After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, before droppin’ her head in her hands to cry. “You always were such a good boy, and Rosie too. He just doesn’t know how to stop once he starts something. Really, I thought, well, I thought he was a good man, but…I guess I was wrong.”

The sobs rolled through her like crashin’ waves, heavin’ her slight shoulders, explodin’ from her mouth where they spilled into her palms. I rubbed her back and winced as I comforted her, needin’ to get the brothers back into the Chapel so we could talk about this latest development.

“Can…” she asked after a few moments. “Can I stay here with you until Lion comes home from Vancouver?”

“Of course,” I agreed with a little smile. “You took me in once. It’s my turn to repay the favour.”

Her smile was tremulous but pure as she looked at me, and I only wished I didn’t have to ruthlessly use the information she gave me to put a noose around her ex-husband’s neck.

King

* * *

Once was one time too many for a kid to see their father in prison. The first time he’d gone down, I’d got it even as a boy. He’d killed a man to save the life of a little girl, the same girl who a decade later would be his wife. Didn’t like being stuck with Farrah, without my dad and hero, but I got it and that was important in me learnin’ how to deal with it.

There was nothin’ to get now. Zeus hadn’t done shit all but momentarily disappear to save Harleigh Rose from a shit situation, yet once again, the hero was bein’ punished like a villain.

He sat in the bank of phones behind warped, dirty plexiglass in an orange jumpsuit that barely fit his massive frame. The brackets around his mouth had become troughs, the creases beside his eyes heavy fans, and when he locked eyes with me, I saw the beatin’ his soul had taken from bein’ in the slammer again, this time separated from babies he didn’t even know yet.

“Dad,” I grunted through the pressure in my chest as I took a seat and adjusted Walker on my lap. “Got your sons here to see ya.”

Dad’s face crumpled as he looked between us, eyes chartin’ every inch of Walker’s tiny body where I held him up for observation, then switchin’ to track my own. One tatted hand reached out as if he could touch us, then dropped useless to the table.

“My boys,” he said, voice dry and rough as gravel underfoot. “Fuck me, got the most beautiful kids on the planet.”

My nose itched as emotion welled in my throat, but I gave him an easy grin because didn’t need to worry about me along with everythin’ else.

“Lou says he’s already got a mouth on him,” I relayed, adjusting my baby brother so his sleepy blue eyes, already pale in a way I knew they’d go silver, were trained on his dad. “Sucks like a Hoover.”

He laughed, not the belly rumble I was used to, but a chuckle that brightened him all the same. “Fuck me for missin’ that.”

“You see Angel?” I asked even though I knew Lou had spent a week visiting every day with the babies.

“Heartbreaker already,” he claimed with pride. “Gonna have my hands full with her, can already tell.”

“If Harleigh Rose is anythin’ to go by, you breed fierce women, so I’m thinkin’ she’ll be okay no matter what.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Got lucky with my kids.”

“Nah, we got lucky with you, old man.”

His eyes flashed like light caught on the tip of a blade as an almost violent surge of love sliced across his face.

I got that, the agony of love like that, from him.

“Kin’a you and Cress will be lucky as fuck too,” he said, lookin’ at the way I held Walker. “Gonna make me the youngest, best lookin’ grandfather we know anytime soon?”

I laughed with him and then laughed harder when Walker whacked me with his little fist as if my laughter offended his grumpy self.

“Yeah, workin’ on it, old man,” I admitted, lovin’ the crazy set of his happy grin.

“Glad to fuckin’ hear it. Like the thought’a our kids growin’ up together.”

I shook my head at the thought, my dad and I havin’ kids the same age, but we were biker and we were Fallen, so we didn’t go in much for social mores.

“Brothers voted Buck in,” I told him even though he’d already know.

Zeus sat back and crossed his arms, eyes still swivelin’ from me to Walker and back every few seconds. “Thought you’d wanna talk about that.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “It is what it is. Susan Hobbs showed up at the club the other day, said she was worried Danner’d got some bitch to steal the gun for him. Made sense seein’ as you haven’t used that piece in years.”