Naked Dirty Love (17 page)

Chapter Ten

Kyra

“S
weetie, can you help me with this?”

I looked away from speaking to Bronaugh, coming face to face with Gisela. She held the twins’ bassinets, one in each hand. Daire and Rori were a handful already; thank God she had us to help her out.

I scrunched up my face. “Again? What the hell are you feeding them, Sela? I swear, how much poop can two infants produce?”

She rolled her eyes and looked at the two small babies who were barely a month old. “What are you talking about? They get breast milk and that’s it! At this age, all they do is eat, sleep, and shit.”

Bronaugh walked over and smacked her on the shoulder playfully. “Those are me grandbabies you’re talkin’ about. I’ll go change the wee ones—you two get caught up.”

She grabbed one of the bassinets while Cell, aka Dillon O’Neal, the newest member of Lucifer’s Saints, grabbed the other and walked with her inside of the compound.

It was a festive occasion.

The twins’ baptism had just taken place and following the blessed occasion, a club celebration for the members, their old ladies, and children. The outdoor stereo system blasted pop songs since all the brothers were all tied up with chapel. Although it wasn’t the most ideal day for it to take place, everyone understood that since the night High Lights was bombed, nothing would ever be the same.

Despite tangible evidence and statements from both Gisela and I, the club was under a heavy guise of suspicion for months. The club hadn’t been completely destroyed; it sustained more water and smoke damage than anything else. Only a handful of fatalities and twenty serious injuries were miraculously reported.

The victims and their families were paid off quickly by the cartel to avoid any publicity. The LAPD questioned both members of the Saints and
Aztecas Infierno
but after an exhaustive search that yielded nothing by the Fire Department, the blaze was determined to be an accident due to faulty wiring.

Through it all, my faith in Trey never waivered, no matter what happened. As soon as we got back to Northern Nevada, I told my father we were officially together. My dad, furious with me and absolutely livid with Trey, barred me from the Bastards’ clubhouse unless I was there on behalf of club business. Within a day, I went from having a family of people I could depend on to having no one except the man I loved.

I had to hand it to Bronaugh, Naomi, Chantal, Lacey, Misty, and my best friend. They took me in and, from day one, I was considered a Saints’ old lady despite my past affiliations to the Demon’s Bastards. My dad made it clear to everyone I’d been tossed out of the club and I was not welcome back. As far as he was concerned, the Saints could keep me, kill me, or toss me out on my ass again.

Those were some of the hardest months of my life. Trey needed me to be strong for him and, most days, I felt weak as cat shit. I cried a lot, sulked around home and the office, managed to get work done, but not nearly as much as I usually accomplished. Shortly after February, Trey told me the truth about what he and his mother spoke about that afternoon at Starbucks. I agreed it would be our secret and no one would ever know, not even Gisela. For the first time in my life, my best friend didn’t know everything going on in my life.

I believed in what he was doing and, after the carnage I’d seen
Aztecas Infierno
inflict that night, I was firmly in his corner. It was obvious to us none of the cartels could be trusted as far as we could throw them. It was an obvious mistake by the club to do business with them in the first place.

Trey would never betray the Bastards—despite what my father had done to me—but we both knew his loyalty lay firmly with the Saints. If the government only wanted information about the cartel and the Koslakov family, we would give it to them.

We’d even come up with a little system where I checked the safety deposit boxes instead him since I looked much less conspicuous. Of course Eve busted us immediately and left me a sarcastic note, asking whether she should get me an American passport and a British passport too under the name of Briseis Lipton. The joke would have been lost on anyone else other than a movie geek like me who knew it was the name of Achilles’ lover in the film,
Troy
.

Three weeks later, on a routine trip to the safety deposit box where I dropped off a manila envelope full of information about the cartel, I found cash in various currencies and two passports, both with my picture and my new name. I realized she wasn’t kidding after all.

After what felt like months, the club was cleared by the Los Angeles Police Department. It came just in time too because Hardy and Ronan had been cleared to replace the current Vegas chapter Prez and VP who wanted to retire in Southern California. Their force majeure came in the form of Linx, Trista’s husband and Trey’s sister. Winter’s Regret, Linx’s rock band, had signed a deal that would take them to Las Vegas where they’d be performing exclusively for one of the top hotel-casinos on the Strip.

It was late May and spring was in the air. There had been a few incidents of violence between the Saints and
Aztecas Infierno
in California and southern Nevada but it remained relatively quiet in our neck of the woods. The drug dealers the cartel had sent to Northern Nevada had not been well received by any of the residents of Pine Bluff or Birch Tree.

Most of the young men who were caught selling were immediately arrested and received stiff prison sentences due to their proximity to the Tri-Cities area. It was a noticeable calm before the storm and although we all should have felt relieved, I—like everyone else—was on edge. We all felt cagey, afraid, aware, and anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. No war had ever been so quiet until it wasn’t and everything changed, always for the worse and never the better.

