CHAPTER 11
KADE
My woman’s arms tighten around my waist as we pull into the parking lot of the gas station that’s next to the shit motel where her sister should be. As much as I know she wants to be here, this is as close as I’m going to let her get. I’m already on edge being in this area of the city with my woman.
If I didn’t have my brothers watching my back along with my woman’s back, this shit would not be happening.
An hour ago, when I took her down to Lucifer’s office, knowing he would be the one to approve her involvement, I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to agree or refuse. Fuck, I’m still not sure, but it’s far too late to do anything differently than we already are.
Lucifer’s voice was filled with kindness as he studied my woman and asked, “How you doing, sweet girl?”
Emery sighed and grabbed my hand for support. I wasn’t even sure if she was aware of what she was doing. Not that I was going to turn down any reason to touch her.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted quietly.
“It’s okay to be conflicted. Remember, just because we’re going to follow through with helping Jennifer because of Dot, doesn’t mean you’re required to have a relationship with her.”
The tension in my woman seemed to lessen with his words and I shot him a grateful look. “I can’t imagine a time when I’ll want to try to repair what is broken between us, but I also can’t say it’ll never happen. However, if something were to happen to her and she passed, then I’d never even have the chance of it happening. That’s,” she paused like she was trying to get control of her emotions, “the best I can do right now.”
“It’s enough,” Apostle assured her from where he was standing and leaning against the wall of Lucifer’s office.
She gave the man a small smile that had me wanting to rip his head off, not giving a single fuck that he already has an old lady. Emery sat up a little straighter and squared her shoulders, “I want to be there.”
I swallowed down my reaction because she had already mentioned this to me. As much as I wanted to put my foot down and stop her from being there, I also understood where she was coming from. Could I really refuse her something like this?
“No,” Loot growled which surprised me. From the look my woman shot him, it surprised her as well.
“She’s my sister,” Emery snarled.
“We don’t know what we’re going to find or who is going to be around. There’s no way we’re putting you in danger,” Loot growled as he looked at me like I should be the one telling my woman no. “Just because you’re paying penance for your bad decisions doesn’t mean you can’t put your foot down when you need to.”
“Put his foot down?” Emery’s question was filled with incredulity, not unwarranted either. She narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. “Are you against it because I’m a woman? If I were Jennifer’s brother, would you be taking the same stance.”
“Fuck,” Loot breathed out as he rubbed a hand over his face.
“Look, I’m not asking for a gun, even though I know how to use one,” that part had me looking at her in surprise. She smirked at me and shrugged one shoulder. “It was something I did to bond with my dad, but Jen was never interested in that and would whine about the possibility of breaking a nail.”
Lucifer chuckled along with Aposlte and Prodigal who was watching everything unfold like it was a fucking tennis match. “We definitely wouldn’t be giving you a gun, sweet girl.”
Emery flashed him a big grin before turning back to Loot. “I’m not saying I want to be on the front line, but you also don’t know what state she’s going to be in and seeing someone she knows might be helpful. After any threat is taken care of; if there is one.”
Loot’s shoulders slumped and I gave my woman’s hand a squeeze. Could a man glow with pride? I’m pretty sure I was definitely fucking glowing in that moment.
“You can come, Emery,” with Lucifer’s agreement, my woman relaxed a little bit more, “but there will be conditions.”
“I won’t even fight you on those,” she promised.
And she hasn’t. When she was told that she’d be with me close to the motel, but not in the thick of things, she simply nodded. As much as I wanted to have my brother’s backs when going in to find out what the fuck is going on with Jen, I wasn’t going to refuse a chance to spend some time with my woman.
Having her on the back of my bike was a fucking bonus.
There is nowhere else I’d rather be right now.
We can’t see much from where we are, but we can hear it the moment a few bikes pull into the motel. I know it’s my brothers following through with their mission. Emery’s arms tighten and I reach down to give her thigh a reassuring squeeze.
We sit there and silence as we wait. I’m not going to try and placate her and whatever she’s feeling. If she’s worried about her sister, she has a right to that worry. If she’s pissed that she’s here because of her sister’s shit, she has the right to that too.
The other thing we agreed to before leaving the clubhouse is that we wouldn’t tell Dot about finding Jennifer until we had more information and had gone in to get her. There was no way we’d allow Dot to be here with us right now. I’m on edge enough with having my woman here.
Yeah, I understand why she’s here and I don’t disagree, but Dot is a whole other story. She doesn’t need to be exposed to whatever the fuck is going on this side of the city. From the looks of things, this area has been forgotten. We might have to get involved and help the people who live here out in some way.
