Rocky took a deliberate step away from the wall. “Am I missin’ something? Did I sleep through bein’ patched in?”
Preacher raised an eyebrow. “It’s a damn good thing I didn’t patch you in, or we’d all be in fuckin’ cuffs right now.”
Grimacing, Rocky shook his head. “Who’s this we you’re so concerned about? Your men or mine? Seems to me like you’re thinkin’ mine are expendable.”
Preacher shot up out of his chair. The pen in his grip snapped in half, and ink dripped from his clenched fist onto the desk. “In case you forgot, I’ve got two dead men myself.” He stared at Rocky, hard and unblinking. “At the end of the day, we’re all fuckin’ expendable.”
Preacher didn’t bother bringing up his mother. Rocky didn’t place the same value on women as he did men and wouldn’t consider her death as any great loss to the club.
Unconsciously, Preacher’s gaze slid to the family photograph on the desk. Avoiding The Judge’s disapproving stare, he looked instead at his mother, and he couldn’t help but feel that when the club had lost Ginny, they’d lost everything.
He turned back to Rocky. “Greenpoint is gone. Your two men? Gone. Now we can sit here screamin’ about it, or we can get down to business and make sure this shit doesn’t happen again. What’s it gonna be?”
Seconds passed in silence while Preacher and Rocky stared each other down. Rocky looked away first and retreated to the wall, looking only slightly less lethal than before. Tossing the broken pen away, Preacher wiped his ink-stained hand on his jeans and took his seat.
“Good choice,” he muttered, “Now let’s fix this shit.”
“It’s like I told One-Eye over here.” Rocky jerked a thumb in Joe’s direction. “We need to get the goods outta the city. Couple of my guys got some land over in Illinois—a pumpkin farm with a barn. It’s the perfect place for long-term storage. Middle of fuckin’ nowhere.”
Preacher nodded. “That solves one problem. Now what about Greenpoint? How’re we gonna make back what we lost?”
“We jack up prices for a while,” Frank offered. “Columbians won’t ever need to know what happened.”
Joe scrubbed at his jaw. “We can do that with the metal, but it ain’t gonna fly with the drugs. We’re gonna need to cut up what we’ve got left, stretch it as far as it’ll go.” He shrugged. “Fake it ‘til we make it all back.”
Frank frowned. “That’s risky.”
What Joe was proposing was very risky. If buyers caught on to what they were doing, which someone undoubtedly would, people were going to get pissed—and when people got pissed, things had the potential to get messy. Messy and bloody.
But not nearly as messy as losing their heads at the hands of the Columbians.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Joe rolled his eyes at Frank. “But it’s either that or we start robbin’ banks.”
Frank slowly turned in his seat, his deadpan stare landing on Joe. “Your old lady likes guns, don’t she? You two gonna be the next Bonnie and Clyde?”
Snorting, Joe flipped him off.
Preacher grabbed his bottle of gin and took a long swallow. “Nobody’s robbin’ any banks. Nobody’s givin’ Sylvie any guns, either.” He pointed between Joe and Rocky. “You two, get the fuck outta my office and go tell the rest of ‘em what they need to know.”
When the door had closed behind them, Frank faced Preacher. “You’re really gonna make Rocky your sergeant?”
Sighing, Preacher eyed the office door. “For now.”
“He’s a loose cannon.”
“I know.”
“He’s gonna be trouble.”
“Not much I can do about it.”
“Yet,” Frank said.
“Yet,” Preacher agreed and took a swig.
“We got any leads on who tipped off the Feds?”
Preacher chugged another several inches of gin. “It was Debbie,” he said tightly.
“What was Debbie?”
“Greenpoint. She ratted us out to the Feds.”
A subtle flaring of his dark eyes was Frank’s only reaction.
“They scared the shit outta her… threatened her with… somethin’.” Preacher shook his head. “I don’t know specifics.”
“If she folded once, she could do it again.”
Preacher sank down further into his chair and took another swig of gin. “I’ll figure it out,” was all he said. Just not right now, he added silently.
