SIX (27 page)

I let him go and his weight drops to the floor while his hand covers the bleeding mess between his thighs.

“You deserve to die a thousand deaths, but one will have to do.”

I raise my foot and bring it down on to his face, over and over, until my boot slips and squelches in the pulp that used to be his head.

The feeling of elation I’d been hoping for eludes me.

Betrayal bloomed so thick in my mind and soul, I didn’t take my time with Hammer.

I let the anger override my actions.

Lucky looks me in the eye every day.

He’s like a baby brother to me.

I didn’t have a family, so I chose one, and my instincts sought out the helpless kid inside him, but how fucking wrong I was. It cuts worse than a knife.

Jordon’s next and then I’m going to have to go home for Lucky.

I shouldn’t be riding around covered in blood.

Evidence coating every inch of me would be hard to deny, but the impact for Jordon seeing the blood of his brother varnishing my flesh is too good to pass up. Hammer had an address book on his desk and right there was Jordon’s home address. It was like fate.

I creep up on the house.

The lights are on and a car is parked in the drive.

The sight of kids playing seeps from an open window and Emma pops into my head.

It will be hard on them and the woman he married at first, but in the long run, they will never discover their father is a rapist and his wife will never have to know fucking her does nothing for him.

They all deserve better and nothing is going to stop me from taking his life.

Relief hits me when I see he’s not inside and I won’t have to risk his family.

I slip from my truck and move toward the makeshift bar in his garage, sliding onto a seat next to him.

“I knew you’d come for me.”

Placing the gun down in front of me, I take his glass from him and knock back the liquid inside.

It burns, fueling the repulsion I harbor for the man I once loved.

My hands are tight and sore with my and God knows how many other’s dried blood coating every inch of the once pink skin.

“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of it?” he asks, shaking his head.

“I have a family,” he offers in a desperate plea.

I re-grip my weapon.

“And you can be grateful I’m letting them live—that I’m not taking my vengeance out on them because you didn’t give me the same courtesy.”

“He was going to kill me.” He looks at me like he’s expecting me to understand. Fuck that. Fuck
him
.

“You should have taken the bullet.” I raise the gun and fire.

The red hole leaks between his eyes before his body flops backwards to the floor. His death passes through me, closing a chapter of my life that had been left open too long.

The feeling I desired from killing Hammer hits me with Jordon’s death.

I grab a blanket laid askew on a battered old couch and throw it over his body.

If the kids come in here with their mother to find him, they don’t need to live with that image.

I walk through the shop door. Lucky is sitting in the middle of the shop on his work stool and his head lifts to watch me come through.

Looking over the blood staining my clothes, his hands shake.

He tightens them into fists attempting to hide his fear, but he can’t hide it from his eyes.

He knows I know and this is his reckoning.

I won’t enjoy killing him, it will be the hardest life I’ve ever taken, but he’s a Viper and was sent to destroy us.

“I know it doesn’t matter now, and you’ll do what you have to do, but I want you to know I would never have done anything to get you hurt or—”

I point the blade I’m holding out toward him and his eyes water, lowering to his shoes.

“I trusted you, gave you a place to live, a job, a fucking chance, and this whole time, it was all a fucking lie.

You were here to spy on me for those cunts.”

“I’m not like you,” he grits out.

“What the hell does that mean?” I raise a questioning brow.

He stands, kicking back the stool—a show of defiance or bravery, maybe? Either way, it’s fleeting and his shoulders slouch.

“Prison was rough on me. I didn’t have anyone to look out for me and I’m not like you, I couldn’t keep myself safe.”

“So what?”

“So when an inmate decided I was easy pickings, he was relentless in his games. The guards did nothing and even left my cell unlocked so he could.” He shakes his head and lifts his eyes to me, tears leaking free.

“I needed protection. I couldn’t go through that again. It made me want to die and I would have.”

“So what? There was a Viper crew already there?” I push.

“No, just one guy. He had beef with this inmate and said we could help each other.

The next day, I was in the shower room and he showed me a shiv made from a toothbrush and some metal from nail clippers.

He told me to restrain the guy for him when he came in.” He looks up at me, his lids heavy.

“I was scared and had no one—nothing but a festering hate for this fucking bastard.” He wrings his hands.

“It helped me sleep at night knowing he was dead. And nothing else was mentioned about it until the day I got out and two Vipers were there to pick me up.” He holds his hands up, waving them around as he talks.

“They told me you were a rapist, you killed some of them, and they needed someone new, someone you wouldn’t recognize to get close to you.”

“For what?” I roar, making him flinch and step back.

“To see if you had plans for them, to see who you were close to.” He shrugs and my feet eat up the space between us.

