Chapter Three
Marchella
It was so damn hot outside, and the stale air felt twice as muggy in my work scrubs. The navy-blue colors the local nursing home chose for us aides to wear didn’t flatter anyone, but I was due there in two hours. So, when Izzy demanded all of us accompany her and my father to see Daisy and Montana off, I slid them on and threw my hair into a ponytail.
I didn’t realize that Oak, and Crystal would be there, too. Not until we arrived and the honored couple wasn’t even there.
“Come on in,” Trista waved, opening the door to Daisy’s house. “They had to run and fetch ‘em all; their car broke down or something.”
I gave my aunt Trista a little squeeze of a side hug and she smeared a kiss across my hairline, capturing the opposite side of my head in her hand and pinning me there for a moment.
“You remind me of me,” she whispered when she pulled away, her big eyes lighting up with approval and pride. “... so beautiful and professional in your uniform.”
Her hands traveled my shoulders, smoothing my scrub top and affectionately straightening everything. I smiled, knowing my aunt had been in nursing school when the mob snatched her all those years ago. I’d seen her badge-like clinical I.D. and pictures of her and her friends posing outside of their clinical assignments together. Once she was freed, she tried to go back. She graduated, but her ongoing battle with PTSD made her nursing career a struggle, and she ultimately gave up her license after only a few years of holding it.
She steered me to the table and promptly fetched a few glasses, filling them with ice cubes and sliding sodas across the table at me and Izzy. My brother, Donnie, never even made it to the house before he disappeared into a crowd of Disciples. Mackie, our oldest brother, hadn't arrived yet.
“I simply can’t wait to see Crystal. Do you know, she was my first friend here, when I married Makaveli?” Izzy shared, while wrestling the lid off a pre-packaged shot of rum. She poured it into her soda, stirred it with an obnoxiously long, manicured nail and began to sip.
She’d been down state for nearly eighteen years, but she was still notably northern. Her Chicago-Italian accent could be detected when she was excitable, and it came with a crisp delivery when she was angry.
“I was never really close with her,” Aunt Trista admitted. “Prior to my being taken, I didn’t associate with my father or the Steel Disciples. My mother kept me away from all of that, lot of good it did.”
She snorted and laughed in that odd way that was entirely hers. Even when it wasn’t funny, her eyes lit up and her nose twitched, drawing attention to the ring she kept in it. She was beautiful, but her experience had left her with a hard edge to her features. Her eyes were sharp and dangerous, her mouth deadly at times.
I admired them both, even if Izzy was constantly showing her tits off. It wasn’t that I was offended by tits, or any kind of prude, I just got tired of seeing the tattoo that labeled her my father’s property.
She was more than that. She was our savior. Who knows how we kids would have turned out after her brother’s mob killed our mother, if my father hadn’t married her to raise his children.
We’d have probably all come out as feral as Mackie and twice as cold.
She was a mafia princess, a sociopath at best, but she loved us. It was fucked, but… it was our lives.
“Are they here yet?” a voice boomed from down the hall, causing Izzy to crane her neck.
“Jesus Christ, Easy. You’re not at the bar, you know?” She flung her long, dark hair over her shoulder and huffed.
The front door flew open, and Izzy’s head whipped back in that direction as Mayhem shouted, “Hey, they’re coming from down the block!”
All hell broke loose outside as the Steel Disciples, and their followers began to shout and celebrate. Steps thundered down the hall and Easy shot out around the corner, shoved Izzy’s seat toward the table with her still in it and followed his son outside.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” he advised whoever was on the porch. “Move! Where the fuck is my nephew?”
Trista rose from her seat and gravitated toward the door, so Izzy and I followed. Disciples, prospects, followers, and their women all lined the driveway. Monty pulled the simple, white van off the road and moved at a snail’s pace down the length of them.
Easy wasn’t waiting, he stormed down the drive, shoving prospects out of his way. Poor Daisy must have seen him coming, she popped the door open on the back and once it slid open, she jumped out.
Easy didn’t slow his pace, he reached for the headrest of the passenger seat and propelled himself inside. He tackled whoever was sitting behind the driver in a massive bear hug. I assumed it was his nephew, but all I could see was the Disciple’s patch on the back of Easy’s kutte.
The engine was shut off, and Monty hopped out. After a few moments, I saw movement in the back and a redhead poked out of the van. A woman that seemed to be my age, carefully climbed out and straightened her clothes. She had innocent eyes and a ton of curves. All the prospects were eyeing her, until Izzy shot forward and grabbed her into a hug.
“Oh, my God. You must be Karlotti? I heard Oak and Crystal had a daughter. Look at you!” she exclaimed, while vigorously rubbing the woman’s back and shoulders.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Karlotti timidly answered.
A tiny squeal of laughter slipped from Izzy and the hand not wound around the girl shot to her own plump, painted lips like she meant to catch the sound. “You’re fucking adorable, okay! I love you.” She squeezed her again.
Easy hadn’t come out of the van yet. When he did, he sniffed and tore in a ragged breath, jerking his nephew toward him in a violent side hug. He didn’t really look like Easy, he had shoulder-length brown hair, and the most intense green eyes I’d ever seen in my life. When they landed on me, it felt like he could see every secret in my soul. My cheeks warmed, and his attention anchored on me, making them grow brighter with every passing second.
