Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HAVOC
Icouldn’t let her go. Not after I got a whiff of that sour peach scent wafting off of her. It lingers in my nose and fires up the alpha in me to rush her to safety.
But I can’t. I can’t hide her in my arms.
So I’ll settle for following her home. I’m only making sure she gets home safe. Nothing more, nothing less.
Jumping into my car, a sleek black luxury car with tinted-out windows like the one I used to drive for my old boss back in New York. Before meeting my Pack, before my time in prison.
I was a young buck who had only seen these cars in passing on the way to my shitty school, where no one gave a shit about anything but making it out of there.
The Mafia was to my school what the military was to suburban high schools—finding recruits and training them to be stone-cold soldiers who take orders flawlessly.
I loved my job as an enforcer. It was better than working as a cashier at a rundown gas station like my mom.
My dad left us before I was born, furthering the long list of troubles I had as a teen.
It didn’t help that I became a 6‘4 man in the span of a summer.
I was a hot ticket for both the military and the Mafia.
The Mafia has a bigger paycheck, so the choice was obvious. With the training, I moved up quickly. I got promoted to being the Boss’s personal enforcer.
On my first day with him, he had me and a senior enforcer follow him around the whole day.
From midnight to midnight the next day, I made runs with them back-to-back.
That was the first time that I got three full meals in one day and a friendship that’ll last a lifetime.
He knew as much as I did that I would never want to be in his place, as Boss, and that made the biggest difference in our relationship.
I’m not a leader by any means. I love my place next to the leader, next to Boss, and now Silas.
I protect. I love and care, but I don’t like to lead. Not in that way.
I followed Boss around everywhere, and as a stupid 18-year-old, I fucking loved it. I was the biggest and strongest, and I knew how to throw my weight around. It wasn’t until we got busted and I took the fall for the Boss that things snapped into perspective.
The cops came running into the warehouse one day and tried to arrest us all.
I stayed behind, ensuring the Boss got away, and I got the full twenty-five-year sentence since we were cleaning hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I think they wanted to make an example of me.
I was clearly not the head of the fucking operation, but I ain’t no snitch and took the fall.
Nothing could get me to rat. Not when the Boss had just found his omega, the last piece to his Pack. He and his brother gave up on looking, didn’t want to bring an omega into their world, and that’s when she appeared.
I couldn’t separate my Boss from his Pack. Not when I know how special it is to find your omega. Now I know what it’s like. My Pack has found our omega. Someone who takes over your mind and is at the head of every thought you have.
If I’d never gone to prison, I probably would have never met Silas, Thorne, or Noa.
I follow Noa’s little beat-up car, noticing one of her brake lights is out as I slowly follow her to her home.
I wanted to build my relationship with Noa “organically,” as Silas would say. I didn’t want to follow her around all day, like my instincts told me to. I didn’t want to overwhelm her or overstep, and yet here I am following her home.
If I hadn’t had experience in following people, she would have lost me in all the twists and turns she took. I wonder if she had a sense I was following her. Just in case she did I let a car get between us, I didn’t want to scare her.
She parks in front of a small home, and it can’t be bigger than a one-bedroom, maybe two.
In a neighborhood close to the kind I grew up in, meaning there is no chance it is safe enough for my omega to live in.
She gets out of her car, her heavy bags overflowing with fabric scraps and ribbons in her arms as she races to the door.
She needs a new place with a garage. It’s safer.
She fumbles with her keys, and I sit back in my car a few houses down with the lights off, watching as she gets inside. Lights flicker on and off as she makes her way through the house. I see a pull from her curtain in her front window.
Good fucking girl. I want to slide out of the car and make sure she locked every window, but I don’t want to freak her out more than she already is tonight.
I’ll do it after I know she is sleeping.
My phone dings, the overly bright light in my face. It reminds me of my first phone. It was a work phone from the Boss that was a flip phone with tiny-ass keys on it. This one at least has bigger keys and a bigger screen.
After getting out of prison, I had nothing but the five thousand dollars and forged paperwork Boss gave me after he set me free.
I didn’t need a phone, so I didn’t get one.
I got a cheap car and slept in it until I found a rehabilitation center for people like me getting out of prison after so long.
After finding steady work at a mechanic shop, I was on the road to building my new life—the way I should have from the start. I worked with them until I could afford my own place.
Before I moved out of the rehab center, I met with the therapist, who recommended that I find a few hobbies—something that has me working with my hands, something in art.
The arts were never manly enough growing up, but we worked past that, and it’s something I’m actually good at. I’ve always been good with my hands.
One of the last group sessions I attended involved molding clay, and I found it relaxing. The muddy clay between my hands was close to the feeling of fighting. I had all the benefits of fighting without the physical damage. The control, the creation — I fell in love with it all.
A few years later, I now make a steady income from selling my artwork under a pseudonym.
Thorne: Text: where r u?
I roll my eyes. Of course, his nosy ass wants to know. I chuck the phone onto the passenger seat. I’m busy. He can find out later.
I catch a figure walking up to my car from the passenger side mirror and scrunch my brows. Who the hell? I slide my hand down to the gun in my car door pocket, my fingers meeting the cool metal before I recognize who it is.
He knocks on my window. I’m half annoyed he’d knock on my car window instead of calling me now that I have a phone, but I unlock the door, and in slides Thorne’s ass. He sits in the passenger seat and Silas is in the back.
“So I’ll ask again, better yet, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m making sure our omega gets home safe.”
“Our omega?”
“How did you know I was here?”
“You think I don’t have a tracker on you?” Silas scoffs as he leans back in his seat with his hands behind his head. His arms flex in his tight shirt. “I didn’t offer to set up that new phone for you for nothing.”
Thorne runs his hands through his wet hair; it must be from showering after the game.
“So what’s the plan? Stalk her until she accepts our bonds or?” He says with a mocking laugh.
“Shut up, Thorne,” I grumble, starting my car, still not over Silas putting a tracker on my phone without me knowing. My phone lights up with the text I actually want to see.
Noa
all my windows are locked and so are my doors. Have a good night, Havoc .
Have a good night, Havoc. With those two little cute hearts.
She sent me hearts. I must be doing something right if she sent me hearts.
“Don’t be a hog, Hav, let me see.” Silas rips my phone from my hand, and I grumble in annoyance. If he wants a text from her, then he needs to ask for it like I did.
Is it always this simple? I can’t pretend I have experience in the dating world. Fucking? Yeah, I have that down. The ladies would drop their panties for Mafia men. But, courting is different.
I’ve never done this before.
Not even with the guys. They were the ones courting me, and with their scents I wasn’t pulling a hard bargain.
“She sent him a heart emoji.”
“A heart emoji?”
“Yes.”
“I want a heart emoji.”
“Then text her yourself.” I snap and snatch my phone away. This text is mine. Not theirs.
“So what now? Why are we here?” Thorne asks as he stares at her house. All the lights are off, and we can’t see anything inside, which is good, but my radar is going off, and I don’t know why.
“Something scared her. Whoever broke into her shop, whatever the reason, it’s personal.”
Silas growls as Thorne frowns. Silas grabs his hoodie and lays it over himself like a blanket and stretches his legs out in my backseat. Thorne pushes back his chair, getting comfortable. “So, we are here on watch?”
I nod, pushing back my seat, watching her house first.