Chapter 25

Present Day

Having grown quiet, Preacher took several shallow breaths and turned away. Leaning back in my chair, I wrapped my arms around myself and just attempted to process everything he’d just confessed.

I could count on two hands the times that my father had been noticeably emotional about anything over the course of my lifetime. Half of those moments had been about me, while the other half had occurred on the rare occasion that my mother was brought up.

I’m not entirely sure why I was so surprised to find out the true extent of his feelings for Debbie. I supposed knowing something as opposed to hearing a firsthand account of that same thing were two very different beasts.

I’d known he’d loved her, of course, even as brief as their relationship had been. He’d loved her enough that her disappearance had crushed him. However, I’d never realized the true depth of his emotions.

Having had Debbie by his side during the tragic loss of his parents, the extent of what he felt for her now made more sense. I knew well enough how tragedy tends to bring about heightened emotions, and usually only one of two possible outcomes: you either grow closer or farther apart. Debbie, it seemed, had quickly become Preacher’s crutch, every bit as much as Preacher had become hers.

I would have thought these revelations might have had a soothing effect on me, but I found myself experiencing the opposite. My irritation was mounting, coupled with the anger of being lied to for so long, and about my own family no less. “Daddy,” I snapped before I could squelch my rising temper. “What happened next?”

Preacher faced me and smiled sadly. “Baby girl, I’d be willin’ to put good money on that being the day we made you.”

“Not that,” I said, making a face. “I meant what happened after that.”

Behind me, Deuce snorted loudly, and I turned to find him smirking. Frowning, I asked, “What’s so funny?”

Deuce shrugged. “That probably happened a few more times.”

With an exasperated sigh, I turned back to my father. “I want to know what happened with the police. Did they have any leads? Was anyone taken into custody?”

I’d only managed to find one article about it online—the Four Points Massacre, it had been called. The article had been sparse on details, and instead fraught with warnings and accusations about the dangers of “motorcycle gangs”.

A faraway look in his eyes, Preacher stared at something over my shoulder. “Wasn’t long after gettin’ back to the city that your mother started gettin’ sick. Couldn’t hold nothin’ down.”

“Daddy, the cops. What did the cops say?”

“It was your Aunt Sylvia who thought she might be pregnant.”

Frustrated, I glanced back at Deuce and rolled my eyes. Now that I knew the truth about my grandparents, it was obvious to me what Preacher was doing. The same thing he’d done my entire life—refuse to discuss his parents. He’d never dealt with losing them, that much was obvious to me now.

 

“So you brought Debbie home with you?” I asked, resigned to just letting him talk. There would be no forcing Preacher Fox to do anything he didn’t want to do. And I could always ask my uncles for specifics later.

Preacher’s eyes flicked to mine. “Of course I did!” he huffed indignantly. “You think I’d leave her behind?”

“I don’t know what to think!” I shot back. “Everything I thought I knew was wrong! I don’t know what’s true and what’s a lie anymore!”

“There were good reasons I lied to ya, Eva.”

“Like what?” I practically shouted, jumping to my feet. Gripping the bedrail, I glared down at him. So many feelings were coursing through me, too many, and every single one of them was unpleasant.

I jabbed myself in the chest. “Tell me why I couldn’t know the truth about my mother!”

Preacher let out a hard sigh, and his chest let out a painful-sounding rattle in response. “I will, I will… but I gotta tell you the rest of the story first.”

My eyes bulged, and my grip on the bedrail tightened. I was about to let loose a string of curses when a familiar hand appeared on my shoulder.

“Fuckin’ breathe,” Deuce whispered.

I shook my head furiously. “But he—”

Deuce grabbed my wrist, pulled me out of my chair, and dragged me across the room and into the bathroom. Glaring at me, he kicked the door closed behind us and folded his arms across his chest. Regardless of his age, my husband still painted a formidable picture—his height, his breadth, and the way his eyes could turn bitterly cold in an instant, sucking all the warmth from the room.

Not that I was intimidated. “Move,” I demanded, gesturing angrily.

His arm muscles flexed, causing the dragons tattooed on his forearms to twitch restlessly. “Not a chance in hell, bitch. You need to calm the fuck down first. You start yellin’ at your old man now, you’re gonna regret it later.”

I mirrored his stance—arms crossed under my breasts, legs spread apart—and scowled up at him. His lips twisted, and dimples appeared.

“Put your fucking dimples away!” I hissed. “He lied to me for my entire life! Not just about my mother, but my grandparents too! I thought I could do this, but now—” I threw my arms up in the air. “I feel like I don’t even know my own father!”

I went from shouting to crying in the span of two heartbeats and collapsed to the cold floor with my face buried in my hands. Of course Deuce was right—I couldn’t lash out at my dying father, couldn’t let him leave this world thinking I was angry with him. Even though angry was exactly what I was. Furious, even. Confused, too. And a whole lot brokenhearted.

“You can do this.” Deuce’s voice was firm, yet soft. “I’ve seen you weather worse shit than this and still come out swingin’.”