“Disciples… I give you my nephew, Blaze Anthony Aviston!” Easy roared to the crowd.
The tiny circle that the crowd had afforded them collapsed. People rushed them, shoving into me and pushing past those gathered between us. All the Disciples wanted to meet Anthony Aviston’s son. Who could blame them? His father was a fucking biker legend. I vaguely remembered him. He had died a veteran amongst outlaws in the Steel Disciple’s war with the Valentino mafia. His father gave his life avenging my mother, as far as I was concerned.
I wanted to meet him, too, but I wasn’t going to fight that crowd to do it.
“You okay?” my brother’s familiar voice greeted me, long before I noticed him.
My attention snapped around until it landed on his hazel eyes. He was only thirty-two, but his eyes were so much older. There was a hardness about them that was different from our father’s, but similar. It was pain, I’d learned that long ago, but people weren’t wrong when they identified it as dangerous, either. The type of hurt that haunted them was the type that festered.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I blurted out, my tongue moving faster than my good sense could filter.
His glare told me to fuck off a dozen times, but I didn’t. He was my brother. The rest of the world could cower, I’d stare the monster down and wait for the storm to pass.
“I’m fine. I just need to learn to leave that bitch alone,” he quietly mumbled, before turning toward the house.
I stayed on his heel, catching the screen door, and following him into the kitchen. He grabbed Izzy’s rum-tainted drink and swigged. When it proved positive for liquor, he drank a bit deeper.
“Megan?” I guessed.
He whirled, and that glass went flying. I instinctively drew my leg up, bending my knee and drawing my top half down to make myself as small a target for the glass shards as possible. It wasn’t my first rodeo between him and my father, I could usually predict such things even amongst a bar full of strangers.
“Fuck that stupid bitch!” he roared. “Fuck her. How dare she.”
A hand planted on my chest and half spun me. My body was propelled back toward the column that separated Daisy and Montana’s living room from the kitchen with the momentum of the contact and I landed hard against it.
Glass crunched beneath boots and bone crunched against bone in a second explosion.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” our father roared, standing over Mackie, and shaking his fist.
Mackie’s eyes were wild with rage and locked on the old man. His left cheek was stained red where Dad’s punch landed. My feet anchored to the floor. My heart raced. The air was sucked out of the room as was always the case when I was left waiting for the pair to lock horns.
“What… the fuck…?” Trista slowly began, her gaze hesitantly lifting from the glass and mess on Daisy’s floor to the site of my father and my brother nose to nose.
“Whoa!” The word rushed out of her mouth, followed by a screeched name that caused me to flinch a second time, “Easy!”
Her husband came flying inside like he was ready to take on the world, his nephew right behind him.
“What the fuck is going on?” Easy asked, instantly moving to my father and brother.
I watched Blaze take in the broken glass. His head slowly tilted my way, and his gaze climbed halfway up my torso before he frowned and shot toward me. I sucked in a wild breath, but it didn’t stop his arm from curling around my shoulder. He herded me in the opposite direction like he knew exactly where he was going.
“What’s going on in here?” Daisy blurted out. “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s okay.” Blaze quietly assured me, even as he reached out to bump the door of the master bedroom open. “There is a bathroom back here you can clean up in.”
“Huh?” I mumbled glancing down at my clean scrubs.
They were still clean, but there was a tiny chunk of glass sticking out of my arm that was leaking blood.
“Shit.” I whispered, raising my arm up to inspect it. The glass was lodged about two inches beneath my elbow. It was about as wide as my thumbnail and half as long.
Blaze steered me toward the edge of the vanity tub, and I sat down on it while he fetched a pair of tweezers and doused them in alcohol.
“You okay?” he quietly asked while dabbing my arm with a wash rag.
“Uh- yeah. Mackie, he just…”
“He’s an asshole,” Blaze offered.
I blinked, unsure how to respond to that. Most folks didn’t freely air such opinions of my brother or father, even if they were likely true.
He grasped the tweezers and gently slid the glass from my arm while I hissed at the sting and looked away.
“Hold that on there,” he murmured, pressing the rag firmly to my arm.
Once I took over the washcloth, he stood back up and began to rummage through the medicine cabinet on the wall. I hadn’t realized how tall he was, until he was stretched and reaching for the box of Band-Aids on the top shelf. He was Mayhem’s size, well over six feet. He didn’t smell like weed or alcohol, which was bizarre for the men I was usually surrounded by. His cologne smelled expensive and inviting, I couldn’t help but lean toward him. I didn’t even realize I was thinking such things, until the door popped open, and I sucked in a guilty breath.
“There you are,” Daisy sighed, before her gaze landed on me. “Oh…”
“It’s nothing.” I lifted the rag to show her the clean wound, but blood instantly started to trickle.
“Oh, my God.” Daisy hurried toward me and pressed the rag back down. “What the hell happened?”
“Mackie.” I quietly explained while Blaze wrestled the Band-Aid open. I took it from him and slapped it on as quickly as I could.
Blaze looked like he was about to say something, but I was flushing from the inside out and was struggling to hold his gaze. I felt like a traitor speaking about my brother with Daisy squinting at me like that. It was the same expression that overcame her whenever my father entered a room.
“Thanks. I should get to work.”
“Work…” Blaze repeated. “I just took glass out of your arm. You can’t go to work.”
“I’ve had worse,” I lamely excused myself, before hurrying toward the bedroom door.