Chapter Thirty-Five
Alexandra
Beaming, I lock the bar door behind me and step out into the parking lot. It’s been a long day, but one of the best ones I’ve had in ages. My heart feels lighter than it has in as long as I can remember, and my ears sing with the laughter of the club’s ol’ ladies. We drank, we talked, we bonded, and I felt myself doing something that I never imagined happening — I put down roots. My community — no, my family — grew beyond simply myself and Dixon; it now includes Jennifer, Amelia, Danielle, Eliza, Serenity, and Moose. Costa Oscura isn’t just a stopping point on my way to revenge, it’s my home.
Home.
Damn, it feels sublime just thinking that word.
When I finally have closure, I’ll have a life waiting for me. It feels too good to be true.
“Alex, is that you?”
A voice I both recognize and don’t brings me to a stop halfway to my car. It tickles at childhood memories, at being a young woman, at having a crush on someone I could never be with, because I was the president’s daughter, the VP’s sister, and he was my older brother’s best friend. When I lost my virginity, I thought of him, and not the fidgety teenage boy I was with.
When Lucas died, it was his shoulder I cried on.
And from him I, and the rest of the club, got answers about just what went down at that parlay-turned-shootout. Because, supposedly, he was the sole survivor.
“Mateo?” I see his shadow materialize out of the darkness. I blink for a few seconds, wondering if he is just an illusion. “Is that really you?”
“It is. How are you, Alex?”
He looks different. So different. Grown, with a scruffy beard growing in, one that looks like it’ll never be more than a patchy 5 o’clock shadow with ambition bigger than its potential. His eyes are sunken, hollow, as are his cheeks. Still, when he gets closer, and he smiles, I’m taken back to more innocent days.
“I’m good. Actually, I’m great,” I say, and those words sound shockingly true. I want to say them again, over and over, just for the hell of it. But I don’t, because Mateo would probably think that I’ve lost my mind. “What are you doing here? Did my dad send you?”
“No. I came on my own. But he told me you were following some clue or something?”
I nod, then, before I know it, my voice is moving a mile a minute. I know he’ll want to know, and I’m excited to have something to share with someone who was just as affected by those horrific events as I was.
“Do you remember someone named Erik Marquez? Dad had him around the clubhouse a time or two. So did Lucas. Erik worked for hire. He wasn’t part of the club. We’ve been tracking him, and I think he was involved in what happened to Lucas.”
Mateo frowns. “Rafael showed him around? Are you sure? An outsider wouldn’t have just been given a tour, Alex. You positive you’re remembering right?”
“I know it. Dad showed him around, and I remember asking him about it, and he told me that Erik Marquez was going to be extra security for when you, Cobra, Tiburon, and my brother went to parlay with the Road Kings. You really don’t remember him?”
Another frown and a deep, unreadable look surfaces in Mateo’s eyes.
It used to be that look would suck me in and make my teenage heart race like I’d just cranked the accelerator on an open stretch of road. But now, it makes me sad. How can he not remember? Has he tried to move on so much that he’s forgotten that day? What else about my brother has he forgotten?
”It”s... hazy.” Mateo”s voice is apologetic, and he rubs the back of his neck with a hand. ”There was a lot going on back then, and after everything with Lucas, some details just... Life was hard, and I drank just as hard, too,” he says. “Fuck, I miss him, Alex. He was my brother, too, you know? I know you know some things, but there’s a lot you don’t know. A lot you’ll never understand.”
It”s not forgetfulness that’s keeping him from remembering — it”s pain. It’s grief. A wound in the soul that will never heal.
”I”m sorry,” I say. ”I didn”t mean to push. It”s just that I can”t let it go. Not until I know what really happened.”
“Be careful, Alex,” he says. “If this Erik Marquez guy is involved, and I’m not sure he is — because I’m telling you, he wasn’t there — but if he is, and he is one of those people who kills people for money, it means he’s really dangerous. You should let me help you. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
I sigh. There’s such earnestness in his voice that turning him down feels so wrong, yet I’ve worked so hard to get Dixon and his MC on my side, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize how far we’ve come; I know the Steel Reapers, and I know that bringing in a new person at this critical juncture could cause serious problems. I trust Mateo, but they have no reason to.
“Mateo, I’m sorry, but I’ve got things under control. You don’t need to worry.”
“Are you sure? You mean a lot to me, Alex. More than you know.”
There was a time when those words would have broken through my willpower and had me jumping to agree with him.
But that was before Dixon.
“You mean a lot to me, too, but I’ve got this, Mateo.”
He pauses, frowning. I know him well enough to know there’s something more he wants to tell me. There are words — angry, frustrated words — lurking in his eyes. Maybe he’s upset that I’m not letting him in.
