Chapter Thirty Two
Joey
Leighton immediately turned his attention to Rich once he'd shut the door on Hugo. "I knew it! We're still in a fight, but I fucking knew it !"
I smirked as Leighton threw his warm accusation on Rich. He'd given me the rundown about my idiot brother while we were out getting our house in order. When I asked him what happened, he looked ready to burst at the seams for an excuse to spill all the details. I laughed so hard I was in tears when he told me that Az had hit Rich and Leighton had offered to be his 'murder nanny.'
"Maybe you're gonna have a harder time walking away than you realized, big bro. Despite whatever you think is 'best.'" I said, a little more smugly than I'd intended. But as much as he was fighting himself, her, and the rest of us about what was evident, it seemed like he was losing ground whether he liked it or not.
"Just because I'm not willing to show all our cards to someone who may very well be our enemy doesn't mean I'm letting a temporary piece of ass get to me." Rich snarled.
The energy in the room shifted in an instant. Leighton and Az moved like they were both ready to fight him, but they didn't get the chance. I saw red when I started to move, going over the dining table instead of around it. My fist connected with his face as I came down from vaulting the furniture, causing him to stumble back. The room went quiet.
"I have had e-fucking-nough of this shit from you, Richard!" I growled. "You have been bullheaded and obstinate this entire time when she's proven herself over and over again. She saved Az's fucking life, she sat by your fucking bedside when we weren't even sure you were gonna make it through the night, she's the only reason we were able to get a car without resorting to violence to come home and we all know it. She's solved problems in my warehouse, quickly and efficiently–"
"She got us out of the shit at the club today, too." Leighton offered before falling back into silence.
"I am so over whatever the fuck is going on with you, and I will not stand here and listen to you insult the woman that I love anymore. You've gone from being stubborn to being disrespectful, and if it were anyone else, I'd already have dropped you for disrespecting what's mine."
Leighton cleared his throat, "Ours." he whispered with a fake cough, followed by the sound of a sharp slap indicating Az had smacked him in the back of the head.
" Ours ," I relented. "You need to get your head out of your ass. At this point, you're as bad as Hugo with how you're insulting her."
Rich straightened up to his full height. "All of you have lost your fucking minds. You're putting that woman ," he said the word as if it were a curse, "before our business. Before our fucking family. And not a single one of you chuckleheads can see why that's a goddamn problem!"
His fist lashed out too fast for me to react, and my nose crunched under the punch as if to punctuate his assertion that Victoria was a problem. I stumbled back against the dining table, holding my nose momentarily to check that it hadn't broken before narrowing my eyes on my brother again. I snarled as I launched off the table, charging my brother and getting low enough to have my shoulder collide with his waist in a takedown. He grunted harshly as his feet came out from under him, and we landed on the floor.
"You fucking moron! We haven't put anyone before our family! She is part of this family! Whether you like it or not, she's been claimed and she's fucking proven herself. You need to figure it. The fuck. Out!" I landed three quick blows to Rich's face to drive my words home before he recovered himself.
Rich wrapped his arms around my waist, trapping my arms at my sides and squeezing tight enough it was briefly challenging to take a full breath. He bounded back to his feet, reclaiming the few steps we'd lost when I tackled him to the ground.
"What is it going to take for you four to screw your heads back on straight?! Is one of us going to have to fucking die keeping her alive before you realize this whole thing is a fucking MISTAKE !?" He roared, slamming me into the dining table. The wood buckled and split in half under the impact of my body.
"Fucking hell, they're going to actually kill each other." I barely registered Az speaking as I scrambled to my feet, intent on launching myself at Rich again. "L!"
An impact from my right knocked me off balance, and then I was rolling across the floor with Leighton tangled around me.
"Sorry, bro." He grimaced as we came to an abrupt halt, slamming into the wall next to his bedroom door. I snarled at him, struggling to get away from his hold. "Don't make me hurt you, dude. You have to stop, or I'm gonna have to."
"Let me the fuck go, he deserves this." I barked, still trying to break free of Leighton.
My eyes were locked on Rich across the room. Az held him from behind in an almost bear hug. I was so focused on my brother struggling to break the hold Az had on him that I didn't notice Leighton's arm cocking back until I felt the sting of his palm against my cheek.
