Chapter 23 Thea
I walked out of Maverick’s office and made my way toward the living room, plopping down on the couch beside Anna, Serena, and a few of the other girls who were watching a movie.
“You look thoroughly fucked,” Anna chuckled from next to me. “We heard your orgasm from here.”
“That was just his tongue,” I teased and she pretended to gasp in offense.
“You dirty whore!”
We both laughed and I felt around my pockets for my phone.
Realizing I left it in Mav’s office, I got up and made my way back.
I learned a few weeks ago that if the boys are in church we couldn’t interrupt under any circumstances, but I didn’t think that same rule applied for Maverick’s office, so I didn’t knock and just opened the door.
Walking in, I saw Circuit, Crash, my brother and Maverick standing, facing the opposite direction of me. They all turned their heads, and I felt the breath completely leave my body.
It wasn’t their faces that made the blood rush to my face, it was what they were looking at. As I stared down at the laptop, I was standing face-to-face with a picture of Matteo fucking Santoro.
My stomach dropped so violently I thought I was going to be sick.
Maverick’s eyes met mine and he looked down at the laptop, reading my mind. I quickly grabbed my phone and turned around, and Maverick tried to stop me.
“Babe, stop,” he called out and I could hear his footsteps behind me. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to walk faster as the realization hit me.
This is a club full of outlaws, gang members.
Of course they would be friends with someone high up in the mafia such as Matteo.
I felt like my heart was breaking in half.
If they are associated together, that makes them no better than he is.
I really did trade one devil for another, and I knew I needed to get out before it was too late.
How could I trust that the club wouldn’t turn me in for a couple million dollars? Sure, my brother wouldn’t easily let that happen, but what is one unjust murder when you’re already a soulless bastard.
Interrupting my thoughts, I felt a hand snake around my arm, forcing me to turn around. Maverick gave me an unsettled glare as he tried to read my expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, fighting back my tears. “I’m leaving.”
“What?” I heard my brother and Maverick say simultaneously. I used the opportunity to shake out of Maverick’s grip and walked over to my brother.
“You work for him?” I asked him as I looked into his eyes, daring him to lie to me.
“Who?” Dav responded. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Matteo Santoro!” I shouted, and he dragged me back into Maverick’s office. Maverick and Crash followed, but I did my best to ignore them as Circuit shut the door and Maverick moved to lean against it. “You work for that evil prick, don’t you?”
“How do you know who he is?” Maverick asked from behind me.
“So that’s a yes,” I said mostly to myself as I let out a dark chuckle. “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not leaving, Thea,” Dav said.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I said, pointing a finger up at him. “You lost that right when you decided to be a fucking criminal and get tangled up in the fucking mafia!”
“Thea,” he went to reason with me.
“Save your ‘I did it for you’ excuses,” I interrupted. “I knew coming here was a mistake, but this,” I motioned towards the laptop, “is too much. In Italy, everyone knows who Matteo Santoro is. He’s pure evil, the devil reincarnated in a nice suit and fancy jewelry.”
“But how do you know this about him?” Circuit asked.
“Bridgette and I met a girl named Francesca while studying abroad,” I lied.
“We had invited her out with us and when we told her where, she flipped out. We were accidentally frequenting one of his clubs and she told us to be careful because she met him in a similar way one time and he became obsessed with her and her smart mouth.”
I took a deep breath, trying not to let myself fall apart as I told the story of my demise.
“He choked her best friend right in front of her and threatened to kill her and have his men fuck her corpse while she watched if she didn’t stay with him, so she did, and he spent the next three months tying her to his bed and trying to break the smart mouth out of her.”
“He’s pure evil,” I added, wiping the tears from my face. I looked over at Maverick, “And if you’re doing business with that monster, enabling him to wear that high and mighty fucking crown, then you’re just as bad as he is.”
The room was silent as Maverick and I stared into each other's eyes. It was like we were silently battling to see who would break first. He wanted me to be reasonable and I wanted him to move out of my fucking way.
Instead, he got on his phone and started typing.
“You can leave the room and go upstairs,” he said, moving out of the way and opening the door. “But I just told the prospect at the gate to not let anyone out, including you.”
“Are you serious?” I huffed.
“Yes, very serious,” he responded, calmly. “I’ll be upstairs and we can talk about this later, but you aren’t allowed to leave, Thea.”
