18. Luca
LUCA
Dear Diary,
Nothing humbles you faster than a woman who remembers exactly who you used to be.
Ineeded some fucking air. The clubhouse was more drama than my father’s place, and my nerves were on edge after stepping in between Lynx and Dax.
The last thing I’d wanted to do was put a bullet in Dax’s head, but the way he’d gone after Lynx…
Just fucking no. There was no part of me that could have stood by and watched that happen.
Which was wholly unsettling. I wasn’t exactly used to caring about anyone except my sister.
And the way I felt about Lynx, and Nyah too, if I was being honest with myself, was not even remotely brotherly.
But taking Hawk’s gun and firing it inside the Slayers’ walls likely would have meant one of them returning the favor. I knew I’d walked away from it all only because, at heart, the Slayers were good people.
I wouldn’t have been as lucky if we’d been around my family. Pretty sure any one of them would have happily stabbed me in the back, the side, or the front if given half the opportunity.
I found myself walking down the dirt path through the woods to the house my sister had been staying in, ever since she’d been brought back here.
It had all the charm of a cozy log cabin, but calling it a cabin would insult how big the place was. Which I guessed it needed to be when there were four adults, two teenagers, and two kids all living here.
I took the wooden steps two at a time and knocked politely on the front door.
“It’s open,” someone called from inside.
I stuck my head in, finding Kara in the kitchen, elbow-deep in sudsy water at the sink.
She glanced up with a smile, which quickly fell. “Oh. It’s you.”
Kara wasn’t exactly my biggest fan, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d been caught up in the trafficking rings I’d once run for my father, and though I hadn’t been directly involved in the things that had happened to her, the buck had stopped with me.
I gave her a nod, keeping a wide, respectful berth. “It’s me.”
Kara no longer looked like the scared, timid woman she’d once been. She didn’t flinch away or drop her gaze to the floor like she once had. Now she stared at me like she knew her worth, like she knew this house was her kingdom, and the people living in it were hers to protect.
I hoped that included my sister. Isabella needed people like Kara in her life.
Chaos, one of the men who had actually kept Kara captive, thundered down the stairs from the second floor and jogged into the kitchen. He instantly went over to her, wrapping his arms around her middle from behind and nuzzling his face into the side of her neck.
“Luca’s here,” she said flatly, without looking away from me.
Chaos took half a step back and leaned his ass against the counter edge. “So he is.” He nodded at me.
I returned the gesture.
It wasn’t exactly the warmest of exchanges, and I couldn’t blame Chaos for still holding me at arm’s length.
There was a lot of history between him and me, and a lot of bad blood.
Things had improved right before I’d left Saint View though.
I’d given him the restaurant-sex club I’d blackmailed him into running for me.
Now it was his, free and clear, and it was thriving, thanks to him.
At least for now, while my father wasn’t interested in it.
Hopefully it would stay that way, and my father would forget all about the businesses I’d walked away from to save my sister.
“I just came to see Isabella,” I told them.
Kara jerked her head toward the living room on the other side of the kitchen wall, where a TV played.
“She’s watching a movie with Jax.” Her mouth pulled into a taut line, and then she sighed and grabbed a tea towel, wiping off her hands.
She moved around the kitchen, taking out a couple of bottles of lemonade and a bag of chips.
Then set them both down on the counter and pushed them toward me.
“Here. Take them snacks. You’ll be their new favorite person. ”
I smiled at her gratefully and reached for the goods.
“Thank you.” I knew that, really, it was her who had allowed my sister to be here.
Chaos and Hawk and Grayson, Kara’s three partners, all lived here too, but I knew them well enough to know they would never allow Isabella to stay if Kara hadn’t wanted it.
I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d said no. Seeing my sister every day had to remind her of me and my father, and the things we’d done to Kara and her family.
I swallowed thickly. “Thank you. Again. For having her here. I know you didn’t—”
Kara cut me off. “Stop. I don’t need your thank-yous. That girl hasn’t done a thing wrong. She just had the unfortunate experience of being born into the wrong family. And the main clubhouse isn’t the most appropriate place for a teenage girl to live.”
