Chapter Twenty-One #2
Pope chuckles, his heavy shoulders relaxing slightly.
“Don’t worry about it, Tomcat. If it were a code-red emergency, that’d be a different story.
Cypher found the bastard who ambushed Marigold in the alley.
Malice, Cyanide, and Butcher already went out and dragged him in.
He’s currently tied to a chair down at the Slop N’ Chop. ”
The playfulness vanishes. Marigold freezes beside me, her body locking up at the mention of her attacker. I lace my fingers through hers, squeezing her cold hand tight. “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here. You don’t have to face him if you don’t want to.”
My grip pulls her from the dark trance. She jerks her head up, eyes blazing. “No. I want to. I need to know why he came after me, Tomcat. I need to know who he meant when he said they warned me away from you.” She spins to Pope, jaw set. “Please, Pope. Let me in that room.”
Pope fixes her with a calculating, intense stare, weighing the risk. “Can you actually handle it, sunshine?”
Marigold snorts, folding her arms tight over her chest in absolute defiance. “Do you have Jack the Dripper inside?”
“He’s sitting right behind the bar.”
“Then I can handle anything you throw at me. Just let me take my little buddy along for the ride.”
Pope glances over at me, a huge, dark smile splitting his rugged face. “You heard the lady, Tomcat. Take her inside to retrieve her little champion, and let’s go pay this motherfucker a proper visit.”
“Hold up, Pres. We need to talk to you about some heavy shit first. Shit the two of us just figured out,” I interject, my voice dropping into a deadly, flat tone that immediately kills the humor. “We’re gonna need Cypher to drop everything, do his thing, and locate Damon.”
Pope’s brow furrows, his frame tensing. “Damon Katzis? As in the ghost from Greece she supposedly put in the dirt? The one who might or might not be back from the dead?”
“Not might be, Pope. He is,” Marigold states, her voice chillingly devoid of fear, vibrating with pure, focused malice.
I pull my phone out of my kutte, flip through the local surveillance files until I locate the exact shot from the ports, and pass the screen over to him.
Marigold moves quickly to stand at Pope’s flank, her finger tapping hard against the glass.
“That’s him right there. That’s Damon. See that tiny, heart-shaped pigmentation loss in his right iris?
I’ve stared up at that exact defect too many damn times while he was hitting me to ever mistake it for anyone else. ”
Pope stares down at the pixelated image, his chest expanding with a slow breath.
He cuts his cold gaze directly to mine. “You’re telling me this motherfucker is actively doing high-level port business with the Saint's Outlaws? Using our own operations to get closer to a girl under our protection? Slipping into our goddamn territory?”
The dead, hollow tone in his voice tells me just how dangerous he’s become. An angry Pope is the last man anyone wants to negotiate with. That version of our President is a bloodthirsty psycho who is impossible to leash once he’s moving.
“Do you know where Ghost is holed up right now?” I ask, knowing Pope usually keeps a tight tracking grid on our business partners.
“Fuck no,” Pope snarls, his grip tightening on the edge of the porch railing. “Cypher’s been running Keres to ping his location, but the bastard is coming up entirely dark. He’s living up to his goddamn name.”
“Cypher should still be able to squeeze a lead out of these port photos,” I press, the enforcer in me taking over the math. “Someone standing on that dock with Ghost has got to know his safe house layout. Ghost is the only asset who is going to give us the answers we’re hunting for.”
“Fine,” Pope barks, handing the phone back to me. “While you grab your lady’s little weapon, I’ll head back to the monitors and check in with Cypher regarding Ghost and his inner circle. Meet me at the trucks in five.”
As soon as Pope storms inside, Marigold slips her fingers back into mine, swinging our hands.
She skips ahead, manic excitement for her reunion with Jack the Dripper eclipsing the looming interrogation.
I should probably be jealous she’s more eager to hold that toy than me, but it’s honestly kind of cute how she’s established a completely violent, unhinged relationship with a piece of silicone that had been engineered for a totally different purpose.
The moment we cross the clubhouse threshold, she lets out an adorable, high-pitched squeal, drops my hand, and claps her palms together. She bolts behind the bar, diving for the top shelf where the pink monster waits.
I follow, breathless laughter bubbling up as I take in the weapon’s makeover.
