Cutter 3 (5 page)

“What?” I asked her, hanging my mouth
open. “I’m not in love!” I was trying to keep the screech out of my voice. “I
just started hanging out with your brother and your already singing wedding
bells.”

“Oh, please.” She yanked on my arm
roughly. “What do you think I was? Born yesterday? I don’t care if you’ve been
hanging out with him one day, it’s pretty clear that you’ve fallen completely
head over heels for him. You’d probably wipe his ass if he asked you to.”

I took my front steps up two at a
time. “That’s nasty, Heather. Besides, you know what they say about people who
live in glass houses…” I trailed off, waiting for her to look guilty.

“Are you going in or not?” Ace called
from where he was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. “You only have
54 minutes left.” He glanced at his phone, double-checking the time.

“What do they say about glass houses?”
Heather ignored Ace.

“They shouldn’t throw stones.”

“I’ve never even heard that saying
before. I think you made it up.”

“I didn’t make it up!” I threw my
hands up in the air. “It means that if you’re doing something yourself you
shouldn’t point it out in others. It’s a very famous saying.”

“I’m not in love with my brother!”
Heather made a face. “Gross.”

“You aren’t, you’re right.” I turned
to look at her. “But you’re definitely in love with Blaze.” I titled my head to
the side and shot her a smug smile. Two could play this game.

Her face turned a light shade of pink.
“You’re way off, Grace!”

“So, you’re telling me that you aren’t
totally into Blaze?” I looked at her skeptically. “Yeah, right. Just because
your brother and Blaze are too dumb to notice doesn’t mean I am, I’m a woman
after all.” I took another step up toward the door. “Don’t worry I’m not going
to tell anyone or anything. I’m just saying if you live in a glass house…”

“Ladies, I’m growing old here!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Heather
whispered, turning to look at Ace. “Because it’s not true, so just shut the
hell up, would you?” She pulled her hand back and pounded on my mother’s front
door as hard as she could.

“We don’t have to knock, I live here!”
I pushed open the door.

“You still live with your mother?”
Heather sounded unimpressed, even though I was pretty sure she still lived at
home with her father. Of course, that probably had more to do with her father
and Cutter than anything else.

“I meant I used to live here.”

Casper was clearly an overprotective
father, I wondered if Cutter would be the same way and then pushed the thought
out of my head, along with the promise I’d made his father days before. Somehow
I was conveniently good at pretending it didn’t exist, despite the guy who had
pretty much just threatened to kill me if I didn't get a move on with it soon.

 
I was going to have to tell Cutter about
promising to have his baby.

The longer I put it off the worse it
was going to be.

Yet, there I was, still justifying why
I hadn’t yet.

“Hello!” I slammed the door shut
behind us. “Mom? Alexis? I’m home!” The house was silent, too silent. It
reminded me of the night I had walked into the bar those weeks ago to meet who
I thought was Ace. Heather took a step forward but I shook my head, placing my
head on her wrist.

Something wasn’t right.

“What?” Heather looked alarmed.

“Something’s off,” I whispered.

A second later my sister came bursting
out of the kitchen and threw herself into my arms. “Grace! Oh, Grace! Where
have you been? We’ve been so worried!” Her long hair flowed around her body and
fell against my neck. “I’ve tried to call you like a million times!”

“I know, I know,” I muffled into her
hair. “I’m sorry, some things have been going on.” I tried to pull away from
her but she clutched onto me even tighter, refusing to let me go.

“I’d say some things have been going
on,” Heather muttered.

Alexis pulled away from me and glanced
at Heather. “Hello.”

“What’s up?” Heather shot her a smile.
“I’m Heather.”

It hit me how pretty she was when she
actually smiled.

“Alexis.” She glanced over her
shoulder toward the kitchen. “Grace, what have you done wrong?” She tightened
her grip on my wrist, a worried look on her face. “There’s a cop in our kitchen
looking for you.”

A cop? I looked at Heather, panicked.
It had to be because of what had happened the other night with Cutter when he
had beaten the shit out of that cop. He was right, the cop didn’t let it go and
now they were here looking for me to tote me off to jail!

“He’s in the kitchen right now?” I
whispered.

“Yes!” She gasped. “Moms feeding him
cookies and coffee!”

Heather wasted no time opening the
door and motioning Ace inside.

“Alexis.” I put my hands on her
shoulders and squeezed as tight as I could. “No matter what happens it’s really
important that you trust me and keep your mouth shut unless I tell you to speak
and when you get the chance you tell mom the same thing. Do you understand me?”
It was alarming how much I sounded like Cutter.

“Gracie,” she mouthed my childhood
nickname. “You’re scaring me.”

“Just trust me.”

“I trust you.”