***
MAVERICK
“She knew more about Matteo than my contact,” Circuit said, stunned as the sound of the slammed door died down.
“If what she said is true, then we can’t keep doing business with the cocksucker,” Ares said.
All of my brothers were pissed and rightfully so. We didn’t hurt women or children no matter the circumstances. It was one of the rules our club was founded on. Even when the Sons hit us hard during our first war, we still didn’t stoop below to that evil ass shit.
The look of hurt and disappointment in Thea’s eyes wouldn’t get out of my head.
I didn’t know why it bothered me so bad.
I’ve had people judge me my entire life, it comes with the territory but Thea was the first woman that I had ever cared about and the idea that she’d think I’d be okay with what that fucker did pissed me off. How could she think so lowly of me?
“We don’t do business with him,” I reminded them. “We do business with Luca and we know that Luca isn’t a piece of shit.”
I crossed my arms and took a deep breath.
I wasn’t sure what to do in the situation.
It wasn’t like we could just give up the gun trade business.
They’d just pick up business with another club, and we’d lose a significant amount of control and influence while also pissing off one of the biggest mafia families in the world.
Yeah, that’s a pass.
“Let’s just meet the Santoros tomorrow and see how it goes,” I said. “We’ll tell Luca that we are only working with him and this is temporary and that he needs to send that fucker back overseas ASAP before we do.”
My brothers nodded their heads.
“What about Thea?” Ares asked.
“What about her?” I sighed. “I’ll talk to her, but did you see her face? It’s like she already had her mind made up that we were all pieces of shit. No changing that.”
“C’mon,” Crash said. “That chick is definitely ol’ lady material. She’s been busting everyone’s balls since the moment she got here, and did you see the way she handled the club girls?”
Crash was right. The more I got to know Thea, the more I thought she’d make a great ol’ lady.
She’s so fucking tough it’s almost scary.
Last week, Pearls had tried to sit in my lap at the bar again and Thea grabbed her by her fake ass hair extensions and pulled her off of me and told her that she’d beat her face in if she tried that shit again.
Then she planted a big-ass sexy kiss on my lips and told them to consider if my dick was good enough to get their ass beat over, and if it was, to meet her outside.
Shit was so sexy and further proof that she can keep the club girls in order when we’re away.
Since then, all of them were beginning to respect her as a permanent place at the club, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“That’s ultimately up to her,” I responded. “She has to want to be my ol’ lady. I can’t force her.”
“Damn straight you can’t,” Ares said, and I responded with an annoyed look. “But I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job explaining what this club means to her. Maybe someone should do that?”
“Like who?”
“Your ma’,” Ares said as if I should have already known that. “She did it for Serena when things got bad between us. Maybe she can do it for Thea, too.”
I nodded my head. He was spot on. When Serena thought about leaving Ares and the club to go back home, Ma’ was the only one who was able to talk her down. Some women-to-women shit. I decided that I’d give her a call before I talked to Thea.
***
THEA
I ignored the looks I got from everyone around the clubhouse as I ran to my room. Slamming yet another door, I crawled into my bed and let the tears fall. Grabbing my phone, I called the one person I knew who could make me feel better.
“Hey kid,” the voice of my best friend said through the phone.
Through deep breaths and heaps of tears, I recounted the evening’s events.
“He’s in New Mexico?”
“I don’t know,” I cried. “I need to leave but I can’t.”
“Hold on,” Chase said and let out a deep breath. “How do you know he’s even still looking for you? What if you’re about to throw everything you’re creating here away based on a feeling.”
I huffed. I knew why he thought that Matteo might not still be looking for me. I was too scared to talk about what had happened right before Flynn had saved me, so no one knew except for me and Rosalind, the maid who I convinced to bring me a pregnancy test from the store.
“I know he is,” I said, timidly.
“But how? It’s been two years since you’ve heard from him.”
“Just trust me, Chase,” I replied. “He’s looking for me.”
“If that’s the case, then you need to tell your brother and the club. They can protect you!”
I laughed.
“The club is a bunch of criminals! Who’s to say they won’t sell me out for a couple of million dollars or something? I can’t trust them.”
“Thea,” he said with a pause. “They love you, Davien, Serena, Anna, hell, I think even Maverick, too. It’s okay to let people in.”
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. I let him carry on talking for a while before I found a reason to get off the phone. After another crying spell, I finally fell asleep.