Lethal Temptations (Tempted #5)(70)

He looked up at his mother, grinning from ear to ear.

“Can I?”

I lifted my eyes to hers, watched as she diverted her eyes back to her son.

“Sure, wouldn’t want to leave the nice man hanging,” she said as she turned back toward me. “Thank you.”

I winked, slapping my hands against my knees and rose to my full height.

“Can I have the Spongebob?”

The clerk handed him the ugly yellow stuffed thing, and the boy smiled widely at me.

“Thank you! I hope you get the girl,” he exclaimed.

I turned around, my eyes met Lacey’s and the smile she wore became contagious.

“I hope so too,” I told the boy.

I hope I get to keep her.

I said goodbye to the kid and his mom before making my way back to Lacey.

“You won that boy a prize,” she commented, looping her arm through mine.

“Yeah, watching you put a smile on six kids faces when you gave them those prizes must’ve rubbed off on me,” I said.

“Watch out Blackie, you’re becoming more like a big teddy bear than a big bad biker,” she joked.

I growled.

“Cut it out, Lace,” I ordered, taking her hand and pulling her towards Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. “Come on, I’m starving,” I mumbled.

She was right. I was soft when it came to her. It wasn’t a new development; there has always been a place inside me carved out just for her, but every minute I spent with her I fell deeper.

And she fell too.

Deeper in trouble.

Deeper in danger.

And the both of us threatened to fall deeper in love with the story we were writing.

For her it was an original piece.

For me it was a rewrite.

A story about an Angel and the Devil.

We needed a miracle.

Or just each other.

Maybe we were the miracle.

Ah, f*ck. I was soft.

Tomorrow I was going to shoot something.

Anything.





Chapter Twenty-four





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 motherf*cking Chinese to worry about.

Every which way we turned, there was someone waiting to f*ck 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 motherf*cker was f*cked. He was a scary looking dude before, but now he had burns covering ninety percent of his body—that motherf*cker 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 f*ck 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.