After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)

“Seein’ as we don’t got a fuckin’ bomb in our backlot, I’m thinkin’ you’re bein’ overly dramatic. Told you all those books would go to your head.”

“Yeah, well, they did. I graduated from one’a the top universities in this country with an honours degree in business. At least let me put it to good use. I’m wastin’ away in the garage every day.”

The fact that I loved having my hands on an engine meant dick all if I couldn’t expend my brain too.

“Don’t plan on goin’ anywhere for a long time, boy. Got two more kids on the way and a young wife. Trust me, I’m here to stay.”

“Trust me,” I urged him, leaning forward to bare my teeth at him in a way he would understand. Sometimes, we were less men than wolves in a pack; the young males always testing and trying to outdo the alpha. “You never know what could happen. Don’t want to spend a single day on this earth without ya, old man. You’re my dad, my Prez, and my goddamn hero. But life happens, and we sure as hell know by now that sometimes it happens bad.”

Unconsciously, Zeus rubbed at the spot on his chest where a bullet had once ripped through a little girl and into him. Years later, that little girl was his wife. If anyone could understand fate and its convolutions, it was him.

Yet his eyes hardened as they focused on me, and his mouth went tight. “Listen to me. You got a good woman, a woman who’s been waitin’ for you to pop the motherfuckin’ question. If you can tell me why you’re hesitatin’ on that when you haven’t paused even once in your life for anythin’ you wanted, and you want Cress more than any’a that, then you got me. I’ll bring you into the fold in a serious way. And don’t get me wrong, I’ll be happy to do it.”

There was a trap there, lyin’ poorly hidden in the grass. He’d landed on the one reason he could’ve used against me in this argument.

Because the reason I wasn’t married to the love of my fuckin’ life yet was a direct result of my participation in the club. Oh, Cress had encouraged me to do whatever the fuck I wanted to do. Not because she didn’t care, but because she did. A woman like her, that class and calibre, never would’ve thought she’d end up hitched to a man with a bike and an ironclad association with a criminal outfit. But there she was, and even though she said she loved it and me, a part of me hated that I’d brought all that she was into the shadows.

So I waited. What I was waitin’ for exactly, I wasn’t sure. Maybe some idea of what my role would be in the club, and how much danger she would be in as a direct correlation of my position.

I’d spent the past three years watchin’ first Lou and then Harleigh Rose bein’ targeted because of their association with Zeus, and after what Cress had been through already––nails hammered through her palms, abducted and tortured because of me––I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if somethin’ else happened to her because of the club, because of me.

I looked at the skull and wings burned into the table, drew my thumb over the rough edge of a tattered angel’s wing, and tried to figure out how to outwit Zeus.

“Thought so,” he finally said into my silence, but he didn’t sound triumphant. Only sad. “You think I’m bein’ a dick, and I can live with it if it means you got time to figure things out in a way you can live with. Can’t keep your woman and this world separate, son. When you figure out how to reconcile that, I’ll be happy as fuck to swear you in real-like, you hear me?”

Even if I didn’t know him enough to read between the lines, I’d know it was the end of the conversation. Dad had a way of doin’ that, leavin’ things open-ended on the surface so you didn’t feel he’d actually turned you away when he had.

I blew a deep breath outta my mouth and ran agitated fingers through my hair. “You think Cress has noticed?”

“Think you got yourself a damn smart woman, so my guess? Hell yeah. Know she’s also a good woman, which is why she hasn’t read you the riot act yet.”

My lips twitched even though I was irritated. Thoughts of Cress did that to me. “Not so far behind as you think. Started designin’ the ring six months ago.”

“No shit?” His brow shot up, and he scraped his chair closer. “Pull it up on your phone. I wanna see that shit.”

“What are we, women?” I asked even though I did as he asked and pulled up the specs I’d worked out with the jeweller in Vancouver.