Twenty-Eight
Leo
They didn’t go to the Dungeon.
Not this time.
Leo felt like he was hanging on tenterhooks as the car turned into a private parking lot in front of a nondescript building. There was a sign out front, something about a spa, but Shane parked too close to the entrance and from this close, he could only see the blacked-out windows of the store.
Like so many other places, the “spa” was probably a front to whatever it really was. Leo felt on edge, trying to decipher the possibilities. With his old man, anything was possible. For all he knew, this could be an exchange point, another deal about to happen.
His father hadn’t said a single word the entire ride. His silence felt ominous, like impending doom on the horizon. Leo hadn’t relaxed once.
Shane shut the car off and stepped out. Leo moved to follow, but George’s voice rang out. “Stay.”
Leo’s hand hovered on the door handle, his body tensing. “What’s going on?”
Shane walked to the entrance of the building, pressing his back against the bricked wall. He’d left so they could talk, and now Leo felt like he’d walked into a trap.
He had successfully managed to evade his father’s company for months now. Most times he just lingered around him when he was called upon to follow. His old man was always busy, so it wasn’t entirely difficult avoiding him, but when he was around him, there was a brutal tension in the air.
Certain matters needed to be discussed, and Leo’s luck had finally run out.
“I think you’ve played the small-town heartthrob long enough,” George spoke, tone indecipherable. “You’re not a little boy anymore, Leo.”
Leo didn’t move, staring straight ahead as he replied, “I’m doing everything you want me to do. I go wherever you go—”
“But you’re not entirely focused, are you?”
Leo resisted showing emotion as he replied, “I’m focused.”
“There are perks to being part of this life, Leo,” his father went on, like he hadn’t heard him. “And you’re too busy playing it safe all the time, choosing to linger back than embrace our way.” His voice grew harder now as he said, “You’re almost seventeen, I’d have expected you to have moved along from that girl.”
Leo tried not to react, but his patience dwindled from his tone as he asked, “What is this about?”
George pointed at the building. “That there is a brothel. You’re going to go in there, and you’re going to fuck a woman, and then you’re going to stop hanging around that girl when she’s so very apparently involved in a boy that is neck deep inbiker life.”
So his father had been paying attention this entire time.
Of course he was.
He smirked, like he could hear Leo’s thoughts. “You have never strayed from my line of vision, Leo.I know everything.” When Leo didn’t reply, he continued. “Perhaps your mother was right all along. Perhaps I let it get to this point. I knew I’d made a mistake when I learned you were at that shooting—on Warlord fucking territory. My boy, the next in line to inherit my hard work, among a sea of fuckinganimals.”
“You punished me for it,” Leo responded flatly. “You showed me what happens to our enemy, what could have happened to me if they knew who I was—”
“I should have made my men torture that fucker slowly in front of you because clearly the message was not comprehended in its entirety.”
Leo repressed the memories of that torture room, of what George’s men did to that man that double crossed him. That day Leo lost more pieces of him—he was riddled with holes, not pin prick ones like the start—no, these ones were catastrophic.
“I was no threat,” Leo said quietly. “Even if they knew—”
“Those fucking beasts are capable of anything. Haven’t I told you that enough times?”
Leo’s jaw locked as he reflected on that day. The bikers were in mourning. Would they have hurt him? While George never admitted he was behind the shooting, Leo still believed he was and that was why he got so bent out of shape about it.
Perhaps Leo had been reckless. Perhaps he should have been more mindful of his surroundings and not been so desperate to please Skye’s palate.
“This has gone on long enough,” George told him. “You will get out of this car, and you will discover soon enough that a woman is just a pocket you slip your cock into. They all feel the fucking same. You will move on from this farcical infatuation. Do you understand me?”