His lips moved, sound came out, but the two remained detached, separate. I wasn’t registering words, thoughts, ideas. Only his fingers stroking that fucking tie was real to me. The old familiar tats around his neck crept over his smooth starched ivory collar.
Yeah, there was an elegance about him now, a refinement, so different from what I remembered of him. Back then, he had been a whip, snapping for attention, and he would revel in the sting singing in the air above him. He had once been a primitive, sadistic little beast, sporting a long mustache, with built arms and a huge chest that I was sure he’d pound like some sort of inner-city fucking Tarzan.
Now, that beast was all dressed up and speaking slowly, carefully, but the same glint was in those dark eyes. The predator. The demon. The fiend.
“Why did you wait so long, Alejandro? Why? You could’ve found me sooner.”
“I did find you.” He plucked at the stiff cuff of his shirtsleeve. “But I was waiting until you had something of worth that I could take from you. Inès made me promise not to hunt you down. She made me promise to stay away from you. She would even check to make sure I kept my promise. But she’s dead now, and so is that promise.”
Alejandro took in a breath of air through his nose. “Your girlfriend is pregnant. Why should you have what I didn’t? You took Felipe from us, and in the end, all that miseria you created took my children and my woman.”
“You seem to forget that you took her from me, ese,” I said. “You took what you wanted and left me on the street to bleed. You won it all a long time ago. If it didn’t end up good for you, that’s on you, no one else, not me.”
Alejandro grunted loudly and grabbed the red ashtray, throwing it against a wall. A shower of glinting shards and ash shattered over the rug.
“You want my life for theirs?” My voice boomed through the vast space. “Is that what you want?”
He raised that sculpted chin of his, his jaw jutting out. “Yes.”
“Then take it. Take it and let them live.”
I TRIED TO GET CONTROL of my breathing, but it was nearly impossible. My hand rubbed over my chest as I counted. I should go to the clubhouse and tell the Jacks everything I knew, everything I thought might be going on.
My eyes went to the basket tray by Boner’s front door. Empty.
Shit, where are my car keys?
I plowed through my handbag, my stomach twisting into those familiar knots. Nothing.
“Damn it!”
I shoved my hand under the sofa cushions, I checked under the skirt of the sofa, along the floor. Nothing.
“Unbe-freaking-lievable,” I muttered. “Becca, have you been playing with Mommy’s keys again?”
Becca looked up at me from coloring at the kitchen table, her lips pursed, a stubby black crayon in her hand. I went to the table piled high with her coloring books and sheets and crayons. I shuffled through the heap, pushing the jumbo box of crayons out of the way.
My keys were splayed out at the bottom of the pile. “Thank God.”
Becca went back to coloring and singing to herself. My gaze landed on the coloring page she was working on, one of the many that Boner had printed out for her last night. My heart skipped as crayons rolled across the table.
There they were.
Snow White and the Prince.
She was waking up from her death slumber, and he was over the moon, taking her hand in his. My girl had colored both characters in black—Snow White’s hair, her dress, her coffin, the flowers, and the Prince’s hair, outfit, and boots. Becca would often get obsessed with one color and only use that particular one for everything she colored the entire day. Today, it was black.
The black prince and his black princess.
The crayons spilled over the side of the table.
“Someday, my…”
But my prince had come.
My prince was outlined in black and was full of dark passions and poetry, jagged heartbeats and raw whispers in the night, and he was mine. It didn’t matter that he was another biker. It didn’t matter that he was over a decade older than me. It didn’t matter that he did not sport a cap with a feather in it or a cape along with a dashing, eager smile on his face.
My prince carried knives, guns, and brass knuckles, and he wore dirty dusty leathers, heavy boots, and faded black T-shirts and jeans. He tore through the wind on a powerful metal machine, not an elegantly appointed horse. And the smile he wore for me did not only please me, but alternatively scared me, thrilled me, and gave me a burning rush like nothing else.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I caught my reflection in the leather-framed mirror by the front door.
Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the scared-est of them all?
Me.