Chapter Eleven
Blaze
It wasn’t often I stayed over with a girl, especially since I’d been back from university. I was half asleep and for a moment, I must have thought I was cuddled up with that dog Oak had when I was a kid. Jury was huge, and with everything going on, I always felt safe with him snuggled beside me.
“Are you… petting my belly?” Marchella slowly asked, ripping me to consciousness with an ill-formed denial on my lips.
“Wha–? Your… wha–? No!” I finally stammered.
“I swear to God that little weasel-dicked bastard had better not be laid up with my fuckin’ daughter,” Makaveli exploded from somewhere nearby.
“Mhm,” I mumbled, tossing a leg over her.
“No… No.” She attempted to latch onto me as I shifted across, but I’d already hurdled over her and was toeing into my boots again.
“Wait, Blaze, you can’t…” She scrambled after me.
“Oh, fuck yeah he can!” her father answered, charging toward us as soon as soon as he recognized her voice.
I heard him long before I saw him. He was only a half pint, but he stomped around like he was part buckin’ bull.
“I’m right here you puffed-up cocksucker.” I assured him, about the time he finally came into view.
My uncle was on his ass, moving with the same determined speed Makaveli was. The second those words left my mouth, Easy's eyes bugged so hard he probably strained one.
“Whoa, whoa—” he began, springing forward at twice the rate.
It was like he knew what Makaveli was going to do even before the shorter man reached to his waistband.
By the time my uncle got the third whoa out, Makaveli had a gun drawn and aimed at me. Easy snared him up without a second thought in what I assumed was some type of marine hold. He was half strangling Makaveli in the crook of one elbow with the barrel of his pistol lodged against the smaller man’s head.
Easy was taller than I was, and Mak was just a little bastard, so he was left with his boots whispering against the hallway floor. It happened so fast, I wasn’t even consciously aware that I’d shot my arms out, but there I was making myself as big a target as possible for a girl I’d just met. I felt pretty fucking stupid about it, until I felt Marchella’s hands trembling against my back. Her palms were flat, pleading in a silent way that made me feel like the world’s biggest asshole all over again.
Fuck!
“Aunt Trista!” Marchella panicked.
My gaze tore from Easy and her father. Mak was still clutching that fucking pistol and half ass waving at me and his own daughter. When my gaze landed on Trista, she was sitting at the table. Her hands were gingerly cupping a steaming coffee cup. She winked at me over the rim while she sipped. Her empty, prepacked shot was sitting sideways on the table, but her eyes were still sober as best I could tell. She smiled and motioned for Marchella to come to her.
“Leave the boys to sort things, sweetie. They always do.” She laughed. “Don’t forget to thank your grandfather, Mark, for bailing him out without warning, hmm?”
I couldn’t keep my jaw from growing slack. It was like I was in another world.
I was.
I was in their ‘biker world’ as my mother would call it.
“Come on,” I grunted, and reached behind me. Grabbing her wrist, I led her past her father.
He never steadied his arm, with any real aim as we drew close. Whether that was because he meant her no harm, or because of that odd color coming to his face, I couldn’t say. When we drew near enough, however, I finally realized Easy was flexing his arm, letting him breathe just enough to not lose consciousness every now and then.
“Get the fuck outta here for a while, you.” Easy looked directly at me. “May will help you find something to do. Me and Mak need to have a chat, and I think Trista wants March.”
I gave a short, but knowing nod. He was asking for a truce of some sort. I wasn’t sure how far I was willing to give it, after that episode, but I wasn’t going to argue about it until I had her past them.
“I don’t trust her with him,” I told Easy, plainly once we were safely in the kitchen.
“That right?” Easy asked, not moving his gun, or loosening his grip on Mak’s neck. “You marrying her in the morning? I miss my fuckin’ invitation?”
Mak’s lips flubbed, spittle dripping. An odd, broken nasally sound came from Trista as she watched it all unfold. All I could do was blink.
Was he serious?
“That some kind of biker shit?” I blurted out.
Easy snorted. “No. That was me telling you that unless your financing, fucking, and claiming her as your property, the girl is not your business. What you need to do is find yourself some business, nephew. Mak and I have our own that will take a few minutes to handle. You recall?”
I squinted at Easy, unsure if he was trying to provoke me or not. “My property?”
“He means either claim her as your ol’ lady or shut the fuck up and find some business, man.” May backhanded my upper arm.