"No! Bad hetero-life partner. BAD!" He laughed as if this were all a game when I turned a wide-eyed gaze at him.
"What the fuck, Leighton! Did you really just bitch slap me?!" I snapped, pushing him away from me.
"Well, I had to do something ." He rolled his eyes dramatically. "You were going to make me hurt you if I didn't."
I laid my head back against the floor and stared up at the ceiling. "You know he deserved it, though. We've shot people for less than his disrespect."
"Yeah," Leighton shrugged. "But for starters, I told you I was in a fight with him over this, and for second, he's not healed all the way to take his proper licks over it, and…" He paused as if trying to figure out what number he was up to. "The man is clearly tearing himself apart because he just can't accept he's in love with la petit démone too. He can't even come up with new lines to throw around when he's having his temper tantrums about ‘she's not suited to this' blah blah blah." he dropped his voice dramatically in an attempt to imitate Rich. "If he really meant that shit, he'd have a lot more lines than the ones he already used up on me and Az back at the cabin."
"That's… surprisingly insightful, L." I smirked. "Now, can you get the fuck off of me?"
"I say insightful shit all the time, I don't know why you guys always act surprised by it." He chuckled, unwrapping his arms and legs from around my body and climbing to his feet before offering me a hand.
I grasped his hand as he pulled me up and looked over as Az tentatively let Rich go. I narrowed my eyes on my brother but made no moves toward him.
"Next time you feel like you want to insult our girl, maybe think twice about it and keep your fucking mouth shut." I snapped.
"Hey now!" Leighton chirped, causing me to look at him. His hands were on his hips, and he had a look on his face that was scarily similar to the one my mother wore when Rich and I were in trouble as children. "That's not how this is supposed to go. You're supposed to kiss and make up or whatever brothers do so we can get back to the shit that went down at the club that got so rudely interrupted before I could fill everyone in."
"How ‘bout no to most of that, and we just move on." I said, rolling my eyes at Leighton.
"Joseph Innocenti, do not make me call your mother." L continued. "Because I will. Dawn adores me."
"I am not apologizing. And if you call her, make sure you tell her why I hit him. Dad would come down here with a belt. Now, can we please just move on? I've said what I had to say." I said sternly as I moved past Leighton and back into the kitchen, casting one more look at my brother. "And I meant every word."
"Whatever, I tried." Leighton shrugged. "But I'm still calling Dawn, I suddenly have a craving for her lasagna, and we've missed our weekly chats for the last… like month. She's gonna be so pissed when I tell her about this bullshit marriage arrangement my parents think is gonna happen."
"Tell her I said hi when you get her on the line," Az said, sidling up to the counter. "Leighton, you left your popcorn sitting."
"When the fuck did you make popcorn?" I asked.
"About the time you decided a fistfight required busting out the superhero moves and jumped off the table like fucking Batman or something," Leighton said, looking at me like I was crazy for even asking. "But anyway, we should talk about the raid."
"Share. Now, what happened at the club?" I said, hopping up on the island counter since we obviously wouldn't be sitting at the dining room table to discuss business for now.
Leighton filled us in on the raid and what he'd overheard from the cops on the take while shoveling fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth. At one point, I resisted the urge to slap the back of his head and tell him to stop talking with his mouth full out of concern the little psycho would derail into something unrelated if I did.
"We knew there were a few cops on the Jackals' payroll, but if they're interfering in our shit instead of just covering up for the Jackals, we need to have a meeting with our captains. They won't stop at hitting our legitimate businesses; they will make problems for all our dealings." Rich said when Leighton finished telling us everything.
As angry as I was with him, I had to admit even to myself that he was right. Hell, even we had cops on the take, but they weren't paid to interfere with the Jackals; they were paid to keep our guys out of jail. It was just the way these things worked.
"Have your guys meet us at the safe house on Brooks since we can't use the one on Senna anymore, thanks to our mole telling the Jackals about it. Fucking cockroaches. These assholes don't know that we know, so we need to leverage that and get the upper hand before they figure it out." Rich ordered as we started to make our calls.