KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (3 page)

Chapter
Four

The voices in the trailer were a mix of masculine,
barely hushed, and feminine, loud enough to brawl.

“I told you to get the fuck out of here,” Mina yelled,
followed by an exasperated grunt.

“C’mon, Mina, we’ve known each other forever. Don’t
tell me you’re interested in some other asshole.”

“It’s none of your business who I’m interested in,
Jenner. The only thing
your
sorry ass
needs to know is that I’m not interested in you,” Mina hissed.

Cristov, Damon, and Kennick exchanged looks, waiting
right outside.

“Let me just…oof!”

The door swung open and Jenner Surry stumbled forward,
holding his gut in both hands. Mina’s face appeared behind him, fury painting
her cheeks red, her green eyes flashing.

“Fuckin’ lowlife,” Cristov sneered at the doubled-over
man, who met his glare with one of his own.

“Screw off, Volanis,” Jenner said, slightly breathless
but regaining himself quickly.

“Leave our sister alone,” Kennick said, looking
steadily at the man. Jenner was about thirty, brown-eyed and blonde-haired,
tall and wide – but Cristov and Kennick towered over him, and Damon’s muscles
put Jenner’s to shame.

“She’s doing a good enough job taking care of that
herself,” Jenner said, rising to his full height. “Bitch won’t ever get married
with that attitude.”

Damon advanced, fists tense already, but Kennick held
him back with a hand on his arm.

“What’s your angle, anyway, Jenner? Think that if you
marry Mina you’ll be able to wrangle Kennick’s title?” Cristov asked, spitting
on the ground. “That’s not how that shit works.”

“I don’t need to marry a Volanis to get what I
deserve,” Jenner huffed. “But you
boys
would
be mighty grateful to still be in the family when it happens.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Mina
shrieked from the doorway.

“What you deserve,” Kennick smirked. “You’ve got a
problem with perspective. From where I’m standing, you deserve
something,
but it’s not a chance at
rom baro.”

“You’re gonna fuck this up, Kennick,” Jenner said,
moving within punching distance of the man. “We should never have come here. I
wouldn’t have dragged the whole
kumpania
to
the one damn town we shouldn’t be in, just to settle some dead man’s score.”

Damon bristled again, and caught Cristov’s eye.
 
A smile spread across Cristov’s face as
he moved behind Jenner, out of his line of vision, and crouched down.

“Keep talking, Jenner,” Kennick hissed, seeing his
brothers’ movements and approving. “You keep on talking about dead men, I dare
you.”

Jenner took another half-step forward, and Cristov
shuffled in close.

“Your fuckin’ father may have been halfway decent
leading our clans,” Jenner hissed, “but we need a new chain of command. Surry’s
been in this
kumpania
just as long as
Volanis. About time you saw your reign’s running out. You’ll see. First time
these townies get the taste of gypsy in their mouths, it’ll be a damn war zone.
And you’ll be the one to blame. You and your woman-murdering daddy.”

That was all Damon needed. Pushing past Kennick, he
advanced, and Jenner instinctively shrank from the massive form closing in on
him. The back of his knees met Cristov’s body as he knelt behind Jenner, and
when Damon pushed hard on Jenner’s shoulders, he lost his balance, toppling
over Cristov and slamming into the ground with a grunt. Cristov scrambled to
his feet, cleaning the dirt from his hands by slapping them together. Jenner
sneered, red on his cheeks, before getting up, haggard from having the wind
knocked out of him.

“You…” he said, wagging a stiff finger at the three
brothers, shaking with pure fury. “You’re gonna fuck it up. I don’t have to do shit.
Just sit back and wait.”

“Do that on your own time, fuckwad,” Cristov said.

“And leave me alone,” Mina chimed in, a wicked smile
on her cherubic face. Jenner straightened his shoulders, throwing them back as
he turned and stalked away, hiding the pain in his lower back – though not very
well.

“Dick,” Damon muttered.

Kennick merely shook his head.