I peeked up at him through my hands. “Worse than finding out everything I knew was a lie? Worse than losing my father?”

Deuce only stared down at me, stone-faced, those beautiful blue eyes of his suddenly ice-cold and swimming with ugly memories.

“Never mind,” I quickly whispered. Wiping my eyes, I took several shaky breaths. I could do this. I could get control of myself and walk back out there and do everything in my power to ensure Preacher’s last days were good ones.

Getting to my feet, I pressed a hand to my throat. “Deuce, the kids? Did you—”

“Taken care of. They’re all on the next flight outta Billings. First thing tomorrow.”

“Everyone is coming?”

 “Every last one of them little assholes and all the damn fools they married.” His eyes began to smile. “My grandbabies, too. They’re all comin’.”

I lurched forward into his waiting arms and sagged against him.

“I should be able to do this,” I cried softly. “I’m a grown woman. Our daughter is practically grown. And I’ve got stepchildren with babies of their own. I should be able to keep it together!”

“Didn’t really care much for my old man,” Deuce said, chuckling darkly. “Hardly knew my mom. I think the closest thing I had to a real father was Blue. And darlin’, there wasn’t a goddamn thing on this Earth that could have kept me together when I found him sittin’ there dead. Not a fuckin’ thing.

“It ain’t gonna be easy,” he continued, “But I know you, Eva, and you’re gonna be just fine. You know how I know?”

I looked up to find his eyes on me. “How?”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “’Cause I’m gonna make damn sure of it.”

Tears welled in my eyes. Sheesh. I’d seen perfect couples before—like-minded people who shared the same interests and hobbies and who complemented each other in every way.

Deuce and I weren’t that—we fought just as much as we loved, and to this day the hard times still occasionally outshined the good times. But despite it all, I was unable to recall a time when I wasn’t either fascinated by him, turned on by him, or in love with him.

We were special, me and Deuce. All his sharp and jagged edges may not align perfectly with mine, yet I loved him anyway.

All my grief and guilt, all my shock and sadness, and all my anger suddenly took a very different path. Reaching up, I grabbed hold of Deuce’s face and crushed my mouth to his.

For a full ten minutes, we kissed each another with more passion than either of us had put into a kiss in the last five years, a fact I’d only just realized.

Children, grandchildren, and an entire club’s worth of lives to constantly care for and worry about had begun to dull what had once been such an ever-present and intensely demanding sexual connection. And wasn’t that always the way of things? Life happened, and then happened some more, and kept happening until you were so caught up in life itself that you forgot to actually live it.

• • •

It was Eva who broke their kiss, and Deuce reluctantly let her. He let her because he knew if they kept going like this, he was going to pull her pants down and bend her over the fucking sink.

Breathing hard, she pressed her forehead to his chest. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He smiled at her. “Someone dyin’ sure has a funny way of makin’ everyone else want to get up quick and start livin’, don’t it? And darlin’? Don’t you ever be sorry for fuckin’ kissin’ me.”

Still clinging to him, Eva looked up at Deuce, her big gray eyes storming with emotion. And Deuce stared down into them, into the eyes of the little girl who’d charmed the shit out of him, the teenager who’d gotten him shot and the woman he’d fallen in love with. He still felt the same way about her; it didn’t matter how much time had passed. Take away the fine lines that had taken residence on her forehead and beside her eyes, the strands of gray intermingled among her dark brown waves, and she was twenty-two again… and he was still too goddamn old for her.

“We could ride home,” he offered. It had been far too long since she’d ridden on the back of his bike. And he was only now realizing just how much he’d missed having her there.

She nodded slowly. “I’d like that.”

“Good.” He released her with a hard slap on her ass. “Now go get some air. You’ve been locked up in this room with him all fuckin’ day.”

Eva started to protest.

“I’ll sit with him,” Deuce growled. “You go get some air, go smoke a damn joint. Fuck, bitch, just go do somethin’.” He opened the bathroom door and shoved her gently toward the hallway. “Go. I’ll call you if anything happens.”

Deuce waited several minutes, ensuring Eva was gone, before coming to stand at Preacher’s bedside. Preacher’s eyes were closed, his shallow, labored breaths echoing noisily throughout the otherwise silent room.

Gripping the bedrail, Deuce stared down at one of the most powerful men in the criminal underground. A man who’d crafted his own signature execution styles. A man that other men had both feared and envied.

He didn’t look like that man anymore.

“Preacher,” he said. Preacher stirred, but his eyes remained closed.

“Preacher,” he repeated, louder. “Everyone knows Deluva Sr. was hit by a fuckin’ truck on the Long Island Expressway. So how’s about you tell me why Joe is accusin’ him of puttin’ your parents to ground?”

Preacher’s eyes flew open, as did his mouth, and Deuce wondered if getting straight to the point had been a bad idea. The last thing he wanted to do was give his already dying father-in-law a heart attack.

“What did you tell Eva?” Preacher hoarsely demanded. “What the fuck did you tell her?”

