His Favorite Color is Blood - Coffin Nails MC (gay biker dark romance) (Sex & Mayhem Book 8) (26 page)

“It’s not about that.” Misha
groaned and pulled his hand out of Grim’s. “I just want all of this to stop
hurting, coming back over and over again. I want to forget it, and I can’t. He
won’t let me. I want to help Dennis, because it’s my fault he’s now trapped,
but I don’t really know anymore if I want you to go after Zero.”

“Really? What about the things I
want?” hissed Grim, clenching his teeth.

“What
do
you want?” Misha
crossed his arms on his chest.

“I want to bleed him and fuck his
ass with his own cock.” Grim gave Misha a hard stare, unable to comprehend this
backtracking. “If he lives, he can always come back. Death is the only
permanent solution there is. Think of it as pest control.”

Misha didn’t object, but he
didn’t look too happy either. “When do we go?” His eyes were like a wall,
blocking Grim out.

Grim huffed, unsure what to do
with this kind of rejection. Didn’t he prove to Misha already that he was more
than capable of keeping him safe? Then again, he couldn’t keep him safe from
that vile video. “I don’t know ... tomorrow?”

“Do you have a place to … film
it?” Misha picked up the damn book again as if they were talking about getting
lunch tomorrow, but Grim pulled it out of his grasp and tossed it farther down
the mattress. That got Misha’s attention.

“I’ll think of somewhere.”

For a moment, Misha stared at the
sudoku. “Good. Good that you’ll think of everything, and you’re invincible.”

Grim stiffened, trying to stare
Misha down with no effect. “Are you mocking me?”

“Sorry,” he said, which at least
sounded honest. “I’m not in a good place.”

Grim relaxed and sat back on his
heels, unable to shake off the overwhelming sense of anger at Misha judging him
so lightly. It was as if Misha couldn’t see any of the good things Grim did for
him and only focused on the negatives. But it wasn’t Grim who was running.

“Can we do it tonight?” Misha
asked after a long silence, sliding his fingertips over the small pink scar on
his stump.

“There’s a party tonight. We can’t
just disappear, or the prez will be suspicious I’m going behind his back.” He
watched Misha carefully. Would that cause yet another fit of passive-aggressive
anger?

“I don’t have to go, right?”
Misha inched away on the bed.

Grim grabbed the comforter. He
would not simply take this. “Maybe if you hadn’t burned the flash drive, we
could have already found Zero.”

That put a fire under Misha, as
if he were struck by a match. “Oh, excuse me for trying to forget how I got my
legs sawn off and trying to put years of abuse behind me!”

“Sure. That’s much more important
than possibly saving hundreds of people in your situation.”

Misha reached out and slapped
him.

He actually slapped him.

He hit Grim’s face with an open
palm. It was such a shock to Grim’s system that for a moment he was too choked
up to speak. He pulled in some air through his nose, staring at Misha while his
cheek burned as if someone touched it with a hot iron.

“I’m not going to some stupid
party,” Misha hissed and scrambled away on the bed, not daring to look up at
Grim.

Grim laughed and massaged his
cheek, following Misha with his eyes, even though the firm scaffolds of their
relationship that he built up in his head suddenly seemed all-too frail. “I
kill for you. I keep you safe. I feed you. I give you my undivided attention,
but the moment I say something you don’t like, that’s what you have for me, you
ungrateful brat?”

Misha hit the wall with the back
of his head and hid his face in his hands. “Because you’re right. I should have
kept that fucking flash drive, but I was too afraid to use a computer to even
check what was on it. Fuck!”

“How is that my fault?”

“Because you’re so confident and
brave. It’s as if all the bravery I had was in my legs. Zero took it, and I’m
now this living, breathing bundle of fear, and I can’t help it.”

Grim took a deep breath. “I still
don’t know how this made me deserve this.”

“I have to look at you and see
everything I’m not. It’s not your fault, but I don’t feel good about any of
this either.” Misha kept his face in his hands, as if not looking at Grim could
somehow save him from the consequences of his actions. Or from the world around
him.

“So you hit me because I’m so
great that you hate me for it?” offered Grim, more deflated by the second. This
was not how he imagined their honeymoon period.

Misha looked up with new fire in
his eyes. “You were being spiteful.”

“No. I’m fucking disappointed,”
said Grim and rolled off the bed. He couldn’t believe all this was coming from
a boy who recently declared his love to him.

“You know I feel guilty over all
these other people, so that’s where you hit.”

“Whatever. You can do your
sudoku,” said Grim, replacing the old T-shirt with a new one.

Misha bared his teeth and grabbed
the book. “And you can go to your party.”