Right now he was going to drink himself into oblivion and hopefully forget the never-ending, ever-expanding pile of problems heaped at his feet… for just a little while.
“Here.” Frank set down an unopened bottle of rum in front of Preacher. “You’re lookin’ a little low.”
Muttering his thanks, he continued to drink, hardly noticing when Frank left.
Sometime later, Preacher staggered out into the hall looked blearily toward the living room. Music was playing, and he could hear chatter and laughter. Rum in hand, he stumbled forward.
The bright colors in the living room made his head hurt, and he sat down on the first empty seat he came across. Someone called out his name, though he wasn’t quite sure who.
Eyes closed, he rested his head against the back of the sofa and continued to drink.
Feeling disoriented, sluggish, and blissfully numb, Preacher almost didn’t register the sudden extra weight on his lap. He cracked one eye open and waited until his spinning vision fell into focus.
He recognized her, or rather he recognized the ring in her nose and the safety pins dangling from her ears. She was new to the club, had been hanging around only this past month or so. Her name was Jenny or Jessica—he couldn’t remember which. With her ripped-up clothing and bleached blonde Mohawk, she looked better suited to standing outside CBGB’s, screaming about anarchy and animal rights, and flipping off anyone who didn’t look like her.
“You look sad, Mr. Preacher President,” she said, then giggled.
Preacher thought her speech might have been slurred—or maybe it was just his hearing that was slurred.
Her hand appeared on his chest and dragged slowly down the front of him. Gripping his belt, she yanked hard. Her lips split into a sly smile—a blur of bright red lipstick and gleaming white teeth. “You want me to cheer you up?”
“No.” He tried swatting her hand away—a piss-poor attempt that had her giggling.
She grabbed him again, this time below his belt. “Lemme make you feel better,” she purred, stroking him through his jeans. “I promise you, your girl ain’t ever gonna know.”
His girl. Bitter laughter lodged in his throat. His fucking girl was the reason two men were dead and a third of their goods had just been confiscated by the goddamn FBI.
But she hadn’t meant it. She hadn’t known. She was a good girl. She was his good, good girl.
And this was his fault. All of it. He’d kept her in the dark thinking he was protecting her from his world. Instead he’d ended up being the reason she’d been tossed into this sea of sharks, head first and without a lifejacket.
Are you a monster, too? Debbie’s voice echoed in his thoughts.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and chugged until his head was heavy, bobbing involuntarily, and rum was spilling from the corners of his mouth.
“I’m a monster,” he whispered brokenly to the girl on his lap.
“I like monsters,” she said, and grinned. And the next thing Preacher knew, she was nose to nose with him, licking the rum from his lips. He made a half-hearted attempt to push her head away while his own lolled backward, hitting the wall.
Giggling, she resumed tugging at his belt.
Too tired to move, too drunk to care, Preacher’s eyes began to close, and soon… everything faded to black.
Chapter 33
Present Day
Preacher released a shuddering sigh, and as the air fled his lungs, the light leached from his eyes. He slumped back against his pillows, looking shaken.
“Daddy?” I w
hispered. “What happened next?”
He turned his face just a fraction, enough for me to see the tears in his eyes. “I went home the next mornin’ and found you in your crib screamin’ something fierce. Hungry, diaper hadn’t been changed.”
I was gripping the bedrail so hard my knuckles had turned white. “Where was she?”
He shook his head. “She was gone, Eva.”
“Gone? As in—”
“As in half her shit was gone and so was she.”
I glanced up at Deuce. Standing beside me with one hand on my back, he was watching Preacher intently, every bit as captivated by the story as I was. Releasing the bedrail, I wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my jeans. “So she did run off, then?”
“Never woulda guessed she woulda left me—or you—like that.” Preacher’s voice began to quiver. Blinking rapidly, he swallowed several times. “But I fucked up, Eva. I said some shit I shouldn’t have. None of that shit was her fault. It was mine—it was all my fault.”