I grab him around the throat and march him across the room, his feet dragging and hands desperately trying to free himself.

“Misty?” I breathe.

Shaking his head as much as he can, he whispers, “No,” through the tiny gap between his lips.

Red lines appear in his eyes and his body becomes heavier in my grasp.

He’s going to pass out before I’m finished with him.

Throwing him to the floor at my feet and rolling my shoulders, I wait for him to stop coughing and sputtering.

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. You were nothing like they said and the friendship we had was real to me.”

I laugh, shaking my head.

“There is no fucking real, Lucky. You were never my friend.”

“That’s not true. I never would have done anything to you for them. I didn’t tell them anything of importance.”

My head tells me to kill him, that I can’t trust him, that whether he would have done what they wanted was irrelevant, that he’s still one of them sent here to spy on me.

My fucking heart says otherwise, torn between wanting to believe everything we built in the shop, the kid I watched flourish under my guidance and training, the friendship we formed.

Was it all manufactured? My head is a mess.

It’s like there’s explosions happening all around me and I’m left trying to find something sustainable in the rubble.

The shop door opens and Jude strides in, halting when he sees the scene before him.

Lucky is still on the floor and I’m practically standing over him, harnessing a weapon while covered in blood.

“Oh fuck,” he murmurs, walking over to the door separating the bar and shop. Closing his eyes and counting to three, he pushes the door open, waits a second before opening his eyes, and looks in.

He breathes a sigh of relief.

“You scared the shit out of me. I thought I was going to find another blood bath. What’s all this?” he asks as casual as asking me what time it is or some shit.

“You spill ink or something?” He takes a seat at my station, gesturing to the blood all over me.

“You can cut the shit now. You got me, okay?” He laughs.

“Jude, what are you doing here?”

“Ha-ha.” I study him to see if he’s intoxicated, but he appears coherent.

“Oh shit, your tattoo,” Lucky announces from the floor.

“Did you both drink the Kool-Aid? Six, when did you get back? How was Haley’s family?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I forgot he was coming in for his tat. I told him you were sorting things with Haley’s family. That’s what you were doing out of town.” Lucky nods his head, willing me to go along with it.

“Wait, is this for real? What the fuck’s going on?” Standing, Jude holds out one hand and places the other on the gun attached to a holster on his hip.

“Why do you have a knife? Can one of you tell me what the fuck is happening? It’s making me jittery.”

Scanning over my appearance for a second time, his eyes close.

“Tell me that’s not blood and you haven’t been off on some rampage?”

“It’s not blood and I haven’t been off on some rampage.”

“Fuck, Six! Why do you have to constantly push the boundaries and test me? What am I supposed to do with this?” His hands lift and flop back against his sides. “Is this going to blow back on you? Follow you here?”

Shaking my head no and then contradicting it with a shrug gets his arms flapping again.

It shouldn’t.

Police will see that mess as a gang related incident and be happy one side got rid of the other.

They won’t delve into evidence.

It will be shut and close.

“Depends.” I breathe heavily, feeling the restriction around my heart.

“On what?”

“On whether I kill Lucky and you witness it.”

A mewling sound comes out of Lucky and Jude’s eyes flick between the two of us.

“Why the hell would you kill Lucky?”

Leaning down and replacing the knife with the gun from my boot, I open the clip, pull out a handful of bullets from my pocket, and drop them on the floor, counting as I do.

“One.”
Shing.
“Two.”
Shing.
“Three.”
Shing.
“Four.”
Shing.
“Five.”
Shing.
“Six.”
Shing.

Holding up the seventh bullet, defeat causes Lucky’s face to crumble.

Jude pulls his own gun and points it at me.

“I can’t let you do that, Six.”

“He’s one of them.”

“I’m not one of them. Why can’t you see that?”

“I nearly killed Max thinking he was you.”

“One of who?” Jude asks, perplexed.

“A Viper. He was sent here to spy and report back.”

“But I didn’t report shit back.

I never wanted to be one of them.

I would have never betrayed you.

I didn’t know what they did to Haley and once I did know, it made me ill.

I could never be that, do something like that. I’m not one of them.”

“Listen to the kid and put the gun down, Six. You can’t kill him. He means too much to you.”

But once trust is broken, it’s near impossible to get back.

Am I betraying Haley by letting him live or is he a victim too? Pressure and fear inside can make a man do crazy shit.

And they would have killed him if he got out and refused to pay off his debt to them.

Being around him all this time…there’s no way he could fake all that.

“Why didn’t you just come to me?”

We’re friends and work together every damn day.

I spend more time with him than anyone else.