Chapter 71 Ronan
RONAN
“Hold the phone between her legs, I want to see how wet she is,” I told Kane.
“Aye, aye,” he chimed before lowering it from her face.
He thrusted his fingers inside her. I could hear her mewling in the distance, but the way she thrusted her hips told the bigger story.
“Slow down,” I said, leaning back into the chair.
I looked up to find Santos still sitting at the end of the table, his eyes awkwardly averting mine. He didn’t need my fucking permission to be with Celia. It wasn’t about that anymore. It was about the fact that he was supposed to have been the one person I could have trusted with her life.
I never wanted to be wrong about it.
Now I was stuck here with him, because I trusted Mateo with her more than I trusted him. And that was saying a lot. Mateo Kane couldn’t even keep a fish alive.
There were a thousand unspoken things between us. Most of them absolute bullshit that I would have rather just resolved with our fists.
But the guy was ugly enough now as it was. A visual reminder that he had been punished plenty for his sins.
I couldn’t tell if his appearance was actually bothering him.
He was going to be wearing his mistake for the rest of his life on his skin.
Then suddenly it didn’t feel so fair that I was here, asking him to feel remorse when Celia had somehow found it inside her to forgive me for the hell I put her through.
“Santos can’t hear her brother,” I chuckled, giving him a smirk.
He looked even more nervous.
Suspicious of me.
Untrusting bastard.
She cried louder the minute he lowered his face to her cunt, his tongue lapping at her clit and just as he covered it up he raised the phone to show me her face.
Fucking radiant.
She had one arm raised up high, her fist wrapped around the bar on the headboard of the bed. The other hand squeezed her breast and her teeth dug deep into her bottom lip from whatever it was Mateo was doing to her.
She was holding it back.
“Come on, don’t make me say it.” Her eyes sprung open, and she looked straight into the camera, even though she couldn’t see me.
She bit her lip even harder.
“Fine. But I want you to cry out álvarez’s name for me when you come for me, flower.”
“Fuck! Santos! Shit!” she cried.
Her body convulsed in violent quakes and the bastard finally turned his head my way.
He was fighting a smile so badly It was probably going to constipate him.
“I hope you didn’t call me just to waste my time with one?” I egged Mateo on.
He flipped the camera to selfie mode to show me his face, glistening from her juices just as he rose up from between her legs. I would have given a million dollars to be there right now, in his place.
It was all I’d been able to do since I’d gotten shot.
Emory had a million rules in place to make sure I didn’t drop dead from internal bleeding or post-surgery complications.
Gun to my head, dying while fucking Celia Flores didn’t sound like the worst way to go.
I couldn’t fuck her for another two weeks and the doc had strictly prohibited me from getting off in general.
Something about not getting my heart rate up too high.
So I feasted on her pussy every night that I could.
And oh how I missed my favorite meal.
He was gloating.
Rubbing it in my face because he knew.
I would have done the fucking same.
He flipped the camera back and pointed it down just in time to let me see his cock slowly filling her up. It was the perfect fucking view and I had to clench my jaw tight in order to keep it from going slack.
We didn’t have that much time, our men needed answers soon, and I’d just kicked them out to watch my best friend fuck my woman.
He was fully sheathed inside of her, his free hand roaming up and down her body, paying extra attention to her breasts and tracing gently around her nipples.
“Oh fuck,” she moaned through the speaker.
“Does that feel good baby?” I asked her, getting her eyes to open for me again.
They somehow looked darker when she was drunk with lust.
“Yes,” she hissed, her head bouncing up and down with each slam of his hips against hers.
Then his hand lowered to her clit, and she shook her head.
“No-no… I’m too sensitive still,” she pleaded.
He listened, like the obedient little soldier he was and moved his hand away.
“No. Go back,” I commanded.
Santos’ shadow loomed over me, and I felt his stare behind my shoulder as he watched my phone.
He made a circle on her clit, and she whined and thrashed. Mateo thrusted harder and she sobbed something unintelligible that wasn’t English or Spanish until she came down from her climax.
I shut the call off.
