Page 5 of Seizing Control: Part One

I’ll be free to savour every second I have Cherub to myself.

She is my reason for breathing.

The only thing keeping me sane.

My busted knuckles start bleeding again as I pound on the heavy wooden door. Leaning heavily against the wall, I shift from foot to foot as the frantic urge that drove me to visit my president’s home in the middle of the night tries to goad me into smashing a window to let myself inside. The front light blinds my bleary eyes when it’s switched on. White spots burst in my vision.

Muttering to myself, I shield my face with my hand, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“Oh, sweetheart. Come on in.” Scarlett Mayberry’s expression fills with worry when she pulls the door open to find me standing on her front porch at midnight. Her eyes dart past me, scanning her front yard for signs of danger, then return to my battered face and my busted hands. The bruises are courtesy of the fights I’ve picked whilst drunk. The grazes on my knuckles from torturing the Bishops tonight. “You’re a mess.” She ushers me in with a frantic hand motion. When I don’t immediately move, she grabs me by the front of my shirt and pulls me inside her foyer. “Everyone’s been looking for you... let me check you over.”

“I’m fine.”

With one of her patented eye rolls, Scarlett flicks the lock back into place, then lays the handgun she’s holding on the side table. Her concerned gaze tracks from my bruised jaw down to the split knuckles. I reopened them when I pounded on her front door and they’re now dripping blood on her floor. “You certainly look fine...”

“You should see the other guys,” I joke.

My attempt at humour falls flat when Scarlett purses her lips before she says, “So they’re alive to tell the tale?”

“No.”

“Did Brutus send you to deal with them for the Shamrocks, or was it personal?”

“Bit’a both,” I hedge the truth rather than inform her that I suspect her husband’s intentions have nothing to do with the safety of the club and more to do with some game he’s playing with the lives of his prospects. When Scarlett’s eyes fill with scepticism, I’m forced to admit, “Can’t really tell, nowadays.”

“Sweetheart.” Scarlett sighs. Her fingers wrap around the cherub pendant she wears around her neck. It’s one of the few pieces of jewellery that I’ve been satisfied enough with to gift to one of my loved ones. My dad wears a sceptre and horn of plenty designed in the same style. She caresses it, then tucks it back inside her top collar. “I really wish you’d speak to Hades before you allow my old man to use you as his attack dog. Times are changing. Violence isn’t always the answer.”

“Violence is the only thing I’m any good at.”

“That’s not true.” The pretty blonde sighs a second time. “You’re good at lots of things.”

Scarlett’s attempt at explaining away my killer tendencies feels like a thousand thumbtacks being jammed under my fingernails at once. I’m not in the right headspace to ward off the poison that immediately floods my head as a protest to her kindness. A solitary word echoes in my skull. Stupid. It’s a familiar refrain. One I’ve heard since my earliest days at school—a label my own mother has tossed my way more than once. As thoughts of the woman who finally deserted me for the last time begin to curdle my blood, Scarlett closes the distance between us. The hug that she engulfs me in makes my skin burn with shame. My right leg starts to bounce, and a tell-tale prickle of rage breaks out over my scalp. As my temper, the oversized pit of lava that endlessly bubbles in the space between my heart and my gut, begins to catch fire, the tall and graceful blonde holding me immediately notices. I try my hardest to temper my dark side, aware that it’s a fight I’ll lose if she doesn’t stop offering me unearned sympathy and understanding.

“Zeke,” Scarlett says my name in the same tone she uses on her own children whenever they are upset. “It’s late, and the kids are already in bed, but there’s room for you up there too... as long as you’re happy on Lily’s floor.”

A few months ago, that caveat wouldn’t have been needed.

Now, thanks to Brutus’ paranoia, my every move is watched.

“Thanks, Scar,” I reply as evenly as I can manage.

“No thanks needed. I know you’ll always look after that sweet child of mine.”

“Always.”

“And that’s why you’re welcome here, any time.” Although I’m aware that’s not necessarily true, I still take advantage of Scarlett’s vow. After the past three days of abstaining, I need to bask in little Cherub’s sweetness or I’m going to find myself in lockup. Moving fast, a little apprehensive that she could rescind her offer at any time, I have one foot on the stairs when Scarlett adds. “I’m so sorry about Chantal. It wasn’t a shock, still I know it can’t be easy. Your mother was so very proud of?—”

“Her looks. Her dancing. And the number of zeroes in her latest fuck buddy’s bank account. But never me... I was her biggest disappointment.” When Scarlett looks as if she’s about to argue, I angrily shake my head as I turn back to face her. She frowns, and the weight of the guilt that hits me in the wake of that pitying look quickly becomes too much to bear. “I apologise... shouldn’t’ve have spoken to you like that.”

“You’re forgiven. Three days without sleep will put anyone out of sorts.”

“You and I both know my bad temper’s kinda permanent by this point.”

Shock ripples through me, slowing the lit fuse of my rage a little, when she replies with a sharp laugh, “Ain’t that the truth.” My lips quirk and Scarlett’s smile widens, and she makes a shooing motion with her hands. “Now off you go, get some sleep. I’ll keep my old man—” A ripple of revulsion shakes her shoulders when she mentions my president. “—at bay while you catch some much-needed zeds.”

The reminder of her hot-headed husband—the man who nominated me to the Black Shamrocks MC nearly eight months ago, then immediately began to cut me down—forces me back into motion. I take the stairs three at a time and bound down the hallway toward the Mayberry twins adjacent bedrooms, expertly skipping the squeaky floorboards so I don’t wake up the five kids sleeping under this roof.

For the first eleven years of their lives, Lilianna and Lysander shared a room with their Irish twin, Everett. The threesome was inseparable until late this year when little Cherub decided that she wanted her on space. Always eager to indulge his only daughter, Brutus ordered his prospects to build a dividing wall down the middle of the giant room.

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