Their Queenpin (The Ridge MC #6)

Chapter 25Graff

Chapter Twenty-Five

Graff

Red flashed before my eyes. It crept in at the edges like the time I’d been so angry with my sister for getting the compound raided. When I blinked, it trailed up my vision like the entrancing taillights streaming through the night. And it splattered across my trembling hands.

But my hands hadn’t been covered in blood. The U-Haul had, but not my hands. It didn’t matter how many times I repeated that to myself, I had killed a man.

True, both the cartel men wanted to kill me—and would have—but their blood still stained my soul. I had to do it. Rafe made that clear. He eased the burden a little with his spiel about the things done in the heat of battle, but it only worked so much to wash the blood from the halls of my mind.

The vacant eyes of the man haunted me, lifeless orbs, because I had stolen the light.

After leaving the hotel, I’d wandered about Vegas for hours on end, and now, I found myself at the Clark County Detention Center, sitting in a little cubicle, waiting for them to retrieve my brother.

The sad thing was... I belonged here more than Sas. I should be locked up for killing someone—for cold-blooded murder. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those dead eyes, so I forced mine open, fighting against the fluorescent light overhead. The high-pitched whining screeched in my skull.

I had done a lot of shit in my life. Some of it illegal. I had never flinched at my duties to the MC. I had never hesitated to do my job, no matter how illegal. I chose this life and my brothers, and I would choose them again.

But—murder?

I didn’t relish that. And had never taken another’s life. My brothers had, but it was one of those things people carried in secret. They acted like it was another day, another dollar. Perhaps it weighed on me more than most, and that notebook I’d purchased on the road? It was a mess of my emotions poured out on the paper in dark charcoal lines.

They would’ve been red if I’d thought to get a red pen instead of a mechanical pencil.

Rafe carried around the scars too, and I wondered how many of them started like this. Then again, with the open wound in my soul, did I really want to carry around another’s trauma?

Tap-tap-tap.

I jerked my head back, bringing myself out of my spinning thoughts.

On the other side of the table with the glass barrier in the middle, Sas towered over me, standing with his hands in handcuffs and ankles chained. He picked up the phone receiver.

I did the same, and before I could speak, he said, “Careful of roaches.”

I gave him a nod, but really, I wasn’t here to talk about all the shit going on with the club. Not the cartel. Not the Mafia. I wanted none of it at the moment.

“Sas,” I said at last in a rush of breath, but I had nothing to follow up with it.

What was I supposed to say? Things—bloody things—threatened to bubble out, so I swallowed them down.

Knitting his eyebrows together, he demanded, “What’s wrong?”

A lump grew in my throat, and I hacked like a plague victim. Sas only watched me, burning determination in his eyes.

“Graff,” said Sas in a low voice, sinking into the chair, “what the fuck?”

It made me lift one corner of my mouth in a half smile. I had to be careful, though, because roaches.

“We went hunting.” I wasn’t sure how else to admit what I did. Or my guilt.

Tough guys in an outlaw MC didn’t get wrapped around the wheel like this about casualties of the business.

After another sigh, the words eked out. “I killed a deer.”

Sas swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “A deer? Is that all?”

I nodded. It was too much.

Silence stretched between us.

Of course, he wouldn’t understand. He probably hadn’t faced this... whatever the fuck it was. He had killed guys before—cartel, Mafia, probably others—so this was no big deal.

Kill or be killed.

I had to do what I had to do!

“First one?”

“Yup.”

“Tha’s hard,” said Sas, lowering his head to make sure he was in my eyeline.

“It shouldn’t be,” I said.

“Why’d you come here?”

I wanted to chuckle at his question, but no kind of humor would come. “Honestly? I don’t fucking know.”

“Killing an animal is tough shit, brother. You’ll get past it.”

“You felt this way?”

He shrugged. “You and I are different creatures.”

“I wanna forget it,” I said.

“You don’t get to choose once it’s said and done.” As much as Sas could, he was being understanding. A leader.

“How did you get over it? After your first... deer,” I added.

“Don’t compare yourself to me.” He looked away and at the bland beige cubicle wall.

“Fuck, man.” I ran my hand over my head. “If it means I can’t function anymore, I’d rather be like you.”

The man, gruff though he was, was built for this lifestyle. So much more than me. We had been together for what? Eight years? Nine? He was my brother. But more than that...

