The Aces MC Complete Collection

The phone went silent before I could ask any questions, and I stared at it for a moment in horror before I jumped up and dropped a five dollar bill on the table.

  I was on my phone before I’d reached my bike, barking out orders to Dragon as I climbed on and fired it up.

  I made it to Callie’s in minutes and almost dropped my bike as I went to climb off. Once I remembered I hadn’t let down the kickstand, I quickly set it, hopped off, and went running up the stairs.

  Her door was wide open.

  I took in the mess in the kitchen, my brother—

  What the fuck?

  I turned to Farrah as she came down the hallway, and I panicked at the look on her face. Even during the hardest times with her, I’d never seen her face the way it was then.

  She looked defeated.

  “Callie’s in her room. Gram’s on the bed,” she told me dully. “Be careful when you walk in, and do it slowly.”

  My heart thumped loudly in my ears as I made my way to her room, and my eyes went blurry as I stumbled into the doorway and saw her.

  I must have made some noise, because her head snapped to the doorway and she lifted her arm, pointing a huge-ass .45 at my chest.

  She was covered in fucking blood, her face was so swollen it looked like it was going to burst, and there in her lap was my son.

  “Don’t come any closer,” she ordered, sounding slurred.

  There were used baby wipes all over the floor around her, and it looked like she’d tried to clean the blood off her and Will, but had only managed to smear it around.

  I lost feeling in my legs and dropped to my motherfucking knees.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” I assured her calmly, making her flinch.

  “Don’t call me that,” she muttered as Will turned over, facing me with his head in her lap. He didn’t look hurt or scared, but he also didn’t get up.

  “Okay, Callie,” I murmured, sitting back on my heels and raising my arms out in front of me.

  “Your brother’s dead,” she smiled nastily.

  “I saw that.”

  “Killed him,” she mumbled, glancing at Will and then up to where her Gram was watching her quietly, tears running down her face. “Killed him and he just kept coming, so I had to do it again.”

  I wasn’t sure what the fuck she was talking about, but she was making me nervous.

  “What happened?” I questioned softly, flinching when her eyes moved back to me.

  “Said he came here looking for you,” she told me sadly, her arm wobbling until she slid the gun back up on the dresser. I sighed deeply in relief, but it was short lived.

  “Told him you were on your way home,” she shrugged one shoulder, bringing attention to the arm I hadn’t realized she wasn’t moving. Her hand went to the top of Will’s head as her eyes went glassy.

  “He knew. He knew. He knew you weren’t coming. Said he was coming for—” she didn’t say his name, but tilted her head down to look at Will who was still staring at me. “Said you asked him to come.”

  Tears started rolling out of her good eye as it came back to mine.

  “I’d never do that, Sugar. I’d never take him. You know that.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “But it didn’t matter.”

  I moved slowly to my knees when she was quiet, and started to scoot into the room, but stopped instantly when her hand rose off Will’s head to the top of the dresser.

  “You didn’t tell me he killed my parents,” she accused, her eyelid closing halfway in defeat.

  “What? Sugar, what did he say?”

  “He killed them,” she mumbled. “Mom’s a hot piece of ass. Mad at Aces. Kill me to get you.”

  I’d had no idea that Deke was a part of that. I’d known that the Jimenez brothers were pissed as hell when I’d killed their boys, but when Deke had called me, I’d assumed he’d had no part in it. He’d convinced me that there was nothing he could do to stop it, but he’d been in on it from the start. I felt rage like a massive headache hit the back of my eyes, but forced myself to refocus on what mattered. Callie and my boy.

  “You got him, baby. It’s over. You got him,” I murmured as I moved further into the room.

  The closer I got to her, the more clearly I saw that there was something seriously wrong with her arm.

  “You protected our son, baby,” I told her softly, relieved when I stopped less than a foot from her and she still hadn’t grabbed the gun. “You did so good. Is Will okay?”

