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“There has to be something in the water here. All of you are so hot…and tall.”
“How bad is it?” I murmured,
She hesitated, gaze going toward the ajar door. “Bad enough you won’t be up for sex in the real world for a while.”
“You better brace. The only reason Cleo and Axe-Man aren’t up here is ’cause my dad’s downstairs with half the club, and they’re fightin’ about what to do.” “With me?”
“Not with you,” she said slowly. “For you.” I blinked dumbly at her. “Listen, I get you’re new here and everything, but we’re The motherfucking Fallen. No one hurts one of ours without serious retribution. Especially when it’s one of our women.”
“If Axe-Man forgives you, who are we to hold the past against you?” “I doubt he forgives me,” I muttered, but there wasn’t my normal conviction behind it because I was reeling. “I think I have a concussion.” Harleigh Rose nodded. “You do. And he might not forgive you, I dunno. He’s a private guy, and he doesn’t share much. But if he’s throwing down for you, it’s for a reason.”
“He’s protective, and those instincts have to be blaring after what happened to Cleo,” I explained. “Trust me, if Axe-Man wasn’t such a good guy, he’d probably be wishing the triad had killed me and saved him the trouble.”
“You are the human personification of a pain in my fuckin’ ass,” Axe-Man said as he stepped into the room and crossed to the bed, arms folding across his chest as he studied me with a glower. “But no man who’s been to war wishes death on anyone just ’cause they can’t stand them.”
“Why didn’t they kill you tonight, Mei?”
“She’s the daughter of two heroes, and she becomes her own hero. It’s very inspiring.”
“It was a warning,” I told them. “Tonight.” “The triad doesn’t give warnings.” “Not usually,” I agreed, adjusting on the pillows with a grimace. “But Kasper killed his brother’s lover once. I think killing another would be stretching the family loyalty to the breaking point, even for a Chinese family.” “So you are fuckin’ him.” Even though there was no undulation in Axe-Man’s tone, his entire body seemed carefully clenched around a mass of emotions working behind his stormy eyes.
“I agreed to be Jiang’s beard when I moved to Vancouver. We go out on ‘dates’ every week or two, and I attend certain functions with him. We don’t have a physical relationship, but I guess, after all these years, we’re friends of a sort.” Friends the way two stray cats were friends, banding together to hunt mice but wary enough of each other to sleep apart.
“Jiang is valuable, not just as his brother, but to Seven Song,” I admitted. “He’s the Vanguard, which means he’s in charge of operations. Basically, he coordinates most of the triad’s big jobs. If Kasper killed me, Jiang might turn on him, so basically, he kills me, he has to kill Jiang, just in case.”
I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing so I wouldn’t cry like a little girl.
His lips twitched in his beard. “You tell me why the hell you’d pretend to date Jiang Kuan––the truth of it––and I’ll protect ya from the Seven Song triad even if Axe-Man doesn’t like it.” I gaped at him for a moment before I snapped my jaw shut. “Why the hell would you do that?”
Cause I’m a man ruled by my gut, and it’s tellin’ me you got more goin’ on than you’re sayin’. It’s tellin’ me that when a man acts like a bastard after a girl’s bein’ beat, it’s ’cause he’s beatin’ himself up for lettin’ her get that way. You got history with a brother’a mine, which means you got history with me.”
“Honestly? All that’s icin’. You’re a woman in trouble, and that’s reason enough for me and mine to protect ya, yeah?”
“Axe-Man would lose his ever-lovin’-fuckin’ mind if he knew that shit, Mei. You wanna get killed tryin’ to avenge a death that happened over a decade ago?
“I get you’re a strong woman, so you might not like me sayin’ this, but it’s gotta be said. Have you ever thought’a askin’ for forgiveness instead’a fightin’ for it?” “How can I ask when I haven’t earned it yet?” I countered.
We might not be…friends anymore, Mei, but once, you were family. Once, I went to prison happy to think I’d given you a chance at a beautiful life. One I believed to my bones you deserved. Don’t know why you stopped talkin’ to me, and honest to fuck, I don’t wanna know anymore.
“I’m not worried you’ll fuckin’ faint. I’m worried you’ll get on your stupid excuse for a bike and hunt them down yourself. Never thought you were a damsel, Mei Zhen. You’ve always been a dragon.”
“She’s here, man,” Bat said, leanin’ close to my side, murmurin’ as the others joked around. “Take it from a man who knows, sometimes showin’ up for someone is the biggest act of love there is.”
