Chapter Eight #3
I reminded him. “Messing with Valenzuela’s distribution. Showing Bounty the
worst of it and pulling them back to the right side.”
“Rosie, baby, if you’ll remember, I did share that we wanted
those boys in the joint so pressure could be put on them to do the right thing,
and having one of Bounty turn and work with the cops would definitely be the
right thing. That said, Tack always wanted more pressure put on Throttle
because he figured the man would do what he could to keep you, absolutely keep
close to you and not take semi-permanent residence in the clink. He just needed
the right incentive to get his head out of his ass and do it. Obviously, all
this was supposed to go down without Throttle knowing you helped put his ass in
a cell. But that was our ultimate goal.”
I turned my head to look out the window but didn’t see
anything, considering I was taking another deep pull of my beer and not liking
the thoughts barreling in my brain.
“Rosie,” he called, his tone searching and sweet.
I returned my attention to him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because that was Chaos’s goal. My goal was for you to
realize he was an asshole and dump him so I could have a clear go.”
It took a second for his words to hit me.
And when they did I nearly busted out laughing.
I managed not to do that but I couldn’t stop myself from
smiling.
Snap smiled back, so Snapper, not hiding from me he was
relieved.
Or how deeply.
But his smile didn’t last long.
“Valenzuela has disappeared,” he announced.
I’d been about to take another fortifying slug from my beer,
but what he said made me stop.
“What?”
“No one has seen him in weeks. Weeks that are now becoming
months.”
“Whoa,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“We have no fuckin’ clue,” he answered.
“Are you thinking things are better or worse without him?”
“I’m thinking things are uncertain without him. They weren’t
entirely certain with him, the man is messed right the fuck up. There was
always no telling what he would do, just that whatever he did would be what we
know of him. Messed right the fuck up. But at least he was visible, around, and
although his operation is tight and him being around didn’t give us dick,
something is better than nothing. Him disappearing off the planet is just
nothing, and nothing in this situation is not good. Uncertain nothing is
definitely not any better.”
“That doesn’t sound real great,” I noted in an
understatement.
“It isn’t,” Snap unnecessarily agreed. “But even so, him bein’ gone does not mean his operations have ceased. His
crew is still at it like he was in the driver’s seat, full bore.”
“Do you know what that means?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Either he’s callin’
the shots remotely, or he’s put someone in charge. We don’t got much of a
handle on it, neither do the cops, and that’s making everyone twitchy.”
I was feeling twitchy right along with them and I didn’t
really understand what was happening.
It struck me belatedly he was sharing this with me.
And cautiously, I brought that to his attention. “I thought
we weren’t going to talk about this kind of thing.”
“Well, I’m deep in this and your ex is now deeper in this.
Not to mention, I had to come clean about what the Club was up to with your ex
and I didn’t know how you’d respond to that.” He grinned. “So although I’m not gonna give you daily status reports, I never intended to
keep you fully in the dark, so here’s where we are now. Me, Chaos…and
Throttle.”
My Snapper was so awesome.
“Thank you, Snapper,” I said softly.
“Don’t mention it, Rosie,” he replied.
“Though I think it’s relatively weird I’m thanking you for
not keeping me fully in the dark about a drug dealing, woman pimping, gun
running, pornographic movie producing bad guy and my ex, who beat the snot out
of me with his brothers, who now is putting his ass on the line for immunity
and atonement, something your brothers essentially set him up to do.”
His grin spread into a smile. “Yeah, baby. Now we know
precisely how nice it is to have our little cloud of sweetness in the sea of
all that crazy.”
Oh man, did I know what he meant.
And I loved it that he felt like he was right there with me.
Cloud of sweetness.
That was almost better than Eden.
But Eden was paradise so I was going to stick with that.
“Yeah,” I replied and then took a pull from my beer.
When I finished, Snap asked, “You good?”
I nodded.
He studied me. “You sure?”
I nodded again.
He inched nearer to me, reaching out a hand to tag the side
belt loop on my jeans and pull me a lot closer to him.
Our bodies were inches away when he noted, “Rosie, you kind
of freaked.”
I was worried he’d worry about that. It wasn’t done for a
woman to get twisted up like that for an ex, and the road to our cloud of
sweetness had been a pretty rough ride.
“Snap, I have no problem with him paying for what he did to
me. But the punishment for that is not him getting shivved.”
He started chuckling and through it muttered, “My Rosie sayin’ ‘shivved.’ Too fucking cute.”
I leaned into him, resting my weight on his body, smiling up
at his handsome face. “I’m glad you think it’s cute. But still, I don’t want
him shivved. And to come clean to you, he does good with this, my opinion is,
he’s atoned. And I hope that WITSEC is better than all those shows that have
the mafia guys finding their prey and making them run for their lives.”
There was a loaded moment of hesitation before Snapper
replied, “Yeah, that guy was a massive dick and a serious moron, but can’t
help, he puts his ass out like this, to hope for that too.” He ran an arm along
my waist and pulled me closer, sadly saying, “Since we’re into the heavy, might
as well get it all out there.”
Oh man.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t make me wait, and fortunately, it wasn’t as heavy
as he thought.
Then again, with the heavy we’d been talking about, it
didn’t get a lot heavier.
“Speck wants a word,” he shared. “He was on you when you got
taken and he feels shit how things went down with you. I’ve been holdin’ him back because he was not my favorite person and
I didn’t want him anywhere near you. But things have settled, you’re good, I
need to let that go and he needs to say his piece so he can get that weight
off.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“He needs to say his piece.”
“Okay, maybe we should have him over for dinner on one of my
nights off.”
“He doesn’t need to say that much of a piece.”
I started laughing.
Oh yeah.
Snap loved our little cloud as much as I did.
“Right, then we’ll meet him for a drink or something.”
“That’ll work,” he muttered.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
Man!
I’d had a tough evening, on my feet making drinks, worried
about Beck, now all was good (or goodish) I just wanted to finish my
beer, make love to my guy, and go to sleep.
“What?” I prompted.
“Shy made an approach. He and Tab want things settled with
all of us.”
This confused me.
“Settled how?”
“Shy didn’t do you right,” he began to explain. “And by
extension, Tab was involved in that. They feel that and have for a while, but
definitely now that you’re back in the fold. They want to make sure all is
copasetic in the family.”
“Well, I suppose we can all have a drink too, but that’s
still absurd.”
“Sorry?” he asked.
“I dated Shy for what? A month or so? He broke it off with
me, started it up with Tabby, they got married and had a baby. Sure, it hurt
back then but back then was back then and I’ve moved on. It’s not like Adam
chucked Eve aside for a biker princess and they have to apologize to God.
People get together. They break up. They move on. It is what it is and that was
what it was and we’re all someplace else now. No need to make a big thing about
it.”
“Fuck, how much more can I love you?”
I felt every one of those words sink right through my skin
and make a beeline to my heart.
“That’s so weird,” I replied. “All the time I ask myself the
same thing.”
At my words, Snapper’s entire demeanor changed and I had a
feeling they’d found their way to his heart too.
And that made me happy.
“Time to finish your beer, Rosie,” he declared.
I knew it wasn’t time to finish my beer.
It was time to go up to bed.
Together.
So I did something I hadn’t done since I was twenty years
old.
I chugged an almost full beer.
Then I made out with my man in the kitchen with both of us
smiling through it because Snapper clearly thought watching me chug a beer was
funny and I was happy he thought I was funny.
I tossed my bottle.
Snap and I shut down the house.
And we headed up to bed.