I haven’t touched a drink in two months, sixty-one days to be exact, since that night in Boston. Sixty-one days sober and sixty-one days Lacey remained safe and out of the arms of the enemy.
The club had enemies lurking all over the place and we were living life waiting for the world to be pulled out from under us.
When Jack returned from his visit with Victor, I clued him in on what had gone down with the Corrupt Bastards, leaving out Boots threats against Lacey. That shit was mine to deal with, not his and not the clubs. The club needed to worry about the dynamics of war and be prepared for when the Corrupt Bastards made their demands clear.
And then we still had the motherfucking Chinese to worry about.
Every which way we turned, there was someone waiting to fuck with us.
The thing that worried both me and Jack most was that both rival clubs were quiet. They let time pass, life moved forward and the weak ones thought everything would blow over.
But Jack and I knew better.
On his last visit to see the caged mobster, we found out that Jimmy was being sent to Otisville any day now. He needed clearance from one more doctor, there was no more surgeries lined up, that motherfucker was fucked. He was a scary looking dude before, but now he had burns covering ninety percent of his body—that motherfucker was vile.
Life’s a bitch.
Then you die.
Or some biker sets your ass on fire.
That wasn’t the only news Jack brought home with him. Pastore signed over his union contracts to the club, giving us partial control over the docks and partnered us with Rocco Spinelli, the mobster taking over Vic’s territory now that his organization had been dissolved. He was also interested in buying out the gun contracts we had in place with Wu.
Things were coming along, we had protection from Spinelli, should we need extra hands and Bianci was always willing to strap on bullet-proof vest to help the cause. I gave Jack a lot of grief over his ties with Pastore, mainly with Bianci—in the end I respected both men for their loyalty to our club.
Wolf was back…empty-handed but swore he had it handled and that we needed to hang tight.
The new blood was coming.
Pipe had expanded the garage, put the club in the red but vouched for the loss if the business didn’t prosper. Pipe was a cheap bastard, guy didn’t waste a penny so if he offered to put up his own cash, you knew that fuck had something up his sleeve.
All in all, we were keeping busy, working our shit out and getting the club back to where it needed to be. And the best part about that shit? We weren’t using drugs to do it.
We didn’t sell them.
We didn’t orchestrate deals with them.
And I didn’t do them.
I was still on the methadone, but that shit would change soon too. I didn’t want to be a man who checked into a clinic every morning for a fix. I wanted to be the guy I was on the weekends.
The guy that sanded floors in a house he had neglected for years. A man who allowed Lacey to pick the paint for each room even though her choice of colors drove him insane. The kitchen was aqua blue.
When she wasn’t driving me mad with paint samples she was driving me mad with her smile. I wonder if she knows the power she has over me with that thing.
I shouldn’t limit her control to just her smile.
It was everything she did.
There were so many layers to her I never knew existed but I was discovering all of them and there wasn’t one I didn’t love.
I didn’t see much of her during the week between my obligations to the club, her school schedule and keeping things from Jack, we were lucky if we found a night to be together. She didn’t bitch about it, or bust my balls which I appreciated, especially since I needed to keep reminding myself that Boots had eyes on her.
A week after I returned from my meeting I gave up trying to convince myself that I should let her go. I pulled Bones to the side and lied through my fucking teeth. I told him with everything going on with the Dragons and the Bastards, it was best if we kept an eye on Lacey. Then I told him he needed to keep this shit between us, using Jack’s illness as my excuse for keeping him in the dark about putting one of our brother’s on his daughter for protection. I only had him tail her when she was at campus that way he didn’t catch on to what was going on between us.
Jack spent most nights with Reina but he blocked out every Sunday to have dinner with Lacey.
Every Sunday after dinner, she came back to Staten Island—back to me.
Aside from my blue kitchen, I had a bed, one we put to use often.
My girl, was learning she liked to take charge in the bedroom. Her favorite position was when she was on top, riding me as I whispered filthy things into her ear. But the dirty talk didn’t stop there, Lacey got in on that, using her words and her body to tell me exactly what she wanted.
I want your mouth on my cunt, now.
Goddamn, I was lucky.
Fuck me, Blackie.
Yeah, baby.
And my favorite…
I want to try something different.
She nearly killed me when she sucked an ice cube into her mouth and dropped to her knees, giving me the best fucking blow-job I ever had.