“Yeah, or maybe she loves you enough to brave your hatred if it means bein’ close to you again?” he suggested. “Either way, stop tiptoein’ around it, man. You want her. You know what’s between you. It isn’t like you to be a coward. Just fuckin’ ask her what happened.”
“You’re here, now. You can be part of all of this, too.” “I’ll only stay until you’re back on your feet.” “But don’t you get it? You don’t have to.
“I think he’s being mean to you as some kind of test. Like if he can drive you away, it means he was right, and you were never worth the trouble. But if you stay…if you stay, Mei, I think we could all be happy again. I think you could make a home here with us.”
“I think you could make each other happy,” she finished with a little shrug like she was frustrated by her own words. “I’ve thought so for a long time.”
I don’t know what’s between you, what was or what is now, but I know what I see. And you don’t hurt the way you and Dad have been hurting for eight years without a whole lot of love missing from your life. I just wanted to mention it because, well, because if he ever forgives you, forgives himself, then nothing would make me happier, you understand?”
Axe-Man had found the letters. Not just letters, really, though I kept those unopened with the “return to sender” stamp across the front in the box, too, along with print-outs of the emails I’d sent and postcards I’d mailed. I carried the box with me where ever I moved as a reminder of all that I’d lost.
“‘I miss you,” he started to read, voice tight, and my knees almost gave out so I braced myself against the wall. “‘In Chinese or English, there are no words to properly express just how much missing you eats at me. It’s like your absence is a rabid animal, taking huge chunks out of me whenever I’m vulnerable, nipping at my heels just when I think I might be getting too close to some kind of new okay.’”
“You didn’t send shit for a year and a half,” he retorted. “Why didn’t you send these right away? Why weren’t you there visitin’ me? You fuckin’ disappeared on us!”
“I can’t. Even though you stabbed me through the fuckin’ heart, it can’t fuckin’ forget how to care about you. Even with my blood on your teeth, I can’t fight the mad urge to kiss you. Maybe especially with my blood on your teeth, your little claws in my chest. I’ve always had the bad habit of wantin’ what wasn’t good for me.”
I could feel Axe-Man tracing the designs––his designs––with his gaze.
“You little thief,” he snarled,
“You have me all fuckin’ over you.”
“You don’t want my forgiveness, but you want my rage and my cock? What, Jiang’s not doin’ it for you?”
“I’m not sleeping with Jiang. I never have, and I never would. Not least of all because he’s gay. You know that. Why, are you jealous?”
“Fuck, do you need a road map?” I demanded. “You want me to fuck you into the bed?” he snarled, his brows tangled, eyes flashing lightning bright. My womb quivered, but I jutted my chin up. “Sometime in the next century, yes.”
“Goddamn you, but yeah, I want you. Never want to stop fuckin’ this pretty, perfect cunt. You’re so fuckin’ dangerous ’cause you make me so fuckin’ weak, Rocky.”
“Rocky,” he said softly into the dark.
He’d always been a special kind of gravity to me, something to keep me grounded, something I felt on every inch of me, in every molecule in a way that was both natural and profound.
“I need to know,” he continued.
“Why aren’t you at the hospital?” I demanded. And then Old Dragon appeared in the mouth of the dark hallway looking so old, older than I’d ever seen him before. Pale and drawn like a ghost floating in the shadows. And I knew.
“I think,” I told Axe-Man in the dark, curling even tighter so my knees cracked and my shoulders pulled in their sockets. “I mean, it sounds dramatic, but I really wasn’t human in those moments. It’s like the horror of everything just overloaded my circuit and everything after was just…instinct. Like an animal.” “An animal cornered and afraid,” he muttered darkly.
It’s over. Meaning my life as I knew it. He had me committed.
“How long?” he finally rasped, but I couldn’t read anything in his tone. “I got out that fall.
Jiang found me and paid the doctors off to release me without Florent’s permission under the condition we would work together moving forward. Old Dragon contacted him through some old friends and arranged the whole thing, because he didn’t have enough pull on his own to get me out.
But he tried to make it seem like I owed it to him to accept his logic. He tried to make it seem like I graduated at the top of my class because he’d separated me from my vices.” “From me.” “Yes.”
“Did you really think I’d just…disappear on you?”
Maybe if I’d been at home with Cleo on Cleary Street when you’d vanished, I would’ve understood… Nah.” He shook his head hard, hair flying, then laying with mine against my shoulders. I wished it was light enough to see the gold and black shine together. “I would’ve gone lookin’ for you. Fuckin’ what-ifs’ve always driven me mad. Doesn’t matter now.
“Is this where you tell me this won’t ever happen again?” I ventured, thinking it would be easier to just rip it off like a Band-Aid and get the hurt over with now.