Adam, one of our newest Prospect, pulls in next to us in one of the club’s vans. Normally we use the van to transport people who need to meet the more violent side of the club, but tonight we’re using it for a rescue mission.
Who knows what state we’ll find Jennifer in and who knows who we’ll be taking back to the clubhouse to extract some information or teach a valuable lesson. With the moon shining down on us surrounded by twinkling stars, I send up a little hope that shit doesn’t go sideways, and Jen isn’t too far gone.
When my phone chimes, Emery practically jumps out of her skin. It would be funny in another context, but right now it just makes my heart ache. I wish I could comfort her better, but that will have to wait for now.
When I can hold her properly, I’ll make sure that she knows how much I care about her. I’ll take her mind off the stress of today by worshiping every inch of her body.
I look at the message to find it’s from Lucifer with a room number for this shit motel. The longer I’ve sat and looked at it, the more I believe that it should be razed to the ground. Hell, in only a few minutes I’ve watched four deals going down.
I’m not surprised nor am I not surprised that I haven’t seen a single cop rolling through. These are the kind of areas that are forgotten until shit goes down. Usually good people going through hard times are the ones caught in the middle.
Adam pulls his phone out of his pocket, glances at it and then meets my eyes. I have to say, I haven’t spent a lot of time around the kid, but the way he’s deferring to me so he can watch my back, has me impressed. I have no doubt that he’ll make a solid brother when the time goes.
“Come on, Ink, let’s get this over with,” I talk to her over my shoulder.
“Okay, Kade,” there’s a tremor in her voice that I hate.
When we make our way around the side of the hotel, it becomes clear which room we’re going to instantly because Apostle has his foot pressing down between the shoulder blades of a man whose face is pressed into the concrete. If he’s one of Jen’s clients, then he’ll learn a valuable lesson. If he’s the pimp who has been profiting off Jen and who knows who else, then he won’t be learning a lesson.
He’ll be dead.
When I’m still and my bike is off, I hold up my hand to help Emery out. The way her fingers linger over my hand combined with the warmth of her touch as my cock begging for some attention. Even the gravity of the situation we’re in doesn’t take away from how much this woman turns me on.
Soon. Very fucking soon I’ll be burying myself inside of her again.
Lucifer nods toward an open door and Emery moves past Apostle and his prey to go inside with me hot on her heels. The room is even worse than I would have imagined from the outside. It’s dirty, dingy, moldy, and all-around disgusting. I’m sure part of the problem is that it looks like a frat party has happened in this room for about ten years without stopping for even a few minutes.
There is trash everywhere, along with clothing, all of it cheap, food wrappers, cups with who the fuck knows what growing in them and used condoms. Then there’s the drug paraphernalia. It’s clear that Jen moved on from pain killers a long fucking time ago.
And in the middle of the evidence of poor decisions and chaos is a woman who looks like better days only happened in another life. She looks thin, far too thin to be natural, and her skin is a sickly color. At least it’s that color where there aren’t bruises. Her hair is the same color as my woman’s hair, but it’s stringy, oily, and lifeless.
Eyes so much like my Ink’s watch my woman warily. The difference is Jennifer’s eyes have no life in them. None.
It’s fucking eerie.
“Emery?” The croaked word is both a question, filled with disbelief and mistrust, and a prayer.
Internally I cringe because I’m not sure how my woman is going to react to the scene in front of us. Hell, I’m not even sure how to react to it and I’ve seen shit go down in the club before. Jennifer needs help and I’m grateful as fuck that Hacker already looked into rehab because that’s the only place she belongs. If she wants help.
“Jennifer,” Emery’s voice is cool and aloof.
The sisters stare at each other for a long time. Then the first tear falls. Not from my woman’s eyes, but Jennifer’s. The frail woman sobs, “I’m so sorry.”
Emery huffs, “You’re sorry?” There’s a fire in her eyes and lighting up every word she says. “I don’t need your apologizes, they mean fuck all to me. The person you should be saying sorry to is Aunt Dot. She’s been worried about you,” she tells Jen before adding on, “and with good reason it seems.”
“Don’t judge me,” Jen screeches.
I step up behind my woman and press my front to her back. I don’t wrap her up in my arms or pull her back against my body. She needs to stand on her own on this one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have my woman’s back.
You better fucking believe I always will.
“You need help, Jen,” Emery doesn’t soften the blow of her words with a soothing tone or placating coos. “Unless you want to wind up dead. Just another statistic,” she snarls, a threat laced in her words, but not one that’s unwarranted.
