Chapter 2 #3
I stepped onto the porch as the SUV parked in front of my house.
I saw the twins leading Anakahonua and Moanikeala out the open gate in the pipe fencing.
A task which only required one of them, and yet they were both there.
While neither wore shoes, I was glad to see both had put shirts on.
At least they were taking my talk seriously.
Sometimes it was hard to tell with them.
I approved of their choices of horses for the women.
Both Ana and Niki were very gentle mares that did not spook easily, and they were getting up there in age but still needed exercise. I was not quite ready to retire them.
I watched the men say their goodbyes to their women before Nadia and Kensi headed towards the twins. Then Aftermath and Red came up the stairs towards my front door where I was waiting for them.
“Slippahs off,” I told them, indicating the pile by the door.
They both bent to untie their boots, which looked so constricting.
“Seriously,” Red asked as he stood to toe off his boots, “do you guys do anything normal around these parts?”
My smile was wolfish as I answered, “Depends on your definition of ‘normal’.” Turning, I called over my shoulder, “The twins will take care of your women today. Don’t worry. They know to keep their hands to themselves.”
“They better,” Aftermath grumbled.
Tangaloa was sitting at my table drinking a cup of Kona coffee as I led the men inside. He had a tablet in front of him and was scrolling through the pictures. He raised his cup to them in greeting, “Howzit?”
“Coffee, tea,” I pointed offhandedly to the counter to my right then pointed to my left. “Lua is down the hall on the right.”
“Oh, I know that one!” Red said excitedly. “That’s your word for ‘toilet’.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, and of course, his cheeks reddened as soon as my attention was on him. And because I’m such an ass, I couldn’t let the opportunity slide to make his face even redder. “Good boy. Do you want a cookie?”
Aftermath and Tangaloa chuckled when Red’s face blazed like it had been sunburned. At least, he wasn’t wearing an outrageous amount of sunscreen today.
Aftermath headed over to the coffee pot. “What did you figure out?”
“While you two were fucking your women and getting your beauty sleep last night, we were working,” I said pointedly.
I took a seat at my table, indicating the tablet in Tangaloa’s hands.
“We didn’t have a shoot scheduled last night, so I sent my guys out to all the different storage facilities in the area.
They found your trucks and added trackers to them, as well as got pictures of some of your Bloody Scorpions. ”
Red took a sip of his coffee. “That’s great news!”
“Not so much,” Tangaloa said gravely. He turned the tablet around to show the Royal Bastard brothers. “We don’t just have some Bloody Scorpions on O‘ahu. We have an infestation.”
Red and Aftermath neared. Red put his coffee cup down on the table to pick up the tablet and start scrolling through as Aftermath looked over his shoulder.
I didn’t have to look. I already knew what it was they were seeing.
Bloody Scorpions. A lot of them. We still had to officially count by comparing the pictures, but there were at least three dozen.
I was fuming. I’d left my life of crime behind me.
I’d gone straight, to keep a promise I had made in vain to become a man worthy of…
Well, not to sound cliché, but to be worthy of love.
I wanted so badly what I had thought Kalea and Tangaloa had had, what I now see that Aftermath and Kensi, and Red and Nadia, have, that I’d made that promise.
And she’d still walked out that door.
I’d been under the fucking delusion that my life was better for it.
I didn’t need love in my life. But I had to admit I’d scared myself with how far I was willing to go.
My rock bottom hadn’t been when my front door had slammed closed behind her, but when I’d been staring down the barrel of a gun.
If Jameson had been ten seconds later, I wouldn’t be here.
Then again, if he’d come ten seconds later, I wouldn’t owe him the debt I was currently paying off.
After little to no sleep last night, I was still debating on if I was happy about that or not.
The look Tangaloa gave me as Red and Aftermath continued to scroll through the pictures said that my best friend knew exactly what was going through my mind.
If I hadn’t gone straight, if I hadn’t tried to be better, the Bloody Scorpions would have never gotten a foothold on my island—because I wouldn’t have let them.
“What do the Bloody Scorpions want?” I asked them. “What are they into? Drugs, flesh, black market dealings…?”
“Everything,” Aftermath grumbled. “You name it, they’re in it.”
“They can’t have been here long,” Tangaloa muttered. “Whatever they’re doing in that storage yard, it’s new. Otherwise, I would have heard about them prior to your arrival.”
“It’s too dark,” Red complained, his nose nearly up to the screen. “I can’t make out what it is they’re moving.”
“Boxes,” I answered, unhelpfully. “One of my guys tried to get closer to look inside, but was nearly caught.” I put my feet up on the table, crossing them at the ankles. “You two up for an all-nighter?”
I was definitely going to need a nap soon, and maybe a blowjob.
I was not looking forward to staying up again tonight, especially with the late-night shoot booked for tomorrow at the nightclub.
But I wanted this favor done and over with.
I wanted the Bloody Scorpions, and the Royal Bastards, off my island.
I wanted life to go back to fucking normal.
“Will our women be safe here?” Aftermath asked.
“No reason for them not to be,” I said plainly. “I doubt the Bloody Scorpions know about me or my connection to Jameson. And even if they did, the twins are…” I paused, not entirely sure how to describe them.
“Scarily deadly,” Tangaloa inputted for me.
I’d allow that description.
Aftermath looked to Tangaloa as if he was sizing him up differently for the first time. “Do you have weapons we can borrow? Red said you run guns.”
Tangaloa’s smile turned feral. “‘Guns’ is so bland a word. I run weapons.” With the crook of his finger, Tangaloa indicated for them to follow him.
We headed down to the basement. My house was old, sat above sea level, and was far enough back from the ocean that digging hadn’t been an issue for my ancestors. Since the basement had originally been made for storage, it made me wonder how my ancestors would feel if they saw how I used it now.
Behind a shelf of staged camera equipment, Tangaloa pulled a hidden latch to swing the shelf forward.
Lights blinked on to reveal a secret room.
Several years ago, a severe hurricane had uprooted a tree behind my house and left behind a massive hole.
Tangaloa was nothing if not an opportunist. He lowered a Conex box into the hole, filled the exterior with concrete, and then covered it with dirt and grass to hide it.
After that, he drilled a hole in my basement wall to be able to access it.
Tangaloa didn’t just deal in guns like handguns, automatic and semi-automatic rifles, and shotguns.
He also had hand grenades, grenade launchers, flame throwers, and some not-so-common weaponry, like tomahawks, boomerangs, blowguns, slingshots, throwing knives, shuriken, kukri swords, and whips.
Plus some traditional Hawai‘ian weaponry, like shark-toothed knuckledusters, clubs, and spears.
Aftermath looked like he’d just stepped through the Pearly Gates of Heaven as he took it all in. “This is fucking incredible.”
Tangaloa gave a nonchalant shrug, but also said condescendingly, “I know.” He tossed Aftermath a black gym bag from the corner of the room. “Grab what you can. We’re going to get bloody on this one.”
I couldn’t help the surge of anticipation and adrenaline I felt at those words. Good. It had been a long time since I’d gotten my hands bloody.