Grim glanced back at him and
stormed out of the room, slamming the door as hard as he could. He wanted to
get smashed tonight and forget all about the sour qualities of his boyfriend.
Ripping into the pedophile couldn’t come soon enough.

Chapter 21 – Grim

Grim couldn’t have been more on
edge. As if a whole twenty-four hours without Misha’s affection was a droplet
of blood in the waters, sharpening his appetite yet not letting him bite into
anything. He could hardly believe he had so many feelings, and he didn’t want
any of them. A part of him wanted to do anything to please Misha, and another
tore him apart with anger for having those thoughts. Another was brimming with
lust now that his attentions were welcome. Fucking
torment
. How could
one little bird cause this much mayhem? The only answer he had was that his
birdie was in agony, hurt and desperate. In that kind of state, even a canary
could poke someone’s eyes out if they weren’t careful.

It was a warm evening in Detroit,
and Grim should have been happier to do the deed, but with Misha ignoring him
completely, he switched on loud music in the car he borrowed from the
Nails-owned garage, for once wanting to just get on with it. Maybe seeing Grim
work again would make Misha rethink his behavior? Maybe he would smile again
without that mocking edge to his mouth?

He parked the car a few houses
down from the one owned by their target and stretched his muscles as soon as he
rushed out of the vehicle. For the first time, he resented that he needed to
help Misha with the wheelchair, but he did so anyway, trying not to look at the
boy too much. Misha wore a sleek black outfit and gloves, but none of those
would help him remain unrecognizable. Grim had even suggested to Misha that he
shouldn’t go, and they could just film together, but Misha was stubborn like a
goat and insisted he’d go with Grim. So there Grim was. An assassin with a
sidekick in a wheelchair.

This wasn’t a completely
destitute neighborhood, and no matter how ill kept the houses were around here,
the people could still provide a description of a suspicious newcomer to the
area, so Grim pulled a thin black scarf around the lower part of his face and
wore a baseball cap that he stole from the clubhouse. His ears picked up noises
of muffled music and voices, all accompanied by the steady sound of the wheels
next to him. He really didn’t feel like doing this with Misha tonight. All he
wanted was a quick kill. A fast relief. But he wouldn’t have gotten that even
without Misha following him like some kind of mute examiner who took notes of
Grim’s performance. They needed to film the damn thing, and even though Grim
was sure the video wouldn’t see the light of day in the end, it still made him
uncomfortable.

“Maybe you go in through the
window, and I’ll get inside from the back?” Misha asked.

Great, now Grim, the Coffin Nails
Reaper, was getting advice from a complete newbie.

“Maybe you’re the one who should
approach from the front? You look completely harmless,” he said as they
approached the small, rundown house with rotting wooden panels for decoration.

“Isn’t the black a giveaway?”
Misha asked, sounding a lot more innocent than he had for a while now,
considering his crappy attitude.

Grim frowned at him. “You’re in a
wheelchair. No one suspects a disabled guy of anything.”

Misha gave a long, disgruntled
sigh. “I can still do things. I’m not useless,” he said as if that was what
they were discussing now.

“No one said that.” Grim took a
deep breath and looked at the house with whitish, pulsing light reflecting in
the window. The pedophile was watching TV.

“Okay.” Misha wheeled away,
straight for the driveway and a paved path leading to the front door.

Grim looked after him for several
seconds before rushing into the man’s garden through a broken gate. The backyard
was left unkept with weeds the size of young trees licking Grim’s legs as he
rushed to the back of the house. And as he got there, it became clear he
wouldn’t even have to try his luck with a window, and with a door as basic as
the one he saw there, he doubted getting inside would be an issue at all.

He pulled out his tools when the
sharp sound of a ring made him look inside the dark room. The sink he noticed
in the moonlight confirmed his suspicions that he’d be getting into their
target’s kitchen. With Misha surely already talking to the pedophile, Grim
needed to act fast, and he opened the door, sliding inside while holding his
breath.

He was in his element as he
creeped through the dark corridor like yet another shadow, but when he reached
the living room, from where he could see the front door, he stalled. He could
hear Misha from outside and see the man Misha was talking to, still inside the
house.

Tomas Ornish was in a wheelchair.
Just sitting there. And when Grim looked around the house, he instantly noticed
the little hints of the place being accessible to a wheelchair user. The
furniture was low, and so were the pictures hanging on the wall in the
corridor. When he looked at the old wheelchair, which was probably creaking
with the man’s every move, Grim’s limbs became paralyzed, and his brain
emptied, drained of any will to go through with the plan. He started retreating
along his own footsteps even before consciously making that decision, his brain
a cool sponge of ice crystals that made it unusable. His breathing only slowed
down once he was safely back in the ugly garden that was possibly in such a bad
shape because Tomas couldn’t freely move around.

