5. Wyatt
FIVE
WYATT
“How are you feeling, Wyatt?” Azrael asked, and I looked up at him.
Looked at all of them.
It was quite unlike us to gather in one place, especially unusual to have all of their partners here too, but I guessed this was an important meeting for everyone involved.
I still didn’t know if Elliot should be here, though. He was too young for any of this, yet he stood between Autumn and Donovan as if he was ready to take on the world with us. It was wrong. All kinds of wrong.
“How do you think?” I replied and instantly regretted it because I sounded way more pissed at him than at the situation.
I cast a fleeting glance at Dare and Zach and hoped the latter wasn’t judging me too harshly.
I still couldn’t fathom that Zach knew about me. That he knew the truth. I couldn’t move or talk or do anything for fear of being found out by him, which was bizarre because he already knew.
“The bar has been quiet since the incident,” Maddox said, and I huffed.
“Don’t remind me,” I grumbled.
“Those are all short-term problems,” Warren said. “When Wyatt’s name is cleared, things will go back to normal.”
Autumn pursed her lips. “I don’t know if it will be that easy. Some mud does stick,” she said, and both Dare and Donovan coughed.
Autumn jumped, grimaced, and apologized to me.
“It’s nothing that hasn’t crossed my mind,” I told her to put her at ease, though how successful I was, that was another thing entirely.
“Do they even have enough evidence to charge you?” Hwan, Parker’s boyfriend—I guess it was fiancé now—said.
“Surely if they did, they would have already,” Duke, Azrael’s fiancé, asked.
“It doesn’t mean they’re not going to find any,” Santiago, Joey’s husband, said.
God. Everyone was all partnered up. Well, everyone except Elliot, but he was barely eighteen. He didn’t count.
That didn’t help me not feel like I’d felt all my life, however. Like the black sheep. Like the aberrant. The outsider. Once upon a time these were my people, my officers, now I was the outcast. And why? Because I was too scared of my own self to do anything about it.
But what was the point? It wasn’t like I was going to find the love of my life at the ripe old age of fifty-eight, was it? What would be the point of stepping out of the closet now, so late in life? Especially if I didn’t have a reason to?
Besides, even if I got a reason, even if by some ludicrous miracle someone was interested in me, they wouldn’t last long. No one could love a man who didn’t love himself.
Warren’s friend came to mind, with his kind eyes and his strong arms. The way he’d looked at me, or to be more accurate, the way I’d looked at him.
It had been impossible not to think about him. In fact, he was all I could think about instead of my actual predicament. In a way it was a good distraction, but I didn’t need distractions. Especially hopeless ones.
Because men like Ari were too good for a jerk like me.
“Santiago!” Hwan glared at his friend, and Santiago shrugged.
“I’m not saying he did it. I’m just saying that it doesn’t mean they won’t find evidence. That man is officially going to be mayor in a few days. We don’t know how deep his connections go,” he explained.
“We have to assume he’s connected to everything,” I said, clearing my throat. “We can’t trust the police, nor anyone outside this room.”
I saw a few people nodding, and I hated myself even more. These people, people with lives, loved ones, children, families, were all here because of me. And they’d been put in harm’s way because of none other than me.
Dare had every right to be upset with me for what I’d done. Everyone did. And yet the fact they were still here, helping me, gave me hope. Hope that maybe I wasn’t all bad.
I shook my head.
No. They were all here because they had no other choice.
“I know we’ve all been waiting for Salieri’s next move, but I never saw this coming,” Slade said.
Duke’s face twisted with anger. “I can’t believe I let that man into my sanctuary, near my animals. That bastard,” he said.
Up until his mayoral run, he had been volunteering at Duke’s animal sanctuary, where we’d all gathered today.
After he’d revealed himself to us as Salieri, we also realized he was the man behind Duke’s weird arrangement that meant he always had funding to take care of the animals, while Salieri’s people moved drugs right under his nose.
“You couldn’t have known,” Hwan said. “None of us could. I mean, we voted for the asshole. How could we have imagined Salieri wasn’t hiding in the shadows but posing as a zillionaire?
Actually…” He raised a hand in the air and turned to Slade.
“Can’t we do anything about that? About his double identity?
Surely if the government found out he wasn’t really Jake Wilson but Raymond Salieri, they’d have an issue with that, right? ”
Slade pressed his lips together and shook his head. “They would have, if it could be proven. The man has managed to forge an entire identity. He’s created a whole backstory, traces of his life as Wilson, he’s even got childhood photos.”
“But he’s still a fake person,” Wesley, Teddy’s boyfriend, said.
Slade took a deep breath and adjusted his position against the wall he was leaning on. “I’m actually starting to think Jake Wilson is the real identity and Salieri was the fake one he used to infiltrate the Ferraro family.”
I glanced at his boyfriend next to him, King.
The son of one of the biggest criminal families in New York and heir to the throne.
Only he’d given that role to his younger brother after taking his father’s life.
And who could blame him? The man threatened to kill his mother and granddaughter and take everything King loved away from him.
Monsters. All of them, criminals. How could someone lose their humanity that they would threaten to take the lives of their own family? Was dirty money really that worthy to lose your morals to?
Hwan frowned.
“Couldn’t we…dig up his Wilson past?” Santiago asked.
Slade shrugged. “We could, but I doubt we’d find anything.”
“I’m on it,” Santiago answered and pulled out a pad of sticky notes and wrote something down.
The young man was nothing if not thirsty for a good scoop.
A journalist, through and through. A journalist itching to expose Wilson, Salieri, whatever the fuck name he chose to go under.
