“He’s what?!” Crown chokes out as a deep, heavy melancholy settles in my bones and I resist the urge to go back and look at my brother’s dead body. Is it possible to wish someone dead and then regret their death all at the same time? I’m not excited by Gaz’s death the way I once thought I’d be. I don’t feel smug at the thought of his passing the way he seemed to when he thought it was me that our father was going to shoot.
He smirked at me. He was an integral part of events that caused Queenie and Posey to die horrible deaths. Yet … I’m still mourning him. I’m mourning him, and I don’t understand my emotions at all. Shades of gray, Gidge. The world is painted in shades of gray. You are as gray as they come, just like your mean old daddy.
“He’s here; we need to find him before it’s too late.” I squeeze my lips into a grim line as I turn to look down the hallway. Problem one: antidote. Problem two: Grey. Problem three … hospital. Fuck. It’s hard to prioritize needs in a crisis, particularly when the men you love might … if they … I can’t go there. I just can’t.
If they’re on their way to the hospital, there’s nothing more I can do for them right now. I need to focus on the things that I can change, the lives that I can save, even if I’d rather be by their sides. They shouldn’t have to die alone if …
“We are not looking for or wasting our time on that mafia boy,” Crown hisses, putting his hands on my arms and leaning down to look into my face. He’s absolutely stunning. His eyes, that soft moss green, and that gently curled chocolate hair with the auburn highlights … I force myself to exhale. I’m so disoriented that my mind is wandering to inconsequential things. “I’ll do my best by you, and I won’t actively send out a team to hunt him. But I sure as hell am not wasting my time looking for him.”
I move to tear myself from Crown’s grip, but his fingers tighten infinitesimally on my arms, and it’s enough to hold my weakened form in place.
“Whether you help me or not, I’m looking for Grey, and I’m getting him off the compound. He risked his life to get in here to bring me the antidote.”
“You won’t be able to get Grey off the compound just now,” Beast muses from behind me, his large, warm hands settling on my waist. Between him and Crown, I feel myself being grounded, just like that stupid fern, planting my roots into the base of a very large, very sturdy tree. The entire world feels like a hectic whirlwind, a violent storm. I make myself find the eye of it, searching out that eerie calm inside of myself and letting it stop the swirling around me.
Gaz is dead; I am not.
I have to embrace that now and question Cat’s motives later.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Crown asks, his face disturbingly clean and free of soot. Free of blood. He doesn’t look like he was in an altercation of any kind. He’s the only one of us that looks like that. So where was he? What the fuck was he doing? “You’re going along with this shit?” He stands up, sliding his palms down my arms in a way that makes me shiver.
Crown acts like he isn’t sure about our relationship, but I don’t think that’s it at all.
He wants me. He knows that. I was meant to be his wife. He just doesn’t know how to work out the logistics of sharing me. I can feel that in the way he touches me right now, in the way he refuses to remove his hands from my upper arms.
“Have you met my wife?” Beast drawls, stepping closer to me, his huge form a comforting presence at my back. “She’s stubborn as hell; she won’t accept any less.” His voice softens slightly, and I can feel his breath stir my hair as he places a kiss against the top of my skull. “Besides,” Beast drawls, lifting his head up and letting those long, lazy vowels lasso around Crown’s neck like a noose. “We already fucked up once by letting her out of our sight today; we owe her this.”
Crown curses, releasing me and running his fingers through his hair.
“We need to make sure that Cat gives out as many injections as possible,” I continue, pointing down the hallway where my father disappeared. “If we don’t, people will start dying; they’ve only got thirty minutes.”
“The Grey Wolfe boy might’ve brought you a small dose of that crap, but he wouldn’t know that we already have it,” Crown says, looking up at Beast before redirecting his gaze back to me. “We got the test results back from our FBI informant; then we had an independent lab craft a separate drug to counter the effects of the first. We just got the initial batch in today.”
My eyes widen in response to that, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Using the FBI’s lab not only guarantees the best possible results, but now the feds know the special breed of drug they’re looking for—and who, exactly, is responsible for it.
I would not be surprised if I were to get a visit from the feds, although it’s possible that Death by Daybreak’s pet is keeping my name off the books. Who knows?
“If Cat knows that …” I trail off and swipe my hands down my face. I’m trembling, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Yep, yep, definitely in shock. That, and my face hurts. My goddamn fucking everything hurts. But I imagine it’s mostly bruises; Beast’s body shielded me from the worst of the explosion. I glance back at him, but even though he’s more bloodied than I am, he stands there like an immortal force, something impenetrable and eternal, a pillar of strength. “Okay, so if he knows about the antidote, then he’ll administer it.”
Although it might be too late for some. It’s definitely been longer than a half an hour since people started drinking from the kegs and snorting up coke. Fuck. We’ll have lost people tonight. How many, I’m not sure, but Gaz has done a goddamn number on this club.
What the hell did he hope to gain from that?
I think about that for a second, about the purposes of setting off a bomb in his own clubhouse. Gaz would never actually want to see Death by Daybreak destroyed, but if he were to get rid of my boys, and our dad, maybe a few of the old-timers, then he’d be clearing away his only opposition.
He could’ve, theoretically, taken over things, got himself voted in as president.
Especially if he were to blame the whole thing on me and the officers, if we were the traitors he so gloriously defeated.
But also …
“The families,” I say, feeling my blood go cold. “Anyone who isn’t on the compound is at risk.”
“I already gave the order,” Crown tells me, and the adrenaline in my veins spikes doubly over that. One, because I find his intelligence and capability awe-inspiring and undeniably attractive. Second, it means I’m thinking along the right lines. “We’re rounding everyone up who’s off-compound.”
“Grey then,” I assert, moving onto the next problem as my eyes flick back in the direction of my father’s office. I can see Gaz’s body, the small bloody entry wound on the back of his head, the mess of red and pink around him. “Cat ordered you to clean up the body; I really don’t want Nellie to see.”
“I’m not going to ask you to deal with your brother’s body, Gidge,” Crown tells me, frowning hard. He lets out a sharp sigh. “Why don’t the two of you look for … that boy.” The edge of his lip curls up in disgust. “Take him back to the farmhouse.”