“Did you ever find out anything? Anything at all?” My voice was hoarse—strained with desperation. And my skin felt too tight, my lungs and throat, too—as if my last shreds of hope were strangling me.
“I kept thinkin’ she’d show back up after she cooled off. I kept thinkin’ that she had to come back… for you, at least.”
Tears burning in my eyes, emotion lodged in my throat, I could hardly speak. “So she didn’t come back?” I managed to ask. Deuce’s hand on my back began to move in soothing circular motions.
Preacher stared off across the room. “I was a mess—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I had Tiny stayin’ at the apartment, gave you to Joe and Sylvie, and I went lookin’ for her. Looked everywhere. Even filed a missing person’s report. That’s when the Feds came knockin’, tryin’ to say I did somethin’ to her. And that’s when I found out who she really was.”
Preacher released a chest-rattling sigh. “Elizabeth Stephens—that was her real name. Born and raised in Southern California. Parents were Linda and Daniel Stephens—blue-collar family. Daniel died in a car crash when she was only three years old. Fell asleep at the wheel. Linda worked odd jobs for a few years until she remarried some hotshot real estate developer from Newport Beach. Name was Bruce Holtz. Guy was loaded. And a real fuckin’ scumbag.”
Listening to Preacher, it sounded as though he’d memorized a file on my mother—which, knowing my father, he probably had.
“A few women filed rape charges against him over the years.” His eyes on the ceiling, Preacher shook his head. “Ain’t nothin’ ever came of any of it—the charges were always dropped. Back then, things being the way they were, him being as rich as he was, I figured either nobody believed those poor girls, or he’d paid ‘em off.”
“Rape,” I repeated numbly. “Did he—”
“She never told me,” Preacher interrupted. “But with him bein’ such a fuckin’ scumbag, and her bein’ so damn scared of bein’ sent home, it wasn’t hard to put it all together.”
I closed my eyes and just breathed—an attempt to clear my head of the uncomfortable, painful images filling it. Just like my mother, I knew what it was like to be violated by someone who’d been like family to me. Had she blamed herself, too?
It certainly wasn’t something I was glad to share with her, but it did help me understand why she’d been so secretive, and why she lied to everyone. Even the fear that had caused her to betray Preacher to the FBI made sense.
“What happened to Holtz?” It was Deuce who spoke. The hand on my back stilled, and I opened my eyes to find my husband staring at my father, a menacing gleam in his eyes.
Looking between them, seeing a similar expression on Preacher’s face, I swallowed hard. It was easy to forget the kind of men they were—how cold and detached they could be when it came to those who’d wronged them or dared to hurt the people they loved.
Preacher smiled faintly—a slight baring of teeth. “He died the followin’ year. Got carjacked at gunpoint, and took a bullet in each eye.”
“The followin’ year?” Deuce sounded amused.
Preacher’s expression turned indignant. “I couldn’t do anything right away. The club, the goddamn Feds—I had too much heat on me. One wrong move and I was goin’ away for life.”
“How’d you get the FBI off your back?”
“I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
“You helped them take down the Columbo family, didn’t you?”
Preacher shrugged. “They wanted a notch on their belt and the recognition, and I figured I was better off havin’ the Feds owe me one, rather than them beatin’ down my door every other second.”
“Jesus, Fox. You’re half the fuckin’ reason the Italian’s operation fell apart.” Deuce sounded impressed—a rare occurrence.
“And her mother—my grandmother?” I interrupted, faltering over my words. I couldn’t have cared less about anything to do with the mob or the FBI. Tears were still threatening and I was finding it increasingly hard to hold them back. Deuce’s hand moved from my back to my shoulder and gave me a comforting squeeze.
Preacher’s eyes shot to mine. “Don’t you cry for her, baby girl,” he growled. “That bitch wasn’t your grandmother; she was a goddamn drunk and a piece of shit. I kept tabs on her over the years. She got all that bastard’s money and drank herself to death. Died when you were fourteen. Was a better death than she deserved, and she damn sure wasn’t worth your tears.”
I shook my head, and a single tear slipped free. I wasn’t crying for her. I wasn’t even crying for my mother.
