Chapter Fifteen
Perish
When your parents name you ‘Perish’—like on that official paperwork and my social security card and shit—it kind of says something about their background… and what they expect from your future.
My dad was rough and mean and in and out of prison so often that I sometimes forgot he existed for long spans of time.
But an absent dad and a disinterested mother meant I grew up wild and feral.
I was out more than I was home from all of five years old, hanging out with neighborhood kids.
We got into small-time kid trouble: stealing shit from people’s yards or packages from their porches, tagging old buildings and billboards, picking up smoking and drinking way too fucking early.
The older we got, the more we pushed those boundaries.
Then, well, I followed in my old man’s footsteps.
I was twelve the first time I went away to juvie for a petty disorderly person charge, spending my first three-month stint locked up with a schedule and rules for the first time.
Luckily for me, I still had nasty, bloodied knuckles from the fight that sent me inside and had just gone through another growth spurt. No one fucked with me.
The same couldn’t be said about a kid who came in after me. He was skinny and weak and an immediate target.
I couldn’t say for sure why I took him under my wing—and protection.
I guess you could make a solid argument for the fact that my old man was a bully who enjoyed beating on me because I was weaker than him.
So as I started to sprout up myself, I developed a fierce protectiveness for the neighborhood kids who were smaller and weaker than me.
So, yeah, there was Cameron. My shadow. The kid I kept safe until I was released.
He found me when he got out, still bruised up from whatever the other kids had done to him after I hadn’t been there to protect him.
He hung around a lot after that.
You’d think a stint in juvie would have made me straighten out. But it just gave me a few months inside to learn the rackets all the other kids were doing to make some extra cash. So when I got out, I got to work. With Cameron and some other neighborhood kids there to help.
But, well, I was young and dumb. So I was in and out of juvie until I was seventeen when the court-appointed lawyer told me I had to clean up my act (or get better at not getting caught) or I’d be facing adult time moving forward.
All the while, I kept an eye on Cameron.
Until it finally happened; I went away for real time.
Five-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute.
And I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.
I left Cameron in charge of the hustle I had going.
When I got out on good behavior, I was sent to the damn halfway house. Which, in retrospect, was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was how I’d met Syl. And through Syl, Voss. Then, eventually, Finn, Fallon, and the rest of the club.
At the time, though, it meant I was not only dealing with my parole officer but also under the watchful eye of the staff at the halfway house. There was no way to go back to my crew, to check on things, reinforce alliances, or take control back.
So I had to sit around playing chess and twiddling my fucking thumbs.
Once I was released from the halfway house and went to a townhouse situation, I finally got back in touch.
“It was all catching up with old friends and making plans for the future,” I told the club.
I tried to keep my gaze on the club. But when I scanned the crowd, there was an extra second where I focused on Gracie.
I couldn’t tell you what it was that I saw on her face. But I didn’t think it was the judgment I’d been bracing myself for.
I think in my head I’d put Gracie on a pedestal, like she was above all this ugly.
Forgetting that she was connected to a lot of shady people herself.
All of whom she loved. Everyone from bomb experts and cage fighters to people who tracked down and put down the men who abused and trafficked women and children.
To accept and love things like that about people, your moral compass couldn’t point due north.
Of course, she wouldn’t judge a shady past.
Though I hadn’t gotten to the bad part yet.
“I’m assuming your second-in-command didn’t want to hand over the reins,” Reign said.
“He handed ‘em right over,” I said.
Or so it seemed at first.
I guess Cameron had been smarter than I’d given him credit for. And he’d become a better liar over the years I’d been away.
I think I’d just caught him off-guard, showing up the way I did. Maybe he figured I’d gone straight after prison and the halfway house, so he hadn’t come up with a plan to keep the crew away from me.
So he’d welcomed me with open arms. He shared business plans with me. He’d shared drinks with me. Laughs and inside stories and memories.
“Then, one night, I woke up to a knife pressed to my carotid.”
The gasp across the room made everyone’s head swivel toward Gracie.
So I had an excuse for my gaze to linger, to watch the way her pretty blue eyes went round in shock.
“Gonna guess Cameron never grew up to be as big as you,” Brooks commented.
“Fucking Russia isn’t as big as him,” Pagan mumbled.
“Cameron could never put on weight, no matter how much he tried. He also never had to take a life before. He had no fucking idea what he was doing.”
I had my life to thank for that.
Because if he had the balls that came from a penchant for ending lives, that knife would have been deep in my carotid before I could even wake up. And there was no coming back from that shit.
But he’d hesitated.
And I’d slept lightly, thanks to a lifetime of being in and out of prison.
I remembered that night with a clarity that immediately put me back there, pulse pounding, betrayal burning a hole in my stomach.
I’d grabbed his wrist with one hand, fingers crushing as I pulled his hand away from my neck.
The other arm cocked, swung, and landed right to one eye. Then the other.
I scrambled up as we both fought over the knife.
I could still feel the sting of the blade as it sliced my palm, the warm trickle of my blood as it dripped from my skin to the ground.
