Chapter 6: Tirone: Chapter 6

“Her thorns were my only delight,” I said under my breath as fire gnashed at me with every touch, every kiss of his sickening lips on her skin. He wouldn’t understand that quote, but she would. I said it so she’d make him stop before I snapped because, God help me, I’d fucking kill him and destroy the three of us. How was I supposed to just watch and pretend it was okay for another man to leave his mark on her when she was mine? Mine! Fucking MINE!

She swallowed when she read the fury in my eyes. “Can we get out of here? This place is so creepy, and I still don’t feel well.”

“Sure, baby. How about you rest, and I’ll send Doc to check on you, okay?” Furore fucking kissed her again. My fist balled, ready for a punch. He darted a glance at me. “You come with me. I’ll show you your room.”

My fists clenched and unclenched a hundred times as he led us back up, as his arms wrapped around her when it should have been my arms holding her.

Keep it together. Don’t you see how much she’s ready to sacrifice for him? If you kill him now, she’ll never forgive you.

I don’t care about her forgiveness. I don’t care if she fucking hates me. All I care about is having her. She’s mine, Goddammit. He stole her from me. I can’t let him have her. Not for one second. I have to get her back. NOW.

Not like that. You’re gonna lose her if you hurt him. A new plan is in order. Just keep it the fuck together.

I recited Pushkin in my head. Poetry had always managed to shift my focus when my head roamed into the darkness. Weird for the popular player who rode a bike and wore leather? Yeah, but I didn’t give a fuck. I recited I Loved You until I reached that part.

In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;

I loved you so tenderly and truly, As let you else be loved by any man.

Fuck you, Pushkin. I’d be damned before I let her be loved by another man.

What if I don’t hurt him first? What if I keep him for last? Jo was a good person. She’d care about innocent lives. She’d just said she didn’t care about her own life if she couldn’t be with him, though. I had to play a different game.

In his room, he helped her lie down on his filthy bed. The sight of her alone in another man’s bed made my heart bleed.

When I came here, I had a plan; force Jo to go back with me. I thought when she knew the full truth about who I was and why I left, she’d stop playing this stupid game and come back home to me. I thought even if she didn’t, I’d threaten her like I did two days ago, and she’d be scared enough to do what I said. Yet her reaction to all my moves startled me, even shook me.

Fuck, I was ready to kill for her, and she was ready to kill herself for him. How could you think like that, Jo? How could you feel that way for him?

The black fire wrapping around my heart and soul were enough to eat me and them alive, but I wouldn’t surrender to the darkness, not yet. I wasn’t going to give up that easily. I’d never give her up. She was mine, and she knew it. I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, and I’d play till the last card.

I needed a new plan to win her back, but how could I have the patience and tolerance to watch her with him every day, to just stand there when he touched her, when she lay in his fucking bed?

I ran both hands through my hair as he leaned in to kiss her. Fuck this shit. “I’d been riding for twenty hours. Where’s my room?”

He tucked her in, and I wanted to burn this whole house down with him in it. That’s my fucking job, you motherfucking prick. Then he strode toward me and shut the door. “Your room is here, right next to mine.”

“No fucking way.” There was no way in hell I could keep it together while I listened to her being fucked by someone else.

“It’s the only free room we have.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Get one of your brothers to move in it and give me his. I won’t listen to you fucking my teacher all night.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “What if I was fucking someone else? You’d still have a problem?”

“The fuck that’s supposed to mean?”

He squinted at me. “Do you have a problem listening to me fucking pussy or fucking her pussy?”

My pussy you stole you son of a fuck. Should I tell him and squeeze his heart bloody, and then slice it with a blunt knife, piece by piece until he bled out? I was dying to, but that would totally ruin my new plan and wouldn’t give me Jo. “Again, the fuck that’s supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Then you’re a sick fucking bastard.” So was I. Because of him. “And that’s your problem, not mine. The room? I’m tired.”

He kept his gaze in what looked like a lame staring contest. I won. Easy.

“Doc!” he yelled.

Uncle Waylon’s face appeared down the stairs. He climbed up a couple of steps and looked at us. He was ex-military, about Furore’s age, but his hair was salt and pepper. His skin was sun-kissed and wrinkly around the eyes. A few faded scars decorated his face. He’d once told me he was proud of each one. “Yes, Prez?”

“Get your stuff in the room next to mine and give Rex yours.”

Laughter and jeers roared from downstairs. “Pay up, bitches!”

“Shit. Can’t Marshall do it?” Doc complained.

I chuckled at him. “Is that whom you bet on?” They had to know no one would want take a room next to his father for obvious reasons—not the real one. Who would want to listen to his dad fuck or be heard with a bitch by his dad?

“Fuck yeah. I mean I love y’all coming home and shit, but now you cost me my room and a twenty.”

“Sorry, Uncle Waylon.”

His face softened at me and gestured a no problem with his hand. “Nah. For you, it’s cool.” He switched his eyes to Furore. “I’ll get on it.”

“Check on Jo, too. She doesn’t look so hot.” Furore squeezed my shoulder. “We’re not done here. We’ll talk after Church.”

