Three Kinds of Trouble by Anne Malcom

Chapter Fifteen

“Where is Hades?” I repeated. Demanded. My heart was pounding against my chest, panic crawling up my throat.

“He was getting chatty, so I had to put him to sleep for a bit too.” She nodded her head over to the sofa.

My eyes went there, and my heart dropped even further. Hades was slumped over, as if he’d just fallen asleep watching the game or something. That would’ve only been possible if Hades was the kind of guy who watched games with a beer in hand and a belly protruding from his tee. Hades was not that kind of guy. Hades was a guy who fought a woman with a gun, and for whatever reason had lost then been drugged.

Every cell in my body called out to me, urging me to go to Hades so I could put my hand on his chest, feel the rise and fall of it. Maybe let some of his courage and strength seep into my body.

But I couldn’t do that. The woman was watching me with eagle eyes. It was my job to figure this out, to protect Hades and Sirius.

“I wasn’t expecting you home,” the woman remarked casually. “I watched you walk into Nordstrom with your girl and your shadow, figured you’d be hours.” She tilted her head, regarding me.

“Oh, I apologize. My bad,” I snapped at her. “I’m so sorry for interrupting your plans.” It was a mistake to get ornery with the woman with a gun, but it was either pissed off or hysterical.

Surprisingly, she didn’t seem pissed off at all. In fact, she grinned. Wide.

“Don’t apologize, you’re being here makes this all the more delicious.” She spoke to me as she rounded the kitchen island. I walked backward, slowly, hating to leave Sirius but needing to get to Hades.

“What are you doing in my house?” I demanded. She was a big fan, she’d said. Had she somehow found out where I lived after becoming obsessed with me? That sounded insane and narcissistic, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why she’d be here.

“What do you want with me?” I implored, getting closer to the couch. I didn’t dare take my eyes off her.

She stopped walking then. “With you?” she asked.

I nodded once. “Yeah, with me. Since this is my house, and it’s my dog you drugged and...” I trailed off, desperate to look at him but not willing to let her out of my sight. “And you were talking about my channel,” I finished weakly.

“Oh, yes, I can understand how you could assume that,” she nodded, the gun still held casually at her side. “But I’m not here for you, I’m here for him. More accurately, I’m here to kill him.” She lifted the gun and pointed it at Hades.

My eyes went to Hades, instantly moving so I could get between the barrel of her gun and Hades’s prone body.

The woman’s eyes flared in surprise at this as a stirring on the sofa stole my attention.

Hades’s jerked, eyelids fluttering then opening wide. He went from unconscious to disturbingly alert in a manner of seconds. He was on his feet in a couple more seconds, looking like he was going to rush toward me when the woman spoke.

“Nuh, uh,” she tsked, still pointing the gun at him. He stopped in his tracks, and my stomach lurched.

“So happy you could join us,” she cooed, her voice saccharine sweet. “Freya and I were just chatting.”

“Freya, get the fuck out,” Hades seethed, eyes hard and voice cold. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at the woman.

Even in a terrifying moment such as this one, something about the look on his face irked me. There was a stony fury there. One that was deep and familiar. This was not just some stranger in my house, and this was not about me. This was about them. This was about only one of them making it out of this room alive.

“You are free to leave whenever you’d like,” the woman agreed. “I was telling the truth when I said I was a big fan. I really don’t want to have to hurt you.” The gun was still pointed at Hades’s head. “But if he tries any of his shit, I will unfortunately have to kill you to punish him.” Her brows furrowed ever so slightly. “Then again, it really does seem like the surest way to hurt him.”

She sighed, focusing on Hades. “I was so sure that you were like me, that you were unable to love, that we were perfect for each other. Then you had to go and fuck that up. Then you had to live when I’d been certain you were dead. And I had to come all the way back here to finish the job. I’ve got a lot going on right now, you know. This is very inconvenient.”

She was speaking so casually, as if we were all sitting across from each other at dinner, not in some deathmatch or whatever the fuck this was. This woman was one hundred percent insane. And she seemed to be an ex-girlfriend of Hades’s.

Her eyes landed on me then, and her gaze on my skin was repulsive. “I will say, it was a happy surprise to see that you were fucking Freya Barker,” she chuckled. “When I said I was a big fan, I mean really, I am. It’s nice to meet you in person.”