Sas was like the other half of me. Not romantically, but in a way that almost made us one whole person. We’d never talked about shit like this, neither of us easily expressing emotion. Well, he was more quiet about it than me. But this was us. The one us.

He shifted on the seat, the handcuffs and chains clanking against the metal table legs before rattling back to the seat, a jarring sound that made my teeth clench. How did he live like this?

I thrived on noise, lived for it. The rumble of engines, the pounding music, the chaos of the clubhouse, it was all life to me, and it never bothered me in the slightest.

But this place? Everything was a fucking scream, each sound layered on top of another until it became a cacophony that clawed at my senses. The buzzing fluorescent lights, the clanging metal, the hollow echoes... noise was different here.

Oppressive.

Maddening.

Even with everything I’d gone through, it made me want to recoil, and I tried not to let it show.

“You need to go be with our girl,” said Sas, his tone carrying the weight of his position in the club. An order.

But my mind stuck on the ‘our girl’ part. Sas had never attached to someone he’d fucked, and I didn’t expect that of him now. But the fact that he called her ours admitted his need for her. More than that, it admitted there was a relationship.

The problem right now? I wanted to keep my torment as far away from her as possible.

“Adelina doesn’t need this shit,” I mumbled.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Before we left. Up in a canyon Rafe took us to.” I watched for a sour reaction to Rafe, but it didn’t come.

Instead, he smirked and nodded like he was well-versed in our little escapade. “Listen to me, Graff. She’s turned into someone we—fuck, can’t believe I’m about to say this.” He scratched at his goatee.

I raised my brows. “Someone we what?”

“Need,” he breathed, then immediately sucked in a deep breath. “I need her, you need her, and so does Rafe. I’m done fighting it, but you and I both know I’ll never be her everything.”

I blinked rapidly at him, then cocked a brow. “They giving you sugar IVs around here?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

But he’d done it... pulled me out of the depths I had been sinking into. I didn’t know for how long, but the conversation with him helped.

“That’s a bit of sweetness I’m seeing in you,” I teased.

“Fuck off,” said Sas.

“Nah, not in the mood.”

We stayed silent for several minutes after that, then Sas said, “She’ll take your mind off of this. Trust me.”

I gave a curt bob of my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. With my eyes closed, I was right back in the U-Haul. The cartel’s guys dead. Their blood everywhere. I’d stepped in it to get the jewels and accidentally kicked him.

“Do it,” ordered Sas, voice hard. “Go see Adelina. Now.”

I flashed my eyes up to him. Focusing on him helped. I needed him more than I had ever known.

“You’ll be surprised, brother,” Sas said. “I’m tired of this bullshit with the—uh, Caz and crew. But this shit has made our girl shine like a fucking diamond.”

“She was pretty lost when we were with her at the hot springs.”

Sas laughed. “I know. She told me.”

My eyes flitted back to meet his, surprised. But then again, I recalled Adelina saying she had to give it all to Sas. So this was what she’d meant—that he would make her tell him everything. How humiliating that had to be for her, but I’d be willing to bet it made her all sorts of horny.

He bellowed a laugh then. “I know all three of us are good for her, and I’m fucking okay with that.” He leaned forward. “But you know better than anyone how much of a controlling bastard I am.”

“You made her tell you.”

“Every detail. And then I fucked her pretty little cunt.”

I let out a low whistle.

“Trust me, brother. She’s one hell of a woman to handle us all.”

Despite myself, I chuckled.

“Between her father being a royal dick and all the shit we’re managing, we’re turning her into a fucking queenpin.”

I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Is that really a good idea?”

“Yup. Most brilliant idea in the world. Our queenpin.”

The guard wandered over, tapping Sas on the shoulder, and he stood, cutting our visit short.

“Get the fuck out of here. Talk to her. Get your head and cock screwed on straight.” He dropped the receiver back in the cradle and shuffled away.

That meant I had to go too, but I watched as he disappeared through the door with the pig. He never looked back at me, though I willed him to.

Outside the detention center, the Vegas heat slapped me upside the face. Dry heat that was still too hot. If I’d brought my bike—thankfully, they’d released the ones that were clean—I could’ve gotten on and ridden off, escaping the heat with a bit of wind therapy. But I’d been so wrapped up in my head I hadn’t even considered my ride.

I glanced at the street and the cabs passing by.

Really not wanting to deal with a cabbie, I put my hands in my pockets and started the long walk back to Parisi Casino and Hotel.

To Adelina.