“You don’t know me,” I spat.
“Baby, the love you got for the people in your heart is written all over you,” he whispered.
God, that felt good.
I couldn’t let it feel good.
Not that good coming from this guy.
I looked to the floor on my other side and hauled in so much breath, I felt my own chest rise.
“You gotta stop this shit with Benito Valenzuela, Rebel,” he said.
I looked to him. “She had a thing for older men.”
He pressed his lips together.
“You know so much, Mr. Allen, did you see? Did you see the pictures of her? Of her house? What she was wearing? Did you see what happened to her there?”
“Rebel—”
I sat back and drawled, “You know, my favorite part is that the coroner couldn’t quite call it. You know. The business she was in. He couldn’t say. The results indicated that she’d been brutally raped prior to her death. But, you know, considering she was a porn star, that could have just been part of the day job. Or considering she was a drug addict, that could have been what she was willing to give up to get her fix.”
Rush Allen flinched.
And oh yeah.
That was worthy of a flinch.
I hadn’t flinched when I read that.
It tore me apart.
So I wasn’t done.
I couldn’t be done.
There was too much left to do.
“But I saw. Hank left his desk and it wasn’t right. I’m not sure it was even legal. But I looked at the file, I read and I saw. And I know she fought it. I know she was raped. I know she endured that and being beaten to shit before, during or after being brutally raped. Before he either accidentally or very on purpose snapped her neck. And then, done. No more chances to get her out of that mess. No more shots at getting her clean. No more opportunities to do something more with her life. Get her back on the path to her dreams. Find a good guy who loved her, yeah even one who was older.” I shrugged. “Who gives a fuck? He could still give her babies. Let her share more of what made Diane awesome with the world for generations to come.”
“That’s gotta suck,” he murmured.
“You have no idea just how much it sucks, my man,” I bit out.
He pushed up from his knees to sit straight in his chair and asked, “Do you know Natalie Harbinger?”
I shook my head, confused at this change in topic. “No.”
“She’s dead,” he shared.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“Benito Valenzuela killed her.”
Here we go.
The recitation.
I rested my back against the chair, settling in for him to tell me what I already knew.
Benito Valenzuela was a monster.
“She was Tabby, my sister’s best friend,” he said. “Best friend for as long as I can remember.”
Oh shit.
“Which meant she was in my life too, for a long time,” he told me. “They drifted. You know all about that. That kind of thing happens when one of you gets addicted to blow. So addicted, she’s up to her neck in debt to her dealers and has to turn to porn.”
The girl Chaos rescued.
Now dead.
Too bad Chaos didn’t know Diane.
Then again, it seemed the results would have been the same.
I said nothing.
Rush Allen carried on.
“Tore Tabby apart. Blames herself. She let them drift. She wasn’t the only one but she’s the only one left alive to feel guilt and make up ways she could have made a difference. Could have changed history. She’s certain that if she continued to try to intervene, she could have saved Natalie.”
He stared into my eyes.
“She couldn’t,” he finished, his point not even vaguely disguised.
“Your friend is not my friend,” I returned.
“Do you now Camilla Turnbull?” he asked.
I felt my shoulders tighten up.
“Do you?” he pushed.
“No,” I forced out.
Turnbull.
Something to do with Harrietta?
“She’s Harrietta’s daughter,” he informed me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Sent in to play Valenzuela for Lannigan,” he continued. “Got played and ended up with her throat slit, laid out on a picnic table at our Compound on Chaos with a note stapled to her forehead.”
Yikes.
“Mr. Allen—”
He leaned toward me and dropped his voice in a way even his men, all standing close-ish, could probably not hear.
“You can try to distance yourself from me, sweetheart, by using that bullshit. But we both know what’s happening here. I’m Rush. You call me Mr. Allen again, I’m clearing the room and we’re gonna have a different kind of lesson.”
And again, he did not try to disguise his point.
And his point did not set my clit to tightening.
It set my nipples to tightening and my clit to tingling.
He leaned back and I told my nipples (and other) to behave.
“You know Scruff’s Roadhouse?” he asked.
Goddamn it.
“No,” I snapped.
“Natalie’s body was put in a body bag and dumped behind it. Woman who owned it is called Reb. Anyone call you Reb?” he asked.
“If they’re not my brother, his man or his woman, not if they want to keep their teeth.”
Suddenly, he grinned.
It transformed his face from angled and hewn and gorgeous, to playful and almost boyish.
And gorgeous.
His grin disappeared.
“Well, Reb was a tough nut. And she wasn’t a big fan of having a body dumped behind her bar. She’d never been a big fan of Chew’s. You know Chew?”
It seemed I didn’t know anything.
And he knew it.
Which blew.
But whatever. I couldn’t hide something he already knew so I didn’t try.
“Chew?” I asked.
“Chew. Biker name for Arthur Lannigan because the man has a thing for tarantulas.”
Tarantulas?
Oh God.
“Now Reb, she never liked Chew. There were tarantulas in that body bag with Natalie. Reb got it in her head that Chew tossed that body behind her bar, rather than Valenzuela doing it that way to frame Chew, and Reb ran her mouth to the police. Coupla months ago, takin’ out her trash, on her back walk in her own backyard, she lost that mouth when she took a bullet to the face. Now that,” he leaned into me again, “that was all Chew.”
I stared at him, feeling my heart accelerating.
I knew nothing about any of this.
“Women are dying, Rebel,” he stated. “Now I’ll be even clearer about what I’m tryin’ to get you to understand. There’s another club messed up in this shit, and a woman was informing to us on what was happening with them. She was ours. She had our protection. And we fell down on that job and she was left on a cement floor, beat to shit by an entire club of bikers, having to be hospitalized, broken bones, left with scars. Another woman, another one of our own, was kidnapped. She wasn’t hurt but she witnessed Valenzuela order the murder of two of his own men, she also witnessed their deaths. She’s okay now, but only after a lot of lookin’ after and some serious counseling. Do you see a pattern here?”
Oh, I saw a pattern.
I didn’t confirm that.
I continued staring at him.
“That’s all pussy, baby,” he said quietly. “Not one dick in that mix. Now you can take all of that as a warning to our Club, which is how we’ve taken it, and I can promise you, we’ve also taken steps to look after our women. You can also take it as what it definitely is. There are those who are expendable. And pardon me bein’ coarse about this, I’m doin’ it to make a point, but the expendables got snatch.”
“Are we done?” I asked.
It was his turn to stare at me.
Then he glowered at me.
Finally, he sat back and sighed.
“We’re done,” I announced and stood up.
I’d taken one step to the side of his chair when he spoke.
“You can’t bring her back.”
I looked down at him.
He was gazing up at me.
“Honey, you can’t bring her back,” he whispered.