Grief chokes my throat, but I ignore it. What's the point? Crying won't bring Queenie or Posey back.
“This is far enough,” Cat says, intercepting us just inside the doors of the old warehouse. He acts like I've never seen people having sex before, men in leather with flies undone grunting in time with the yowling moans of groupies.
One look at the red eyeliner and black shadow on my face, lips the color of blood, my curly hair straightened into a dark satin wave … Cat stares at me like I am one of those moaning groupies with her skirt pushed up around her hips.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks me, looking at my scarlet halter-top and leather pants like he wants to burn them. This from a guy who lives his life dipped in sin, who is sin incarnate. He's the master of drugs, weapons, and prostitution—a kingpin, practically a mafia boss. And what am I? Just a symbol of all that he's lost.
I open my mouth to respond, pausing when one of the side doors opens and several more members of the club walk in, dressed in denim and leather cuts, motorcycle jackets and boots. I recognize three of them right away—Sin, Grainger, and Beast, three more of my father's officers. Road captain, sergeant-at-arms, and enforcer respectively.
While the rest of the men veer off, heading for the large bar in the corner of the warehouse (it's open twenty-four seven in this stupid fucking place), the three officers make their way straight to us.
“Shit,” I curse under my breath, but Cat hears me anyway.
“Shit is right,” he says as the five men make an intimidating circle around me, cloaked in their matching leather vests. Each one has a patch on the front right side with their name and position in the club. I can't see any of their backs obviously, but I know that if they were to turn around, I'd see a big decorative patch in the center with a black moon and a red sun, eclipsed so that only a sliver shows on the right side—a devil's grin dipped in blood. “You run off on me, and you've got more than just one person to answer to.”
I stand there with a straight back, eyes fixed straight ahead. On my right, Sin taps his tattooed hand against his forearm, this rhythmic motion that threatens to steal my attention away from the corrugated steel wall.
“These men work overtime to keep you safe, Gidget.”
I don't respond to Cat's statement. My heart is racing, and I feel … well, I don't know what I feel, but it's definitely not a comfortable feeling to stand in the middle of a warehouse with a black floor and a bar and men doing coke on tables in the corner. Out back is my daddy's chop shop and beyond that, warehouses filled with shit I don't want to know about. Worst of all is the hotel on the far side of the property, where both men and women sell their bodies for the club.
My stomach turns, and I have to shut my eyes again to hold back a rush of bile.
“You need to run from your daddy's devil about twice as fast as I need to run from my daddy's version o' God.” Reba is always telling me to leave (I’m always telling the same damn thing to her), but where she feels a familial and religious obligation toward her parents and her little brother … my family is blood in and blood out.
My eyes open and I glance around at my father's men.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask. My voice is quiet, but strong. My mother taught me that. She taught all us girls that. It's just … I'm the only one left. “Does sorry work?” I ask, realizing too little, too late that there's too much attitude in those three words for Cat to let this go.
I see my father's jaw clench tight, muscles ticking behind that dark beard of his.
“Ho-ly shit,” Crown curses from behind me. That's when I know I'm truly in deep crap here.
“You've sure got a mouth on you,” Cat says, maintaining that gruff wiseman bullshit he developed after my sisters were murdered. Before that, he was as much a loser as the customers he sells to, just another addict who cheated on my mom and drank too much. The difference between my father now and two years ago … night and day.
“Believe it or not, I was born with it,” I say and that's when he snaps.
Something happened in the club today. I'll never know what—even the president's daughter isn't privy to that information—but whatever it was, it was bad.
“You smart mouth little shit,” Cat snaps, his red-brown eyes flashing with anger. The lines in his face crinkle as he leans down toward me. At six foot three, he's not quite the hulking monster that Crown is, but I'm only five ten so all the men surrounding me, they tower up above like leather bound trees with dark frowns and blurry pasts. “Get your ass home and clean your fucking face before your mother sees you.” Cat pauses and looks down at my shiny skintight leather pants, molded to my legs and the round curves of my hips like a dozen groupie girls that probably hung out here today. “I want you to leave those clothes with Beast; he's taking you home and staying there.” Cat looks up at Beast, a man who makes people disappear for a living. Fan-fucking-tastic.