From what I could tell, the guys at the club were all very fond of the kids who resided in the compound, and they toned down the bad language and lewd remarks whenever they were around.
But I could also see it was a balancing act, one Kara’s family and the club handled well.
The guys kept it PG when the kids came to the clubhouse, and in return, Kara and Chaos and Hawk and Grayson kept their kids out of it at night when things had the tendency to move beyond a family friendly rating.
It gave the men time to be together, to drink and party, and to get their dicks wet with the club girls or their old ladies.
The respect went both ways and had to be the only reason this living arrangement worked for any of them.
“I’m just grateful to you for giving her a safe place to land when I couldn’t.”
Chaos nodded curtly. “She can stay here as long as you need. Or as long as she wants. She’s the perfect houseguest, and Jax is loving having another girl around the same age to hang out with. Hayley Jade and Wren think she’s the coolest.”
I didn’t say thank you again. I just shifted the snacks around in my arms and took them into the living room.
Isabella glanced up when I entered and smiled brightly at me. “Hey! I thought I heard your voice out there. Ooh! Snacks. Gimme.”
Her and Jax pounced on them, and I grinned at the way the two of them were sprawled out on the couch, all gangly legs and arms, fully relaxed.
I sat next to my sister and nudged her with my elbow. “You doing okay?”
She shoved a handful of chips in her mouth but answered anyway. “Yep! Kara got me some schoolwork to do. She homeschools Jax, but she’s a grade younger.”
I looked over at Jax. “So you can ask Is all the answers then?”
She smiled at me. “Naturally. Don’t tell my sister though.”
“I heard that!” Kara called from the kitchen.
I wasn’t surprised she was eavesdropping. She didn’t fully trust me, and I couldn’t blame her for hovering when so many of her memories would have me as a predator.
No amount of talk would convince her I wasn’t that man anymore. I just had to show her. “So what’s on the TV?”
Isabella shrugged. “Truthfully, we weren’t really watching it. We were mostly talking.”
“About what?” I stole a chip from the bag and crunched it.
“Do you really want to know?”
I crossed one ankle over the other and leaned back against the cloud of soft couch cushions. “Of course I do.”
Jax folded her bare legs and feet beneath her, sitting cross-legged so she could twist to face me. “Issy has a crush on one of the prospects.”
The smile fell off my face. “One of the prospects? As in those fully grown men who live up in the clubhouse and have—”
Chaos cleared his throat loudly from the kitchen. Which was clearly a warning to me to not spill every detail about what the guys were doing up in the clubhouse at night when the two teenage girls had clearly been sheltered from all the deviant behavior up there.
“Jax has a crush too,” Issy announced with a laugh.
“Oh God, please don’t let it be on Herb,” Kara muttered from where she eavesdropped in the kitchen, though it was loud enough for all of us to hear.
Jax rolled her eyes. “It’s not Herb, Kara! Relax!”
Kara and Chaos gave up pretending they weren’t listening and joined us in the living room.
I hid a laugh at Chaos’s expression. He was clearly none too thrilled about his teenage charge having a crush on a biker.
Though really, when the kid was homeschooled within the gates of a biker compound, what exactly did he expect?
“Who?” he asked her.
Jax sighed dramatically, as only a teenager could. “Don’t start.”
He held his hands up in two stop motions. “Hey, just be glad I’m not Hawk.”
Jax rolled her eyes. “He’s already told me I can’t date until I’m thirty.”
“Sounds like sound advice to me,” I threw in.
Both girls gave me a dirty look.
“What? I’m serious. Men are trash!”
Issy made a face at me. “You’re a man.”
“My point still stands!”
Both girls laughed, and even Kara’s lips twitched.
She perched on the armrest of the couch and stared at the little sister she was raising after they’d rescued her from the cult she and Kara had grown up in. “Okay, so if it’s not Herb, then who?”
Jax went pink in the cheeks. “Kyle.”
I couldn’t even remember which one Kyle was, but Kara nodded. Then winced.
“Honey, I think he has something going on with Kiki though.”
