “Spot!” I yell. It’s becoming a fucking habit.
Spot runs up to us.
“What are doing?” she snaps. “No point in dragging him along unless you want to keep him. Maybe you should. I can’t have dogs in my apartment and the damn thing likes you better than me for some unfathomable reason. No accounting for taste.”
Her fire speaks to me in a primal way that makes me forget how crazy she is. This girl, I could love. I need to solve this problem and get away from her before I break down and keep her. “I don’t want the fucking thing,” I snarl to settle the beat of my heart.
“You have two horses, a rotti, a poodle and a temporary ugly dog. Spot can keep them company.”
“They are not my fuckin’ animals.
“I’m not budging on this,” X says like she has a say. She stares at Spot. “Stay here! We’ll come back and get you.”
Spot tentatively wags his tail looking from X to me, kind of in that ‘if mom says, no, ask dad’ way.
I shake my head. “Go back to your friends.”
He turns on a huff and lopes off.
“Could we please go and get my pops,” X says tartly.
I sigh as I get in the truck and turn on the engine. At least I can go home and get my bike. I haven’t ridden it in two days and I miss the thrill of the speed, the risk, the sheer freedom I feel. Maybe it’ll help me settle the anger and lust coursing through me.
X refuses to talk to me until I turn down the street to my house.
“What’re you doing? I thought we were gonna go get Pops.” She’s still wearing her emotions on her sleeve. I can see the anger, the hurt, the fear.
I hang on to my need to take her in my arms and promise her it will be okay. “We are,” I say as I pull into the garage and turn off the truck. “I want my bike.” I get out of my truck, then circle it and pull her out the passenger side because she refuses to budge.
She lowers her brow as she yanks out of my grip. “How’re we gonna pick up Pops if we have your bike? Don’t even think about leaving me here.”
Me, so cool, so contained, lose my temper again. “I’m not leaving you here!” I shout. “I don’t want you in my house. We find your pops first and then we figure out what the fuck to do next.”
Big tears well in her eyes and spill onto her cheeks, but that doesn’t shut her up. “Sure. He’s bleeding to death, we call him a cab so he can take himself to the hospital.”
I want to shake her until her bones rattle. Instead, I toss my helmet at her. “Put it on.”
She lets it fall to the ground, crosses her arms and stands there looking like a pissed off lost little girl. Christ. Why? Why do I want to take her in my arms and kiss her until she can’t breathe? Why do I want to make crazy promises to her? Solve her problems, then keep her for the rest of our lives.
She burst my bubble with a snarky, “Are we going or not?”
I grab my helmet and shove it in her arms. “Get on the bike or stay here. Those are your options.”
I stalk into the house without taking my usual precautions, grab my cut, then storm back into the garage. That’s what X does to me. Makes me careless, makes me furious, makes me panic.
I straddle the bike and rev the engine. “Get on!”
She slides on behind me and I rip out of the garage, stopping long enough to close the door. Her arms are around me, her nose pressed into my shoulder blades, but this time I hear sniffling, feel her shaking. I can’t figure her out and for some reason, I want to. In my head, I see X with me, then I see my world start to crumble and it scares the hell out of me. If I’m out of control, what then?
We head to the bakery and I pull into the alley near the back door. Can’t go through it because X’s keys are in her purse, which is still in the fucking chamber. This is beyond a clusterfuck.
As we walk through the front door, mouth-watering smells assail my nose, reminding me how long it’s been since I’ve eaten.
“Pops!” X cries as she skirts the front counter and throws herself into Paulie’s arms.
“Sweetheart,” he croons. He glares over her shoulder at me. “What did you do to her?”
I roll my eyes but keep my uncharitable thoughts to myself. “You don’t know your daughter if you think I’ve done something to her.”
“I was so worried about you,” X says as she holds her pops cheeks and forces his face to hers. “I was sure they grabbed you and killed you.”
The place is buzzing with customers who are curiously watching as the scene unfolds. I circle the counter, grab Paulie by the arm and drag him into the back. X is attached to him like a leech, so I don’t have to haul her with us.
“Get your hands off me,” he hisses as he jerks out of my grip.
“You want everyone in the fucking world knowing that you and X are up to your necks in shit?”
“Who made the cannolis?” X asks as she eyes several trays on the cooling rack. The fire in her tone is gone, replaced by a hint of petulance.
“I did,” Paulie replies. “Shanna helped.” To me, he says, “What do you mean up to our necks in shit?”
His voice is too loud so I grab his arm and pull him further away from the front. “Keep it down. This is serious.”
X trails behind us. “Shanna helped? How come?” She has the attention span of a goldfish.
Paulie looks at her. “Because you weren’t here. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I wanted to be here, but Reaper’s gang had other plans.” She juts her chin at me in a way that makes me want to shake her.
“Sure, princess,” I mock. “You bring a kilo of coke into my life and you’re pointing fingers.”
Paulie’s eyes dart back and forth between us. Finally, they settle on me. “A kilo of coke! What the hell did you get my daughter mixed up in?”