Scorch wasted no time stitching it a custom leather kutte, complete with a tiny rocker patch that reads ‘Pussy Beater’ in silver thread.
Marigold wanted to glue on googly eyes, but Malice went further and had D-Bag tattoo cartoon eyes right into the silicone so they’d never fly off in a fight.
Still not enough for their twisted minds, though.
Malice and Marigold insisted on a thick seventies porn mustache, so D-Bag inked one across the tip, too.
I tilt my head, studying Jack. For an adult toy, the little bastard is actually kind of cute. Made for one thing, now repurposed for violence by an unhinged woman who treats both uses as equal acts of love.
For women like mine, I'm starting to think they probably are.
“Tomcat, look!” Marigold squeals, aggressively waving the heavily tattooed, mustachioed dildo in the air. “Isn’t he so stinking adorable? I absolutely love him.”
I let out a rough laugh, wrapping my heavy arm around her leather-clad waist and hauling her body flush against mine. “Yeah, baby. The little fucker is adorable. Not nearly as fucking cute as you, though.”
“Duh. No one on this earth is that cute,” she quips smoothly, sliding effortlessly out of my embrace.
The playfulness instantly vanishes from her features, replaced by a dead-serious, stern expression as she smacks the flat silicone base of Jack right against her open palm with a loud, fleshy thwack. “Let’s get down to business.”
Pope strolls back into the main bar area, his face set in a hard, grim line. "Cypher's going deeper on Ghost. He'll flag me when something surfaces." He looks between us. "You two ready?"
Marigold cracks her neck from side to side, her eyes flashing with a dangerous, electric current before she nods. “Absolutely.”
“Bloodthirsty little wench,” I murmur affectionately against her ear.
She flashes me a brilliant, lethal smile that would make a great white shark proud. “Always, lover.”
The slaughterhouse thrums with its usual daytime chaos, so we skip the main entrance, weaving our bikes toward the locked back lot and gliding down the concrete slope to the underground bay doors.
Marigold parks right next to me, her obscene hot pink beast clinging to her custom gas tank like a deranged trophy.
Pope rolls up to the security box, punches in the master code, and the steel doors groan awake, rattling upward.
Our engines detonate in the echo chamber below, the sound ricocheting off concrete like gunfire.
No one but us ever sets foot in this underground tier.
Day shift workers don’t have the codes, much less the clearance to enter the soundproof cells.
If they ever glimpsed the darkness brewing beneath their feet, they’d probably drop dead on the spot.
And if they saw what the Saint's Outlaws get up to in the butcher bay after hours, their hearts wouldn’t stand a chance.
As soon as our engines die, the steel door to the holding room swings wide, and Malice steps into the gloom. His icy stare snaps to Marigold, then drops to Jack the Dripper the instant she peels the pink monstrosity from her tank.
Malice’s lips twitch. “You brought my bestie?”
Marigold scowls fiercely at him, instantly pulling Jack tight against her chest like a protective mother. “He's mine.”
Malice scowls back, eyes narrowing in a silent dare, looking like he might snatch the silicone beast from her grip just to stir the pot.
“Do it. I fucking dare you,” Marigold snaps, cracking her neck and squaring up, ready to wage war over her hot pink dildo. “I’ll beat you half to death with it, Malice. Swear to the goddesses. Try me.”
“As much as I’d shell out to see which one of you maniacs wins, we’ve got real work to do,” Pope booms, slicing through the tension.
Marigold shoots our President a glare, lips pursed. “You’re such a party pooper, Pope.”
“And you’re an unhinged fucking brat. Move it,” Pope snaps, heading for the door. “I want to know why this bastard ambushed you in our town, and who sent him.”
Marigold points the tip of Jack the Dripper directly at his spine. “Lead the way, boss man.”
Pope just shakes his head at her chaos, already worn out by her antics as he swings open the insulated door to the holding bay.
Before we step into the dark, I catch Marigold’s leather sleeve, gently halting her in the corridor. My chest tightens as I look down at her. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Goldie?”
A soft, knowing look crosses her features, her expression softening just a fraction. “It’s incredibly sweet of you to be so concerned, lover, but I'm tired of being the victim. I've faced the devil before and walked out. Nothing in that room scares me."
I exhale a ragged sigh, then claim her mouth in a deep, possessive kiss. “That’s exactly what scares me, little shadow.”