Chapter 7 Ghost
GHOST
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
The canteen is full of people, but it’s as though she’s the only one in the room.
Her eyes are so dark, they appear almost black, and her hair is a similar color and falls over her shoulders in an ebony wave.
Her face is free of makeup, except for a tiny smudge of mascara beneath each eye.
I wonder if she’s aware of it. I fight to stop myself from crossing the room, cupping her face in my palms, and rubbing that smudge away with my thumbs.
Jack told me that some son of a bitch tried to kill her last night. I haven’t even exchanged words with this girl, but I’m already murderous on her behalf. I can see where her arms have been bandaged, and knowing she’s been hurt fills me with rage.
What pathetic little piss-stain excuse for a man would try to hurt her?
My phone buzzes, and I pick it up from the table. It’s Jack.
Leaving my breakfast where it is and casting one final glance at the girl, I stand and move almost silently through the canteen. People see me coming and get out of my way. Very few dare to make eye contact with me.
I rap my knuckles lightly on the closed door, waiting for the call to enter, then slip inside.
“Prez,” I greet Jack, giving him a small nod.
Jack-the-blood McGrath is one of the few people walking this earth who isn’t intimidated by me. He probably knows I could kill him without him even being aware I was in the room with him, if I so chose, but we have mutual respect. Jack isn’t the kind of man you mess around with either.
“I’ve spoken with the dean at the college, Nataniele Rossi, and there haven’t been any reports of the young man returning there. He says Ledger Fields has only been at Verona Falls for a matter of months.”
“What’s his family background?” I ask.
“They’re new money based out of Texas. Honestly, I can’t find that much on them.”
I frown. “Doesn’t Rossi do his homework before letting people into that place?”
“He does, and I know because he vetted me and the MC before letting Ivani in, but not every kid who does something wrong has a record, particularly if it’s something like sexual assault.
How many of those go unreported or aren’t investigated?
Plus, the place is a business, at the end of the day.
Rossi uses it to wash dirty cash, as well as give the kids an education away from the public.
I assume no red flags were raised and the price was right, so he had no reason to say no. ”
I guess he’s right. What kind of red flags could he have looked for, anyway? We’re all a bunch of criminals. It’s not as though having a violent past or having done time would exclude someone from the college, unless the crime was a sex crime, and as Jack says, how many of those are recorded?
“Anyway,” Jack continues, “Nataniele Rossi has his men on high alert. When Ledger returns, Rossi assures me that he has strict protocol in place for dealing with fucks like him. Plus, I alerted my daughter’s… friends about the situation. No one has seen Ledger so far.”
“So, Ledger could have run back to Texas?”
“It’s possible, yes. I know a couple of MCs in that area, so I’ll get them to investigate, but I can’t see any reason for him causing us trouble.”
I crack my knuckles. “We weren’t the ones he was causing trouble for. It was Camile.”
Something flickers across Jack’s face, and I can’t quite read it. I’m normally good at getting an angle on people, so that bothers me. It was me mentioning the girl’s name. She’s friends with his daughter. Is that why he’s taking this so personally, or is it because she ran to him for help?
Jack is a good decade older than me, but that doesn’t mean he’s blind.
The woman is stunning, of course, but she’s also different in how she dresses and carries herself than a lot of the women we hang with, which I guess is why she grabbed my attention.
I haven’t noticed a woman in a long time, so she’s clearly got something about her.
Has she caught his eye the same way she’s caught mine?
I’d picked up some vibes that night at the party at the college, but I hadn’t been sure if I’d been reading too much into it. Perhaps I hadn’t.
He blows out a breath and sits back, then scrubs his hand across his beard. “Yeah, I hear you. I’m not exactly happy about letting her out of my sight either, but we can’t make her a prisoner here.”
“We can keep her until we find the little prick.”
Jack arches an eyebrow. “And if she doesn’t want to be kept?” He lets the words hang between us. “Besides, I must believe that Verona Falls is safe. My own fucking daughter goes there. If it’s not…”
I understand what he’s saying.
“No one is targeting your daughter, though,” I point out. “Someone is targeting Camile, and we don’t know why or where he is.”
Jack narrows his eyes at me. “We know why. It was a date that went bad. She turned him down, and he made her pay for it.”
