Chapter Five
Zeppelin
Noon rolls around, and I have nothing else to do. I head to the Seven Crows for a drink. Or twelve. We’ll see how the day turns out.
“Zeppelin Molloy,” Nancy Charney calls out to me.
The forty-five-year-old woman with short salt-and-pepper hair sets a beer down in front of me. She’s curvy and short, and she looks like she’s seen some shit in her life. If I was into older women… I’d still steer clear of her.
Because she honestly scares me a little bit.
Nancy’s nice and attractive, but she’s terrifying when she needs to be.
Besides the fact she’s related to one of the toughest gangs in the state, and she can hold her own against the roughest of guys, she has cats.
Three of them. She has the means to hide the smell of a dead body until she can dispose of it.
If she disposes of it. Might just let her cats have at you.
I know I’ve thought about it having only one. Chonk may hate my guts, but his litter may come in handy one day.
“Hey, Nan. Thanks,” I say, taking a drink from the beer.
The Seven Crows bar has been in Gravelton for as long as I can remember, and it’s one of the few neutral places around town between us and the Venom. With her family ties, we know it’s best not to piss her off too badly, so we do our best to follow her only rule: No fighting in the bar.
“There was a guy who came in looking for you this morning. A cop, I think. He said to tell you he needs more than a week. Something about his boss monitoring him, and he said you’d know what he meant.”
Fuck. I guess I have to give him more than a week. It won’t do me good to have my contact getting busted getting me the case file.
“Thanks.”
“You involved with the cops, Zep?”
“No, just trying to get information on Johnny’s accident.”
Wylie Ballard walks into the bar, waggles his eyebrows at me, and kisses the air in my direction. I fucking hate that man. Almost as much as I hate his father.
“How are you doing?” I ask Nancy instead, trying to keep her attention on me rather than even glancing at Wylie.
It’s childish, I know. But I don’t care. Call me fucking Petty LeBelle today.
“Not great. I got chased by a goddamned duck this morning.”
Snorting, I nearly spit out the beer. “You got chased by a… duck? Like, quack quack?”
“Hey, you encounter a rabid duck and tell me you ain’t scared, asshole.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” I say with a chuckle. “Have you talked to Rooster about this? He can probably commiserate with you.”
“Do you want me to take that beer back and serve you milk with a mouthful of my spit in it instead?”
Clutching the mug in my hand, I move to keep her from grabbing it. “No. I’m sorry.”
The image of Nancy running away as a duck chases after her keeps me chuckling, and she tosses a wet bar towel at me. I wonder if the ducks can sense her fear like all birds can sense Rooster’s.
“You know, he’d kick your ass for smiling at his pain,” Nancy says, knowing I’m thinking about Rooster’s run-ins with various large breed birds, too.
“He could fucking try,” I say and drink half the mug.
“How are you holding up?” Nancy asks.
“It doesn’t feel like life with Johnny gone,” I admit to her.
She’s one of the few who has any idea how this hurts. She lost her husband in a gang war with her family, and she hasn’t moved on. The ring stays on her finger, and she’s still married. In her heart, she’s forever tied to him.
Giving a small smile, she shakes her head. “I wasn’t talking about losing your stepdad.”
“Mama and Johnny weren’t married.”
“They were more married than most of the married folks around here.”
“Except he was still married to Lainey’s mom in Seattle, remember?’
Waving a hand in the air, she sneers. “Who gives a shit about that traitor?”
“What are we talking about if not Johnny?”
“I saw Chanel’s car in your driveway the other morning when I closed up here.”
Fuck. “She was just… There was something that she… Johnny needed…”
I can’t come up with anything good to excuse it. Everyone knows she’s engaged to Dorian, and I don’t want them to see her as a cheater. No matter what she does to me, I always protect her.
“Johnny needed you to shove your cock into her pussy?” She gives me a knowing look as I stare in shock. Nancy’s always direct, but damn. “We all know that girl cheats on the man she left you for with you. And when she comes to town, you mope around for days after she leaves again.”
Great. The entire fucking town is more aware of my business than I thought. “We may have had some… relations.”
“Zep, what are you thinking?”
“I know. She’s marrying another man—”
“No, not that. She’s a fucking twat. She screws you and leaves you. Gets to have her cake and eat it, too. Why the hell do you still let her?”
Getting relationship advice wasn’t what I expected when I walked into the bar today. “I love her.”
