Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUCIFER
I work the zipper on my fly and move to the rusty sink.
As I wash my hands, my gaze drifts to the dirty mirror above, and I stare at my reflection.
The dark circles under my eyes tell the story of a man who didn’t get much sleep.
It’s a story about a man who fucked his wife senseless the night before and left her there, in his bed, so he can do the Devil’s work.
Turning the water off, I swipe my wet hands across the front of my shirt, then I reach into my cut and pull out my phone.
I’ve been wanting to call her since I straddled my bike, and when we stopped to gas up our bikes, I almost did.
But then it was only a couple of hours after we had left, and I didn’t want to wake her if she was still sleeping.
But it’s almost eight hours later, and I’m itching to hear her voice. Maybe then I can get my head straight and concentrate on keeping my men and me alive.
I pull up her contact information as I exit the truck stop gas station, and my thumb hovers over the send button for a second before I finally hit it and lift the phone to my ear.
It rings three times, then goes to voicemail.
I contemplate leaving her a voicemail but ultimately decide against it. What the fuck would I even say?
I miss you?
I can’t stop thinking about you?
I just want to hear your voice?
If I die, you were the best thing that ever happened to me?
“Fucking hell,” I hiss, angrily shoving the phone back inside my pocket.
My boots crunch over the gravel as I make my way back toward where my men are gathered around a rickety old picnic table, eating gas station tacos.
I’m still twenty feet away when I catch pieces of the conversation drifting over the rumble of passing highway traffic.
“I’m warning you, man. Drop it,” Dread says, his voice low.
“Why?” Nightmare laughs. “The girl is free game. So what if she’s got some fucked up scars and a limp. I’d still twist her like a pretzel and fuck her.”
I close the distance in four strides, grab Nightmare by the front of his cut, and rip him clean off the bench. He barely has time to register what’s happening before I slam him down onto the top of the picnic table and drive my fist into his face, sending tacos and drinks scattering everywhere.
Shouting erupts around me. Bodies surge in from every direction.
“Prez—”
“What the?—”
“Lucifer, back the fuck off?—”
Hands grab at my arms and my shoulders. I shrug them off and slam my fist down again. Blood blooms across Nightmare’s face, but it’s not enough. I want to keep hitting him until he’s a bloody mess and he can’t form another word.
Then Shadow and Tormentor get a real hold on me, each taking an arm, and they wrench me back hard enough that my boots drag and kick up gravel.
“What the fuck, man?” Nightmare shouts, rolling to his side and pressing his forearm to his face. Blood pours freely from his nose, and drips from his chin.
I’m breathing like I’ve run ten miles. Every muscle in my body is coiled, straining against Shadow and Tormentor’s grip, every part of me still wanting to finish it.
“You say one more fucking word about my wife,” I grind out, “and I will fucking end you. Brother or not.”
Silence drops over the group, and everyone stares at me.
Nightmare swipes the back of his hand under his nose, smearing blood across his upper lip, and he looks at me with both fury and confusion. “Your wife?” He spits a mouthful of blood onto the gravel. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Dread, who has positioned himself at Nightmare’s shoulder, leans in close. “I fucking warned you, man.”
Nightmare turns on him, shoving him back a step. “Warned me about what?”
Shadow and Tormentor are still holding me, but they’ve gone slack with shock, and I feel the moment their grip loosens just enough. I roll my shoulders and break free, stepping forward. Not charging this time. Just closing the distance so there’s nothing left between us but truth.
“Jess is my fucking wife, you cocksucker.”
Nightmare stares at me. His chest is heaving. Blood is still running freely down over his lips, dripping off his jaw, and he doesn’t even seem to notice it anymore. “How the fuck was I supposed to know that?” His voice climbs, raw and defensive. “I’m not a fucking mind reader, man.”
“No,” I say, my jaw so tight it aches. “You’re just a man who doesn’t know when to keep his fucking mouth shut.”
Shadow’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Lucifer. Walk with me. Now.”
I don’t want to walk. I want to stand here and let every man at this table understand exactly what the price of disrespect looks like, but Shadow’s grip tightens.
He steers me away from the table, past the gas pumps, around the corner of the building where the highway roars behind us.
Shadow turns to me. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on? When the fuck did you get married? And why am I just hearing about it?”
