His Twisted Heart by Ellie R Hunter
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Luca
Ipop my head into Dad’s office, but he’s not there. I find him in the bar, sitting at his usual table with Sparky and Pope, looking over plans for the renovations he wants to make around the club.
Stopping by the table, I ask him, “Do you have a minute?”
Nodding for Sparky and Pope to leave, I take a seat and clear my throat.
“What do you need, son?”
I don’t know where to start. Sitting forward, I hang my head and pull at my hair, hoping the sharp pain clears the fog in my mind.
He pulls my hands away and moves his chair closer. “What is it?”
“I’ve messed up so bad, and I’m not sure if I can put shit right. Apparently, it’s no secret Victoria and me have been close.”
“Tell me what we don’t know then, Luca.”
“I treated her like shit when she didn’t do anything to warrant it. I pushed her away, harder every time she wouldn’t stay gone. You’ve heard why she ran out and lost her hearing?”
“So you fucked some girl to drive her away? You couldn’t find a different way to get through to her?”
I admit, “I did it to break her as much as to keep her away from me.”
“Why?” His frown is so deep, I’m surprised the crease between his eyes doesn’t become permanent.
“Because she told me she had an abortion.”
The frown disappears, and so does his brows when they hit his hairline.
“Your baby?” I nod. “But she didn’t?” he guesses.
“No, she miscarried the night Ellis was here.”
“Why did she lie?”
“Her head was messed up. She thought Ellis had already taken so much from our family, and after everything we’d been through at the time, she wanted me to hate her.”
“It’s messy, that’s for sure. What do you want now?” he asks. Victoria asked me the same thing.
“Do you want to be with Victoria?” he pushes on. “Are you concerned about Pope, Rick, and the twins?”
“No, I have zero concerns regarding them. I want Tor.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
He sighs heavily. “From what you’ve said, all you can do is own your shit and fall on your knees for her.”
I was hoping he’d have some sort of magical advice that’d be more helpful than the shit I already know.
“What about Sara? Where does she fit into all this?”
“She’s gone, and she won’t be coming back. It’s Tor I want, no question about it.”
“Then I wish you luck, son.”
I reckon I’m going to need it, and more, but I’m willing to do anything to prove to her I’m sorry for everything, and it’s her that I want in the way she’s always wanted me.
Pushing my chair back to stand, Dad leans forward and lowers his voice.
“Before you run off, I want to ask you something.”
I sit back in my chair and tip my chin for him to get on with it.
“It’s been brought to my attention that Lily hasn’t been seen in a while. I know how you feel about her, so I’ll ask you once, are you the reason she’s gone?”
Without hesitation, I answer, “Yes.”
“What did you do?”
I’ve never outright lied to my father, and I won’t now. Opening my mouth to tell him, I’m distracted by Aspen and Emma rushing through the door, Emma’s eyes red and puffy, clutching Penelope to her side.
Dad’s on his feet without missing a beat, and I hang around to see what’s going down now.
“What is it?” he demands.
Aspen steps forward, panting. “Mason and Myles have been taken. These guys, six of the, kicked in the front door. They beat Mason and shoved him into a van. They did the same to Myles.”
Pope is the first one over. “They didn’t touch either of you?”
Both of them shake their heads. “They held guns on us. We were told to tell you Effie Rathbone says hello.”
“Fucking hell!” Dad roars.
I look to Pope, who’s deadly silent as he thinks.
“She wants our attention. She won’t kill them,” he murmurs.
Dad turns to Sparky, hollering, “Call Jamie Boy. This is their fucking mess, they can fucking help clean it up.” Then he turns to Slade across the bar. “Find out what you can on this Effie bitch.”
While Dad barks out his orders, I notice Aspen struggling to hold on to a holdall.
“What’s in the bag?”
She looks to Emma, and like the twins do, they seem to be holding a silent conversation.
“What’s in the fucking bag, Aspen?” Dad snaps.
“You know the strip club that got robbed the other week?”
Dad falls back on his chair and sighs. “Don’t say it.”
“Talk!” Pope barks.
“Mason found this surgery that could help Victoria regain some of hearing, but it costs a lot of money.” She dumps the bag onto the nearest table and unzips it. There are wads
of cash inside. “This is what they have so far.”
“What surgery?” I ask.
“The doctor layers over the damaged eardrum, and in most cases, a hearing aid is also needed, something like that,” Emma explains.
Sparky hands Dad a phone and presses it to his ear. Listening for a moment, he hangs up. “The Haywards will be here in an hour. Where’s Ricky?”
“He went home earlier. I’ll call him,” Pope says.
Dad tips his head back, his cheeks ballooning from exhaling a hard breath, while Pope makes the call.
Conversations hush when Pope speaks. “Where’s Ricky?”
He goes quiet while he listens. “This is Jimmy.” Obviously, he can’t use his real name. He’s supposed to be dead. “You’re Effie, I assume?”
Pope’s anger is palpable. I know the moves made tonight will change the club once again.
“Return them, now.”
This Effie bitch must hang up on him, because he launches his phone across the bar. A few brothers have to duck to avoid being hit by the damn thing.
“She has my entire family,” he tells Dad, and my body goes cold.
“Victoria?”
