26. Hayden
26
HAYDEN
I t only took Luca’s guys about thirty minutes to mount the Sinners sign above the restaurant door, and within the next hour, they had a sticker on the glass window below.
“You like it?” Luca asked as one of his guys used a scraper to remove air bubbles. “That’s your name up there.”
It seriously fucking was. The sticker was huge, taking up the full length of the shop front window, my name and ‘head chef’ printed right there for everyone to see. I stared at Luca. “I only just signed the contracts.”
Luca thumped me on the back. “Yeah, but I knew from our first conversation that you would. I had this printed a week ago. I was just waiting for you to come around before I had the guys put it on.”
I hated that I’d wanted this so bad I’d been that obvious about it. But there was no denying, Luca was handing me everything I’d ever wanted on a silver platter. Though my head screamed warnings, especially after seeing his plans to turn that back room into an underground sex club, I couldn’t bring myself to complain.
All I could do was grin like an idiot at my name on the front of a restaurant. A restaurant that was at least partly mine.
Pride swelled within me.
“You like it,” Luca said more as a statement than a question.
“I love it,” I admitted. I glanced over at him. “I need this place to be a success.”
“You and me both. Ninety percent owner over here, remember? You don’t make money, I don’t make money. The bank will have us out in under three months if we don’t have this place up and running and making good coin. You know how much I paid for this fucking building. It’s good, but it didn’t go cheap, so neither is the mortgage.”
I nodded, the reality of banks and mortgages and payments settling on my shoulders. “We should talk more about this club idea…”
Luca grinned. “Plans are on the table there, but I’ve got to go check on my other businesses. Tomorrow?”
It was getting late anyway. The shops around us were all starting to close, and Luca’s guys had already packed their trucks, ready to call it quits for the day.
I lingered though, not having anywhere else to go.
Like he could read my thoughts, Luca pulled a set of keys from his pocket, tied together with a piece of simple brown string. “Stay as long as you want. I’ll be around until we get her on her feet, but this place is yours now. Your name is right there on the window after all. ”
A thrill ran through me as Luca pressed the key into my palm and I closed my fingers around it.
Mine.
This was mine, at least in some ways.
I waved off Luca and the others and went back inside, just standing there like a damn fool. The street outside was busy with people grabbing their last-minute items from the closing stores, and all I could imagine was at this time each day, we’d just be opening. People would be arriving in nice outfits, laughing and smiling with their friends as the ma?tre d’ showed them to their tables. The waiters would bring drinks on arrival and present them with fresh, modern menus. Ones where I’d carefully created every dish. Excitement bubbled up inside me, and I pored over the floor plans again.
Luca’s scrawl on the rectangular room at the back, marked “sex club” drew my eye, and I sighed, but it was a little less heavy this time.
Restaurants failed all the damn time. I knew that.
This wouldn’t be one. If that meant we had to supplement our income with something else, then who the hell was I to complain? Luca might have had his finger in many an illegal pie, but my brother had done his homework. Luca also ran more than one well-established, legitimate business.
If he said we needed a sex club, then maybe we needed a sex club.
As long as I didn’t have to perform, then Luca could do what he wanted in the back there, and I’d keep to myself in the kitchen.
I could make snacks for people. Having an orgy surely would work up their appetite .
I sniggered to myself.
“Sinners!” someone shouted from out the front. An accompanying thumping of a fist against the clean glass window followed it. “Are you…fudging serious, Chaos?”
I glanced up and groaned.
Hawk glared at me through the glass window. With one hand, he pointed angrily at the sign, my name proudly displayed beneath it. His other held the fingers of a small girl. “Sinners!” he yelled again. “Really?”
“Hey, what do you know. You can read,” I called back.
It was probably stupid to antagonize him, but I couldn’t stand obnoxious people, and Hawk was the most obnoxious of them all. As proven by the way he was standing on the sidewalk, in the middle of Providence, shouting like he was a teenager having an argument with his parents.
Hawk stormed to the door, the kid trotting along behind him.
I didn’t stop him from entering. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he wasn’t armed, but what was he going to do with his daughter right there beside him? Shoot me? I didn’t think so. Even Hawk wasn’t that stupid. Though I swear he acted it sometimes.
I eyed the little blond girl and then dragged my gaze back up to her father. “Didn’t know you had a kid.”
“I don’t,” he spat back just as quick.
I raised an eyebrow. “Not sure if you’re aware, but there’s a small child attached to your hand.”
“She’s not mine.”
I glanced at the girl. “You’re real lucky then. I wouldn’t want a dad like him either. ”
Hawk stepped in front of her, blocking her from my sight. “Don’t fuc…fudging talk to her.”