I sneered at her, shaking my head in disgust. “I wish I could say the same.”

She grinned, showing perfect, white teeth. “Oh, fire. I like it. I’m sure that’s why he likes you. More than likes you.”

I was watching this woman like a hawk, looking for a moment, any moment I could get the gun away from Hades’s head. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d walked in the door, since I’d sent the text to Swiss. Five minutes? Ten? How long did it take to get from the clubhouse to here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? And that was only if Swiss got my text immediately and wasn’t busy choking some girl or whatever the fuck it was he did. Only if he’d taken my text seriously and was riding over here armed and ready to kill a bitch.

Three was a good chance that he wasn’t, and I could not keep stalling in hopes that he was. Hades and I could very possibly die if I didn’t think of something soon. Presumably how to kill a bitch.

I’d never had a violent bone in my body, even toward those who had hurt me in the most permanent of ways. Now, looking at the woman who had drugged both my dog and my Old Man, I was more than ready to claw her fucking face off.

“No,” the woman decided. “No, I can’t kill Freya Barker, even if that would punish Hades deliciously. Us girls have gotta stick together.” She winked at me.

I glared at her.

“Freya, leave,” Hades gritted out.

I didn’t move.

She sighed, the woman with the gun. “As riveting as this honorable routine is, I’ve got a plane to catch. I’ve got to wrap this up. Hades, don’t worry, I’ll get the brain on the first shot.” Then she steadied the gun, looking more purposeful.

I acted on instinct then, my life flashing before my eyes, Hades’s life flashing before my eyes. There was no reason, no tactic to it, only the desperate need to keep Hades alive.

I charged.

The only reason it worked was because the crazy woman was not expecting to be out crazied and charging an armed woman without a weapon or any kind of brawling experience was definitely crazy. My hands went for the gun, then we went tumbling to the floor.

Hades reacted fast, really fucking fast. But it happened faster. As we slammed to the floor, struggling for the gun, my finger found the trigger, and it went off. Loud. Loud enough to rattle my teeth.

Something warm covered my face.

Hades was there then, pulling me backward, the gun in his hand now. It all happened slowly, in my head, at least. In slow motion, my eyes looked down at the woman.

The dead woman.

The one I had killed.

* * *

Things got a little chaotic once Swiss arrived, just seconds after the gun went off, after Hades had searched my entire body, looking for wounds. There were none. The blood and brain matter I was covered in was not my own. He’d let me go only because I was desperate to check on Sirius. Obviously, Swiss had taken my text seriously, arriving with Elden, Anderson and Hansen. All of whom were armed and quite obviously ready to go to war.

“Late to the party. Fuck,” Swiss teased, holstering his weapon and pouting. Pouting at the woman lying dead on my living room floor.

I was sitting on the floor with Sirius’s head in my lap, face and eyes dry even though I was sure I’d been sobbing. Maybe that had just happened on the inside. Whatever the case was, I was grateful since there were a lot of stoic badasses here right now, and I did not want to be the crying, hysterical woman.

“Fuck,” Hansen hissed, walking over to where I was sitting on the floor.

“She killed the fucking dog?” Swiss asked in horror.

“He’s not dead,” I snapped, my hand on Sirius’s torso, letting the even rise and fall of his breathing stave off the grief and panic.

“I’ll call a vet,” Anderson offered, phone at his ear.

“I’ll take care of her,” Swiss volunteered, nodding to the dead woman on the floor.

“Someone needs to check on Hades,” I told Hansen from my spot on the floor.

Hansen’s eyes went to Hades, looking for a wound of some sort.

“I’m fuckin’ fine,” Hades ground out, eyes on me.

“No, you’re not,” I seethed. “She, whoever the fuck she was, drugged you, and I want to make sure it wasn’t some kind of lethal, slow-acting poison.”

Hades looked like he was going to argue, but I pointed at him from my spot on the floor. “So help me God, if you try any macho masculine shit, I will scream. I’m holding it together by a fucking thread right now. You’re going to get checked out.”

Hansen watched our exchange with a raised brow. Hades glared at me.

“Fine.”

The word was a victory, or it would’ve been if I wasn’t holding my unconscious dog in my arms. If I hadn’t just killed a woman, and if I wasn’t covered in her blood.

