Chapter Seven
ZZ
Click. Click. Click. Click.
I go to open my eyes, but no Bueno, my head weighs a ton.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
I try to lift myself off the pool table. “No Bueno.”
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
“You speak Spanish now?”
“Fuck. Not so loud.”
Click. Click. Click. Click.
“What the fuck are you doin’ Storm?”
“She’s not the only one here.”
Shit.
Winter too?
“Nope. She’s not.”
Piper?
I use all my might to crack an eye open. I close it when I believe I’m dreaming. I did NOT just see what I saw.
Click. Click. I don’t even bother opening my eyes, my ass scrambles off the side of the pool table and onto the floor.
I shake my head trying to clear the fog away. Click. Click. Click. Click. I use the edge of the table to pull myself up.
I’m legit scared for my life right now.
There’s a fold-up table set up across the room with bullets and guns galore. Winter, Piper, Storm, and Jinx are all here. They’re all standing around the table loading bullets into multiple clips.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Alright. I get it. We went a little too far with our partying ways last night and their paying us back by trying to scare this piss out of us.
Click. Click.
“Ladies,” I say with hesitation. “What’s goin’ on?”
Click. Click. Click. Click.
“You’d know if you bothered to come home last night, maybe one of us ladies would have heard one of your phones going off.” Storm grunts. “But, nope. You fools got so fucked up, you forgot you had people outside of HQ who count on you.”
I stand at full height. “Sugar,” I say gently. “What do you mean?”
Winter shrugs and answers for Storm. “Oh, nothing new. Just another victim.”
“What?” I growl.
“Lyrics twin sister,” Jinx, speaks up now. “She was beaten and branded. Dropped off like trash at the Red Ladies place.”
“You’re fuckin’ with us, right? For gettin’ wasted?”
Winter’s eyes glare at me. “We wouldn’t take a joke that far.”
“What’s goin’ on?” Braxxon grumbles from the corner. “You guys are bein’ too fuckin’ loud.”
Jesus. He’s curled up in the corner like a fucking cat. I can’t believe we all got trashed like we did.
“Prez. Get up,” I order when I finally take everything in. “The Red Ladies have trouble.”
“Call Dizzy,” Winter demands as she goes back to her task. “Oh, and in case you were wondering, these are our guns.”
My eyes widen. “And, why would you guys need weapons?”
“Jesus, Angel.”
I turn my attention to prez. “Lyric’s sister was attacked.”
Braxxon tears his gaze away from the women, wide-eyed. “What?”
One of the women slams something down on the table. “Melody, Lyrics twin, she was beaten and branded. They left her like she was trash on the side of the road,” Piper growls. “Oh, in case you were wondering. It was a scorpion they branded into her skin.”
“What,” Pyro roars as a loud knock echoes off the wall. “Fuck.”
I snap my head towards the bar. “How the—”
A groan comes from underneath the pool table. “We were playin’, ‘ where the brothers at.’”
Smokey can’t be serious. That’s why Pyro’s on top of the wall liquor cabinet?
“Like Where’s Waldo. Live version,” he groans again, sliding out from underneath the table.
Storm snorts. “Guess my man isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. He was passed out on top of the table. Full view.”
“He was the seeker,” Smokey informs them when he stands. “He tagged me, laid on top of the table, we all got to talkin’, and we must’ve fallen asleep where we were at, at the time. I think.” He rubs his temples in a circular motion.
I remember none of this.
“None of them are very bright right now,” Jinx mumbles a few minutes later.
“Did you not fucking hear us?” Winter finally yells. “Get it together and call Dizzy!”
Braxxon stumbles backward. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Winter slams the magazine down, angry and frustrated. A dangerous combination when one is standing in front of a shit ton of guns and bullets. “She said you’d need your rest and there wasn’t anything you could do until they got here. I voted against it.”
“Now explain that.” Brax gestures towards the table.
“These are ours.” Piper chimes in.
“Like, hell.” Braxxon snorts.
“Jinx,” Pyro calls when he has his feet on the ground.
“Not now, Pyro. I’m busy,” she says gently as she continues to work.
“Baby,” he tries again.
“I said, not now.”
“Shit,” he curses and limps over to where me, Brax, and Smokey stand.