Ace and
Heather
reappeared in the doorway at the same time my mother and a man in a light brown
tailored suit emerged in the hallway. The man was older with gray hair and a
thick mustache. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and what looked like a mouth
full of cookies.

My mother looked like someone had run
over our childhood dog. I hated myself for the stress and worry that was
written over her face at the sight of me. My poor mother, she wasn’t getting
any younger, she didn’t need this kind of thing going on in her life.

“Grace?” The man asked, holding his
free hand out to me. “Detective Lance Orangemen. I was hoping that you would
have some time to answer a few questions for me.”

I glanced down at his hand then
reached out slowly to shake it.

Ace pushed my hand away and shoved
himself forward. “What is this regarding?” He and Heather both looked like they
were dealing with the scum of the earth; I let myself fall back so they could
take the lead. I pulled my little sister along with me.

“Are you her attorney?” Lance smirked.
“Cause it’s privileged.”

“Can I see your arrest warrant then?”
Ace asked him.

Did he say arrest warrant? My mother’s
eyes grew wide. I felt so ashamed. Was I really going to be taken out in
handcuffs from my childhood home in front of my baby sister and mom?

I immediately wished Cutter was with
me.

Lance looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“Oh.” Ace nodded. “You don’t have one?
Well, tell you what, why don’t you come back when you do and we can talk then?”
He turned around and opened the front door. “Until then we don’t have anything
to say.”

Lance didn’t move for a second, sizing
Ace up, but after a second he handed the cup of coffee to my mother and licked
the cookie crumbs off his lips. He reached into his pocket and held his card
out to me as he passed. “Call me if you change your mind, Grace, I’m trying to
help you get out in front of this thing.”

Ace intercepted the card and tore it
in half, letting the pieces fall to the floor. “She’s not interested in
anything you have to say, now get the fuck out of her house.”

“Real classy group of guys you hang
around with, darling.” He looked at me closely. “There’s video, Grace, it’s
only a matter of time before that cop snaps out of it and talks. If you work
with me, I can make sure you get a good deal, don’t go down for something your
boyfriend did.”

“OUT,” Ace snapped. “BEFORE I THROW
YOU OUT.”

“These kind of guys never change,
remember that.”

Ace slammed the door shut behind him.
“Asshole.”

My mom clutched her heart.

“Sorry,” Ace mumbled.

“Hi! I’m Heather!” Heather announced,
smiling as she took a step closer to my mother. “It’s great to meet you!” She
put her arm around Alexis’s shoulder and pulled her closer to her small frame.
“Your daughters are absolutely beautiful.”

My mother looked back and forth
between Heather and me. Then her eyes fell on Ace. She took in his long dark
hair, broad chest, and arm full of tattoos. Next, her eyes traveled down his
muscular body and landed on his thick black boots and leather biker pants. The
outline of his gun was evident through his t-shirt.

My mother gasped. “Oh, Gracie. Gracie,
what have you done?”

And then her eyes rolled back in her
head and she fell to the floor.

“Wonderful,” Ace muttered.

Chapter Five

CUTTER

I was livid.

No, I was beyond livid. I’d almost
fought everybody in the fucking committee meeting once they had put it to a
vote and pretty much made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to be involved in
Stone’s takedown at all. Blaze had to pretty much take me out of the warehouse
kicking and screaming while he took all my guns hostage so I didn’t do anything
drastic.

I didn’t give a fuck. Grace was my
girl I should be the one to go.

The fucking cops weren’t going to do
shit.

Blaze drove along the back roads of
our turf. He’d taken the long way around the city back home so that I had some
time to calm down. I didn’t want to calm down, I felt worked up. What I really
wanted to do was get home and fuck the shit out of Grace.

Sounded like a great way to get rid of
some stress to me.

The thought of me spreading her pussy
apart and shoving my dick inside of her made my junk so fucking hard that I was
tempted to tell Blaze to pull over so I could go off and jerk the fuck off
while I thought about her. She was so fucking sexy.

Apparently some asshole cop had paid
her mom a visit and gotten everyone all worked up at her house. I wasn’t
worried about it, Blaze had already put a call into one of our contacts in
blue, telling him to do what the fuck he needed to do to get his hands on that
tape and destroy it.

And the cop’s wallet was still burning
a hole in my safe just in case he needed a little more motivation to keep his
mouth shut about what had gone down that night.

Now all we could do was wait and hope
that our man panned out.

In the mean time if anyone came near
Grace again it was going to be the last thing they did. My adrenalin was pumping
so high that I felt like my mind was going to explode if I didn’t get some
relief soon.

“You know I’m not going to walk out of
there without him,” Blaze said.