I glance at X and the rancor drops from her face.
“It’s the other way around, Paulie. She had a kilo of coke in a box in her locker at the college.” I pace away, shoving a hand through my hair.
Paulie stares at X like this is the first time he’s set eyes on her. “What the hell did you get yourself involved in?”
My feelings are in full swing mode as my need to defend her becomes overwhelming. “It’s not her fuckin’ coke. Her asshole ex put it in her box of shit and she picked it up without realizing it.”
Paulie glares at me. “Stop swearing in front of my daughter.” I see where X inherited her attention span.
“It’s okay Pops,” she says like she’s a newly minted angel. “I’m getting used to it.”
“Jesus,” I retort, forgetting that I’m supposed to stop swearing in front of X. “Could we fucking focus? We don’t know who it belongs to or why Miguel had it.”
“I’ve thought about that,” X says.
“When?” I ask because asking stupid and unimportant questions have become a pastime since X walked into my life.
She narrows her eyes at me. “When do you think? On my long walk into town.”
Paulie looks at me. “What the hell were you doing letting her walk around unprotected?”
I glare at him and then say to X, “If you’d stayed put, you wouldn’t have had to walk into town.”
“Sure. So maybe another ten years of waiting for you to get out of jail.”
“Low fucking blow, X.”
Paulie swivels his head back and forth between me and X. “You were in jail? What for?”
X throws her hands in the air as if it were obvious. “For killing Miguel!”
“I didn’t fucking kill Miguel!”
“Language!” Paulie growls.
“I know!” X snaps at me. “That’s not what he asked. He asked why you were arrested.”
I close my eyes and sigh. “Can we call a truce, X. I’m trying to help you out here.”
She clenches her teeth. “Sure, but after, you and me, we’re having a talk.”
She’s fucking right about that.
I haul them both into the cooler and pull the door almost shut. “Whoever the coke belongs to wants it back. Miguel didn’t die easy.”
Paulie sucks in a breath as he turns to X. “Did you know about this?”
“No!” she snaps, clearly running out of patience with her pops. “I don’t have anything to do with drugs.”
Paulie glances at me. “Well, you do now, since you’re attached at the hip with this clown.”
It pisses me off that Paulie is taking the shit he and his daughter are involved in out on me. “You don’t fucking know what the Jury’s involved in, but I’ll tell you right now, we don’t deal in drugs.”
“You sure about that?” Paulie challenges. “Then why do you turn a blind eye to the pushers in your so-called territory?”
I don’t know how he knows that aspect of our business and this isn’t the place or time to get into that part of our operations, but I also can’t let it go. “Because, Paulie,” I growl. “Drugs are a fuckin’ fact of life and neither you nor I are stupid enough to think we can clean the streets of them. What the Jury can do is regulate what and how much is being sold out there. We don’t take a cut, but we do set down our expectations.”
“How very noble of you,” Paulie sneers, not giving an inch.
“Can we focus on the current problem,” X interjects bringing our attention back to her.
“Yeah,” Paulie says as his eyes sweep his daughter. He looks haggard and scared. Given how Miguel paid the price for his stupidity, Paulie’s justified. “What are we going to do?” he asks me.
He’s handed the power over to me and relief ripples through me. No more wasting time with pissing contests.
“My brothers are having conversations with those in the know on the street. Hangman’s making calls to the higher ups.”
“Like who?” he demands.
I decide to give it to him straight. “Mob. Cartels. The ones who call the shots in this town. We got our Vegas club on it too, seeing if anyone south has lost a kilo.” I pause. “So far, we’re coming up empty.”
X shivers and strokes her arms. I want to pull her into my warm embrace, but I resist, mostly because Paulie is still looking at me like I’m dog shit on his shoe. “What’re we gonna do?” she says. Her voice sounds like a punctured tire. “I’ve been going over it in my head and I can’t think of a thing that Lavender or Edgar or anyone else said. But they were definitely looking for that box.”
“What exactly did they say?” Paulie asks. He’s turning blue, but I’m not willing to leave the cooler until this conversation is over.
“Well, I was mad, Pops, and you know me. I didn’t give them enough airspace to?—”
We’re interrupted by a staccato of gunshots followed by glass shattering, followed by people screaming.
“Fuck!” I bolt from the cooler and race to the front, X and Paulie on my heels. It’s a scene out of a nightmare. Glass is everywhere. A couple of customers are down, people are shrieking and running out the door. There are sirens in the distance. Too soon. Too fucking soon again.
Paulie turns to me. “Go. Take her with you. I’ll handle this.”
“No!” X cries.
“Yes!” I tell her. Despite every bone in my body screaming at me to stay and help, he’s right. “We can’t do any good here and if the cops see me, I’ll be arrested again.”
I don’t give her time to retort as I grab her hand and race out the back door. When we get to the bike, I flip her my helmet. “Get on,” I say as I start the bike.
I feel the tremble of her hands as she uses my shoulders to straddle the seat. Her arms are weak, her body’s shaking. Now’s not the time to check on her well-being. Now’s the time to get the fuck out of here.