Page 75 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
“Gidge,” Beast warns, sliding his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “We ain’t takin’ you to the Palm Motel.” The look he gives me brooks no argument, but I’ve got to at least offer one up.
“Give me a gun. We’ll feel out the situation. Beast, I wasn’t meant to live in a box.” I’m pleading with him because I know exactly how things are going to go if I’m not there.
Reba will die.
“If you had a chance to save your sister,” I offer up to Sin, and he flashes me a warning look.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” he says, pointing at me. “Mark my words.” And then he snatches my wrist and drags me back to the bikes.
The Palm Motel is dead silent. I mean, at least at this time of day it is. During the night, it’s a hotbed of crime, hookers, and overdoses. Since most of the rooms are rented by the hour, and the hour isn’t right, the place is a dead zone.
“See anything?” Sin asks, waiting beside me on the roof of a nearby building. He had Nellie pick Fem up from the street near Reba’s house while I waited behind a tree. He also had her drop off something special for me: the Magnum that I dug out of the rice that day. Reunited all over again.
This is, essentially, my first time ‘in the field’ so to speak—and I love it. I hate how much I love it, but … I do. Fuck, I really was born ruined. It isn’t just a pretty phase; it’s shaped me. It’s the essence of who I am. With a strange, strangled sound from my throat, I run both hands up and over my hair.
“Don’t be scared, Gidge,” Sin offers, which should rightfully earn him a kick in the balls.
I slice a glance his way, fingers still tangled in my own hair. It’s curly today which I hate, but I didn’t exactly have time to straighten it, now did I?
“I’m not scared,” I scoff, the words like ash as I spit them into the wind. It tastes like it, too, the air does. The wildfires around here are only getting worse; I can’t stand it. It’s like the earth’s literally given up on us. “At least not of the situation. If anything, I’m afraid because I like this too much. This blood and bullshit.”
I step up to the edge of the building as Sin and Beast both refocus their attention to me. A huge gust of wind whips up, stirring flakes of ash from the roof and stinging my eyes. I sweep my dark hair from my face as I blink through the pain.
Unless we check every room—and there are fifty of them—then we’re not going to see anything from here. That much I’m sure of. My eyes lift up and look past the motel building, to the spire of a nearby church. It looks to be about four blocks away.
“Is that a Catholic church by chance?” I muse, and then I’m stealing Sin’s phone from his pocket and pulling up a map.
Santuario di Santa Gemma Galgani. That’s the name of it.
“The church is abandoned,” Beast drawls, turning to look at me with a spark in his eyes that says I might be onto something. “But it was once a mafia hotspot.”
I lift a brow, but this isn’t the time for history lessons.
“You can explain to me later how a church on this side of town was mafia-owned … and also how it became abandoned.”
I stroll past the two of them toward the stairs, but Beast slips past me before I can start down them, taking up the front while Sin guards my rear. And also reaches out to grab a handful, giving my ass a squeeze before stepping up close behind me.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten anything about this morning,” he warns me, and a thrill rockets through me. Exactly the words I want to hear, I think, wetting my lips with my tongue as I stomp down the steps after Beast.
We get back on the bikes and off we go.
It isn’t a long drive, just a couple of minutes, but it also isn’t worth being without our only source of transportation to walk. We park one block north of the church and then use the alley to access it.
When Beast said the place was abandoned, he didn’t just mean ‘without management’.
There isn’t much left of the place but crumbling walls and a statue of a saint without a head.
Ominous.
“Bombing here a few years back. Damn shame,” Beast says with a long sigh, putting his hands on his hips. It’s almost … dare I say, weird hearing him talk. Like, who is this man that I’m engaged to? That I fucked when I really shouldn’t have. Whose baby I could’ve had.