“Alex, you really should let me help you.“
“Why can’t you respect that I have this under control? I’m the only one who has been looking into Lucas’s death this whole time. You, my father, everyone else, you all just gave up on him.“
“Gave up on him?” He explodes. “I didn’t fucking give up on your brother. What the fuck, Alex? I was there. I saw the Road Kings shoot him. I saw the bullet go into Lucas’s head and saw his brains and blood come out.”
“Then why the fuck did you come here? To argue with me? To tell me how stupid I am for looking into this? Because, if you did, you’re a really shitty friend, Mateo. A shitty friend to me, and a shitty friend to Lucas.”
That last line hits him with the force of a punch from a prime Mike Tyson.
His eyes go blank for a second and his jaw works furiously.
“I came out here because I care about you and I wanted to help you get over all this nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. Why can’t you see that?”
“I came out here for one other reason, too. I found something, and I thought you’d want to have it,” he says. He reaches into his cut and pulls out a photograph. It’s worn, wrinkled, sun-faded, and he handles it like it’s the more precious than gold.
He passes it to me.
My breath leaves me in a gasp. “I remember this… Where did you find it?”
It’s an old photo. Just me, Lucas, and Mateo. I must be eleven, maybe twelve, and my brother and Mateo are both nineteen. I’d skipped school, and they took me north to southern Oregon to go to a biker rally. It was a day of barbecue, riding, and getting to have fun without thinking about how I was the daughter of an MC president who would murder anyone who looked at me cockeyed. That day, Lucas and Mateo bought me a Honda Super Cub, and I rode it for all of two-hundred feet before I got scared; that day, I drank an entire beer, and discovered it’d be awhile before I could see what all the fuss was about; that day, Lucas and Mateo both taught me how to shoot a gun. We took a few pictures of that trip, but Lucas and I never kept them because we were scared our dad would see them. I’d thought they’d all been lost.
“In my attic. I’d kept it in my wallet for a while — I loved that day, it was so much fun — but after everything that happened with Lucas, I put it away. I had to. Then, not long ago, I was cleaning my attic, found it, and thought you’d want it.”
“Wait, are you giving this to me?”
“Yes. If you want it.”
For a moment, it’s all I can do to just look at that photo and relive that day. All three of us are smiling, just a trio of kids free from trouble and with no idea of the pain waiting for them. I can hear my brother’s laugh. I remember what it feels like to have him alive beside me. There’s a tear in the corner of my eye. Then another.
“Thank you.”
Mateo opens his mouth to say something, but pauses, listening.
Then I hear it, too — the sound of an approaching motorcycle.
“Are you expecting someone?” He sounds wary. Not that I blame him. These are dangerous times, and he came here because he’s worried about me. But I smile. Because I know what that sound means: Dixon is coming. He’s coming, and that means he must have news.
“I am,” I say.
“Who?”
Now it’s my turn to pause. How much do I tell him? He rode all the way here because he cares for me, and the photograph in my hand reminds me of how deep our connection was. How do I tell the man I had a crush on for most of my youth that the man arriving on a motorcycle is the man that, for so long, we all believed murdered Lucas.
Fuck, this could be bad.
“It’s my boyfriend,” I say. “But it’s new, and it’s complicated. We’re working through some sensitive stuff, and it’d probably be best if you left.”
“Are you safe with him? You can tell me, Alex. If you need help, I’m here for you.”
My mind scrambles. With each second, the sound of the bike is getting closer and the odds of Mateo and Dixon trying to kill each other gets higher and higher.
I have to get him out of here.
“I’m safe. It’s not like that. We just had an… awkward situation, and we have to talk it out,” I say.
“Awkward?”
Why won’t he get the hint? What do I have to say to get him out of here?
“It’s, uh, sexual,” I say, stumbling over my words while my brain spins. Think, Alex, think. What story can I come up with to make Mateo walk away? What would… what would Moose do? That’s it! Moose! “We went to an art exhibit recently. It was a bunch of nudes on bearskin rugs. There was this one painting there of a gargantuan man. He was quite hairy, just bulging and thick, but muscular, too. Powerful. And he had an enormous cock. It was erect, he was bending over, and…”
“You know, I’ll leave you and your boyfriend to sort your sex-things out on your own,” Mateo says. He gives me a quick hug. “Just keep me informed about what’s going on with this Erik Marquez guy. I’m here if you need me. Take care of yourself, OK?”
“I will. Thanks for the photo, Mateo. It means a lot to me.”
I watch him go, wistful. Memories of better times moisten my eyes while I wait for Dixon. He nearly leaps off his motorcycle the second he comes to a stop. He charges to me, just as I run to him. For a second, the world stops as I hug and kiss him. All thoughts of everything — murder, revenge, my childhood — flee from my mind as I lose myself in the man I love.
Then he sets me down. Three paltry words set my world on fire.
“We’ve got him.”