Jax nodded. “I know. But I can’t help it. He’s so nice. And cute.”
“And too old for you,” Chaos mumbled.
I nudged Isabella. “What about you? You like this Kyle guy too?”
She shook her head fast. “Oh my God, no. He’s all Jax’s. I like Chirp.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face but tried to take a leaf out of Kara’s parenting book and nodded. “Okay.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay? You aren’t going to give me a lecture about how he’s too old for me? Or about how he’s a thug biker or something?”
I looked at her gently. “I trust you. If you think you’re ready for a relationship like that, and he likes you in the same way, then how I feel about it is irrelevant.”
It was not what I would have said to a regular sixteen-year-old girl. Deep in my gut, I wanted to tell her he was too old for her and she had her whole life ahead of her to date.
But Isabella was not a normal teenager. She’d had to grow up so damn fast when my father had married her off to one of his friends. There was no turning that back. All I could do now for her was give her the respect she’d already earned the hard way.
Is shrugged. “I’m not. I don’t want a boyfriend.” She glanced over at Chaos. “Don’t worry, Jax doesn’t either. We’re just looking for fun. From a distance.”
Me, Kara, and Chaos all seemed to relax in unison at that.
Because the two girls, who’d both been through more than anyone should, were suddenly sounding age appropriate.
It would have been so easy for them to go completely off the rails, to throw themselves into drugs or underage sex or worse.
They could have railed against us as their parental figures and been sneaking out at night, getting drunk and slipping into the bedrooms of bikers who were too old for them.
And yet both had seemed to have gone the other way. Protecting what was left of their innocence and deciding to take their relaunch into adulthood slow.
I ruffled Issy’s hair. “You’re pretty smart, you know?”
“Smarter than you, that’s for sure,” she retorted. “I’m not the one messing around with a biker.”
I side-eyed her. “You know about that, huh?”
Jax giggled. “It’s kind of obvious.”
It was? “How?”
Isabella made a dopey lovestruck face. “Because you stare at him like this whenever he walks past you.”
Chaos snorted on his laughter. “Perfect impression.”
I flipped him the bird.
But it was Jax who raised a cocky eyebrow in his direction. “Like you can talk. That’s the exact same face you get whenever my sister walks past.”
Chaos winked at her and then pulled Kara onto his lap and kissed her neck. “Yes, it is.”
Jax crinkled up her face in disgust and tugged Issy to her feet. “Let’s go upstairs, because now they’ve started, they won’t stop, and nobody needs to see them slobbering all over each other.”
Kara threw a cushion at her sister. “Hey! We can control ourselves!”
But now that the girls were walking out of the room, Chaos was looking like he might want to devour Kara whole.
Which was definitely my cue to leave. I stood. “I’m gonna go.”
Chaos waved a hand at me without removing his head from the spot behind Kara’s ear, which was making her blush.
But she held my gaze. “For all your past faults, Luca Guerra, I do think you’re a good brother. You’ve changed, and for the better. Issy is lucky to have you.”
The compliment, from her especially, twisted up my insides in a way that was completely unfamiliar. It felt like it meant something. I’d had a lifetime of people blowing smoke up my ass because I was Carlos Guerra’s son and telling me the truth could end up badly if I didn’t like what you said.
But Kara had no reason to respect me. No reason to throw me a compliment she didn’t mean. So those few simple words meant a lot.
“Thank you.”
Chaos eventually lifted his gaze. “You ever going to extend that decent side of you to anyone other than your sister?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You hoping for me to be nicer to you? Pretty sure Hawk wouldn’t like that.”
He shook his head slightly. “Was more thinking about Lynx and Nyah.”
I breathed out in a huff of breath. “Hard to say. Still kinda pissed they brought a Mafia war down on my head.”
Chaos eyed me carefully. “They did? Or you did?”
He was right. Nobody had forced me to say Nyah’s baby was mine. When the cards had fallen, I’d chosen to lie.
Because watching my father end her life was completely unacceptable.
Either way, there had been a price to pay.
But this was the only one I could stand.