“You always were so fucking perfect,” Jennifer sneers.
“Perfect,” Emery barks out with a derisive laugh. “I’m not fucking perfect, Jen. What I am is human, just like you. I have no idea why you’ve always hated me and assumed I thought so highly of myself.” When Jen opens her mouth to say something, my woman holds up her hand to tell her to shut the fuck up. “I don’t need to know because, if I’m being honest with you, I don’t care. You made your choices, and I made mine. I’m here because Aunt Dot went to the DSMC for help with finding you. Since no one knew what state we’d find you in, I insisted on coming. I’m glad you don’t look like violence threw up on you, but that doesn’t mean that seeing you as the junkie you’ve become doesn’t make me sick.”
I blink a few times, worry about my woman seeping in. This doesn’t sound like her. She’s all heart. When I examine her closely, even though she’s not looking at me, I notice the way she’s trembling and how tight her muscles are contracted to make sure it doesn’t show.
“You need help,” Emery continues to steamroll right over Jen and whatever she was even thinking about saying. “Which brings us to your choices.”
“Choices?” Jennifer eyes her sister before spitting, “I don’t have any choices.”
“Not true,” Emery states firmly. “I’m here to make sure you understand your choices.” She pauses and when Jen doesn’t interrupt again, she holds up a finger for each choice as she breaks it down for her sister. “One, you can stay here and continue to be used by whoever your pimp can sell you to for however long they’re willing to pay. I will never come to find you again and I’ll make sure Aunt Dot doesn’t as well. You should note that this option winds up, more than likely, with you dead and in a place like this I’m not sure how long it would take someone to find your body. Two, I’ll give you some cash and you can get the fuck out of town. It won’t be a hell of a lot, but it’ll be enough to get somewhere else and get started. Three, you can go to rehab, which the DSMC has been kind enough to fund. You’ll get your shit taken care of, get clean, and then we can go from there. If you want to start over somewhere then, I’ll make sure that happens. If you take this option, I won’t stand in the way of our aunt supporting you and being there for you, whether you choose to stay when you’re clean or not.”
“Damn,” one of my brothers mutters behind us, “we should have her do negotiations for us from time to time.”
Well, he’s not fucking wrong.
I watch as Jennifer weights her options. The longer she takes, her eyes darting around the room as if she’s seeing it for the first time, the more impatient Emery becomes. I know she’s coming to the end of her rope when she starts tapping her foot on the carpet that has seen better days, better decades in all likelihood.
“Choose,” Emery’s voice is like a punch to the gut in the quiet of the room, “now.”
Jennifer looks around at the faces of my brothers behind me before settling back on my woman. As they take each other in, tears start to stream down Jennifer’s cheeks. No one here will give her any sympathy; not right now.
I feel for her situation and what has happened in her past, but some of those things were of her own making. I’m doubtful that she’s ever taken responsibility for her actions.
Jen’s shoulders slump, but her voice is strong, “I’ll go to rehab.”
“Good choice,” Emery praises her slightly without a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She makes a motion with her hand indicating the entire room. “Grab what you need right now. If you’re missing anything then that can be taken care of without a lot of trouble later.”
It doesn’t take long before Jen has gathered her things. As she goes to walk by my woman, who has been watching her closely the entire time, she murmurs, “I really am sorry.”
Emery doesn’t look at her as she speaks, my hand wrapping around her waist and helping to hold her up, “Don’t be sorry. Do something to change your life for the better. Do you want to show me your apology? Get your shit together and get clean. That’s all I need for you because seeing you like this would devastate Aunt Dot and she doesn’t deserve that hell.”
When Jen is gone, Emery twirls around in my arms and presses her face against my chest. “Take me away from here,” she pleads. “Make me forget.”
“Glady, Ink,” I murmur and kiss the top of her head.
I’ll make her forget and then forge new memories of her. At least, I hope I can make things right. It’s only been a matter of a few days, but I have no doubt that she would have shown up, unannounced and uninvited, more than once.
Then I throw my woman over my shoulder, stomp away. Away from this horrid motel where people come to chase their depravity. Away from the words she had to hurl at her sister in order for her to see reason. Away from the unrelenting gaze of the moon.
I make sure she doesn’t even remember where I live or her own damn name before I’m done with her. Now I’ve had her and slept next to her, which caused me to get the best sleep of my life.
Now I just need to figure out how to get her to stay right where she belongs—at my side.