I sniggered. “Fudging?”
“She’s not used to people swearing.”
“Definitely not your kid then.”
“Like I said.”
I wasn’t used to seeing him in anything other than jeans and his club jacket. In sweat pants and a hoodie, his hair shorter and neater than mine, he could almost pass as a dad just out and about with his daughter.
It was a good look on him.
Awareness prickled over me, and I realized neither of us had said anything in an uncomfortably long minute.
I broke the silence before he got weird and mouthy, like he had last time. “Did you actually want something, Hawk? Or are you just going to keep staring at me the same way you did the other day?” The memory of his gaze wandering over my naked body and centering on my dick was fresh in my mind.
He snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t staring at you.”
Liar.
I raised an eyebrow. “No? You weren’t checking out my…” I remembered he had a kid there and coughed around a grin. “Salami?”
“Salami? Don’t flatter yourself. You mean your pig in a blanket.” Hawk sniggered.
I stepped in, close enough I was in his space, just because I knew it made him uncomfortable. I was petty enough to enjoy pushing at his barely cloaked homophobia. “No problem for you to swallow it down then, huh? ”
He stilled, me too close to him to see his expression, but I heard the hitch in his voice.
For the tiniest of seconds, I wondered if it was because he was thinking about what getting down on his knees for me would be like.
In the same second, surprise heat barreled through me at the thought.
But he shoved me away and leaned over the table that I had Luca’s plans rolled out on.
I cringed, knowing what he’d spotted.
I’d been too busy thinking about him getting on his knees for me to remember the sex club plans were right there in plain sight.
He went nose to nose with me. We were almost identical heights and similar builds, but his eyes flashed with anger. “You’re turning this place into a—”
I coughed and glanced down at the kid, staring up at us with big eyes, taking in every word.
Hawk took half a step back, reminded we weren’t alone, and tried again. “You’re turning this place into a…strawberry club?”
Laughter bubbled up my throat that couldn’t be contained. “I’ll be sure to invite you. We’ll have solo strawberries, group strawberries.” I eyed him suggestively. “Male-on-male strawberries is going to be a specialty, I believe. That’s right up your strawberry alley, isn’t it?”
But apparently Hawk had lost his sense of humor. His eyes darkened. “You know War and his family own Psychos in Saint View. That club is their livelihood.”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard. I’m sure Psychos won’t mind a bit of friendly competition though, right? ”
He shook his head, no trace of any earlier amusement left. “You’re playing with fire, Chaos. Starting up a rival club. Calling it Sinners. For a man who says he’s not in the game anymore, sounds a whole lot like you want back in.”
I didn’t say anything.
Because his warning was fair.
I’d spent five years trying to get out. In the space of a week, I’d thrown myself firmly right back in.
And yet I didn’t want to stop. For the first time in a long time, my blood rushed around my body. My heart beat for some other purpose than just keeping me alive.
I wanted this. I wasn’t giving it up just because Hawk and War were scared of a bit of friendly competition.
“Invite will be in the mail,” I promised the other man, refusing to back down.
He shook his head with something that edged on regret. “Your funeral.” He looked down at the kid. “Come on, Hayley Jade.”
I froze at the little girl’s name. Hawk took a step away, but I grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around.
“Her name is Hayley Jade?”
Hawk opened his mouth to reply, then quickly shut it.
He didn’t answer, just picked the kid up and walked to the door, like he’d realized he’d said too much.
Hayley Jade watched me over his shoulder, her big brown eyes so like her mother’s I didn’t need Hawk to confirm who she belonged to.
She was Kara’s daughter.
The one I’d delivered on the floor of a shitty run-down house in Saint View .
The one she’d named after me, even though she wasn’t mine.
Bullshit, she isn’t fucking mine. She’s been mine since the day I delivered her.
And so has her mother.
The thoughts hit me so hard it was like a physical blow to my gut, a punch I hadn’t seen coming.
But I should have.
Kara was the reason I hadn’t touched a woman in five years.
I rushed to the door. “Is Kara back?”
Hawk kept on walking toward a white van parked farther down the street.
“Hawk!” I shouted.
He yanked open the passenger side and put the little girl down in the seat before shutting the door.
He owed me nothing, but I had to fucking know. “Hawk! Does she even know I’m alive?”
He turned and glared at me. “She’s married. And that kid ain’t your daughter, even if she was named for you. You’re too late, Chaos.” His voice dropped to something sadder. “We were all too fucking late.”
He didn’t even give me a chance to question what that meant before he got into the van and the engine roared to life.
I watched him drive away but refused to heed his warnings.
I wasn’t too late. Everything I had ever wanted was falling into place.
All I needed to have everything was that little girl.
And her mother.