Page 215 of Restless
“I want a lock for my door, Boss,” Christopher said.
“No,” Rack answered. “Joey doesn’t have one, and he’s the president’s son. Who the fuck are you?”
“A good kid,” Big Joe barked.
Joey’s heart sank. His brief sense of triumph wilted. If Rack hadn’t spoken up, Big Joe might’ve declined Christopher’s request. No chance of that now.
“I’ll get it done tomorrow,” Dad said.
“I’ll hold the book for you,” K-P offered.
“If he gets a lock, I want one,” Joey demanded, once Christopher handed K-P the book, and walked away with Johnnie in tow.
Big Joe got to his feet. “You and Christopher would make a good team, if you’d stop competing against him, son.”
“You love him more than me!”
“I don’t,” Big Joe denied. “I love you just as much. I just wish you weren’t so much like—” Snapping his mouth shut, he rubbed his eyes and stared at Rack. “Never mind.”
“Like Momma!” Joey snarled. “I know that’s what you were going to say!”
A sad smile touched Big Joe’s mouth. “You couldn’t be less like her.” He started off. “I’m hitting the road.”
Two weeks later
“Are you ready?”
Joey nodded at Rack’s question. He sat his beer on the counter and glanced at the pool cues racked on the wall. He couldn’t choose, not when anticipation crowded his thoughts. “Dad didn’t forget anything, did he?”
He didn’t want to act in haste and end up with his father beating his ass.
“No, boy.” Rack drained his beer bottle and set it on the counter next to Joey’s. Belching, he placed a hand on Joey’s shoulder. “My ass is on the line, too.”
With Big Joe and K-P gone, the club was quiet this evening. Still, there were spies in every corner. If a whisper of Christopher’s endangerment blew in the air, Big Joe would blaze back into town and rain his wrath on all involved.
Rack flicked his gaze over the main room, then leaned closer to Joey. “Your old man would fucking kill me if he knew it was my idea.”
Perhaps locking Christopher in the meatshack with a decomposing corpsewasRack’s idea, but Joey was more than happy to carry it out. He hated that fuckhead, almost more than Logan. What Big Joe saw in that idiot, Joey wasn’t sure. He’d shortly disabuse his father of the notion that Christopher was braver, stronger, and better. Ever since Christopher moved to the club, Big Joe forgotJoeywas his only son. Fuck, his only child, and Joey meant to keep it that way, under all circumstances. Even murder.
Although Big Joe stuck his cock in more than a few cunts, he used protection. He said it was to keep his dick disease-free. Joey didn’t buy it for a minute. His old man thought women were soft and gentle, in need of protection.
Joey saw it differently. Unfortunately, Christopher respected women because of the split-tails he’d grown up with. This reverence toward females won Big Joe’s respect. Joey would take his father away from the Daddy-napper if it fucking killed him.
Wrapping his hand around his beer bottle, Joey shook. The cool condensation calmed him slightly. He drew in a breath, thinking of all that might go wrong.
His father was the biggest obstacle. But there was one more difficulty needing addressing.
“What about Johnnie?” he whispered. The pretty boy loved Logan, but he adored Christopher.
Before Joey drank, Rack grabbed the bottle and drained it. He released a heavy breath on a cloud of beer. “As long as he doesn’t find out what you’ve done, you’re safe from his wrath, boy.”
“You’re nothing but a fat, fucking coward.”
Rack glared. “When I gave you the idea, I told you you’d be on your own. Big Joe would kill me for fucking with that green-eyed devil, but Cee Cee would find a way to keep me alive while he gutted me. If you don’t want to take the fall, don’t make the fucking leap.”
At the mention of Cee Cee Caldwell, a shiver went through Joey. He cleared his throat. “He didn’t gut Fred. He just shot him.”
“Why, asshole?” Rack snapped.