* * *

Sirius woke up. After a checkup from a vet—one who made house calls and didn’t ask questions—he was declared healthy. The vet had said that Sirius might be groggy and confused for a while, but the drug would have no lasting effects. I was going in for a checkup tomorrow too. Just in case.

Hades was also fine, according to Sarah, who I believed to be a fucking saint. Swiss, as promised, had ‘taken care’ of the body. After a badass powwow, the Sons of Templar left my house.

Hades had wordlessly taken me into my bathroom, slowly peeled off both of our clothes and got us both in the shower. The water turned red as the blood washed from me. I’d watched it with detachment, my body cold despite the steaming hot water, despite Hades’s body pressed against mine. He washed me with tenderness and care, in a way that wasn’t at all sexual. Then he’d taken me out of the shower, dried me and wrapped me up in a terrycloth robe. It was the warmest robe I owned, yet my body still shivered underneath it.

Hades didn’t speak until we were back in the bedroom, after I’d checked on Sirius, curled up happily on the bed. When he spoke, the tenderness that existed in the shower stall was nowhere to be seen.

“Freya, why in the fuck didn’t you leave when I told you to fucking leave?” He was seething, holding my hips tight. He hadn’t stopped touching me since the gun went off. I was grateful for that since I was pretty sure that his hands were holding me together.

My body was trembling under Hades’s touch. The harder I tried to make it stop, the harder I shook. I tried to focus on Hades, his eyes, his downturned lips, his milky skin. He was pissed off. That was good. Pissed off was something I could work with in that moment. That meant I could also be pissed off instead of falling apart.

“Why the fuck would I leave?” I replied with bite.

“Because I fuckin’ told you to.”

“Because you told me to?” My brows all but flew up into my hairline. “Well, if I’d done what you told me to do, you may not be standing here right now.” As pissed as I was, the mere thought of what could’ve happened had the world tilting beneath my feet.

“If things had gone a little bit different, and I mean if that bullet was a few fuckin’ inches to the left, you’d be dead,” he forced out. “I’m gonna do my best to make sure you’re never in a situation like that again, but if shit happens, you’re gonna do what I fuckin’ say.”

“Did you hit your head at some point tonight?” I scowled, rolling my eyes, anger completely and utterly taking the place of the shock.

“This is not a fuckin’ joke, Freya,” he scowled, making it clear that he was not amused. His hands tightened. “Need to hear you tell me you get me on this.”

“I will not,” I scoffed, stepping out of his arms so I could fold my arms and say with my body what my tone and face were saying. He was really starting to piss me off.

Hades was having none of that, striding over to hold me once more.

As if a switch had been flipped, I broke. All the strength I’d been clutching with a death grip vanished. “You want me to walk away when we’re in a situation like that?” I countered, my voice shaking. “That’s never going to fucking happen. I may not have the skills, I may not be brave and badass, but I’ll never leave you when you’re in danger. I’ll fight for you. Despite what you try and order me to do. I’ll fight for you.”

Hades froze at my words, something I couldn’t define passing over his face. Then he pulled me to him, pressing his lips to mine.

I relaxed into the kiss, lost myself in it. I would’ve been willing to drown in it had he not pulled back.

“I’m an enforcer,” he murmured against my lips. “My job is to fight for the club. Kill for the club. Die for the club if need be. I fight for them. My brothers. No one has ever fought for me.”

My heart shattered then, into a thousand and one tiny pieces. He spoke in that same deep tenor I’d grown accustomed to, iron ever-present in his voice. There was nothing soft, nothing vulnerable about his voice. But I knew him well enough to hear them. The cracks. The deep chasms between them.

I lifted my hand to cup his jaw. “Honey, you’ve never had me before. I’m going to fight for you.”

Emotion swirled in his eyes. Emotion that shattered those thousand and one tiny pieces into another thousand and one tiny pieces.

“Who was she?” As much as I’d wanted this moment to last forever, this question had been burning in my throat, and I couldn’t hold onto it for a moment longer.

Hades sighed. He’d had to have been expecting it. Dreading it, by the looks of it. “Someone from my past.”

I waited for him to expand, but he just kept staring.