“As far as we know…”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “As far as we know.”
“And we don’t know where he is. He could hide out at the college, waiting to get his revenge, and we’re about to throw her back in with the dogs.
Maybe he snuck back in before Rossi was alerted and he’s hunkering down until she goes back?
Let’s give it another twenty-four hours, see if we can flush him out. ”
Do I have ulterior motives for wanting to keep her around the compound?
I haven’t so much as exchanged a single word with her yet, and Ace and Rook are fawning over her like a couple of lovesick puppies.
She seems to be tolerating them, for the moment, but something tells me she’d like a more serious man in her life.
I glance over at the huge, bearded man across the desk from me. Someone like Jack? I wonder if that’s what he’s thinking…
Jack seems to be considering my suggestion.
“I guess it is daylight now,” he muses, “which means if Ledger is still hanging around, we’re more likely to spot him.”
“True.”
“But ultimately, it’s going to be Camile’s decision. If she wants to return to the college, then we’ll have to respect that.”
I raise my brow. “Will we? Seems to me that if we tell her to stay put, she won’t have much choice in the matter.”
I’m treading on kind of shaky ground here, speaking quite so freely to the Prez, but as his Sergeant at Arms it’s my fucking job to speak my mind, and to ensure he and the club are safe.
That idea sounds good to me. Keep her here, where we can have an eye on her and whoever is around. I’ll happily watch over the girl. She won’t even know I’m there.
But Jack laughs. “You want to be the one to deal with my daughter when she finds out I essentially kept her best friend prisoner at the compound? I seriously wouldn’t want to put either of our balls on the line like that.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’d prefer to deal with Ivani when her friend gets hurt or worse, and she wants to know why you didn’t do more to prevent it?”
Jack’s face turns serious. He knows I have a point.
“If she wasn’t my daughter’s best friend, and she was at a normal college, I’d go out there now with the dogs, find the guy, and fucking slice him open.
Let his guts fall out. But… she is my daughter’s friend, and she’s at a college that’s no normal facility, the same one my daughter is also at. It means I’m fucking stuck here, man.”
I forget Jack is stuck between what’s right and his daughter.
“Fine.” I get to my feet. “I’ll get a fresh team of guys together to try to track this little prick down, while you go ask the girl to stay.”
He seems surprised at my suggestion. “Can’t you do it?”
“Me? Why would she listen to me? She doesn’t even know me, and I’m not exactly… good with people. Besides, I get the impression she’ll listen to you.”
“Why?”
I can’t help myself. “I think she probably sees you as a father figure. Someone she can rely on.”
He visibly flinches at the dig. Oh, so Jack doesn’t want her to think of him as a fatherly type.
Maybe he’s thinking of himself as more of her daddy.
I smirk at that. Yeah, I bet I’m on the right line.
He’s already pictured her bent over, crying out, ‘Yes, Daddy… more, Daddy...’ while he grips her silky hair in one hand and fucks her hard.
And perhaps he doesn’t want to go and ask her to stay because he’s trying to avoid her because he doesn’t trust himself around her one hundred percent.
“Where is she now?” Jack asks, thankfully oblivious to my thoughts.
“I just left her in the canteen with Rook and Ace.”
His expression darkens. “Fucking Ace has taken a shine to her. Do you know I caught him in her bed last night?”
His words are like a punch to the gut. “What? They’re fucking already?”
An image of Camile lying naked in bed, her dark hair tossed over the pillow, while an equally naked Ace has his face buried between her creamy thighs, jumps into my head.
Her face is a contorted mask of pleasure, and I suddenly need to know what sounds she makes when she comes, with a desperation that’s as critical to my existence as breathing.
Christ, all this picturing her getting fucked by various members of our crew is getting me hard. I’m not sure if I’m jealous, turned on, or both, which is kind of fucked up.
But to my relief, he shakes his head. “No, nothing was going on, but I reckon she could be his new obsession, and you know what he’s like when he gets fixated on something.”
“I hear you. We wouldn’t want him to scare her off.”
Jack smirks. “It certainly looked like that was going to happen last night, though she seemed to handle him pretty well.”
“Good. If she’s going to spend any time around here, she’s going to need to know how to handle crazy men.”
I wonder if I put myself in that category.