I was crying for Preacher.
I’d thought I’d known who he was. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t known him at all.
It isn’t easy to see your parents as people, separate from you. To think that they once had a life before you, that they’d lived and loved and lost, and everything in between, all before you’d ever existed.
The Preacher I knew, the one I’d loved my entire life, was a driving force in the criminal underground. He was a hard man, steadfast, who brooked no arguments from anyone—with the minor exception of those he loved.
But he’d also been so much more than that, more than I’d ever dreamed. I’d never known the young Preacher—full of self-doubt, lost in the world, and wishing for something more. I hadn’t known the son who’d struggled to free himself from the life his father had laid out for him. Neither had I known the man who’d loved the girl.
I only knew the person he’d become after he’d lost so much, the man he’d become because he’d lost so much. I was suddenly feeling as if he’d been shortchanged—as if we both had.
“Ah, shit, Eva.” Preacher reached over the bedrail, his hand quivering. “Never could stand seein’ you cry.”
I grasped his hand between mine and bowed my head. And then I cried. I cried for all of us. For Preacher, for The Judge and Ginny, for Elizabeth Stephens, and… for me.
“Why did you wait until now to tell me the truth?” I eventually asked, wiping away the last of my tears. “About all of it. I still don’t understand, Daddy. Why did you keep it from me?”
Preacher stared at me for a moment, considering. “Back then a lot of people thought I took out my own parents, and I didn’t bother correcting them. They thought I was crazy, they were afraid of me, and that served me well over the years… but I didn’t want you knowin’ any of that—thinkin’ that of me.” He paused, his chest heaving with heavy, painful-sounding breaths.
“I might have told you the truth once you were old enough to understand. But as it turned out… I didn’t even know the truth.”
Tears filled his eyes. “And then… I couldn’t tell you, Eva. I couldn’t face it. It was all my fault… all my fuckin’ fault. It was right there in front of my face the whole goddamn time and I never saw it.”
Eyes narrowed in confusion, I squeezed his hand harder. “What was your fault?”
His sunken features contorted. Pain blazed in his eyes. “Every
thing, baby girl. Every goddamn thing.”
• • •
The click-click of footsteps across the floor startled Preacher awake. He’d fallen asleep slumped forward in one of the two uncomfortable chairs in Frank’s hospital room. Pushing upright, he peered at the newcomer in the room through blurry eyes. Petite, with long blonde hair, the young nurse gave Preacher a sympathetic smile.
Approaching Frank, she began systematically checking the machines surrounding his hospital bed. Muted red and green lights flashed from one; a soft, steady beeping came from another. And in the center of it all lay Frank—heavily sedated, an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth, he lay utterly still save for the slight rise and fall of his chest.
It had been three days since Preacher had gotten the call—Frank had been involved in an accident on the Long Island Expressway. The pileup had sent a Mack truck skidding straight into Frank’s bike, dragging him across three lanes of traffic and crashing through the median before dislodging him.
Glancing at the empty chair beside him, Preacher wondered where Tiny had disappeared to. He looked to the window—at the black sky beyond the brightly lit skyline. Then at the clock on the wall—it was nearly midnight.
Scratching idly at his stubbled jaw, Preacher got to his feet and approached the bed. “How’s he doin’?” he asked.
“It’s too soon to tell,” the nurse replied. “He’s suffered so many injuries. His body needs time to heal.”
He glanced down at his friend’s unrecognizable face—bruised and swollen and missing skin on his left cheek. Most of the skin on the left side of his body was in similar condition—mangled and shredded. Frank had also broken his left arm, both of his legs, and nearly all his ribs. There was internal damage, too—some brain swelling and a punctured lung that he’d since had surgery to repair.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen people recover from far worse.”
Eyes flicking up, Preacher nodded slowly. He knew Frank would recover. He and the rest of the club would see to that.
Finished checking on Frank, she started across the room. Pausing at the door, she glanced over her shoulder and flashed Preacher a smile—an interested, flirtatious smile.