“Not about that, Blaze, and you know
it. This should be on me. I’m the one who wants to keep her. I’m the one who
owns her. It’s my fight that I brought the brotherhood into, the least I can do
is head up the fucking team on the fucking mission.”

I knew I was saying fuck every other
second but I didn’t give a fuck.

I didn’t give a fuck about anything
except getting home and pounding the hell out of Grace while she looked up at
me and moaned like the good girl she was, my good girl.

Blaze shook his head. “Hey, you know
how it is. If one of us has a problem, we all have a problem. You didn’t drag
us into it, we walked into it when we chose this life, when we picked the
brotherhood over anything else.” He pulled over into a parking lot and cut the
engine.

“Thanks, Blaze, but we both know
that’s not how it is where Grace is concerned. She’s my responsibility.” I
looked around the empty parking lot. “Why did we stop?”

“We’re meeting Ace,” Blaze said just
as a black car pulled up next to us.

“Who’s watching Grace?” I demanded.

“I put one of the other brothers on
her, relax, Ace said it was important.”

“It better be.”

Ace jumped out of his car and got into
the backseat of ours. “What’s good?” He rubbed both of his hands together,
letting the cold air off of him from his brief time outside.

“You tell us,” I snapped, annoyed. I
wasn’t having the best night and I still wasn’t that thrilled with Ace
considering everything that had gone on between him and Grace. She had sworn
nothing had happened between the two of them and I believed her, I knew she
wasn’t that type of girl, but the situation as a whole still pissed me off.

And he was an easy target for my rage
right now.

“Not to add salt to an open wound but
we have a situation I think we need to take care of.” He shifted nervously in
his seat. “Now I didn’t tell you this because I thought it was just street
gossip until today.”

I swung around in my seat, curious
now. “What is it?”

Ace glanced at Blaze. “It’s about
Heather.”

I relaxed a little bit. “Heather? What
about her?” I turned around, uninterested again. My little sister was too
boring to be involved in anything too crazy, she knew next to nothing about the
life we lived. My father and I had always been extra careful about shielding
her from all the bullshit we were involved in.

Unless it came to injuries, Heather
had taken some anatomy classes at the local college and was really good at
cleaning people up and giving stitches. It was actually pretty impressive how
fast she had managed to teach herself. I wasn’t sure it was completely sanitary
but none of us gave two shits about things like that.

“Is she okay?” Blaze asked Ace, his
eyes were focused on the glass in front of him, his hands twisting in and out
of his pockets as he emptied the contents of his pockets out in the center
counsel.

Ace shifted his feet up and down
slowly in the backseat, dragging out whatever he had to tell us until the last
possible second. “Depends on if you think hanging around with Criminal Reynolds
is okay or not.”

Blaze and I both spun around in our
seats.

“What the fuck did you just say?”
Blaze asked, his voice growing dark.

“Apparently, they’ve been spending
time together,” Ace said.

“Since when?” I demanded.

“What kind of time?” Blaze demanded.

“I don’t know, it must be pretty
recent because I just started hearing about it in the last week or so but
either way, it needs to be stopped. He’s not exactly the most honest kid and I
doubt he’s hanging with your sister for his health.” Ace cleared his throat.
“My boy spotted them down at village pizza about a half hour ago.”

Blaze through the car into drive and
peeled out.

“Are you telling me that my little
sister is sleeping with Criminal Reynolds, Ace, is that what you’re telling
me?” I clenched my fists up tightly. “I’ll kill him.”

“Not if I kill him first.” Blaze took
a sharp turn and sped up.

“I don’t think they’re having sex, she
claims they’re just good friends.”

“You’ve talked to her about this?” I
asked him, shocked.

“Earlier today.”

“You talked to her about it and she
still went to meet up with that fucking kid tonight?” Blaze sounded more pissed
off than I’d seen him in a while. “Unbelievable.”

“We need to be careful how we play
this, technically we’re riding into Misfit territory and bringing our problems
along with us.” Ace gestured for Blaze to take a right before he missed the
turn.

“No, he brought the problems with him
when he decided to put his hands on my little sister.” I reached across Blaze
and tried to lift my gun out of the other side of his jacket. “I can’t believe
no one told me about this shit earlier.”

I cursed myself for not paying better
attention to my sister lately. How long had this been going on for? Maybe she
was on to something when she bitched at me earlier about never calling her or
checking in on her enough, I’d just been so caught up in the Grace stuff
lately, and I’d figured my dad was still on top of things.

Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

Well, that was going to change. From
now on my little sister was going to be watched like a hawk, even if I had to
assign a personal guard to her so that she didn’t get herself into damn sticky
situations like this one. Spending time with a guy like Criminal, what was she
thinking?