“This is bad news, boys,” he said. “Division like
this…it’s not good for our
kumpania.
We
don’t need to lose sight that we’re all one. Maybe I should have…”

“Don’t,” Damon interrupted. “If it was a Surry whose
name needed to be cleared, you would have brought us here, anyway. Jenner
doesn’t understand that. But you know his
familia
would be embarrassed to hear what he’d just said to us. He’s the only bad
blood.”

“For how long,” Kennick wondered aloud. “How long ‘til
he gets his fingers into them…”

“They’ll stick by you the way they stuck by our
father. You know, no one really
wanted
to
come here.
You
didn’t even want to
come here. But everyone agreed to – for Pieter. For you. For us. Jenner…he’s
not a team player. He’d lead this
kumpania
right into hell if it was in his own best interest.”

“Still,” Kennick said, looking at the last trailer in
the park, set right next to the woods. “We need his cousins for the plants.”

“We don’t,” Cristov scoffed. “I got that covered,
Nick.”

Cristov was the only one who ever called Kennick by
his childhood name, Nick.

“And Sam and Nal aren’t exactly Jenner’s biggest
fans,” Mina pointed out. Sam and Nal Surry were Cristov’s right-hand men when
it came to tending their stock of medicinal products. Cristov grew it, and Mina
prepared it into teas and edibles. It was high-quality, medicinal grade
product, and it beat shit out of the synthetics that were flooding the market.
Synthetics were dangerous, the exact opposite of medicine. There was no
question; most of the buyers weren’t exactly looking to cure their rheumatoid
arthritis, but at least they wouldn’t get addicted and go insane because of the
chemicals and impurities of low-grade synths.

“You worry too much,” Cristov said. “Aren’t we
supposed to be getting ready to go?”

Kennick grunted and nodded, but his mind was still
stuck on Jenner's accusations. It was true, there had been some reluctance when
Kennick pressed the issue of coming to Kingdom. The town, small and rural, had
left a bad taste in many a mouth. But it had been agreed, in the end, that it
would be right and just to fulfill Pieter's final wish.

He remembered the growing unease he'd felt as the caravan
of trailers approached the town. With a population just under 10,000, the whole
town of Kingdom seemed like it was on the outskirts. Small farms dotted the
Delaware landscape before yielding to a more suburban area of one-story
shotguns and split levels. The town's schools, one elementary school and one
high school, sat kitty-corner to each other just off the main road.

Two miles down, the suburban part of town broke open
onto a small Main Street that was more shuttered than not. Kennick had done his
research in advance, already making offers on a number of properties to lease
in the town center as well as further out towards the highway. But reading
about Kingdom's bleak financial state paled in comparison to seeing it: it
looked like a ghost town in the making. Of the few shops that still looked to
be open, most were actually bars or pubs.

All the same, it was still a rather beautiful town.
The large swaths of forest that surrounded the town, edging into every
backyard, were lush and green in the early summer heat. Two streams sandwiched
the town between them, now running fast and high with the spring's abundant
rainfall.

The storefronts on Main Street were charmingly
old-fashioned, and despite the dust and “for lease” signs in the windows, there
was a hint of what had once been lingering in each one. Many of the now-defunct
businesses still had hanging signs that declared the ghosts of themselves on
antique wood and chipping paint: “Kristy's Stationery and General Store”, “All
You Want Hardware”, “Ricotta and Basil: Fine Italian Dining”. A tiny library
tucked between a still-open frame shop and a closed-down butcher shop gaily
advertised a summer reading program.

The municipal buildings at the end of Main Street, of
which there were two, screamed small town. All white exterior, white columns,
white balustrades. The Town Hall appeared to also house the DMV, Town Clerk,
Post Office, Mayor's Office, Town Council, and just about every other possible
government office one could imagine, while the courthouse next door doubled as
the police station. A single poster hanging from a streetlight outside the town
hall invited readers to the weekly farmer's market, held in a small park
nestled between Main Street and the woods that began not four blocks away.
 

Out past the main street, the town grew slightly more
industrial, and far less charming. There were a few car repair shops, a pawn
shop, some office buildings and advertisements for an insurance agency, a
pediatrician, and a tax agent. A diner called Sid's boasted a whopping six cars
in its parking lot and promised, on its retro-style sign, “Best Eats 'Til
Dover”.

