Lessons in Corruption (The Fallen Men 1)

His huge dark brown eyes stared down at me, confused and belligerent. “You’re being ridiculous. You have to know that I can’t give you any money when you’re acting like this. It wouldn’t be fiscally responsible of me to support your mid-life crisis.”

“Quarter-life,” I corrected automatically, just like I had that morning with my mother.

“You know I have this big merger coming up and your mother is almost literally sick with worry every day that you keep up this charade,” he pushed, driving the bamboo slivers further and further under my nails.

“Stop it, William. Now, you’re just trying to be mean.”

“She’s going to the doctor next week. Your father is very worried,” he continued with the same infuriating calm.

“I said stop it,” I hissed, stepping closer and up on my toes so I could try to get in his face.

“No, not until you come home. You think I don’t care, Cressida? I’ll show you just how much I care if I have to tie you up and lock you in our bleeding closet,” William said, again, calm as can be.

A shiver worked itself up my spine like a creepy, crawly thing.

“You good, teach?” A new, hoarse voice said from behind me.

Normally, I tried not to curse but I felt that the arrival of Zeus freaking Garro warranted it.

“Fuck.”

“Cressida?” William asked, instantly straightening and moving into me so he could place his hand in a possession of ownership on my waist. “Do you know that… man?”

“Better question is, does she know you?” Zeus demanded, stepping into my line of sight.

He was wearing his leather cut over a skintight white t-shirt that defined his abs in a way that was somehow more indecent than being totally bare-chested. The purity of the shirt contrasted beautifully with the plethora of black outlined feathers that wrapped around his biceps and upper forearms like the tips of angel wings and the other tattoos that crept up his neck under his beard. He looked like a menacing, badass biker; the villain in this bizarre scene.

Instead, I knew he was the demon on a black hog come to save me from my knight in shining armor. Unconsciously, I took a step away from William and closer to Zeus. Sensing this, the biker snagged me by the wrist and tugged me forward so that I fell in beside him.

“Yes, William,” I said although Zeus’s actions had rendered it unnecessary. “I know him. This is Zeus, um, Garro.” I turned my head up to look at the man looming over me and winced slightly. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know your real name.”

Zeus stared down at me for a long beat as if he wasn’t certain if I was human or alien. Then he said, “Zeus is my name on the streets and in the books now, teach. Don’t sweat it. Now, tell me what’s goin’ on, yeah?”

I sighed heavily, waved my hand in a very shocked William’s direction and explained, “This is my soon to be ex-husband. He would already be my ex-husband if he agreed to sign our very fair divorce papers but instead, he’s holding our joint account hostage until I go back to him.”

I watched Zeus’s face go from diamond hard to graphene, the hardest material in the world. I thought for a moment that he might just be the hardest man in the world and I wondered what I’d done bringing a man like him into this conflict with my husband.

My fears gave way to shock when he slung a weighty arm around my shoulders and kissed, kissed, my temple.

“Ah, the one you told me about last night before bed,” he said.

I blinked.

William blinked.

Zeus continued to speak, “Knew he was a fuckin’ piece of shit caught in your tire treads, darlin’, but didn’t think he’d be low enough to show up at the school to fuck with you.”

“Me either,” I squawked when he squeezed me to prompt a response.

He jerked his chin up at William. “You listen to this and you listen like your life fuckin’ depends on it because, Willie boy, it fuckin’ does. This lady is now with a Garro man and in case you’re so stupid you don’t know what that means, I’ll let you know. She belongs to The Fallen MC and no one fucks with The Fallen. Not even soon-to-be-ex-husbands with wallets bigger than their tiny pricks who think they can blackmail a woman into bein’ with ‘em.”

“Oh my God,” I said with the last of the breath left in my lungs.

I tried to inhale but choked on my inability to understand what was happening and started to cough. Zeus (not so helpfully) thumped me on the back with a mighty fist.

“Are you actually saying that you’re dating my wife?” William confirmed, his jaw unhinged with the weight of his doubt. “That my wife of eight years, the same woman who won’t watch sex scenes in romantic comedies and who hasn’t spoken with her brother in the nearly nine years since he went to jail because he’s a convict, that same woman, is involved with a notorious motorcycle gang?”