“Honey, she almost killed you. I killed her...” My voice broke a little on that, and Hades’s jaw contracted, but I held it together. “I’m going to need a fuck of a lot more detail than that.”

His eyes searched mine, as if he was searching for a way out of this. Or maybe he was trying to figure out how much to tell me.

“Everything,” I stated firmly. “I need everything, Hades.”

“She was the one person I cared about ... before you,” he answered after sucking in a deep breath. “Because she hated the world just about as much as I did. Because she was a fucking knockout at sixteen, and I was a teenage boy who wanted to fuck because I thought that would make me a man.”

He paused, looking at me from beneath his dark lashes. “You sure you want to hear this ... now?”

I gritted my teeth. No, I really did not want to hear how the woman who had been lying dead in my living room up until about an hour ago was the only person in Hades’s young life that he’d cared about. And, by the sounds of it, the girl he’d lost his virginity to.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I had to force strength into my voice.

Hades did not look happy about this, but he nodded once then began talking. “We fell into the same crowd. She did even worse shit than me, which was sayin’ something. But she’d also been through shit worse than me. Shit she never talked about, shit that I later learned took away her ability to be human.”

My stomach roiled at his words.

“She had me tangled up in her shit for a long time.” He stared off into the distance, like he was back there. Faraway.

“Before I patched into the Sons. Sure, we’re outlaws, we do some fucked up shit, but we have rules. She’s a high-ranking member of a cartel. Those fuckers have no rules. I knew she’d get me killed. I didn’t want to die. She took me explaining that to her as rejection. It didn’t end well.”

I raised my brow in a ‘no shit’ gesture.

“Hadn’t seen her until a few months ago. The night I met you.” He reached out and took my hand.

I gaped at him. “The night you met me? The mean the night you were stabbed?”

He nodded once.

“She was the one who stabbed you?” I screeched.

He didn’t reply, which was all the confirmation I needed. “We’ve been together all this time, and you didn’t tell me your psychotic ex-girlfriend tried to kill you?”

“Not exactly something you slip into conversation,” he remarked dryly.

I glared at him. “I don’t know … how about, ‘hey babe, remember that night we met? A girl didn’t like the way I broke up with her, so she tried to end me. For good.’ ” I waved my hand. “Something along those lines would’ve worked swell.”

Hades rubbed the back of his neck. “If I’d tracked her down and killed her like I should’ve, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You wouldn’t have to live with this for the rest of your fuckin’ life.”

My anger dissipated immediately. It hadn’t disappeared completely; I was sure it would reemerge at a later date. But for now, I reached up to cup Hades’s jaw.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! I swear, if another alpha male tries to place blame on himself for not being supreme ruler of the universe, I’m going to scream,” I rebuked. “I will not let you take the blame for this just because you didn’t kill your ex-girlfriend after she stabbed you and left you for dead.” A dark smile stretched across my face. “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

Hades examined me then. Examined me as if he was trying to see inside of my head. “You’re okay.” Not a question exactly. An observation.

I remained quiet for a moment, doing some of my own self-examination. “Not entirely,” I admitted. “But you’re okay. Sirius is okay. I’m okay. Those are all ingredients to me being on the road to okay.” I frowned at him. “As long as you’re not going to do some noble, alpha male shit and decide to leave me because you don’t want me to have to deal with your world.”

His eyes blazed, and he squeezed my hand. “I’m not fuckin’ noble, Freya,” he bit out. “And I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

An oath.

I relaxed.

“Then I’m definitely going to be okay.”

* * *

Hades had not wanted me leaving the house after that. He was in full-on, alpha male, protective mode. I couldn’t breathe heavily without his body stiffening and his eyes narrowing as if he was waiting for me to dissolve into a blubbering mess, trying to figure out how he’d catch every single one of my tears.

It was nice, comforting even. But it also made me feel all the more breakable knowing he was waiting for me to break down. I needed to be around someone different. Someone who had called late the night before.

“Coffee,” Macy said as a greeting. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll also come over later on in the afternoon with wine or tequila or both, but I feel like you need to talk to someone sooner than that. So coffee. As soon as you wake up. Call me. You won’t wake me up because I have children, and those little devils are up before dawn.” This was followed by a long pause. A loaded one. “You’re going to be okay. And you did the right thing. Love you, babe.”

