Page 108 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
“What was the deal?” he asks, voice like iron.
The deal is, like Sin requested, when we’re out in the field, I … defer to the four of them.
Right.
“What is Grey doing at a club-owned motel?” I ask instead, glancing back at Beast.
“He’s been here all along, it seems,” he tells me, musing on the idea of a mafia brat ghosting beneath our radar all this time. “I’ve been tracking your brother, just to see what he’s getting up to. As of right now, that ain’t much.” He turns as Gaz comes out of one of the other rooms—room two to be exact—with a girl on his arm. “But he comes here a lot. Too much, actually. Yesterday, he visited your friend’s room.”
Is Reba with Grey? I wonder, but I don’t ask the question because I’m not ready for the answer just yet.
“Let me talk to him,” I say, feeling Grainger’s fingers tighten on my arm. “Not Gaz,” I correct, as if that somehow makes any of this better. “Grey.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Grainge asks, looking at Beast like he’s seeking support for his position. “What we should do is let Cat know, bring some big guns over here, and kill that brat.”
“Let her talk to him,” Beast offers up, a surprisingly generous man. He isn’t at all what I expected of him. It makes me wonder about his past, about his time as a fighter, as a champion. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve looked up videos of his old fights, that I’ve let my fingers trail down my stomach and into my pants, that I’ve rubbed my clit while watching him, muscles slick with sweat and sometimes blood.
Oh yes.
“If we don’t like him, or we don’t like what he has to say, we’ll kill ‘im.” He moves past me as Grainger curses, dragging me along by the arm. I let him, if only to stop him from bitching me out. We skirt around the side of the building opposite where Gaz has just left with his new girl, the one he hasn’t killed. Yet.
One day, one day soon, my brother is going to have to die. I’ve come to peace with that. Whether it’s by my hand, by one of my men, or someone else entirely, has yet to be determined.
We’re at Grey’s door in less than thirty seconds … but he’s already opening it, like he was expecting us.
“Come in,” he says, standing aside. He waits for the three of us to enter the room, closing and locking the door before turning to me. Grey reaches for me, but Grainger steps between us, every movement he makes a clear threat.
“If you touch her, I’ll blow your head off.” He lifts up his Ruger and puts the barrel between Grey’s eyes.
It’s nothing either of us is unfamiliar with.
“Are you okay?” Grey asks me instead, ignoring the gun to his head with an admirable level of self-control. His eyes are the same piercing gray color, but everything else about him looks different. He’s got stubble on his face which throws me a bit, and his hair is longer and more disheveled than before. His demeanor though, is the thing that throws me most. He’s asking if I’m okay, but there’s a coldness in his gaze that I’m not sure was there when I left.
Or rather, when I told him to run, and he climbed into a pipe organ and disappeared.
“I’m fine,” I say, letting my eyes search the room. It’s a disgusting room to begin with—a bit of mildew on the ceiling, brightly colored coverlets left over from the eighties, and stained carpets that have certainly seen better days. As for Grey’s personal effects or impact on the room, he could very well be a ghost.
The beds are made, the wastebasket empty, the curtains closed.
The only sign of life is a pair of food containers stacked atop one another on the nightstand.
“She’s fine, but you might not be for long,” Grainger continues as Beast moves over to the bathroom door and reaches for the handle.
“Don’t,” Grey warns, but not in a surprised or anxious voice. It sounds like … a command? One that Beast doesn’t heed as he tests the door and then, with a single kick of his boot, dislodges it from the frame.
A woman screams from inside, and the hair on my arms stands on end.
I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
I’m tearing across the floor so quickly that my boots slip on the hideous rose-pink shag. My arm knocks Beast’s gun aside as I push past him and find Reba pressed to the wall of the shower, the curtain pulled across her nakedness.
My heart swells with pride, breaks, reforms itself, does the same song and dance all over again.
That’s my girl, prudish enough to think of covering her body when the door is kicked in and a gun is pointed at her. I once described the pair of us as sin and salvation. Looking at her now, I don’t wonder if she isn’t the incarnation of good, the virgin Mary perhaps. If so, then perhaps I’m not just the devil’s daughter, but something else, a Lilith, a she-demon.