He nods. That’s all it takes for me to ready myself to fight with the club. I cannot lose her now.
A hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes roughly. Leo leans closer and whispers, “Keep your cool.”
“They went after my family because the fucking Haywards made me out to be the guy’s killer.”
Slade comes back with Zach, informing Dad, “There’s nothing on Effie Rathbone that shows red flags. In the public eye, she’s the owner of three high-end hair salons, and runs marathons for various charities.”
Zachery informs him, “We’re still waiting on a deeper search.”
Dad turns to Pope. “What does she want?”
He shrugs. “She didn’t say, just that she’ll be in touch.”
“Trying to make us sweat,” Sparky grunts.
Dad kicks the chair closest to him and barks out, “Luca! Get your ass in the back room.”
Wondering what he could want with me at a time like this, I walk into the back room with Dad slamming the door behind us.
“I have one question for you, and by God, you’d better tell me the truth. When trouble comes for this club nowadays, it comes fucking hard. Yet again, I have to make decisions on the lives of five people I call family. I’m going to call for the brothers to vote on whether Angel, Dion, and Grim will patch into our chapter. Depending on your answer, I’ll call for your patch too.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What did you do to Lily?”
“I made her believe I was going to shoot her in the head until she begged for her life.”
For a moment, he just stares at me. He doesn’t say a word while he silently tries to work me out.
“Where is she now?”
It’s like he’s almost afraid to ask me.
“She said something about a cousin. I didn’t care to listen after I made her pack her shit.” A second fucking time, which I don’t add.
Dad moves closer to me and holds my face in his hands. “For a moment, I thought you were going to tell me you’d killed her.”
“I wanted to. I came too close to going through with it.”
“What stopped you?”
“She’s Harper’s mom and Slade’s sister.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.” He smiles. “I’ve made no secret about wanting both of my sons to wear the patch. I need your word that you understand this club is more than yourself.”
I do. Finally, I understand the brotherhood and the need to have one another’s backs in order to survive and live free. I understand when one goes down, we all go down. I understand it all. I see what my dad’s been banging on about for years now. I see in order to get Tor back, I need the club beside me, working as one.
“I understand.”
Slapping me on the arm, he leans around me to open the door. “Let’s go, and be ready for anything.”
Facing my dad is one thing, but having to face Pope is another. I don’t particularly give a shit what he thinks about Tor and me, but it does to her. And technically, it would make my life a lot easier if he weren’t going for his gun every time I walk into the same room as him.
He’s sitting with Emma and Aspen, leaning in to look at something on Aspen’s phone.
Emma’s stopped crying, and her hands have stopped shaking. Penelope plays on the floor next to her. She’s so focused on the kid, I don’t think she hears or sees anything going on around her.
“What do you want, Jackson?” Pope asks without having taken his eyes off the phone screen.
“I just want to say that I’m in love with your granddaughter, and when we bring her home, she’ll be my old lady.”
“Is that so?”
Nodding, I go to speak, but he cuts in.
“The last I heard, she walked in on you fucking some whore because you set her up to walk in on it. Now I don’t claim to know shit about women, but I do know they don’t like that sort of shit, and they don’t tend to forget or forgive. My granddaughter’s smart, and she’s worth the world. Why in the hell would she want you?”
Scratching the back of my neck, I stall for a second, trying to figure out how to do this. I’m not afraid of Pope, but I’m not stupid, either. I need him to give me his blessing.
“Victoria’s worth more than the world, and she’s done things to hurt me too. It wasn’t all one-sided. I know we’ve got shit to work out, and all I’m asking is that you won’t cause problems.”
Tearing his attention away from the phone, he rises from his seat.
“I’ll tell you what. You help bring my family home, and if, if, Victoria wants to be with you, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But you’ve gotta show me what kinda man you are. I won’t be around forever, and when my time does come, I need to leave this world knowing my only granddaughter is safe, looked after, and loved like she deserves to be.”
Fuck me, what do I have to say to get through to him that I love her? Then again, they say actions speak louder than words. If action is what he needs, I can already give him that.
“The two assholes in Mercy who were fucking around with guns and caused her hearing loss, they didn’t run after the twins beat them and promised to finish the job when they got back from the hospital. I ended them. I shot them both between the eyes, and helped bury their bodies far up the mountain.”
It’s this moment Pope drops the Luca-is-a-piece-of-shit facade and looks at me in a new light. The old man’s lips part as he struggles to speak a single word.
“I know I’ve messed up when it comes to her, but no one would have ever gotten away with causing her pain.”
“You killed two patched members?”
“I’m not going to stand here and explain my reasons for what I did. You know as well as I do that if it weren’t me, it would’ve been you, Ricky, or the twins. She lost her fucking hearing. A beating was never going to suffice.”
“I guess that answers two questions I had.”
“And they were?”
“If you were willing to kill for her if needed, and if it mattered who they were.”
“It doesn’t matter to me who you are. If you hurt her, I kill you,” I vow.
The infamous deadly Pope smirk returns, and I begin to relax.
“Okay. If you bring her home, which you better fucking do, and if she wants to be with you, I won’t stand in your way. But know this, Jackson. She’s the most special person to me in this ugly, violent world, besides her mom, and there isn’t anyone I won’t kill for her, either.”
“I hear ya.”