Page 9 of Cinder
After turning right at the end of the driveway, I pull into the underground parking garage beneath the clubhouse. It used to be an old boat slipway leading down to the beach. Now it’s where we keep our Harleys and club vehicles.
I park my bike next to Beast’s gigantic black and chromemonster and kill the engine. Tonight I don’t need pussy, I need a bottle of Jack and some alone time.
But Beast is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairwell leading into the clubhouse. He’s an enormous man. Seven feet tall with tattooed-covered muscles and a fierceness about him that can only come from true grit. Scars twist across his face, the markings of a woman who wanted revenge a long time ago.
He’s our club president and a damned good one. He used to be a moody sonofabitch until he met his wife. Now the fucker smiles all the time. It doesn’t take a genius to see he’s crazy in love with her, and why wouldn’t he be. She’s gorgeous and feisty, and the moment I saw her I could see why he was obsessed with her.
If I sound like I’m jealous, I’m not. I’m a realist. There’s no point wanting something I’ll never have. What they have is a once-in-a-lifetime love. All-consuming and written in the stars. A love like that isn’t waiting for me, and I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I like my pussy with no expectation.
“I was starting to wonder if you were coming back,” Beast says, his big arms folded as he leans against the stone wall.
“I needed to ride.”
He nods. If anyone knows how I’m feeling, it’s him. He carries the weight of this club on his shoulders and has taken his fair share of nighttime rides to quell the lingering rage of a kill.
“Eugene taken care of?” he asks.
“I left him to the birds,” I say, walking past him and into the stairwell. He follows, and we climb the stone steps to the castle foyer.
“The authorities are at the gravesite.” His deep voice echoes along the stone walls.
I don’t tell him that I already know. That I rode out there and watched from a distance as the flashlights of the authorities moved through the trees, and the medical examiner set up his lights and tent around Beth’s grave.
I don’t tell him that I was there when they excavated her remains. Or that I stayed until they loaded her into the back of the medical examiner’s van and drove away.
Because he would ask me why, and I’m not ready to admit that this whole thing has hit me harder than anything else that has come before it.
I don’t tell him I could have ended Eugene’s life with a single bullet, but I didn’t, because those girls needed him to pay for what he did to them, and I was the only person who could do it.
So I did. I made him pay. Limb by limb. Tooth by tooth. Second by second. Until I felt a knowing inside me that the girls were avenged.
And I sure as fuck don’t have it in me tonight to explain to my president what this has done to me.
How I couldn’t leave Beth. That the least I could do was to watch her remains being pulled from the lonely, dark earth and sent back into the light where her parents could bury her so she could rest in peace.
Fuck.
I need that bottle of Jack.
“What are you doing awake, anyway?” I ask. “Wait, don’t tell me that gorgeous bride of yours has been keeping you up for all the right reasons. Because I might just shoot myself in the face right here. You’re an ugly sonofabitch; doesn’t seem right you got the best girl in the world.”
I love Belle like a sister. And I love teasing Beast and getting him worked up. But if anyone else spoke about his queen that way, he’d cut out their tongue and make them swallow it. I only get away with it because he knows I would never disrespect him or his wife. Tonight’s attempt at teasing is weak though, because damn, I don’t feel right.
I need to shake myself out of this mood.
“You know I’m not a kiss and tell kind of guy,” he says by way of shutting me up.
That’s when I think about another reason he might still be awake. “Lucy’s okay?”
Lucy is Beast’s daughter. Or, more importantly,my goddaughter. The gorgeous little monster loves her Uncle Lars. At nine months old, she already has great taste.
“She’s sound asleep. Which is where we should be.” His dark eyes roam my face. He’s concerned because I’m acting weird and he can pick up on it. He’s like some psychic bloodhound. “What you did tonight, that piece of shit got what he deserved. But if it runs deeper than that, then you and me should talk.”
“I know he had to pay, and I was happy to be the one to do it.”
He doesn’t know just how much I made Eugene pay.
“Then what’s eating at you?”
