Page 35 of Ice

Get a money order, sure, that she would know. But where they came from, checks were as foreign as basements and organic food.

“No, I swear. Then she went to Brambilla. She paid everything off, thinking one payment would be easier to pay down, and then went back out and charged more. When the house gets repossessed, I’m done. I’ll have lost everything.”

“That’s sad and all, but Brambilla isn’t going to kill over money owed, no matter the dollar amount,” Ice said. “Interest just piles up and eventually you settle. You can still work with busted knees and, in your case, no balls, but unless Misty has a big-ass insurance policy, I assume you won’t be paying him off.”

“She tried to fuck him to work off debt,” he said, eyes closed. “My baby believed batting her eyes and wiggling her ass would save us. All she needed to do was stop, and she couldn’t.”

“Again, not a reason to kill her,” Ice reasoned, “let alone my kids.”

“She went to the son-in-law,” John said. “You get that, Brambilla’s son-in-law, and the joker took it. Then when he wouldn’t wipe her debt, she stole some of Brambilla’s daughter’s jewelry on the way out of the house.”

Angela Brambilla was the only woman in Vegas that should never have to worry about her man straying, and yet, Misty had found a way. Boundaries were suggestions for Misty. Ice had laid them out time and time again, only to have her cross them. She always did. He tried to respect the fact the woman was married, but even with the options all around him, there was the simplicity of easy satisfaction when it came to Misty. Unlike with Bree, where his focus had been on pleasuring her, Misty was for his release, the quicker, the better, especially as the years went on. Long seductions and days spent in bed had never been their thing.

“Fuck,” Ice said, shaking his head and knowing the spiral John described wasn’t even taking in the alcohol and drugs he knew in his heart she had to have been blowing money on. If it hadn’t been for Grimm, the man’s father, and others in the club teaching him a bit about handling money, he would have never set himself right. Hell, creating accounts to show he had the ability to care for his children had him learning things they didn’t teach in school, and it hadn’t been enough.

He’d need his brothers, because Misty’s choices weren’t going to take his children from him. Only, much like when they rode into another club’s territory, it was for a limited time and always on a heightened alert. Suddenly he was glad Shadow was sitting sentry with his kids. He knew how to take in the slight movements and wouldn’t even think twice if someone dared enter the room.

“Ice, I’m sorry about Jane and Aiden, but if you could”—he coughed, eyes sealed tightly shut—“could you finish the job? I can’t live like this.”

There were many things Ice had been accused of over the years, but being a fool wasn’t one of them. John Welch had used his power and influence to take his kids from him, backing up some fantasy where they were in a better environment, uncorrupted by those deemed lesser by someone who donned a robe during the daylight only to disappear behind the curtain at the Review once the sun went down. While he may have fantasized about killing the man a time or fifty over the years, even fielded offers from those in the club willing to do a few years in prison in duty to them if caught, this was better. This was that pain spoken about inThe Princess Bride, a movie he would never admit to seeing, but would never flip the channel from if it happened to be playing in the background.

The pain, the emasculation, the torment of knowing he was dropped at the hospital in enough time to survive, but would never truly live again. That was a fate worse than death, and Ice was here for it. No one could control Misty. No one knew Misty. She was a tornado that spun around grabbing everything she could only to smash it to pieces. The only good that ever came from that woman were two babies he’d need to find a way to get the Misty out of if they were going to survive.

“For the last day or so, I’ve finally had my kids,” Ice said, leaning in close to make sure the man didn’t miss a word. “You kept them from me, threatened to have me locked up if I came anywhere near them when not approved by the court. You know what that feels like, John? It feels like a part of me was cut off. I could breathe, eat, shit, but I wasn’t whole. No, John, I’m not doing twenty years away from my kids because your balls are going to be silicone and Angela Brambilla has a new set of earrings.”

---