It was sharp, and my mood was already short. I wasn’t expecting it, so when that little snap of pain came, I shoved at him, letting go of Marchella and turning in confrontation.
He barked with laughter, throwing both hands up, his palms facing me in surrender.
“Hey! Hey, cuz! I’m just fuckin’ with you. But seriously… that’s all he means. He ain’t talkin’ bad about her.”
Makaveli had given up struggling, his nostrils were flaring with each breath he claimed, and his eyes were murderous. His pupils were so blown the bastard almost looked demonic.
“She is my ol’ lady,” I informed them.
“Mother—” Mak got out, before Easy clipped his airway off and roughly adjusted his hold, hefting Mak up the front of his chest an inch or so. He made choking sounds, and his feet shuffled all the more frantically in the air over the floor, but Easy didn’t let his soles whisper against the hardwood floor again for several long moments.
I should have left it alone, but after witnessing the episode in the hallway, and the way Marchella had cowered from her brother– How could I?
I was already asking myself how many times she’d stared into those rage-filled, black eyes and answered to his temper.
“It’s true. You can let him go,” I told Easy, raising my shoulder in a mild shrug. “He can have the mother of all temper tantrums if it makes him feel better to perform for the ladies, but when he’s exhausted himself and the lights go out–”
I shut up long enough to pointedly shove a finger at his daughter, “–that’ll still be mine.”
Trista sucked in a breath and shot out of her chair, slapping May on the arm as she moved to the front door and ripped it open. Everything happened so quickly that all the sounds combined.
Her frantic movement, and that wild, swishing noise that broke out when Mak started throwing elbows and squirming like a rabid squirrel in my uncle’s arms. He was strangling himself worse with his efforts.
“Go!” Easy roared over the sound of May’s sudden laughter.
When I glanced back, that pistol of Mak’s was leveled at me.
A loud click made me flinch. It took a moment for my brain to realize Easy had pistol whipped him. I watched Mak crumple before me. Easy didn’t break his fall, either. His arm hung limp while he stared down at his brother-in-law with a disgusted scowl. After a moment, he cleared his throat, grabbed Mak’s pistol, and shoved it into May’s hands. He didn’t say a word, he just fisted my shirt, hauling me toward him so that we collided brutally. I was shocked by how much power he had in that arm after half strangling his own vice president for the past ten minutes.
“Easy, please.” Marchella shot out of her chair.
“Don’t you ever do that shit again, do you hear me? Don’t you put me in a position where I have to choose between blood family and patch family. It isn’t fair, because you know goddamn good and well you’re all I have left of my brother. I will kill for you, Blaze Anthony.”
He didn’t give me time to respond, the fucker just got louder, “Of my family– My birth family….”
He thumped his chest with the pistol, causing me to draw in a hard breath.
“Easy,” I blurted out in a panic, my voice not more than a whisper. I wasn’t sure if the fuckin’ safety was on or not, and it made my vocals fail.
He let go of my shirt, and reached up to roughly grip the back of my skull and make me look him in the eye. “You’re all I got left of them, Blaze. You would be wise not to provoke me into providing you with proof of what I’m willing to do to keep those I love safe.”
I was speechless. I stared at him. The indignation over Mak’s bullshit was gone in an instant.
I knew from pictures that Easy and my father looked alike, but at that moment, I realized that it didn’t matter if I’d never have memories of my father telling me he gave a fuck, advising me, and all of that. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t even conjure the sound of his voice to imagine what such a thing might have sounded like from him… I heard it through Easy.
And it shook me.
I wondered what my father would have said to me. What advice he would have given me in handling my mother and the need to expand my education or find a fucking career. I’d been feeling like I was in the middle of a sea with no shore to swim to for so long.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “For upsetting you… Not about the girl. I guess you’re just going to have to accept that I inherited that Aviston gene, too. The one that makes you want to keep someone safe at any cost if they’re special to you.”
I thought he was going to cuss at me but I spoke fast, and by the time I was done, he was exhaling like it pained him and giving a slow nod.
“Just… give me a few hours, okay? Let me sort him… and… this. May,” He motioned at his son, and I stepped back, glancing toward Marchella.
“I haven’t ever seen anybody stand up to my dad the way that you do. You should give him time to adjust.” She smiled and winked, while making an inch gesture with her index and thumb.