Blaze pushed my hand away. “You don’t
need a gun right now, you’re still too worked up for that.” He slipped a fresh
magazine into his gun, jiggling the wheel back and forth with his knees to
steer.

“Yeah, getting out of the car in
Misfit turf is real smart with no gun.”

“You two are exaggerating.” Blaze
stopped in front of the pizza shop. “We’re on the edge of Misfit territory at a
dead pizza shop no one goes to except fucking losers. Hence, why he brought
Heather here, he probably wanted to make her feel special without actually
being seen with her.” He glanced out of the window, disgusted. “What a fucking
prick.”

I swung the door open, sick of talking
about it.

I wanted to take action.

I was at the door leading inside
within seconds; Blaze and Ace close behind me. The pizza shop was pretty dead
except for a few drifters and an older couple picking up their pizza. I scanned
the room until I spotted the back of my sister’s head in the far corner of the
building.

She was leaning over some video game,
Criminal standing in the back of her. He had his arms around her waist, trying
to show her how to make the shot. My blood started to boil.

Blaze followed my gaze and grew stiff
beside me. “Really? Trying to show her how to play a video game? That’s the
oldest trick in the book.” He shook his head. “What a pussy.”

“I’m going to snap his head off his
body.” I took off toward the two of them. The only thing I could see was red
and a light blur of white. He picked the wrong night and the wrong guy to piss
off.

As fast as I was, Blaze reached the
two of them first.

He tore Criminal’s hands off of
Heather in one hard tug, throwing Criminal’s body against the wall in the
process. “Who the fuck do you think you’re putting your hands on?” he growled.

My fist collided with his jaw within
seconds, knocking it out of place. The pain that shot through my hand made me
feel excited and thrilled, the anger of the last few hours started building up
inside of me even heavier than it already was and I knocked him across the face
a few more times.

I could hear my sister screaming,
climbing on my back. “No! Cutter! No! Please!” she begged, crying hysterically.
“He didn’t do anything, he’s just my friend!”

Blaze pulled her off me, holding her
back. “Your friend? He isn’t any friend of yours, Heather.” He picked her
kicking body up and lifted it over his head effortlessly. “I thought you were
smarter than that.”

Criminal looked up at me, not with
fear in his eyes, but with hate. A small smirk came across his face. “It’s
okay, Heather, everything is going to be okay.” He was talking to her but his
eyes were on me, only reinforcing what I already knew to be true. He didn’t
give two shits about my sister. This was all an attempt to get to me.

“You don’t talk to her.” I grabbed him
by the color of his jacket and yanked him closer to my face. “You aren’t
allowed to talk to her ever again.” I let go of him and smashed the back of his
head into the wall.

The blood that spilled out of his
wounds was a dark red, gushing down the back of his neck and all over his crisp
white t-shirt. The look of pain on his face and the rich smell of the liquid
made my insides jump.

This was exactly what I needed right
now.

The only thing that would be better
was Grace’s sweet cunt in my face.

I made the thought go away so I
wouldn’t get a fucking boner while I was beating the shit out of the creep that
put his hands anywhere on my sister’s body.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I could
hear Heather screaming somewhere behind me. “Criminal, are you okay? You’re
going to be okay, aren’t you? CUTTER! CUTTER! STOP!”

“Get her out of here.” Blaze spat out,
handing my sister’s body over to Ace. “Put her in the car, she shouldn’t be
around for this.” Blaze watched Ace walking away with her, shaking his head
back and forth.

“I HATE YOU!” She told him. “I HATE
YOU!”

“You hate me now,” he told her.
“You’ll thank me later.”

“I’ll never forgive you guys for
this,” she said tearfully. “Do you hear me? You’re both dead to me!” She was
pounding on the back of Ace like she was criminal being carted away to jail
against her will as the door swung shut behind them.

Blaze was back beside me within
seconds, cracking his knuckles back and forth as he looked down at Criminal.
“Did you touch her?” His voice was serious, soft but laced with evil.

Criminal spat a mouth full of blood
out onto the floor and shrugged. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he paused and
tilted his head up toward Blaze. “But let’s just say she has a really soft
touch if you know what I mean.”

Blaze lost his cool, pulling him away
from me and throwing his body into the pool table on the other side of the
room. A bunch of balls went flying everywhere and glasses shattered on the
floor.

The few people who were inside that
hadn’t taken off already ran out the door, not wanting to stick around for any
trouble. I glanced behind the counter to make sure the owner wasn’t going to
call the cops but if the guy standing there was concerned about Criminal, he
didn’t show it. I was guessing he was a little tired of Misfits coming into his
shop and causing trouble for everyone. It was probably nice to see one of them
getting a taste of their own medicine for once.

I would cut him a check for the damage
later.