Page 23 of Cook

Wilde and Celt exchanged a look. Celt let the Prez position fall to Wilde, but he was honorary with all the men in the Ridge. The rest of us were there to enforce the decisions and carry out orders. I would’ve followed Celt to the end of the road, no matter where the fuck we ended up. We had been brothers long before we joined the MC.

I didn’t know Wilde well enough to guess where his head was, but he was Bou’s old man and father to her future child. Our MCs were now officially intertwined, and we were stuck having to deal with theapparent transgression.

“We need to come up with a plan,” said Celt.

“And hopefully not get capped in the process,” said Wilde.

Angel took a pull from his longneck and let out a sigh. “Really though, how many people can they have left to pull these strings? The Don, Tommy is in jail, Amaranta is dead. Who are the others we need to be aware of? Because that bastard,”—he threw a hand out toward the screen—“is easy pickin’s.”

Ward stuck out his bottom lip and nodded slowly. Everyone looked up at him as he said, “I’ll do some digging.”

Maddie

Trailing my fingers over theshelf, I studied an old photograph that was obviously cut in half. There had once been three people in the faded image, but now, only a hand peeked around Vivi’s shoulders, the rest of the person missing. I leaned in, making out Cook’s features on his boyish face. Vivi looked almost the same, but she had a few more threads of gray in her hair.

Cook’s bedroom was surprisingly clean, and for it to be where he grew up, it had very few childish things. It was orderly, as though Vivi expected Cook to come home from a war any day. Cook said he didn’t live here, but I wouldn’t know it by how Vivi acted. Or by how the clothes packed the drawers or hung in the closet.

I opened the closet and took a long, deep breath. It all smelled of Cook. His scent had washed off me when I took a shower this morning, and I was desperate to get it back.

To get him back.

Curling my fingers into one of his flannels, I held it close to my face and closed my eyes. If I pretended hard enough—like I had with my sister when Signora had me—I could imagine he was here with me. I could almost feel the weight of his arm around me again. He could weigh down my body, but I would still know he wouldn’t hurt me. If I asked him to back off, he would.

Daddywould.

Smelling his rich leather and cinnamon scent, I could pretend I had control of the situation when I had anything but.

Wasn’t that who I was? A pretender?

A fraud in this normal suburban house? No one as vile and impure as me should be free in this home that Vivi worked so hard to keep.

I dropped the sleeve of his flannel and shifted through the rest of the clothes in the closet. All his T-shirts had sayings scrawled on the fronts. Many quipped about motorcycles, but a good number of them were food-related and sexually suggestive.

Should that disgust me as a long-term victim of sexual violence?

Perhaps, but it just brought a smile to my lips. Those sayings made light of something I’d always viewed as dark and vicious. The humor behind those words broke my mind and all I believed. It twisted the concepts around and made me think there was something better out there than the depravity I’d experienced.

The hangers scraped against the bar as I moved the clothes aside. Something was on the ground and pushed to the back, so I swooped down and grabbed it. Stepping out of the closet, I held an old photo album, one of the few things in his whole bedroom covered in dust.

Sitting on his bed, I opened the photo album. The first page was a picture of two teenage boys, the one with shoulder-length black hair had to be Cook, but the other stood a few inches taller than him and had bright red hair. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside a house.

But not this house.

Perhaps it was where he lived before? I slid my finger over the two faces. The two boys wore timeless little smiles that said they were about to fuck up some shit. If I lived a different life and met them back then, would I have been attracted to one of them?

The redhead had a regal stance and his jaw was squaring off nicely, accenting his high cheekbones, but there was something deeper in Cook. Darker. Something he might not even know existed in himself.

I took the photo out of the sleeve and flipped it over. Scrawled in womanly handwriting was “Morris & Celt.”

So the other kid was Celt. The two looked like best friends, if not brothers. I slipped the photograph back into the plastic holder and moved to the next page. The pictures were mostly of Cook and Celt invarious teenage ages. They must’ve been inseparable back then.

Would Mel and I have been like that, given the chance?

“Hey, Maddie.” Vivi knocked on the open bedroom door and was already standing inside.

I curled my fingers around the photo album, caught looking at something I shouldn’t. But she would have to wrestle it from my cold, dead hands. There was more that I needed to learn about Cook, and I didn’t want to let go of this piece of him.

Vivi leaned away, a smile pulling across her thin lips. “I remember those pictures.”

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