Thankfully, he also had a brain and knew doing so would put him, Joey, and the two kids they’d adopted in danger.
“So what next? What do we do? How do we bring him down?” Autumn asked.
Everyone went eerily silent, and her expression changed from determined to frustrated real fast.
“Are you kidding me, Mayberry Boys? Come on. We’ve got, like, what? Twenty minds in here? Surely we can put them together and come up with a bunch of plans,” she shouted, and even the elderly and unfazed dog at Duke’s feet stirred.
“Mayberry Boys?” Hwan raised an eyebrow.
She huffed. “Not important right now,” she said.
Hwan shrugged and whispered, “I like it,” but was quickly glared down by her.
“Okay, Santiago, Slade, you look into Wilson’s past and find anything we can pick on. Any kind of thread, however small.”
Santiago gave her a soldier’s salute with half a smile, and Slade simply nodded.
“Parker, Teddy, and Joey will continue with their rotation on protecting the kids. We can’t let him touch them.”
“Don’t worry, hon. Joey wouldn’t leave their side even if you put a gun to his head,” Santiago said, and my heart ached.
For what the parents in the group were going through, for what Joey and Santiago’s boys had experienced in the hands of their biological father, what bullshit we’d all put Joey through when we thought he was an irredeemable asshole when in reality he would give his life for his family—which included all the people in this room, despite how we’d treated him.
“He hasn’t turned up for work since the murder,” Elliot said. “The few people that still come to the bar have noticed, but I’m doing my best to step up to the task.”
Autumn patted his shoulder and so did Donovan.
“You’re a great cook too, Elliot,” she said.
“I learned from the best,” he replied.
“Okay, what about the rest of us?” Hwan asked.
I stared right at the pink-haired man who had more fierceness than all of us combined.
Or that was how it felt sometimes. Oh, how envious and proud of him I was at the same time.
To be able to live openly like himself, without shame, unapologetically, to have embraced his femininity but without taking an ounce away from his masculine side.
He was truly a wonder of a man. If only I could be half the man he was.
“You stick to your lives. All of you.” I made sure to look at all my men’s partners. “There’s no point in putting you in any more danger than you are already.”
Hwan frowned.
“As for the rest of us, we need to be more active. Go back to Salieri’s old bases. Find any clues we might have missed, look under every stone, uncover every secret. I don’t know if we can take him down, but we can certainly take down all his cells. We hit him where it hurts.”
“Won’t that make him angrier?” Duke asked. “If we take down more of his mules and warehouses?”
“It might. It will. But it could also make him more helpless. More desperate,” I said.
“Which means he might make mistakes,” Slade said.
“Or he could retaliate even worse,” Teddy spoke for the first time since we’d gotten here. “He could go after everyone. He doesn’t care anymore. He’s too powerful.”
“We can’t give up,” Autumn said. “He might be strong, but so are we. And we’ve already proven we’re a credible threat to him.”
Dare chuckled.
“I’m sorry, is that funny?” she asked him.
“Kind of. If his blatant reveal last month proved anything it’s that he’s always known more than you have. And he’s been toying with all of you.”
No one said anything. Some heads dipped. And I felt a pang in my chest.
He’s right.
It was me. All me. So arrogant to think I could go up against a crime lord. Put everyone I know and love on the line for an ego trip. How could I be so much older than everyone and still be so dumb? What did I think was going to happen?
This wasn’t a TV show. This wasn’t a movie where the good guys always won. This was real life. I should know this. I had spent far too long in warzones not to know this. And yet I’d still made the grave mistake of putting everyone in my life in danger.
Where was my stupidest man of the century award? Because I deserved it. I deserved so much more for what I’d done.
“Well, I, for one, refuse to throw in the towel. Yes, it might anger him. Yes, it might mean he goes ballistic, but he needs to be taken down. We won’t be safe until he does,” Parker said.
“This is war,” Zach said.
Parker nodded.
“We knew it was coming. We just have to finish it.”
I choked back a tear and composed myself as best I could.
Well done, Wyatt. You’ve started a war with innocent lives on the line. Are you proud of yourself now?
“He’s right,” Azrael said. “It’s the only way.”
Another tear drowned in my throat. I couldn’t speak. Not without giving away how weak I actually was. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show them. Not because of what they might do to me if they realized I was nothing but a weakling of a man. But because of what I might do to myself.
“Okay. Let’s take that son of a bitch down,” Hwan said, and after a few more minutes, we dispersed and the husbands-to-be approached me.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
What was I even saying? Nothing was okay.
“Yeah. We…wanted to talk.” Hwan cringed as he spoke. “We know it’s not even important in the grand scheme of things but…”
“What is it? You can tell me anything,” I said.
Parker took the lead. “We think maybe it’d be best if we didn’t have the wedding at the Outpost anymore. With everything that happened, I don’t know if it’d feel right. Especially with Levi there.”
I swallowed a knot that formed in my throat the instant he started speaking and held back the shake I felt coursing through my body.
“Of course.” I nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I understand. Do what you have to do.”
Hwan hugged me and kissed my cheek with a sad face before he said, “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. You know we’re all here for you. If you need anything.”
I nodded again. “I’ll be fine. You…you take care of yourselves and that wonderful little boy of yours.”
It took everything in me not to break down in front of them and everyone else. But when I got back in my car and on the road, the tears ran loose down my face.
“You’re a monster,” I told myself in the rearview mirror. “A fucking monster.”
And like all monsters, I deserved everything that happened to me.