Chapter 20 #2
“What?” I glanced over my shoulder to look at him.
His eyes glistened with unshed tears, his smile rising slowly. “Means I get to kick your ass if you ever hurt her.”
A swift punch landed just under my ribs as Deeks lurched forward, causing me to laugh and tuck my body into one side.
Within seconds, he was rubbing the top of my head in a way he hadn’t done for years, and for just a second, I felt free again.
But when the laughter faded and he fell back into his seat, taking the picture from my hand to hold in his again, that light gray cloud hovered overhead.
The door to The Hut opened right on cue, and Ayda stepped out onto the porch. She didn’t say anything when she saw us. She just looked our way with a warm glint in her eyes and waited.
“Speak of the she-devil,” I said quietly, turning back to Deeks. “The wifey calls.”
“Go get her.” Deeks jerked his chin in her direction, and I didn’t miss the way his eyes lit up at the sight of Ayda close by.
He was a damn good man. One I’d not acknowledged nearly enough in my life. One I didn’t want to imagine ever losing. I stood up to leave but only made it a few steps away before I found myself turning back to him.
“Brother?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“You’re just like Harry to me. I’m sorry if I’ve never told you that before. Keep smiling. He needs that of you now. We all do.”
Deeks’ chin jutted back, his head dipping as he cleared his throat again and ran the back of his hand under his eye.
We didn’t need to say anything else.
Sometimes silence said it all. There were only so many ways for each and every one of us to bleed out. We’d done enough of that, both emotionally and physically. Now it was time to make others bleed instead. It was time to do whatever we had to do to protect our club.
We pulled up outside the safe house, neither one of us needing to say anything. Ayda had clung to me more than usual on our ride over. Her cheek had pressed against my back like she couldn’t get close enough.
When she got off the bike, her hand immediately sought mine until she’d managed to twist them together.
I led the way, guiding us up the stairs before I pushed the door open to see Helen laid on the bed as usual.
She looked different this time, though. Her hair was clean.
Her face, too. When her sleepy eyes opened and she saw us there, a weird smile fell into place. She looked…
Happy?
Was that even the right word to describe someone being held hostage? She definitely looked calm.
I glanced around, raising my chin and scowling as I folded my arms over my chest and sniffed the air. “Is that… lavender I can smell?”
Ayda stifled her laughter and leaned in against me. “Helen had a bath.”
I looked down at her, raising a brow. “Did you braid her hair, too?”
“Not this time,” she responded playfully, squeezing my fingers.
My eye roll was one of amusement, and I turned my attention back to Helen who was sitting up in place on the bed.
She was pretty for an older woman. There was an air of defiance about her, but not one that made her features seem too harsh or cold. She was warm, like a mother should be, with just enough of an edge to make any man think twice about crossing her. Any man except Jon Taylor, obviously.
What Ayda told me earlier flashed through my mind, and I found my shoulders softening just a bit as I stared at Helen.
“I didn’t expect you to work so fast,” she said to Ayda, glancing her way with a cocky yet soft smile on her face.
“I told you I would talk to him, and I did. It was Drew’s decision to come and see you.”
“Okay,” Helen said quietly, and even I could tell she knew it had been Ayda who’d convinced me to get here as quickly as I had done.
Her compassion and her ability to want to save the world were my weaknesses.
You didn’t have to be a damn psychic to know that.
Helen looked at me as she dropped her legs over the edge of the bed and let them dangle there.
Her ankles crossed over one another, and she tucked her hands under her thighs.
“I guess we all know why you’re here. Shall I just get to it? ”
“Please,” I said coolly.
“Okay,” she repeated, and every time she spoke, the words came out like she was playing us, not the other way around. “Where to start?”
“I already know the back story. Jon was a dick. He hurt you, humiliated you in front of the kids. Ran them halfway across the world. You hated him. Still hate him. I kinda get the feeling you don’t care if he lives or dies—”
“Oh, I care,” she said sharply, interrupting me, her eyes wide and her face falling serious.
I raised a brow. “You want him dead, don’t you?”
Helen pursed her lips, swinging her legs back and forth slowly. She didn’t say a damn word.
Stepping forward, I moved in closer to our hostage. Of course, she wanted him dead. Who didn’t?
“You want me to kill him,” I said, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Not quite.” Helen glanced at Ayda before she focused on me again. “But I’ve avoided visiting him for a reason. I can’t be in the same room as him and see him weak the way he is now.”
“Don’t tell me you love him after everything he’s done to you.”
“Love? No.” She shook her head firmly. “I haven’t loved that bastard for a long time.
But caring for someone is different to loving them.
When I look at my children, I see their father’s eyes.
When I hear my eldest daughter sing, she reminds me of her daddy.
I can’t detest something so much that reminds me of my girls.
It’s a strange hate to carry around with you, to want to be rid of someone forever, yet still feel programmed to give a shit whether his dinner is on the table when he comes home to you or not.
A strong man needs a good supper, after all,” she added with sarcasm dripping from every word.
A small part of me knew exactly the feelings she was trying to describe. I’d felt that way about Eric for so long. I’d carried anger toward the man for a while, but also been programmed to respect the fact that he’d brought me into this world and he was my blood father.
“Let’s cut the shit, shall we?” I sighed. “You wanted to talk to me about some conditions, so talk.”
Ayda stepped forward until she was at my side. “If you want our help, now is the time to ask for it, Helen. You have to lay it all out on the table or this is pointless. You got one chance. Use it wisely.”
Helen rose to her feet instantly, moving as close to the two of us as she could before the long chain was stretched to its full capabilities.
