Tirone (The Night Skulls MC #2)(7)
Her lashes fluttered at me. Could she see the truth now? Did she believe me? She had to believe me because every fiber of me was honest and protective of her. “And I should just believe you, after all the lies you’ve told me, all the stories you’ve always been so good at weaving?”
“You have to believe me,” I groaned.
“The only truth I believe and can’t ignore is that you’re a sick, toxic motherfucker. I genuinely don’t give a shit about what you say or do anymore. You know what else I don’t care about, Tirone? My own life. Yes, I don’t care if I live or die, not anymore. If I can’t be happy with Laius, then what’s the point? You want to tell your father your own twisted version of the lie we had? Be my guest. I won’t even bother correcting you or defending myself. Let him kill me.”
The lie we had? Her words were daggers slicing me open. She’d choose death over me? Because of him? “No.” I shook my head until it hurt. “You don’t love him, Jo. Stop lying to yourself.” I rested my forehead on hers and brushed her temple with my fingers. “You love me.”
She slapped my hand off her face. “You’re the only one who’s lying here, Tirone.”
I grabbed her arms, shaking her. “He’s not the man you think he is.”
“Stop it! You’re hurting me.”
A roar of fury erupted from my throat as I left her arms and banged the concrete with my fists until they bled.
“Ty!” she screamed, her shoulders hunched, fear rippling in her voice.
I tore myself away from her because hurting her was the last thing I ever wanted to do, and right now I couldn’t trust myself. “How can you be so fucking blind? For all I know, he could be barging in here any second, delivering your soul to the Mafia devil outside himself.”
She stared at me with glistening eyes for a few moments. Hope flickered in me. She was mulling it over. Maybe she was finally seeing the truth. Maybe she would finally come back to me before I crossed the line of no return. But then her nostrils flared as she shook her head. “Well, any second now isn’t that long. I guess we’ll just wait and see.”
CHAPTER 4
Furore
Enzio Lanza was touching my bike.
My fingers clawed around my gun in the back of my jeans. Molar and Fort did the same. Disrespecting me in my own home wasn’t something I’d forget or ignore. “You in the market for one? You came to the right place.”
Flanked by a couple of heavily-packing dickhead black suits, the bastard smirked, laying his dirty ass on my baby as he slouched against it. “My brother was the one into bikes, not me,” he said through the clinks and buzzes of metal and repair streaming from the garage. “Did you know that Roar was the one who gave Cosimo his first bike?”
The fucking history the Lanzas had with the San Francisco chapter didn’t interest me. I wasn’t Roar, and working with the Mafia was never on my agenda. They were too fucked up, even for me. “May they rest in peace.” So may Enzio if he doesn’t get off my beauty. “Sure Roar told Cosimo the first rule of owning a pretty girl like this, yeah?”
“Which is?”
“Bikes are like old ladies,” Fort said.
“Ain’t yours, don’t touch,” Molar finished.
“Oh.” Enzio sighed, not fucking moving. “Scusi, like I said, it was my brother who was into this.”
I stepped toward my bike with a fake grin and gestured for Enzio to get back inside the garage so I wouldn’t murder him and start a fucking war. “Step into my office, per favore. Let’s welcome you to our town. Beer?”
Finally, he got his ass off my bike and walked with me, his bodyguards in his tail. “I heard I’m not the only person visiting from my town.”
Shit. Did he mean Jo or Rex or both? I marched past the working prospects and sat behind my desk in the garage office. I nodded for Molar to close the door even when the room was too small to hold six men, three the size of Fort, at once. “You heard right. My boy just arrived right before you. So excuse me if I kept you waiting.”
“Excuse the rush, too,” Molar added while Fort passed beers among us. “We gotta prepare a homecoming party for Rex, and for Prez, who just got home from the Arena. If you’d told us you were coming, we would have set a proper meet at a proper time.”
“Certo. Where are my manners?” Enzio casually took the beer, but his men didn’t. “My sincere apologies for showing up unannounced.”
“No problem. We’d have loved to invite you to stay for the party, but it’s family only. We’ll set you a good one another day, though,” I said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your precious, unannounced visit, Enzio?”
“Jocasta Kelly,” he said straight to the point, his shitty smile plastered on his face. “AKA Jocasta Larvin.”
After all the trouble we went through to hide who she was, he wouldn’t keep my Jo out of his filthy plans. Fuck. Despite being worked up, I looked him straight in the eye, hiding every emotion behind years of practice and running a business like ours. “May she, too, rest in peace. A lot of talking about the dead today.”
“Don’t sound very festive to me,” Fort snorted.
Enzio rolled his eyes among the three of us. Then he set the beer on my desk and leaned forward, all smirks and grins gone. “Where are you keeping her?”