  “He’s fine,” she whispered, glancing down at him. “He was in here.”

  “I had to make sure no one got him,” her voice rose as she looked at me fiercely. “I made sure. I made sure.”

  “Yeah, you did. I love you so much, Calliope,” I whispered, reaching out my hand to lay it softly on hers where it rested on Will’s head. “But you’re hurt, Sugar, and it smells like Will needs his diaper changed.”

  She looked like she was going to agree, she’d even started to slowly nod, when we heard men coming through the front door.

  Her hand moved faster than I could catch, and in seconds, the .45 was resting against my sternum, her finger on the trigger.

  She didn’t look away as she called quietly to Will. “Go over to Gram, Will,” she said gently. “Run on over to Gram.”

  He climbed up to his feet slowly, wobbling a little in a way that had my heart lurching in my chest, but he made it to Gram as she stood from the bed.

  “Get him out of here. Lock yourself in your apartment,” Callie ordered, never looking away from my face. “Go, Gram!”

  Rose shot out of the room, and the moment we heard her front door slam, Callie’s hand dropped to her lap.

  “Get your brother and get the fuck out of my house,” she mumbled tiredly as I heard someone small walk up behind me.

  “We need to get you to a hospital, Callie,” I whispered, as I gently pulled the gun from her fingers.

  “I’ll take her,” Farrah argued at my back.

  “I love you so much, Sugar.” I ignored Farrah as I set the .45 back on the dresser and ran my finger up and down the top of Callie’s hand, the only place I was sure I wouldn’t hurt her. “Let me take care of you.”

  She turned her head away from me, not saying a word as she pushed her forehead against the side of the dresser.

  “Go, Grease,” Farrah ordered behind me. “Get your guys and get them out of our apartment. I’ll take care of Callie.”

  “She’s mine,” I hissed, turning my head to Farrah. “Go make sure that Will’s okay.”

  I started to turn from her when I noticed another gun, this time in her small hand.

  “Will’s fine with Gram,” she told me seriously, her hand hanging relaxed at her thigh. “Now you need to get the fuck out of here before you make her worse.”

  “She needs me,” I argued, my hand tightening on Callie’s. “I’ll take care of her. I always take care of her.”

  “Look at her, Grease,” Farrah snapped sharply. “She doesn’t fucking need you.”

  My head turned to Callie to see she was still facing the dresser, her swollen eye practically hiding the rest of her face from me.

  “Callie?” I questioned gently, as her body started rocking in tiny movements.

  “Please leave me alone,” she whimpered, never looking at me. “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.”

  I heard Farrah’s revolver as she snapped it into place, and I turned my head to see her pointing it directly at my head.

  “I’m not Callie,” she told me calmly. “I’ll pull the trigger.”

  I didn’t think she would, but it didn’t matter.

  I nodded in defeat, knowing that she was right. I wasn’t making anything better.

  I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward one last time and kissing Callie lightly on the side of her head. “I love you. I’m not going far,” I promised.

  I made myself leave the room as Farrah kneeled down to help Callie to her feet.

  Chapter
73

  Callie

  The doctors told me that the psychological scars of the attack would be much harder to heal, and they were right.

  Farrah had informed the police that my attacker had fled and she’d found me in our apartment. I didn’t dispute it. I didn’t say anything. Not to the nurses or the doctors or the social workers or the policemen.

  I didn’t speak.

  They grew frustrated with me, asking the same questions over and over, sometimes changing the words they used as if phrasing something a different way would make me answer. I listened to them argue as if I wasn’t there, sometimes stating that they needed to leave me alone, and other times fighting that someone needed to snap me out of the fog I was in.

  I would have liked to see them try.

  No one had known what happened when they’d found me because the Aces had taken Deke’s body instead of letting the police do their work. It was a clear case of self-defense, as my broken body could prove, but I was glad that I didn’t have to explain to anyone what had happened.