She ground her teeth and closed her eyes for just a second, clearly hating the bite around her wrist. When she looked back up at me, her eyes were filled with unshed tears, but like the well-trained victim of domestic violence, Helen knew every trick in the book to swallow that emotion back and lock it down tight.
Raising her chin in defiance, she stared straight into my eyes.
“Jon Taylor isn’t just a bully. He’s a sadist. A narcissist. A sociopath.
The Devil’s son. Maybe the Devil’s father for all I know.
He sure could teach him a trick or two. When he decided I was to be his and his only, he made sure he covered all his bases, including where I worked.
He didn’t want me among other men, you see.
He didn’t want me around people who could convince me to leave.
He didn’t want me to have a life, so Jon ended up getting me a position as a correctional nurse in the medical department of Huntsville Prison where he worked, just so he could keep his eyes on me twenty-four-seven.
” She blinked once, letting that information sink in with me.
“You should know the place well, Mr. Tucker. You’ve been there.
I was one of the nurses who treated you after you were nearly beaten to death during your second year. ”
My lips parted, the shock pouring out of me as my poker face fucked off to the past.
“That’s right. I was one of the women who brought you around, stitched you up, and made you better when Jon authorized the hit on you in prison that almost ended your life. I didn’t expect you to remember me. You were lucky to stay alive, never mind recognize faces.”
My nostrils flared, and my chest began to rise and fall harder. I flexed the muscles in my jaw as the memory of that beating stabbed me in the brain like tiny fucking needles of defeat.
“We looked after you,” Helen said softly.
“You said a lot in your drugged-up state. Out of all the thousands of men I treated at that facility, you were one of the few I remembered clearly. Not because of who you were, the state you were in, or even because you were a handsome man no woman in their right mind could forget.” She let her head tilt to one side.
“I remembered you because of the way you spoke about a man named Pete while you were drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember how you pined for your brothers, apologizing to them over and over for the things you hadn’t done more than the things you had.
I remember the soft words that fell from your hard, cracked lips as I soothed your forehead with a damp cloth in a desperate bid to bring your temperature down.
You said so much, Drew.” Sucking in a slow breath, she released it quickly, her eyes shining.
“You all did. Every man who lay in our beds, bloody and beaten… they all spoke. They all shared secrets without knowing they were talking at all. Including your enemies.”
Every hair on my body felt like it was standing upright, paying attention. I felt cold. I was shaken. My mouth refused to work, and my brain was mentally reliving my entire prison life to try and remember even a glimpse of the woman in front of me.
“It’s why, even when you’ve been at your most frightening in this place with me tied to the bed, I’ve always known, deep down, you wouldn’t kill me. No man who speaks of his brothers and family with so much love can be that evil.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. It tasted like regret for hurting the woman who had once, apparently, saved me.
“So…” she started, glancing between Ayda and me.
“My conditions. I’ve thought about them long and hard.
I’ve had time.” She raised a brow. “And, despite the bullet wound in my shoulder, which will always serve as a reminder of the one time I thought you actually might finish me off, I find myself wanting to help you.”
“Why?” I pushed out through gritted teeth. I was acting angrier than I felt. That was my default. If in doubt, growl it out.
“Because I’m sick of seeing Jon Taylor win. I think it’s time he lost.”
“And how do you plan on making that happen?”
“Let me kill him,” she said coldly.
My eyes widened in a flash. “What?”
“Let me kill him.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m the one person allowed in that room with him. I can be the one person to go in, find something to unplug, work those crocodile tears, and cry for help a second too late. I was a nurse. I know a lot of ways to make things look like an accident.”
I searched her eyes wildly, seeking out a trick, a gameplay, a lie, or something that would convince me all this was an act, but all I saw staring back were the hurt eyes of a mother, the tiredness of a long-suffering wife, and a woman who wanted to start her life again.
“I kill Jon. You set me free. I leave Texas for as long as you need me to. I’ll go find my daughters and enjoy life on the road.
I hate this place anyway. You don’t have to worry about Jon ever again.
I won’t be a dirty mark on your record. I’ll never tell anyone what happened here.
Why would I when I was a part of it all? ”
I’d never been so focused on someone before.
I couldn’t look away. “My record is dirty for life. There are ways to get around things. One less murder or crime doesn’t affect me enough, sweetheart.
I let you live. I let you kill your husband.
I let you walk away. Everything I had going in my favor is gone.
Jon won’t have suffered enough. I want him to feel the pain, not get away with the sting of it. I’m going to need more than that.”
“Which is why I’m willing to sit down with you and Ayda, and I’ll give you as much information as I have on every man who came into my unit while I nursed at Huntsville. And do you know what else I’ll give you?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“I’ll give you every secret Jon Bastard Taylor ever whispered in my ear while lying beside me in bed at night, too drunk on bourbon and ego to understand that loose lips like his can sink a whole lot of ships, Drew.
” She paused and let her eyes meet Ayda’s again before she brought them back to me.
“I think we all know how men of power are at their most vulnerable while lying beside the woman they claim to love. That’s when all their dirty secrets pour out. ”
And then Helen set her soul free, spilling secrets she clearly thought she’d never have to spill, and putting her husband and his associates directly into my line of fire.
Oh, the things she said.
The thoughts I had.
The need for more revenge grew within me as words tumbled from Helen’s lips, implicating the mayor of our town, the law enforcement around us, as well as people we’d never really heard of.
Helen talked, and she talked, and she talked, and we soaked every word of it up, not knowing where this was going to take the club, or how the hell we’d suddenly ended up at the very center of it all.