I drag my fingers through my hair, gripping the back of my skull, and let out a breath that’s been sitting in my chest since I threw that first punch. “A couple of weeks after the explosion at Rodeo Roundup.”
Shadow’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts behind his eyes.
“She was in bad shape,” I tell him. “Had burns all over her legs.” I drop my hand from the back of my neck. “And because we’re a bunch of cheap fucks who don’t insure their employees, she had nothing. No coverage.”
Shadow crosses his arms. “So you felt responsible.”
In more ways than one, but telling him everything—how I had Max fire her so I could hire to work at the bar just to keep tabs on her, when I haven’t even told her about that yet, doesn’t seem right. I put her in harm’s way, and that’s not something I’ll ever forgive myself for.
I swallow thickly. “Yeah, and at first, I tried to pay cash for everything. I emptied my accounts and borrowed money from Dread.” I pause, contemplating how truthful I should be.
The man is my vice president, and I’ve been fucking lying to him for months.
Now, I’m sending him and everyone else into a war I created all because I needed money to save my wife.
“Remember when you found out about me going to Maddox to see if I could recoup some of the money we invested in the ranch?”
His brows furrow as he crosses his arms over his chest and nods.
“I lied to you when I said it was about getting the funds to rebuild the bar. I didn’t give a fuck about that place. If he would’ve given me that money back, I would’ve likely handed it straight to the hospital.”
The dots start to connect for him, and he lowers his hands to his hips. “Jesus Christ, man. Is that why we’re on our way to Mexico, right now? The stockpile . . . the deal with the Satan’s Knights . . . it was all for her?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. We’re on our way to Mexico because we needed more weapons to cover the deals I’ve made, but every cent the club has made with the Satan’s Knights has gone to the rebuild of Rodeo Roundup.
“It would’ve been if I didn’t marry her.” I tip my chin to where the rest of our club stands. “Every dollar we’ve made has gone right back into our books. You can ask Mammon.”
“He knows about this too?”
I shake my head. “But he’s the treasurer. If I had gone through with my plan, he would’ve caught it by now. The only person who knew everything was Dread.”
“Why him?”
I shrug. “It was around Della’s kidnapping. I was fucking spiraling, man. He caught on, and came up with the idea that I marry her.”
“So what—” Shadow’s voice cuts off, and he runs a hand over his face. “He was your best man?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “There was no best man. She was in a fucking coma, Shadow. We had to forge the application. Dread had a judge backdate the license before we submitted it to the insurance company.”
Shadow just stares at me. His mouth is slightly open, his eyes wide. “You forged a marriage certificate.”
“I did it so she could get well. That’s it.”
Shadow’s jaw works. He looks away, toward the highway, then back at me. “She looks pretty fucking well to me, and you’re still married. Fuck, you even got her working at the clubhouse now.”
I don’t say anything to that. There’s nothing to say that won’t make me sound like a man who’s in way over his head.
Shadow studies me for a long moment. The anger bleeds out of his face, replaced by something that looks like empathy. “You’re in love with her.”
My throat tightens.
Yeah. I’m in love with her.
But I don’t say that out loud. Some things are too raw, too new, to hand over to another person, even if that person is my vice president.
Shadow watches me, waiting for an answer. When it becomes clear I’m not going to give him one, he lets out a long breath.
“So, what now?”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You just fucking beat the piss out of Nightmare for talking shit about an unclaimed woman.”
“She’s not?—”
He cuts me off with a raised eyebrow. “I get she’s your wife on a piece of paper, man, and that she means something to you, but the girl doesn’t have a property patch.”
Something hot and possessive flares in my chest. I staked my claim last night when I took her into my bed and put her to sleep, wet and messy and full of my cum.
When I marked her neck and her thighs with my teeth and my mouth.
When I spread my release across her skin and watched it seep into her like a brand.
When I tucked her into my sheets and listened to her snore and thought, for the first time in my goddamn life, that I might actually be happy.
But in reality, she’s been mine before all of that. She’s been rooted in my marrow from the moment I laid eyes on her. I’ve just been too much of a fucking coward to admit it.
None of that matters when it comes to the club, though. The rules were established long before I ever held the gavel. A woman without a patch is fair game, and every one of my brothers knows that. Nightmare wasn’t out of line.
I was.