And then the town dwindled again, houses few and far
between, and it was here, just before the town ended entirely, that the
kumpania
had made their new home, in the
very same trailer park that Pieter Volanis had brought his caravan to thirty
years prior.

The gypsies made quick work of clearing up the place,
which had fallen into a sorry state in the few decades since they'd last
occupied it. With a bustle of energy and loud music to accompany their labors,
they set up a new home for themselves in the span of an afternoon. There was
business to attend to, applications to fill out, shipments from vendors to
check on, connections to be made, and a bevvy of other responsibilities, all
doled out to whomever was ready, willing, and able to lend a hand.

Even the oldest and youngest members of the
kumpania
made themselves useful. The
unease lingered amongst the different families that made up the caravan, but
they covered it with cooperation, companionship, and, at the very end of their
first day, a party fit to raise the dead.

And, in effect, wasn't that the whole idea of
returning to Kingdom? They would raise the dead, and demand the truth. Be it
whispered or shouted, it would be heard. And then they would be free.

Chapter
Five

The mayor was already well-situated by the time Kim
arrived at the bar. By the smell of his breath and the woozy appearance of his
eyes, he was quite well-situated indeed. He sat at a table near the bar with
four men, all of whom were business owners or employees in the town hall. Kim
would be the only woman. That was not unusual. Ordering a beer from the
bartender, she hoisted herself into an empty stool at the Mayor’s side.

“Kimmy! You made it! But you already have a beer. Bad
girl, I told you
I
was buying,” Mayor
Gunderson said with mock disapproval.

“You can get the next one, Tom,” she said, slipping
into a more casual lingo now that they were out of the office. Across the
table, Paul Tiding was smiling at her, and she respectfully returned it,
wishing heartily that he wasn’t there. Paul, who worked for the town council,
had been trying to get into her pants for years. She was not interested, and as
often as she told him so, he never stopped trying. He was persistent. She
supposed, in some people, that was an admirable trait.

Ed Kerry, owner of the town’s only supermarket, Phil
Topher, banker at First Delaware, and Bob Talkee, council member, made up the
rest of their little party. From the look that Bob was giving her, Kim knew she
was less than welcome at their informal round table. He was of the old order,
and didn’t see what place women had in a bar, with men, talking politics. Or
anything else, for that matter. Kim sipped her beer, staring daggers right back
at him, though her anxiety yanked at her stomach and begged her just to go home
and leave it be.

“So, what’s up?” Kim asked, her voice giving no
indication to her discomfort. She hoped their conversation would somehow allow
her to discuss the business proposals she’d spent the last two hours going
over. They excited her. Well, most of them did, anyway.

There had been seven applications in total. Some were
quite traditional. A hair and nail salon, a tattoo parlor, a cheese shop. The
last one had particularly interested Kim; there wasn’t another cheese shop
between Kingdom and Dover, and she knew that the richer towns nearby were full
of yuppies and well-to-do people who would probably come out just to pick up a
nice gruyere.

The application to open a veterinary practice had
surprised her, but she thought it, too, would help attract business to the
town. She wasn’t quite sure what an “exotic grocery” was, but there was an
application for that as well, and it described a shop that would specialize in
imports of caviar, cured meats, wines and coffees, among other things.

The only application that had made her pause was the
last in the pile: a strip club. She didn’t know if
that
one would make it very far past the Town Clerk, but deep down
she knew…it would draw money to Kingdom, too.

She was excited. Even if they
were
gypsies, all of the myths and legends about the famous nomads
couldn’t be true. It was the modern day; they weren’t baby-stealing,
fortune-telling, swindlers anymore. Hell, there was even that reality show on
TLC about gypsies. And if they were so invested in opening businesses in the
town, they must have some idea about sticking around. Even if only for a year
or two, the amount of money that they could bring in for the town might help
stave off the swiftly-falling debt ceiling for another decade.