I didn’t feel good about lying to her, but if I had told her the truth, she would have tried to stop me.
Santos smelled my bullshit the minute I opened my mouth to tell her there was an issue that needed dealing with out here, but he didn’t call me out.
Instead he hopped along for the ride, probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the shitshow that was coming.
I had one reason and one reason only for coming here.
“Let them back in,” I told Santos, crossing my hands over the table and cracking my knuckles anxiously.
I did not want to fucking be dealing with this, but I had to. What was meant to be a trip to Cove City, ended up being a stay at the Diablos Locos compound in Grimm’s Reach. This was where all of our members were taking residence ever since the Los Muertos attack on the high-rise.
No one felt safe going back.
I didn’t blame them.
So here I was, using César’s church room to conduct a half-ass Black Crow Brotherhood meeting with our members. They filed back in slowly, too many bodies in the small room and these were only the members who were privy to decisions we made, not just any soldier
I was anxious.
But this had been coming, I knew it from the moment she walked back into my life. I’d just been pretending like there wasn’t a countdown above my head the entire time. It was now flashing zero.
Time was up.
“Zerkos!” Ethan yelled, hair still wet from a shower.
He greeted Santos with a bear hug, not giving much notice to the change in his face. I embraced Ethan, slapping him hard on the back and Fletcher followed behind, hooting and making animal noises as he bounced on his toes and pushed his way into the room.
“It’s good to see you both.” I nodded as they made their way in the room.
The rest of our men gathered in, taking seats where they found them.
The remainder stood shoulder to shoulder as they waited for me to address them.
The last four months had been nothing short of a fuckstorm, but the Black Crows could rebuild from the ruins, they deserved that.
I just wasn’t sure if I was the one who could stack those bricks anymore.
“This compound is cozy and all boss, but people are ready to go home. Wherever that is. We’ve been in limbo for too long now and we need a purpose. We need to take out the assholes who hurt our families,” Fletcher spoke first, nodding to Santos when he said family.
He was just now back at a hundred percent, and if I were him, I’d want blood too. We needed more than that if we were going to go after the Bratvas. We’d need everything we had and more.
“Everything’s wrong right now. I know that,” I started, getting the attention of all the men in the room. “I’m gonna do whatever it takes to make sure every ounce of blood gets paid back in double.”
“Dez has turned some Crows against you. They don’t whisper loud enough for us to know who they are, but we’ve all heard the whispers, Zerkos.” He used the nickname the city knew me by.
The name of the man I was before she came back to me.
Men began to talk over each other, but they were all practically saying the same thing.
They were worried. They had more than enough proof that Dezmond Archer Junior was now working with the Bratvas to get payback for Sokolov’s daughter’s face. We also never gave the other daughter back. Not our fault for lack of trying though, apparently she didn’t want to go home.
Daddy had done enough damage that the Diablo’s compound was cozier than a Bratva penthouse with all the fixins.
And now we had a major target on our back. Our rat problem became a traitor problem and we were down quite a few soldiers. Permanently. The attack on the high-rise killed too many of our people. Out of those who came out unscathed, quite a few decided to leave the life.
Who could blame them?
Not knowing which day was going to be your last and learning to be fine with that was a skill in itself.
Not something either nature or nurture could prepare you for. It was something that was burned into you with the flames of time. For Celia that was a cattle brand in her father’s hand. For me it was a black dog tag and all the men I once watched die in the name of freedom.
“We’re not ready to attack them head on right now.” The second the words left my mouth a chorus of disappointment rang out from half the room while the other chimed in louder to my defense.
We were already divided.
What was I holding on for?
Like a kid who wouldn’t share a toy even though he was done playing with it.
Except the Crows weren’t a toy and these were people’s lives at stake.
Santos stuck his index and middle finger in his mouth and whistled loudly, quieting the room.
“We wiped the floor with Los Muertos, why can’t we do the same with the Bratvas?” Bruno, one of our heavier hitters asked.