“Are you all right?” Gisela asked, shattering both my frayed nerves and scattered thoughts.

I tried to hide my apprehensive mood behind an Award-winning smile. “Of course. I’m just…a bit worried, that’s all. Chapel couldn’t wait until tomorrow? I mean, what the hell is taking them so long? What
are
they talking about?”

She laughed. “You’re
kidding
, right? Men gossip more than women do. Besides, it’s not like they’re in any hurry. Yes, the party is, officially, for the twins but they don’t even know what’s going on, sweetie. Mainly, it’s for us. We’ve been through a lot in the past year and a half. We deserve to let our hair down and have some fun.”

“Especially you.” I grasped my best friend’s hands and held them in my own. “You’ve been through so damn much and look at you! Almost as skinny as you were before you had the twins,
married
, and the future club Prez’s old lady. I’m so proud of you.”

Gisela rolled her eyes. “It’s all in a day’s work and, to be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love Cillian so much and he loves me. He’d die to keep me safe and so would every other man here because we protect our own. I know…what happened between you and your dad was tough but you’re family now. You’ll always have a place here regardless what happens between you and Trey. None of us would leave you out in the cold. Your place in this club is
not
contingent on your relationship with Trey.”

“I know,” I replied in a soft voice.

“Well then, what the hell are we doing? We’re just sittin’ here talking shit. I pumped enough milk for the twins to last them all day and night—I wanna get my drink on! Come on, let’s go grab a few drinks. Poor Cell was a prospect for so long before he got patched in, he knows how to make a mean dirty martini. Let’s go have a couple or five—each!”

Gisela and I walked into the clubhouse and sat at the bar where Chantal and a very pregnant Lacey were also seated. The young woman looked miserable as she nursed a strawberry margarita on the rocks.

“Lacey, if you don’t stop drinking, you’re gonna end up having a baby with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” Gisela chastised coldly. “I know the last few months have been tough but drinking and smoking while you’re carrying another human being is
not
the way to handle it.”

She rolled her eyes. “What the fuck do you care, huh? This is my baby and I can do whatever the hell I want with my body. You fuckers dragged me away from Carlito—what the hell did you think would happen? I’d be happy and yell with joy about how I was ‘free at last?’ He wasn’t holding me against my will. I was with him because I wanted to be!”

Chantal wrapped an arm around her best friend. “She’s okay, Gisela. I promise I’ll make sure she gets some food into her. She’s just depressed, that’s all—”

“
Depressed?
I’m fucking
miserable
here, trapped on this shitty fucking compound while everyone else goes about their daily life like nothin’ happened! What about me? I’m stuck here, without a man, expecting a kid no one wants me to have. I’ve got no fiancé and no future! How the hell else am I supposed to feel?” she wailed dramatically.

Gisela rolled her eyes. “Boo-fuckin’-hoo, Lacey. Put your big girl panties on and grow the fuck up! You wanna be an adult and play Bonnie to your Latino Clyde? Own up to what you did and face the fact that you’ll soon have responsibilities. If you’re not gonna do that, then just leave. Call Carlito and tell him to come pick you the fuck up because no one here should have to deal with your shit!”

Lacey glared at Gisela in anger before she looked away and began to cry again.

I looked over at Cell, who’d taken a place behind the bar for our benefit. “Tell the prospect to cut this one off and can you make two dirty martinis for Gisela and me? To go.”

“No problem, ladies.” He smiled and got to work as I looked over my best friend’s shoulder. She looked through photos taken on a digital camera from the Baptism.

“They’re so beautiful, aren’t they? Look at Rori, she doesn’t look a damn thing like me. Those eyes are definitely her dad’s and that smile, she’s a female version of Cillian.”

“What about little Daire? He’s completely hairless and what color are his eyes?”

“Blue-green, the same color as my mother’s. He looks completely like her side of the family. My poor dad—he got shafted again. Neither one of the twins look like they share any genetics with him.”

I stared down at the little infants, fair-skinned and gorgeous, they were opposites in every way other than skin color. Rori had her father’s soft brown hair that would probably fall out, and go through a myriad of colors before she settled into her adolescent hair color. Daire didn’t look like either one of his parents with his angelic features and bow-shaped mouth.

“Life’s not fair.” I grabbed the digital camera and looked through the photos. “You have these absolutely beautiful children and I bet you anything, when I have my first kid with Trey, he or she will have my red hair, fair skin, and freckles. I’d like just one of my children to come out with his gorgeous hazel-green eyes. It would be nice to see a child I helped to create with an eye color other than blue, you know?”

“Mmm,
when
you have a child by Trey? I didn’t realize you two were trying but congrats. I’m glad to know you two are both ready for that.”

Cell whistled at us as he set down our dirty martinis. I handed the camera back to Gisela and she placed it in her Louis Vuitton handbag as we walked out of the clubhouse.