“You too,” I returned, a little stunned. Stunned that she’d said all of that without so much as taking a breath. That she’d known exactly what I’d needed to hear, that she’d said ‘love you’ in an offhand, casual way yet really sounded like she meant it.

And that was why we were sitting at Oliver’s at seven-thirty in the morning with pastries and very strong coffees. I’d barely slept the night before, even with Hades’s arms wrapped around me, with Sirius’s weight at our feet, with all of the adrenaline rushing out of my body. I knew Hades had barely slept either because every time I’d jerked out of a nightmare, his arms had tightened around me. He never said anything, just held me close. It had helped. A whole bunch. But there were some things even hot, alpha male bikers couldn’t fix entirely. Sometimes you needed a hot, hippy biker babe like the one sitting across me with understanding in her eyes. The one who had just shared her heartbreaking story with me, the one that made me feel a heck of a lot less alone and doomed.

She’d made it through killing a guy—not to mention losing her parents—yet her eyes were full of light and happiness. She had a family, a life. No mental breakdowns on record. There was hope for me yet.

“I can’t believe I’m in a world where death and violence and breaking the law is a way of life,” I mused over my second coffee.

She patted my hand. “You feeling like running yet?” The question was serious, and there was not an ounce of judgement there.

I considered the question. Running had always been my default. Escape was easy and something I was familiar with. I could’ve run. I could’ve left this place behind to find a small, quiet town—one without a resident motorcycle club—and build a quiet life. I could’ve found a job that did not require me to take my clothes off, which would in turn help me attract a man who was not going to break the law or murder people on a regular basis.

If I’d wanted to give up Hades and the fabulous women like Macy who came with him.

“No,” I proclaimed adamantly. “No. I’m not thinking about running.”

The mere prospect of existing in a place where Hades wasn’t seemed impossible. Just thinking about it made my heart beat faster and made my skin feel tight and uncomfortable.

“I love him,” I whispered to my muffin.

“Well, duh,” Macy muttered when she’d finished chewing her croissant.

“I have no idea how this happened,” I looked at the ceiling, as if I’d find the answer there. “He’s not who I’m supposed to fall in love with.”

“Yeah, right,” Macy snorted. “Women never fall for the evil, dark-haired, psychotic man. There’s nothing attractive about that.”

I grinned. My body grinned. Bloomed. That’s what it had felt like, these past months with him. That I had emerged from the winter of my life. That first night, the one where he was bleeding on the parking lot, was the first chilly morning of spring. There hadn’t been any visible new life, no beauty, the skeletons of before still stood stark and overwhelming. But somehow, while I wasn’t looking, new life began to grow.

I began to grow. To flower.

With a man who never in a million years would look like he could foster or nurture new life. But he had.

“There’s something about the villain,” Macy continued. “When the antihero, the scoundrel, is ruthless and deadly to everyone but you.” She noticeably shivered, her cheeks flushing. This woman with years of marriage under her belt, with children, blushed talking about her husband, her villain. “There’s something about that. And it takes a certain kind of woman to tame a villain. To love a scoundrel. They don’t live their lives like other men. Certainly not like any kind of hero or prince. But they love you that much deeper, fuck you so much better and make your life that much more amazing.”

I blinked it at her. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

She smiled. “When you’re in the thick of it, you barely know which way is up, and the only thing you do know is that you need him. And he needs you, Freya. I cannot pretend I understand Hades because I don’t. He’s the darkest horse in our fucked up little stable. His heart may be black, but it’s there. It’s big. And it’s yours. When a man in a Sons of Templar cut loves you, really loves you, it’s for life.” She tilted her. “And he loves you. In his own way. He’s going to battle with what happened last night. With the guilt, blaming himself. He may be different than my Old Man in every other way, but in that regard, they’re the same. You’re going to be okay, though.”

I smiled weakly. “How do you know that?”

“Because, bitch, you’ve got me. And Caroline. And Scarlett. And the whole fucking club. You’re not alone.”

Her words echoed through my head, rebounding through my body and settling in my stomach, flourishing. They kept me warm.

I was not alone. I had Macy across from me. Hades at home. Marilyn. My Aunt V phone call away. Des. Kallum.

I was not alone.