“It’s not that simple. Los Muertos wasn’t even half the amount of soldiers as I would expect the Russians to have. They were distracted, the Russian’s are waiting for us. Not to mention, we had over a hundred Diablos holding our hands on that fight.”
“They won’t help us again?” he asked.
Santos scoffed out a laugh.
“No. Los Muertos was a mutual problem. I’m not in any position to ask anything of any Diablo. They didn’t fight that battle for us, they fought it for Celia.”
Most of them still didn’t know the full weight of the truth.
They’d heard bits and pieces about how Celia wasn’t just some random bitch in the trials, how we’d had history.
They deserved the full weight of the truth, but they needed to prove they could be trusted.
I could count the men in this room that deserved my unrequited loyalty with less than four fingers.
“Didn’t we bleed enough for her?” It was Hughes who spoke next.
His face had the kind of coldness I hadn’t seen from him in a long time. It made me realize I hadn’t thought to ask what everyone had lost that day yet.
“It can’t be now,” I told them again. “Sokolov will have to wait. Until Celia has the full force of her army behind her, until she’s the only person alive who can challenge the cártel throne, I can’t—”
“I think you’re too cunt-struck to see clearly Zerkos.
Ever since you brought that bitch into our lives, it’s been nothing but bloodshed.
Either you do right by your people and use her to eliminate our target, or you lose the right to call yourself our leader.
” He stood up, nostrils flaring, and fists clenched tight.
Yeah.
There was a good chance he was working with Dezmond Rat Junior.
Fletcher stood, chest to chest against Hughes like he would have jumped to defend my honor. I didn’t need that from him.
“Sit down Fletch.” I stood myself. “He’s not wrong.”
Some voices gasped, the ones who had already been privy to the history between me and my girl. The ones who had overheard too much about just how deep the root of our problems stretched out.
“I can’t be your leader anymore. The more I think about it, the more I realize it isn’t right. How am I supposed to lead you when I’m following her?”
“You are?” Ethan asked.
“I am,” I said without blinking. “She knows the game better than any of us, and I’d give my life for hers a million times over. I won’t rush a revenge that I know she’s calculating.” I hardened my eyes at Hughes, knowing the fucker was going to take that juicy tidbit of information back to Dezmond.
Voices rang out over each other once again in confusion as my men tried to make sense of the news I’d just dumped on them.
“What does that mean for us? What about you?” Fletcher asked Santos.
“I go where she goes,” he said, his eyes barely shifting to me. “Wherever he fucking goes too.”
“Fuck,” Ethan barked, taking in the seriousness of the situation.
The room dropped into complete silence.
“Me too.” Fletcher looked up, brushing his red hair out of his face.
A few voices rang out with confusion, and he waved them off.
“I owe her my life, and if she’s someone you consider following then I don’t see why I can’t do the same.” He seemed so sure of himself.
“You don’t even fucking speak spanish,” Hughes shouted but Fletcher just shrugged.
“I’ll learn. It’s better than sticking around a lost cause with a rat for a boss.” He was insinuating that if I wasn't the leader, Dezmond would certainly reap the opportunity.
He would, and he’d lead them all down a dangerous path, aligning them with our enemies who were really just waiting for the right opportunity to knock us down, wipe us all from the map.
The idiots didn’t see that. The Black Crows had taken money, power and opportunities from every major syndicate in Cove City.
The thought that they’d align themselves back with us now that we were broken instead of using it as an opportunity to kill us off for good was laughable.
Then all hell broke loose, and the room suddenly became divided.
They were choosing sides. Something I’d never asked them to do.
Hughes stepped up to me, his chest pressed to mine and his nostrils flaring wildly.
He was pissed, and I’d been so far up in my own bullshit I couldn’t even figure out what it was that I’d done to piss him off.
It was a good thing I was stepping down.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this shit.
Life was simpler when I was the one taking orders.
Ethan spread us apart before spit went flying everywhere from how hard the man was seething.
“Get the fuck out of here.” Santos pointed to the door, with his gun in hand once the distinction of who would be aligning themselves with Hughes and Dez, and who would be coming to Mexico was decided.
To join the fucking cártel.