She couldn’t wait to tell Mayor Gunderson and the rest
of the men. Especially that asshole Bob. This time, he wouldn’t be able to say
shit about a woman not contributing something meaningful to the conversation.

“Gossip,” Ed said, leaning in slightly, a smile on his
mouth. Ed Kerry was probably the only openly gay man in the town’s upper
echelon of business owners and government officials, and he made no attempt to
hide his flamboyant side, much to Bob Talkee's quiet, but clear, disdain.

“Bad gossip,” Mayor Gunderson cut in, a scowl on his
face, his mood changing quickly in that way only drunks and people with bipolar
disorder have.

“Seems like we’ve got some new residents,” Phil
explained, taking a deep swill of his beer. “Gypsies.”

“Oh,” Kim said, only somewhat unhappy that she hadn’t
been able to bring that revelation to the table. She also wasn’t happy about
the Mayor’s immediate attitude on the subject. She’d never counted him as much
of a bigot, but then again, they’d never had a gypsy invasion in town. At
least, not while she’d been alive and working for him. “I know. I met some of
them today.”

“You did?” Ed asked, his interest peaking. “How did
that
happen? What were they like?”

“Three men came by with some business applications,”
Kim said, happy to see that even Bob was listening to her with all his
attention. “They’re going to be opening about seven new places in town. And
they were – well, normal, I guess.”

Normal and
God-help-me hot,
she thought, blushing at her own mind. She hadn’t been
able to forget Kennick’s face, his impressive stature, the way his lips spread
in a grin that seemed damn inviting. It made her feel hot under the collar just
remembering it. She hadn’t been so immediately attracted to a man since high
school, when she’d fostered a raging crush on the school’s lacrosse star, Cal
Strongbow.

“New businesses?” Mayor Gunderson sneered. “We don’t
need their dirty money.”

Kim frowned. They sure as hell
did
need their money – dirty or not.

“Actually, it all seemed pretty straight up,” she said
after taking a sip of her beer. “They completed all the applications
meticulously. And, honestly, the businesses they’re planning could do
wonders
for Kingdom. You know, a
veterinary practice, an importers, cheese shop.”

Kim purposely left out the tattoo parlor and the strip
club. It didn’t seem the right time to introduce
those
trickier subjects.

“I doubt they’ll be planning to employ any locals
though,” Phil interjected. “Those people like to keep the money in their own
pockets.”

“Even so,” Kim said, pointedly, “people just
travelling through will want to stop and pick up some cheese, or foreign coffee
or whatever. And there’s not another cheese shop between Starling and Dover.
Anyone in, like, Hamilton Falls or Springtown will want to come and shop
there.”

“So?” Mayor Gunderson said, petulant as a child.

“So…even if they keep all the profits and don’t employ
any locals, they still have to shop here, and go to school here, and pay taxes
here.”

“They probably don’t even pay taxes,” Bob said dourly,
apparently riding Mayor Gunderson’s pessimism train.

Kim only shrugged, feeling disappointed in the cold
reception her good news was getting. She’d hoped these men could put aside
their prejudices to be happy about something –
anything
– happening in their soon-to-be-broke town.

“Well, I think it’ll be interesting,” Ed said,
clapping Mayor Gunderson on the back. “You should look at the bright side,
Tom.”

“What bright side?” he sneered. “I know what those
dirty, lying fuckers are capable of more than any of you. I was on the force
last time they decided to come and screw things up here in Kingdom. Last time
gypsies landed in Kingdom, someone died. Or have you all forgotten that?”

The mood at the table changed immediately, turning
cold as Mayor Gunderson swallowed the last of his beer and gazed around, fixing
each individual in a cold – albeit somewhat dazed – stare.

“Of course, Tom,” Ed said softly, removing his hand
from the Mayor’s back. “Of course we remember.”

“You know damn well that I remember,” Bob chimed in,
his tone gruffer than usual. Kim looked at him; he was staring into his glass
like it had just insulted his mother.

“Good,” Mayor Gunderson said. He looked over at Kim’s
nearly-empty beer, his face softening slightly. “Ready for me to buy you a beer
now, Kimmy?”