I’d love to point out, we are the idiot men standing across the room, in perfect position to be shot down by our angry females. Execution style.
The women are onto something, we aren’t the brightest crayons in the box.
Still, we can’t seem to take our eyes off them, if they weren’t so angry with us, this would be a dream come true.
“Can someone pull me out, please?”
I close my eyes.
I can’t handle any more of our stupid.
I can’t.
“Pull yourself out, babe.” Piper smarts off.
“I’m stuck,” he groans. “By the way. We have mice.”
“Maybe you should have thought better of it, you know— before you crawled underneath the stage?”
“We really dropped the ball, prez,” Smokey coughs.
“I know,” he agrees. “Where’s our daughter, Angel?”
“With Berry and Tea.”
“What about, Tea?” Shadow grumbles from behind me, and I sigh in relief and re-open my eyes. I don’t trust myself not to snap if another one of us is hiding like an idiot from all our shenanigans.
“Why do you appear to be confused, ZZ?” Storm questions me with a smirk.
I rub my forehead to relieve some of the tension. “One. We have two pregnant chicks, possibly a third in here, so we can’t light up our mornin’ cigs. Two. I’m a little annoyed with how fuckin’ stupid we are.”
“I second that,” Braxxon grumbles. “I’m gonna step outside and call Diz.”
“What do you mean possibly a third pregnant chick?” Sniper huffs from the floor when he’s out from underneath the stage.
“Pyro couldn’t shut up about it last night,” Smokey sighs. “Betcha I’ve already put a baby in her.” Smokey mimics Pyro from the night before.
“Pyro,” Jinx gasps. “Seriously?”
“I’m sorry.” Pyro apologizes to his new bride with his hands in front of him. “But in my defense, they’re my brothers.”
“At least he’s happy about the possibility,” Piper mumbles.
Sniper. You’re a stupid fuck.
“Pipe, can I talk to you outside,” he says with a nod towards the hall. “Hard pass,” she answers cold.
Sniper’s shoulders drop, along with his head; probably from the shame of how he reacted when she told him.
I do remember the part of the night where he informed us of how he responded to her being pregnant.
Winter sighs and puts the magazine she was working on down. “I’m gonna make these idiots some coffee.”
Bless you, lady.
I flick my eyes to the clock on the wall and grumble when I see it’s well after eleven in the morning.
“Fuck you, Shadow,” I mumble when I remember why we crashed so hard.
“The fuck for?”
“For bringin’ out downers when we were high on blow.”
“Shut it, ZZ,” Storm snaps. “You’re a grown ass man. Here’s a lesson you might’ve forgotten growing up. Just. Say. No.”
Smokey snorts walking away. “Well… she has a point.”
“To just say no?” Sniper chimes in. “Why the fuck would we do that?”
“Ugh, I dunno?” Piper bulks. “Maybe because it isn’t smart to mix uppers and downers. Of any kind.”
“It wasn’t smart to get as wasted as they did,” Jinx whispers, “leaving us all vulnerable last night. We got lucky.”
I can’t even be mad at Pyro’s new wifey, she has a point. A few of us should have stayed sober last night.
Shadow kicks at someone. “Get up, Sin, we got shit to take care of,” Seneca grumbles something incoherent, and Shadow kicks him again, forcing a what the fuck out of his mouth.
“Where’s Krew and Fox?” I ask, looking around the room.
The smell of coffee filters through the air. “Rap said they actually made it to their beds.” Winter calls from the corner where she’s brewing up the pot of caffeine goodness.
A light bulb goes off. “Rap was our babysitter.”
“Ding. Ding. Two points for you.” Winter laughs.
She’s good. Too good.
“Where’s Rap now?”
“He’s at the gate,” Storm chimes in. “He’s on edge. Maybe someone can relieve him? It would be the proper thing to do since he hasn’t slept.”
“At all?”
“Nope,” my lady answers, popping her p. “He kept an eye on you idiots and then went to lay down, and we got the call and woke him up, right as he was dozing. He didn’t hear his phone either.” Storm says with a frown. “Probably because he was worn out from you guys.”
“I’ll do it,” Seneca grumbles when he stands up in the corner. “It’s the least I can do. He kept us from makin’ very foolish decisions last night.”
