Repeat Offender (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 1)

“I was going to go dig a hole,” she said.

“Why?” I pushed.

Bruno, who I’d made up with in the time that Lynn and I had been married, set the mangled bike down in the middle of the kitchen.

“Because I was going to go bury something,” she hedged.

I looked over at Bruno, who was having a really hard time keeping his face straight.

“Go talk to your father,” I ordered, pointing at the closed office door. “And make sure to knock first. He may be in a conference call.”

Adele went in, didn’t bother to knock, and slammed the door closed.

“What do you think she was burying?” Bruno asked as he leaned his hips against the counter.

Before I could answer, a loud curse sounded from Lynn’s office.

“I have a very weird feeling that I don’t want to know,” I admitted, watching the door warily. “I’m just going to let him deal with it.”

Bruno started to laugh.

That laugh turned into full-blown giggles when Lynn walked out of the room looking disturbed.

He started hurrying outside, and I had no other choice but to follow him.

When we got to where she’d ‘buried’ whatever she’d buried, it turned out to be a dog crate. A dog crate that just so happened to have her little brother in it.

Her little brother by five minutes.

“Ummm,” I said as I stared down into the cage and looked at my son who was reading his iPad with a pillow and a blanket to keep him warm. “What the hell is going on?”

“Well, it started like this,” David said as he flipped his ‘fake’ page on his iPad. He must be reading again. “Adele didn’t want me to touch her iPad. So, I didn’t. Only, she thought I did. And then she decided that a fight was in order to settle it. I told her I didn’t want to fight, so she decided that I could sit here and be buried alive. So that’s what I did.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Where’s the dog at?” I asked.

Because if the crate was buried, that meant the dog was somewhere that it shouldn’t be.

Laric had suckered us into taking one of his military working dogs, and the dog didn’t do well without his crate. He didn’t necessarily have to have it closed, but it was his safe place when he was inside the house and wanted to stay away from us.

“Bruno is in the garage, in the boat.” Adele kicked a rock with her foot. “All I wanted to do was fight. Why is that so bad?”

Bruno was also named after their Uncle Bruno. At the time, I’d thought it was funny because Bruno was still on my shit list. Now it was just a pain in the ass.

I looked at Lynn, who was also pinching the bridge of his nose. “You deal with this.”

Lynn’s eyes flashed open. “I don’t know why you think this is my fault.”

“The fighting?” I asked. “That’s definitely not me.”

“Agreed,” he said. “But the weird, random acts of vandalism? The fucking with stuff that shouldn’t be fucked with? That’s all you, and you know it.”

He did have a point.

“What are we having for dinner?” David finally looked up at us. “And do I still have to take a shower tonight?”

“You can jump in the pool with me. Since Daddy is out here…” Adele looked at her father adoringly.

I rolled my eyes and walked back inside, stopping to check on Bruno the dog as I did.

I found him curled up in the captain’s chair sound asleep.

Knowing he would be fine there for now since he liked that particular spot, I made my way back into the kitchen and finished dinner.

It wasn’t fancy.

It wasn’t even all that healthy.

But it was homemade, and all that I had the desire to cook at this point.

I was exhausted.

I was seven months pregnant, it was the middle of the summer, and I was apparently only capable of making hell children.

Just as I was pulling the taco meat out of the pot to drain the fat off, Lynn came back inside without the children.

“You seem to be missing two constant companions,” I said as I looked at my husband.

Lynn rolled his eyes. “Bruno was guilt-tripped into watching them. I have to go dig the dog crate out before tonight so Bruno the dog can go to bed.”

I looked up at him when he crowded me against the cabinets.

“I love you.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s still not going to make me watch them for you so you can go do whatever. I have to get this documentary filmed or I’m going to not have enough content for this week.”

Lynn sighed against my face.

“Your kids wear me out,” he said.

I snickered. “How do you think I feel? And, just sayin’, but if you didn’t allow them to do half the things you allow them to do—like watch you fight and allow them to dig—then they wouldn’t know how to do half this shit.”