“Sure, Tom,” she said, feeling a deep squirming
sensation in her stomach. She rarely saw her boss behave in such a way. Most of
the time, he was all smiles and things-will-be-alright aphorisms. “Sounds
great.”

He grunted as he rose, shambling towards the bar. The
moment he left, the table breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“I had no idea…” Kim said, feeling bad. She’d
forgotten that Mayor Gunderson had been a cop thirty years prior, when, as
legend had it, a gypsy had murdered a local woman. Apparently, though he’d
never spoken about it to her before, this was an old wound to him, and it was
being reopened now.

“He never got over that,” Phil said, shaking his head.
“Don’t know why, he just took it very personal. Half the reason he left the
force, in fact. Said he couldn’t sleep at night, knowing that he’d failed to
protect someone he was sworn to protect. Didn’t help that they couldn’t get
anything to stick on the bastard who did it.”

“You’re too young to know about any of that,” Bob
sneered, calling Kim out on her age. “But it really hurt our town. We’d never
had something like that happen before. It changed everything. Everyone. So
excuse us if we’re not too keen on letting a bunch of murders back into town
limits.”

Phil and Ed both gave Bob a sympathetic stare, but
when Paul moved to clap him on the back he shook it off wildly, taking a deep
gulp from his beer.

I doubt a
man who killed someone thirty years ago would come back to the place he’d done
it,
Kim thought.
We don’t
even know if this group is related to the one that came thirty years ago.

But she bit her tongue, feeling that this wasn’t the
time to act like a mediator. The one thing she did know was that the town
couldn’t afford to run off anyone who might be able to save it from utter ruin.

“I don’t know,” Ed said, giving voice to Kim’s
thoughts. “I just think we’re being rather quick to judge. Kimmy says they
might actually help us out…”

Two things happened at the same time as Ed’s sentence
trailed off. Mayor Gunderson returned with two beers and two shots, slamming
all four beverages down on the table. And the door opened, the sound of strange
laughter preceding the three figures who entered. Kim’s breath caught in her
throat as she saw the first man enter. Kennick. He was smiling distractedly as
his brothers filed in after him, his strong profile making her want to squirm
in her seat.

“Kimmy,” Mayor Gunderson said, snapping her attention
back to the table. He was holding one of the shots of whiskey and motioned with
his eyes to the one he’d put in front of her. Kim wasn’t much for strong
liquor, but the sudden arrival of the three men – who had no idea that they
were currently the topic of conversation – made her feel like a little liquid
courage might be in order. Maybe the taste would help her mouth stop watering.
She picked up the glass, smiling up at her boss.

“To finally getting you out of the damn office,” he
said, apparently forgetting the anger he’d so obviously felt just moments
before. They clinked glasses and took their shots, Kim nearly throwing hers
back up the moment it hit her throat, her reaction making the men laugh. She
burned red from the shot, and from being the butt of the joke – as usual.

“We’ll make a drinker of you yet, my dear,” Phil said,
reaching over to clap her on the back. Kimmy’s eyes swam as she looked up from
the empty glass. She saw Ed looking at the three men, who had bellied up to the
bar and were chatting with the bartender. Apparently, he saw the same thing
Kimmy had seen in them – holy hotness.

Ed’s stare attracted the rest of the party’s
attention, too, and slowly all eyes turned to the three men at the bar. The bartender
was leaning forward, seemingly entranced by what they were saying in low
voices. He laughed, pulled away, and uncapped three beers, placing one in front
of each man. They clinked glasses and drank as the bartender lined up a row of
shots.

“Wonder…” Mayor Gunderson said, softly, almost to
himself. Kim felt her stomach catch slightly. Did he guess? She hoped he would
take them for tourists or passers-through, or something else. As she watched,
Kennick shook off the flannel he’d been wearing. Tattoos danced up his arms,
covering every inch, it seemed. They were elaborate, geometrics designs; his
arms looked like the inside of a mosque. Kim turned back to the Mayor. His eyes
narrowed as he examined Kennick’s arms as intently as Kim had, but with growing
anger instead of lust.