“Then you get coffee first,” Winter says while pouring a cup, then walks it over to Seneca. “Black, right?” He nods, takes the cup and murmurs a thank you.
“What kind of foolish decisions?” Sniper asks, timidly, as if he’s worried about the answer we’ll receive.
“Real slumber party shit,” Seneca mumbles from the rim of his cup.
I growl while Storm mock gasps. “No!”
“Shut up.”
“What kind of shit,” Sniper asks again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Piper huffs. “You tried to compare dicks, shave eyebrows, you even tried to find a needle for some home piercings.”
I drop my head in shame.
It was real slumber party kind of shit.
Jinx giggles and then grows serious. “If we didn’t have someone on the way, hurt and scared… it would’ve been very amusing finding you all the way we did.”
“But it wasn’t,” Winter sighs. “Because Melody was beaten and branded and our men, the men we count on, we’re so fucked up, we were scrambling for what we should be doing.”
Jinx nods. “We cleaned your stock of guns, cleaned up the mess, then we started doing this.” J waves at the table biting her lip and Pyro can’t take it anymore; he goes to her, wraps his arms around her middle and puts his chin on her shoulder. “It was our way of helping.”
Heart meet blade.
“We’re fuckin’ idiots,” I admit sadly. “I’m sorry.”
Storm, the love of my life, the woman who I’ve been struggling to bring back to my reality, this stupid fucking reality, gives me a small smile. A smile. I deserve a kick in the balls, not a smile. “You’re not idiots,” she says quietly. “You guys haven’t partied in forever. We’re used to you guys leaving a few of you sober, you know, just in case. The older members never come in anymore, or they’re always on the road. You’re all we have.”
Yep. Heart meet blade.
She’s right. Pops, the founder is semi-retired after faking his death, and the men he chose to help him build our wicked empire, are retired or dead.
Braxxon comes in from outside, and Winter hands him a cup of coffee without a word and goes back to divvying up more cups.
I trudge my hungover ass over to the line that’s forming and push Smokey forward when he doesn’t move because if I don’t get my coffee in a few seconds, I might become a little fucking unbearable. “Don’t push me asshole,” he growls.
“Stop,” Braxxon orders. “Ladies, thank you for cleanin’ the guns and loadin’ magazines.”
A round welcome’s issues. “Seneca has relieved Rap, he refused to leave the gate, so he’s on a cot in the gate shed.”
“Why,” I mumble. “We’re all awake, and you said Seneca is out there.”
“He’s a little pissed with us.”
“Ladies you can go prep for Melody’s arrival now. She’s gonna need you all.” Braxxon orders. “Thanks again.”
“Storm.” I motion with my head.
She wipes her hands on her shirt and comes to me with a sad smile on her face. We’re still not where we should be, but she deserves a little appreciation for helping the women out.
Her hair is in a giant knot on the top of her head, she has no makeup on, she has gun grease on her shirt, her jean shorts are cut-offs, and to me, she’s never looked better. I put my coffee on the counter and wrap her in my arms inhaling her scent when I do. “Thank you, Sugar.”
She fists the back of my shirt in her hands, and it pulls when she tightens her arms around my large frame. “You’re welcome.”
I take one more sniff and unwrap my arms, she blinks up at me with those light blue-eyes I love so fucking much and I almost cave and pull her into my old room, but it would ruin the lesson she has to learn. So, instead, I cup her cheeks and bring those sexy lips to mine and give her a feather-light kiss, she tries to jerk me into her for more, and I fight my grin, I do, but it’s Storm. The woman owns my entire being for fucks sakes. I do pull back when she nibbles on my bottom lip though, she knows it gets me every fucking time, and she’s not playing fair. I haven’t been inside of her for far too long, and my cock aches with the reminder of what I’m missing. “Go get ready for your new arrival.” I smack her ass and turn away to adjust my cock, which only hardens when she whispers, “fuck you, too” and gives my back a little shove.
I groan when I hear her footsteps retreat.
“I believe you started a war,” Winter laughs and hands me my cut. “It had somethin’ on it. I wiped it off for you.”
I mumble my thanks and shove into it, even though I’m desperate for a shower.
Coffee first. Shower second.
✽✽✽