  I was in a fog, not making a noise as they set my shoulder and checked out the rest of my body. My legs and stomach were bruised, my nose was broken, and they were most worried about my eye that was swollen so much that if I looked across the bridge of my nose, I could see the eyebrow on the other side.

  They took photos that I knew they’d never need, but I didn’t fight them. I didn’t do anything but move when they moved me, and stared blankly as they tried to get answers.

  At some point, Cody showed up at the hospital, and I could hear him in the hallway arguing with Farrah, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

  Not even my son.

  Because when Asa’d left me, I’d successfully retreated to that special place where nothing mattered.

  They kept me in the hospital for a few days to make sure I wasn’t going to lose my eye, poking and prodding, and asking question after question as I stared at them blankly. But even after they knew that I would keep it, they didn’t discharge me.

  Instead they moved me into the psych ward.

  They sent in a nice psychologist who asked me questions while I stared at her, and even though I could see the frustration in her eyes, she kept coming back. I guess she was getting paid for it, though, so it wasn’t surprising that she was tenacious. She had beautiful strawberry-blonde hair. I wondered how Farrah would look with hair that color.

  Gram and Farrah rarely left my bedside, taking shifts with Will so I wouldn’t be alone, but they didn’t get through to me and neither did Cody when he showed up. Nothing was getting through—and sometimes I’d hear them quietly arguing about what to do.

  Something had broken in me when Deke was talking about my parents. I don’t think anyone understood why I’d just disappeared inside of myself, but I didn’t expect them to, not really. Only I knew what I had tried to ignore, what I’d pushed back so far that I’d rarely thought about it anymore. Only I knew that I’d been building those walls between my memory and myself so that almost nothing could breach them.

  No one had hidden with me inside that tiny space, listening to my parents die and their killers calling my name. Only I knew that horror.

  Asa was the only one who could’ve guessed where my mind was, we’d had a vague conversation about it years before, but for some reason—he wasn’t there. If I had been feeling anything, I think I would have been sad about that.

  I lay there, listening to Gram yell at the psychologist as I thought about the water stain on the ceiling. I wondered if anyone noticed it or if it was only patients that ever had that view and they just never said anything.

  “You’ve been doing it your way for three weeks and this shit isn’t helping,” Gram thundered. “I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m going to do this my way, and if you’ve got a problem, I’ll just take my granddaughter home with me!”

  The pretty-haired psychologist murmured something soothingly that I couldn’t hear.

  “Oh fuck you and your fancy degree!” Gram shouted. “I know her! I’ve wiped her ass and bandaged her cuts. I’ll do what I think’s best!”

  I didn’t hear anything for a while after that.

  “Callie,” Gram snapped, hours later, pushing the button on the side of my bed until I was sitting up. “You look like shit and you’re ignoring your son who’s been crying for you for weeks.”

  I watched her, detached as she opened the curtains in my room, making me squint as the bright sunlight filtered through. She rearranged my bedding so it was lying flat on my lap, and brushed the hair back from my face as I watched her silently.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” she informed me as she strode out the door.

  When she came back in, she was carrying my beautiful son in her arms.

  His face lit up when he saw me, but it fell when I didn’t react to his presence.

  “You hold your son. He misses you,” she told me firmly as she placed him in my lap.

  He snuggled into my body, pressing his head against my chest, and all of a sudden I felt like I couldn’t breathe. He smelled really good, like baby shampoo and chocolate, and the warmth of his body seeped into mine until I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began.

  “Mama,” he sighed, reaching up to pat my breast like he’d done a thousand times since he’d stopped breastfeeding almost a year before.

  “Come on in,” I heard Gram call as I stared at Will, forcing my arms to move around him until I knew he wouldn’t fall off the bed.

  The emotions overwhelming me were too much. Hope and fear and love and horror and grief—so strong that I clenched my jaw against them, begging for my brain to send me back. I’d almost succeeded, my vision going grey at the sides, when I felt him reach the head of the bed.

