After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)

“The way I figure it, they’re makin’ nice to lull us into some false ass state of security while they try to pull the rug out from under us,” Zeus agreed. “Reaper had nothin’ real to say about crossin’ over, and the whole time he sat there with a motherfuckin’ grin like he knew somethin’ I didn’t.” He paused and tugged on his bottom lip the way I did. “Turns out, he’s fuckin’ Farrah.”

My eyebrows shot into my hair as everyone went on alert. “You’re fuckin’ kidding?”

“Wish I was, but the bitch has shacked up with the jackal. Seems the only real reason Reaper had for meetin’ me was to introduce me to his new Old Lady and let her ask me for a little fuckin’ favour.”

“No shit.” Bat shook his head and cracked his bat tattooed knuckles. “Motherfucker has a set of balls on him.”

“It’s Farrah with the balls,” Buck grunted. “She always was a piece of fuckin’ work.”

“Thank God, you traded up, Prez,” Nova said with an eyebrow waggle. “Lou’s a fuckuva lot easier on the eyes, and she’s a sweetheart.”

“Farah didn’t used to be such a bitch,” Zeus protested, but even he didn’t seem convinced of it.

There must’ve been a time when my mother wasn’t a ragin’ bitch, but I certainly couldn’t remember it. From the time I was a kid, my only priority was takin’ care of Harleigh Rose and keeping her as far from Farrah’s influence as possible. Our mother had an unhealthy obsession with being a bitch to H.R. while groomin’ her at the same time. Me, she just ignored.

As hard as it was to believe my dad, my fuckin’ hero, could’ve made as massive of a mistake as he did marryin’ a woman like that, I had to be thankful he did or I wouldn’t fuckin’ be here.

“What’d she want?” I asked over the chatter.

“Leads into our next problem,” he growled, eyes flashin’ bright as lightning. “Apparently, the Ventura outfit has seen fit to start up a fuckin’ underage pornography gig outside’a Entrance. That drug ring we busted in the high school a while back? A part’a that was hooking the teenage girls on drugs and gettin’ them in too deep with the cartel so they’d have to work it off with Irina in her studio.”

“That’s just…” Curtains swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbin’ in his thin throat. “I’ve seen the kinda places shit like that is posted, and it’s… it’s not good, and it’s definitely not fuckin’ safe for those girls.”

“No shit. Seems Javier had been tryin’ to set up a human traffickin’ circuit along the coast from here down to Mexico, but it was too much of a hassle, so Irina started to recruit locally. Now, you’re probably wonderin’, those’a you who had the displeasure of meetin’ my cunt ex-wife, why she would offer up that info all sweet and easy. She didn’t. Apparently, Honey’s involved.”

My heart spasmed at the name of my half-sister. Hadn’t seen the girl since she was a baby, the first year she was born to Farrah and the man who had moved in about thirty seconds after Zeus was incarcerated, and we’d all lived together like one fucked-up family. Farrah had taken her when she’d fucked off over a decade ago, and I hadn’t seen her since.

But I’d always thought, in those quiet moments before bed when your conscience is most acute, about what happened to that pretty little girl with the unfortunate name.

Knowing Farrah, she couldn’t have grown up good.

And evidently, she hadn’t.

“What’re we gonna do about it?” It wasn’t a question of doing somethin’ or not. There was no way The Fallen would let somethin’ like this lie. We were the only outlaws allowed in Entrance, and we’d gone to greater lengths to see that enforced than savin’ some poor girl from prostitution.

Zeus scrubbed a hand over his face. “Got a lot on our plate right now. The fuckin’ PD wouldn’t lay off for a second. We need to make sure our shit is tight and not go head first into somethin’ that might lead to gang warfare, you get me?”

“Well yeah, but the girls…” Curtains protested, paler than I’d ever seen him. “Boss, you don’t got the right idea of what’s happenin’ to those girls.”

“And you do?” he asked with a raise brow.

The redhead licked his lips, quick and reptilian. “I––fuck, I used to work for a man who did some darknet dabbling. He liked…those kinds of things. Took me a while to figure it out, but when I did, I was outta there.”

“No one’s judgin’ you, man,” I said, tippin’ my chin up. “Brothers here have done a whole lot worse than that.”

“Never get those photos outta my head,” he muttered, lookin’ down at his computer and peeling at the edge of the Hephaestus Auto sticker there. “Don’t like the thought’a girls bein’ forced to do that shit.”