Was that supposed to scare me? If anyone ought to be scared, it’s you, Furore.

He walked to the stairs as Doc came up. I stared at Furore’s back for a second, at the skulls and roses that adorned his cut. My legacy I’d managed to stay away from all those years, and I’d have for many more…if it hadn’t been for her.

“I want in,” I said.

Furore glanced at me over his shoulder, holding the banister. “In what?”

“Church. I want to sit with you in that meeting.”

“It’s full patch only, Rex,” Doc pointed out the obvious, as if to save me the embarrassment.

“You heard your Uncle Waylon.” Furore climbed down the stairs. “Go shower and rest in your new room until I finish. I’ll tell someone to get you something to eat.”

I went after him. “You always wanted me to patch in. I will.”

Fort was lazily getting off the couch as Molar met us at the foot of the stairs. “You think you can just waltz in and get your colors, boy? A patch has to be earned.”

“What, you want me to prospect first, VP?” I mocked.

“Pfft. You ain’t earned that yet. You’re a Hang Around at best.”

“My father is literally your fucking president.”

“Oh, Furore is your daddy now, not that monkey-ass, chickenshit, wife beater you put over him for years? Great to finally hear it.”

“Fuck you, Molar. I don’t know what shit you have with me, and I don’t give a fuck. I ain’t here so you can give me a piece of your mind or hear you talk shit about the man who raised me.” Jaw clenched, I darted a glare at Furore. “You’re gonna say something to your VP?”

“He ain’t wrong about the patch. Everybody gotta earn it. Blood may get you out of prospecting, but that’s all.”

Of course, my father the douchebag has to be his shitty self. “Fine. This meeting you’re about to have is about Miss Meneceo, right?”

“Meeting,” Molar snorted. “Stop talking like a pussy noob. It’s called Church.”

I fought the urge to tell him to go fuck himself because I was talking to his boss, not him, but knowing Furore, he’d take his bestie’s side and tell me to respect the VP if I wanted to earn a patch. So I just gave my back to Molar—his real name is fucking Travis, by the way—and directed my speech to Furore. “You need me there. I have info that can help.”

“Info? About Jo?” Furore asked warily.

“Yes. I know a lot of things about her…issue.” I didn’t want to elaborate in the middle of the lounge. There were other members that weren’t on the council and prospects and sweetbutts. They could hear us.

He cocked a brow at me. Then, suddenly, he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and dragged me with him, yelling, “Church!”

Fuck, how much I wanted to break his hand and hear his bones smash while he yelped like a bitch and I laughed my ass off at him. But I put it in the snap bank. People had spank banks. Mine was full of nothing but Jo. I had a snap bank, though. Images of my doing all kinds of evil to the people who hurt her. To the people who hurt me. By that last part I meant Laius fucking Lazzarini.

Practically, the second we entered the meeting room—Church—he threw me in a seat so hard I almost toppled and fell off it. He shut the door in the face of his gang, and no one dared say a thing. Their shadows waited outside like good dogs until their master let them in.

Yeah, that was how I saw the Night Skulls. I hated them and whatever they represented. I didn’t see the loyalty and brotherhood they preached. I didn’t see the twisted concept of family they were raveled in. I didn’t see an MC as any shit but as a pathetic excuse to get laid, cheat, snort, get high on power trips to feel like a man when you were a pussy and cash on illegal shit because you were a loser and couldn’t do any better in life.

Why did I just ask to patch in if I rejected what they were and their ways? Because it was the only way to get Jo back. For her, I’d do anything, and without her, there was nothing I wasn’t ready to destroy.

He snarled at me, bending over me, grabbing my shirt again. Okay. Looked like it was going to be a one-on-one session for a bit.

“Spit it out.”

“Which part?”

“Start with how you mysteriously knew about the heat on her already.”

“How do you know I know?”

“Don’t get smart on me, boy. The shit you told her in the Boiler when you were trying to make her see me as a piece of shit pussy, thinking I’d fuck her over and give her to the Lanzas.”

“Oh, that.” I smirked, as obnoxiously as possible. “Well, I’ve known her for almost a year before she fell into your lap. I probably know a lot of shit about her you don’t even know.”

“Rex!”

“My name is Tirone. You made it clear I’m not a member and have to earn my fucking patch. Doesn’t the road name come with it?”

His nostrils flared. His hands almost tore my shirt off me. “Very few people know about the heat on her and the reason for it. A student of hers wouldn’t know any of it…unless…” He looked like he was about to punch me. It seemed like he wasn’t that much of a dumbfuck. He had some brains on him and might have figured it out. Before him, there were about two people in the world who knew who Jo really was. I and the man who saved her that night they tried to kill her. Then she met Furore, and it seemed like the whole world now knew, or, at least, suspected. But no. I wouldn’t let him know the truth yet. That would ruin my plan. Besides, I wasn’t done with toying with him.

I swear when I’m done mindfucking you, you’re gonna wish you were dead instead. “Unless I’m John McNamara’s kid who lives with him in the same house?”

Anger flashed in his bloodshot stare for a second, but then it turned into relief and understanding. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Now, about that patch?”

“Tell me what you got first.”