It’s the simplest way to explain why I give in every single time.
“And you’ve loved many other girls around town.”
“No, I haven’t. The others… that’s sex. Just sex. Chanel has owned me since I was fourteen.”
“Just because she was the first to suck your diddly-pop doesn’t mean she owns you. Or should have the free rein you give her to make you feel like shit every time she gets the itch for whatever it is Dorian ain’t giving her at home.”
Diddly-pop. I don’t hate that term. Not sure I agree with her assessment, but I know it’s not completely false either.
Chanel was the first to give me a blow job.
Something she quickly stopped because she hates it, but after going down on her the first time, she let me take her virginity. Same fucking night, and I was in love.
And we haven’t gone longer than a few hours around each other without stripping down naked since. It’s usually minutes after my front door shuts that we’re coming together to get that high we can’t seem to get anywhere else.
“What do you expect from me, Nan? I’m kind of fucking lost these days.”
“Can I help you?” Lainey Sloan calls as she wipes down a table.
I turn to look at Johnny’s only biological offspring. If Mama and Johnny had gotten married, Lainey would legally be my stepsister, but she’s been my sister since I was seven. Since the day Johnny became the man I called my dad.
“Remember my rule,” Nancy says as I stand and walk over toward the commotion. “No fighting in my bar.”
“I can think of a few things you can help me with,” Wylie says with a smirk, his hand firmly on Lainey’s ass.
She swats it away and pushes him backwards. He stumbles a few steps but catches himself. He may not be his father, but I hate him almost as much. And right now, he’s the closest I’ve gotten to Butch since Johnny died. His father seems to be hiding from me.
For good reason.
“How about I help you? Would you like your body tossed in the dumpster or the river?” I ask.
“Zep, I got this. It’s fine,” Lainey says, trying to push me back, but I’m a hell of a lot stronger than she is.
The dark blond smirks up at me, and I want to wipe that smile away by smashing it into the table. Then, for good measure, permanently remove it with a sledgehammer.
Too much?
I don’t think so.
“You think you can hit me without making me laugh? That’s cute, little brother.”
“I’m not your fucking brother.”
He scrambles to his feet and shrugs, and I hate how he wears a tank top under his leather. Everything about him screams TRAILER COURT, not the higher-class neighborhood he lives in. “Your mom fucked our dad and got knocked up. Kind of makes us kin.”
The idea of Mama sleeping with Elvis “Butch” Ballard makes my skin crawl.
I hate that man with every fiber of my being, and I’d give my left nut to have a tombstone for him in a cemetery instead of Johnny.
Especially because I know in my bones that he was the one who took Johnny out.
Whether directly or by proxy, he still made the call.
“Then I guess I have a claim to the family fortune, huh?” I say.
This makes Wylie stand a bit straighter. Butch has made quite the name for himself, and he never holds back when it comes to bragging about how much money he has.
“Go to hell, Molloy.”
“But I thought we were brothers. Here I thought we’d make a pact to always be there for each other and seal the deal with that stupid thing kids do where they spit in their hands and shake. Then I could get my sleeping bag and watch a movie with the family.”
His jaw clenches. “Funny.”
“Your mama won’t mind me being there, right? I mean, it would be an in-her-face reminder that he fucked Mama while he was supposed to be fucking her. That has to sting, huh?”
He takes a swing, but I dodge it, holding back my rage as Nancy comes running from behind the bar, baseball bat in hand. I know better than to fight, but I also know easily the two Ballard men are to rile up. And their collective lack of self-control.
“You know the rules, Wylie!” Nancy shouts and slaps the bat into her palm. “Get out.”
“He—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Snarling, he walks toward the door. “Fine!”
“And stop trying to manhandle my sister. It’s weird,” I call. When Lainey and Nancy both glare at me, I shrug. “What?”
“You, too, Zeppelin,” Nancy says.
“I can handle myself, Zep. I don’t need you swooping in here acting like a hero,” Lainey says.
Her dark hair and eyes match Johnny’s. It’s hard to look at her sometimes because she reminds me so much of him. A much prettier version, but still him.
I roll my eyes. “He was only trying to cop a feel because I was in here.”
“Out,” Nancy says. “Go.”
Groaning, I shake my head. “Fine. See you tomorrow.”
I walk out to my bike and sigh. Now what am I going to do with the rest of my day?