Page 75 of Equilibrium
He started walking up the stairs, pulling me with him, when the taller out of the two girls squeaked again, destroying my eardrums.
“Stormy!” Oh God. I was going to pee myself if this shit continued. “Where have you been?”
I tried not to laugh, I really did, but as my shoulders started shaking, so did Storm’s.
“Yeah, Stormy.” I looked at him, ignoring the girl behind us. “Where have you been?”
The pinch to my waist was warning enough to know that there would be a retaliation later. I was counting on it.
I really triedto stop laughing. I really, really did, but even after we entered the club and Storm brought me a vodka cranberry, I couldn’t stop. Tears were free falling down my cheeks, and my mind replayed their faces as the two girls surrounded them.
“Stormy,” I choked out, earning another glare from the man in question. “Oh God, I can’t believe they called you Stormy.”
That whole encounter was the highlight of my year. It was better than Christmas and New Year combined in one. Their faces were something I would never forget. I might even try to find one of those sketch artists just so that I could have it on paper as well. If I had my phone with me, I would’ve taken pictures.
“Shut up, Ophelia,” Storm grumbled, but when Atlas started laughing, I couldn’t stop the new onslaught erupting from me. “Gods.” Storm looked to the ceiling, probably trying to pray or something, putting his hands on his hips. He looked pretty hot in the leather jacket and the black shirt underneath fitting him like a second skin. The tattoos on his neck were peeking from the shirt, and I suddenly wanted to lick each and every line, tracing a path toward his lips.
Grumpy, or well, Indigo, stood right next to him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Not even surprised, I knew he was looking at Atlas who was still howling next to me, holding a beer bottle.
Trying to move my eyes from Storm, I took in the club for the first time. The neon sign outside was a clear indication that this wasn’t a five-star establishment, but I could see why some people liked it.
The area where the poles were located was smack dab in the center, slightly elevated, and it was the first thing you would see once you entered. Of course, if you weren’t laughing like an idiot, that would be the first thing you would see. Booth-type seating was arranged all around the circle stage, and patrons, both young and old, were already occupying most of those seats. Most of the guys seated wore vests similar to Storm’s. Some of them had the same insignia and I knew they were part of the club, while the other ones either didn’t have any kind of insignia or it was a different one.
Two long bars located on each side of the spacious room were filled to the brim, each of them with two bartenders. The smaller bar we were seated at was deeper inside the room, mostly hidden from the eyes of the public, which I didn’t mind. At all. Ava used to tell me I was a creepy people watcher, but throughout the years, my “people watching” helped me more than the skills my father tried to instill in me. People were at their most vulnerable when they thought no one was watching.
The guy sitting at the booth closest to the stage, but furthest from the entrance, kept looking from the bar to the entrance, and back to the stage. He wore a suit, a very rumpled suit, and the way he kept gulping down drink after a drink told me that him being here wouldn’t sit well with some people.
Some people probably being his wife or husband, if the ring he just took off was any indication.
“What are you looking at?” Atlas asked, taking a sip of the whiskey he previously ordered. He tried following my line of sight, but he couldn’t locate where exactly I was staring.
“That piece of shit there.” I pointed to the blond guy I was glaring at. “He just removed his wedding ring.”
“Oh.”
Oh,was the right reaction. After what happened with Kieran, I had a low tolerance for cheaters. If you didn’t want to be with somebody, just break it off. Don’t fucking drag the relationship that wasn’t working just because you weren’t man or woman enough to break it off.
I didn’t want to dwell on that again tonight. The memories of that day when I found Kieran and Cynthia in our apartment were already burned inside my mind and reliving that moment and thinking about this asshole’s spouse wasn’t going to fix anything. I couldn’t exactly march over there and demand for him to leave the place just because he was married.
Besides, we had more important things to do tonight, and seeing this only elevated my need to spill some blood.
“Where’s Creed?” Storm stood on the side, talking in hushed tones with Indigo, carefully scanning the crowd behind us. Atlas was with me, and the other guys were carefully positioned between us and the passage leading to this part of the club. This was my first rodeo with Storm and his guys, and I had no idea how they worked.
On all my missions I’d been alone, sans a couple of times daddy dearest decided that he wanted the new recruits to be killed off or just tried in the field. Most of them returned in body bags or not at all, depending on how many body parts I was able to salvage.
But them, they worked as a team. Although I didn’t know what their roles were, or where Creed disappeared to, I knew they worked as a well-oiled machine. All of them seemed to respect Storm and his decisions, which brought me back to my questions from yesterday. Why did Hunter attack Storm and why didn’t he defend himself?
If somebody tried to do that to my father or to Logan Nightingale, they would end up dead, thrown in the nearest ditch. So why the fuck did that shitshow happen? I agreed to let him tell me other things when he gets ready for it, but some things, like that shit, he would have to explain to me. And for fuck’s sake, somebody had to explain to me the inner workings of the club. I almost got smacked by Atlas two days ago because I called their cuts leather jackets.
Or maybe I would just have to practice patience, like, for the first time in my life. Even as a kid I was an impatient thing, and it drove our nannies crazy. Theo was the one that was never there, older than Maya and me, hanging out with the Nightingale twins. Maya was the quiet one, calm, mentally present.
I was apparently a hell-raiser.
Needless to say, that whole patience shit I needed to practice was almost snapping in two, because I had no idea what our plan was, or what was going on. This usually sent me into a mini panic attack, but I had to trust them, trust Storm. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, and if we were here for that scumbag that fucked up the last four years of my life, I wasn’t going to stand on the side. Well, I hoped Storm wouldn’t want me to stand on the side.
The music suddenly changed, and a familiar song blasted through the speakers as the lights in the room dimmed down, only the red hue from the bars visible in the dark.
“I love this part,” Atlas whispered, excitement evident in his voice. I didn’t have to wait too long to see what was the part that he loved, as the red and green lights mixed together shone over the stage. The smoke filtered over the runaway leading to the backside and the dark silhouette stepped up, just as the Fame on Fire’s singer started the chorus of “Her Eyes,” driving my blood pressure higher.