  “Hey, Sugar,” he whispered gently, reaching out to run his hand down my hair. “We’ve missed you.”

  My entire body jolted and I raised my eyes to his, the tender look on his face opening the floodgates as I began to cry. I cried in loud, obnoxious, gasping sobs that made Will start screaming in fear, and even then I couldn’t stop them. Gram came to get the baby, tears on her face as she kissed me on the head, and in the next minute, Asa was in the bed with me, wrapping his entire body around mine.

  “You’re okay, Callie,” he murmured over and over, never once letting go as I let out years of pain by screaming at the top of my lungs and pummeling my fists against his back.

  When I’d finally calmed down into sobbing quiet hiccups, he pulled his face away from my neck.

  “If you ever scare me like this again I’m going to paddle your ass,” he rumbled, his voice sounding gravelly and raw. “Our boy needs you, Sugar. I need you.”

  I nodded once as he rubbed my back, and stuffed my face into my favorite spot between his jaw and shoulder.

  My emotions were all over the place, but I let him have that moment. Once my body had relaxed, I noticed that his was trembling, and some place deep inside me wouldn’t let him go uncomforted. I loved him so much, and guilt piled on top of grief when I thought of all the things I’d put him and the rest of my family through over the month I’d been gone.

  I didn’t know where I could go from there. I felt too exposed, too overwhelmed to just go back to my day to day life. The walls I’d built to keep me safe, to keep my world sane and ordered, had shattered around me and it felt as if I was standing in the middle of a war zone with no help in sight.

  I loved Asa. I loved him so much, and I reveled in the way his arms wrapped around me and held me tight against him. I loved the scruff of his beard against my chin and the way he always smelled like smoke, Armani cologne, and leather. I loved the way he looked at me and our son.

  I loved him, but that didn’t seem to make any difference, because the moment he crawled off my bed, I was going to tell him I didn’t want to see him anymore.

  I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  Chapter 74

  Grease

  Leaving Callie aft
er her breakdown was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I wanted to protect her, to save her from whatever demons she’d been fighting.

  I didn’t understand how I could have been so stupid, how I could have thought that I’d saved her. That I could fix her.

  She’d been slowly drowning for years, and I’d missed it. I’d missed all the signs because I’d believed that as long as I took care of her, she’d be fine. I’d fucking loved the way she needed me, reveled in the way she’d been so clingy in the beginning of our relationship.

  And in the end, that had fucked her up even worse.

  It killed me to think of the way I’d ignored her when I was pissed, the way I’d thrown her out of the house because she wouldn’t go get groceries, the way I’d pushed and pushed for her to act normal when she was doing the best she could.

  I hadn’t seen it before, but I sure as fuck saw it as she held me off with a pistol bigger than her arm.

  So when she’d told me that she didn’t want to see me, I’d taken her at her word for once. I’d given her the space she needed as I watched her slowly get stronger and leave the hospital.

  I’d given her space as she met with a psychologist three times that first week out of the hospital, and I’d waited. When no word came from her that I would ever be welcome again, I said goodbye to my son.

  “You know you can come see him whenever you want,” Gram assured me sadly. “She doesn’t mean to keep you from him.”

  “I know, Rose,” I told her with a nod as I watched Will drive his monster truck into a table leg.

  “Told you years ago to call me Gram,” she scolded, wrapping up banana bread for me to take.

  “Shit’s different now,” I mumbled, my heart breaking as I watched Will’s little diaper-covered ass shake to the low music coming from the stereo.

  “Nothin’s different for me,” she scolded over the edge of her glasses. “You’re still one of mine.”

  I nodded again, my throat feeling tight, and then jumped to my feet as Cody came barreling in the front door.

  “You leaving?”

  “Yeah, it’s time I take care of some things and let your sister be,” I answered, the words tasting like acid.