Then, well, it was pure rage.
I pummeled his face, hearing the crunch of his nose, feeling his hot blood on my skin.
“Then he landed a lucky punch to my fucking liver,” I told the club.
I saw the understanding on all their faces… and the commiseration from former cage fighters like Laz, Pagan, and Niro.
Because a punch to the liver is fucking excruciating.
But only for thirty seconds to a minute.
By the time I’d recovered, the bastard had found my gun.
We struggled over it.
“Then it went off,” I admitted.
The image came back.
Even in the low early morning light, I could see the gaping hole, watched the blood ooze out, saw the life draining from his eyes.
“Or so I thought.”
“Didn’t check for a pulse?” Brooks asked.
“Man, I wrapped him up in black trash bags and carted him across the fucking state. He was dead weight when I dumped him in the woods. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.”
Or so I thought.
Maybe I hadn’t looked closely enough.
I mean, fucking obviously, I didn’t.
“And we’re in lockdown…” Fallon prompted.
“I was at Matteo’s venue today, working on the grass. Milo invited me in for a drink. And I saw this,” I said, reaching into my pocket to produce the police sketch.
At his blank look, I sighed.
“Didn’t know Gracie did a police sketch.”
“I didn’t know either,” Fallon admitted, looking over at Gracie.
“I… I didn’t think it mattered. Everyone thought it was about the Grassis. I… um… Detective Vaughn asked me to come in. I did it the next morning. I didn’t know I should have told you guys.”
“No one is blaming you,” I said, shaking my head.
“Of course not,” her old man said, giving her knee a pat.
“Anyway… this is Cameron. Back from the fucking dead. And none of this has to do with the Grassis. It’s all me.”
“But why was Gracie targeted?”
“I dunno if she was. Not for the shooting. Think maybe I was the target. But then maybe he saw me protecting Gracie. Then drew some conclusions…”
“Did you see who attacked you tonight?” Fallon asked, looking at Gracie.
“I didn’t… I didn’t really get a good look.”
“But it’s not a stretch to assume it’s Cameron,” I said.
“We’ll get the security footage from the building,” Fallon said, looking over at Brooks, who immediately reached for his phone. “I want to know if he is operating alone, or if he is still running your old crew. We need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here.”
I had nothing to add to that.
“Whatever it takes,” I agreed.
“And it goes without saying, I want your ass staying inside for the foreseeable future. At least until we are done gathering intel.”
“I can do that,” I agreed.
“And Gracie—” Fallon started.
“I want to stay here,” Gracie said, her voice a strange, tight chirp.
To that, Fallon’s brows scrunched.
“Everyone else is at Hailstorm.”
“I know. I just… I’d rather be here. I have, uh, a lot of work to do. And the Wi-Fi sucks there. Because of, um, you know, all the hacking…”
I couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else could see what a terrible liar she was. Or if they were just accepting what she said at face value because there didn’t seem any obvious reason to lie about that.
A few feet away from me, a muscle was ticking in Fallon’s jaw.
We all knew he preferred the girls at Hailstorm. The place was practically impenetrable. But it was also hard to say no to Gracie. Especially because I assumed she didn’t ever ask for much.
Fallon glanced at his father, who offered a little shrug.
“Okay,” Fallon said. “But I want you to stay in the basement as much as possible. Especially to sleep.”
“Okay,” she agreed, giving him a grateful smile. “Oh, um… I couldn’t grab anything…”
“Just give us a list. I’ll have someone pick whatever you need up from your apartment or office.”
“Thanks, Fal,” she said, giving him one of her soft smiles.
Beside her, Duke put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned over into him and he pressed a quick kiss to her temple.
That, I reminded myself, was why I couldn’t touch her.
She was their sweet golden girl.
And every one of them would think a guy like me would dull her shine.
“Anything else you need from me?” I asked, forcing my gaze away from Gracie.
“As much information as you have about Cameron and your former crew that you can remember. It’ll help Junior narrow shit down.”
“I’ll get on that,” I said, moving away.
The meeting wound down from there, with Brooks giving out guard shifts to some members and recon tasks to others before Fallon reminded everyone that lockdown meant no outsiders and parties before dismissing everyone.
“Alright, pretty princess,” Sully said, moving to lean on the bar beside Gracie in his ridiculous Hawaiian shirt with a cactus print. He had a spiral notebook and one of those pens the rich kids had in school where you could click down different individual colors.
“Hey, Sul,” she said, finishing off the drink Pagan made her.
I just barely fought back the urge to grab him by the back of the neck and drag him away from her.
He wasn’t even flirting.
He was happily taken.
He was just like that.
But there was no reasoning with my jealousy.
“I’m on Gracie’s Goods duty,” he told her, flipping with a flourish to an empty page and scrawling her name across the header line. “So, what do you need me to pick up?”
I forced myself to walk away, to go into my own room, to grab a notebook, and get to my own list writing.
And I tried really fucking hard not to think how nice it was going to be to have Gracie around the clubhouse for the foreseeable future.