Deuce shrugged. “Nothin’ yet. But if you ain’t gonna tell her, I sure as fuck will.”

Preacher’s sunken features contorted with anger. “Don’t you threaten me, asshole. You think you know what you’re talkin’ about, but you don’t. There’s more to it—there’s some shit I gotta explain first.”

“It’s true, then?” Disgusted, Deuce closed his eyes and shook his head. “You fuckin’ knew that kid came from crazy.”

Deuce was referring to Franklin Deluva Jr., better known as Crazy Frankie, the only child of the late Franklin Deluva Sr. and his wife, Maria, also deceased. Preacher had taken Frankie in after both his parents had died and raised him as his own.

“It might’ve been Eva who put that blade in Frankie’s neck,” Deuce continued angrily. “But it was because of you that she had to do it! You let that messed-up fuck into your house, into your club, and into her mother-fuckin’ bed!”

Preacher gritted his teeth and attempted to push himself upright. “I don’t need you to remind me that I failed my daughter,” he growled. “But what you’re not understandin’, you self-righteous piece of shit, is why I didn’t know what Frankie was doing to her. I was lettin’ Eva be. I was lettin’ her do her own damn thing, become her own woman. I was givin’ her the chances my old man never gave me. Hell, I did everything I could to make sure she had friends outside of the life. I woulda paid for any college she wanted to attend, too, didn’t matter if it was on the other side of the world. I gave her every out and she didn’t take a single one of ‘em. She refused to leave the city, refused to leave the club.”

Preacher paused to catch his breath, and the painful-sounding rattle in his chest grew louder.

“I thought she was always hangin’ around for Frankie. I thought someday I’d be handing the club to them both. I didn’t know enough, I know that now. And because I didn’t know enough, I never saw it. I never saw what he was doin’ to her. I just thought… I just thought she was…”

Shaking his head, Preacher glared up at Deuce. “In hindsight,” he spat, “I think maybe she wasn’t leavin’ because she was waitin’ on you, Deuce. You ever think of that?”

It was an accusation meant to give Deuce pause, and it worked. But fuck if Deuce was going to let Preacher know he’d struck a nerve.

 “She wasn’t waitin’ on me,” Deuce shot back, “She knew she coulda had me. Hell, she did have me whenever the fuck she wanted me, and every damn time it was her who walked away.”

Walked away and went right back to Frankie.

Deuce’s heart rate shot up, and his chest grew uncomfortably tight. Just because he’d learned to live with Frankie’s ghost, didn’t mean he’d ever get over what that lunatic had done to Eva. Frankie’s brand of crazy had left a mark on everything it touched. You could cover it up and ignore it, but that mark was always going to be there, just below the surface, burning a slowly growing hole through whatever peace you thought you may have found.

“Eva is just like us, you fuckin’ asshole.” Deuce pointed between him and Preacher. “She’s lived and breathed the club from day fuckin’ one. And not one of us ever had a fuckin’ chance.”

As the two men continued to stare at one another, the anger in Preacher’s eyes began to slowly fade.

“You’re wrong,” Preacher said, sounding resigned. “I used to think that… but I was wrong. We had choices. I made the choice to bring Frankie into my home, and Eva chose to marry him. You made the choice to knock up another man’s wife and then drag her off to Montana with you. We all made our motherfuckin’ choices, and we’ve all been living with the consequences of ‘em ever since.”

Seeing red, Deuce’s nostrils flared. Drag Eva to Montana? Fuck that and fuck Preacher. He hadn’t dragged Eva anywhere. She’d come home with him because she was his. She had always been his.

“Preacher,” Deuce growled, feeling like crushing someone’s skull with his bare hands. “Forget fuckin’ Frankie and tell me about Frank.”

Preacher closed his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. When his eyes reopened, he stared out across the room. “Joe was tellin’ the truth. It was Frank who killed my parents.”

“Yeah, but when did you find out? Fuck, how did you find out? Was Frank at the rally?”

“He musta been. But no one knew he was there, no one saw him. As far as we knew he was in Philly.”

“Why’d he do it?”

When Preacher finally spoke, his tone was pained, his every word sounding as if it were being physically pried from his insides with a rusty blade. “Took me a long time to figure that out.” He swallowed thickly. “Even longer than it took me to find out it was him who’d done it.”

When it didn’t look like Preacher was going to elaborate further, Deuce switched topics. “The accident on the expressway. Was that your doin’?”

Preacher choked out an ugly laugh. “No. That woulda been too easy. Frank, that sick shit—he needed my hands on him.”

Preacher’s gaze suddenly swung to Deuce, glowering with the hate of a thousand deadly men. “My only regret is that I could only kill him once.”

Had Preacher not been lying in a hospital bed, knocking on death’s door, Deuce might have taken a step back. Because this was the Preacher who’d turned The Judge’s motorcycle club into an empire that rivaled most mafias. This was the man who didn’t think twice about taking a life—even the life of a friend.

This was the man other men both feared and envied… and with due cause.