This was some kind of joke.

He rushed around the house, his
head spinning when he saw Misha again, smiling at Tomas as if the two of them
already shared some kind of connection. When he came up to them, Misha stalled
mid-sentence, while Tomas, a pudgy man in his forties, adjusted his glasses.

“Can I help you?” he asked Grim.

Grim forced himself to smile and
put his hand on Misha’s shoulder. “There you are. I got completely lost back
there,” he said, trying not to look at Tomas. Was he really the man they came
for?

“I—yeah, I was asking for some
directions.” Misha smiled back, and even though his face looked honest, Grim
knew nothing about that sweet expression was sincere.

“That’s fine. I already found
it,” said Grim, hoping Misha hadn’t given Tomas any details. “Let’s go.”

Misha nodded and shook the man’s
hand. “Thank you anyway. Have a good evening.”

Grim pulled him away from the
house more roughly than he originally intended, his blood buzzing aggressively
as he broke into a run toward the car, with Misha at the front.

Misha gripped the armrests with a
gasp. “What are you doing? What happened?”

“This can’t be him. The fucker
must have moved,” said Grim breathlessly as he stopped next to their car. This
night was such a failure.

“Tomas Ornish. That was him.”
Misha whispered, already scrambling into the seat.

“How do you know if you were
asking for directions?” asked Grim, jumpier by the second. It was as if his
brain refused to work as it normally did. He would not question the identity of
a target at any other time, even if it wasn’t confirmed by a photo.

“I asked him if the house was
someone else’s, pretending I was looking for that other person, and he said
that I was wrong, he was Tomas Ornish, and he lived there.” Misha stared at Grim
with his eyes wide open.

Grim clenched his hands on the
roof of the car, sucking in long, scattered breaths. “Come on ... he couldn’t
have done it.”

“What? Why not? Didn’t someone in
the club give you this intel?” asked Misha, transferring into the seat.

“Yeah, but it’s just Milk.
Something’s off,” Grim said and stuffed the wheelchair into the car, jumping
into the driver’s seat as if the asphalt were burning his feet.

Misha looked out of the window as
they left and didn’t question Grim anymore.

*

Grim drove into the parking lot by
the club-owned garage with the squeak of tires. Misha was silent again, but
Grim didn’t even bother with putting on some music, as his brain was the source
of enough noise. Getting out of the metal box was both a relief and yet another
reason for anger. Milk would be here tonight, and he’d have some explaining to
do.

“I’ll be fine, just get it
close,” Misha said as Grim went to get his wheelchair on autopilot, even though
his brain was still going over what had happened.

He put the wheelchair next to
Misha when Milk’s blond head appeared in the doorway leading to the garage
backrooms. Grim rushed toward him, trying to keep his hands low as he
approached. The moment Milk saw him, he walked up to him as well.

“How’d it go?” Milk
loud-whispered with his eyes wide, but the moment heat exploded in the depths
of Grim’s chest, he grabbed Milk by the shoulders and pushed him against the
wall.

“You gave me the wrong guy!”

“What? No. I checked the address
a few times. Show it to me. Did you hurt someone innocent?” Milk asked
frantically as Misha wheeled closer.

Grim pulled the crumpled piece of
paper out of his jean pocket and pushed it into Milk’s hand. “Of course not,
but I could have, and the guy’s already in a wheelchair.”

Milk looked down at the paper and
then stared up at Grim with that dumbfounded expression. “That must be him.
He’s in a wheelchair.”

Grim took a deep breath that
didn’t seem to fill his lungs well enough anyway. He let go of Milk. “No way ...”

Milk frowned. “They’re kids. He
didn’t exactly need to chase them down or lock them in a basement.”

Grim swallowed hard, staring at
him with a heaviness spreading in his limbs. “But ... he’s defenseless,” he
whispered.

Milk spread his arms. “So it
should have been easy to deal with him! What the fuck? I stuck out my neck to
get this for you.”

The squeak of wheels was an
insistent presence behind Grim, and all he could focus on was the grating
feeling of failure and the thought he’d have to hurt someone like Misha.

He gave Milk a slow nod and
pushed back his hair, turning away from him only to see Misha moving back and
forth in his wheelchair. “I’ll think about it,” he muttered and slowly made his
way toward the clubhouse.

By the sound of it, Misha didn’t
follow, so Grim looked back to see what was going on with him. “We’re going.”

Misha stopped riding around the
yard, only to resume after a few seconds and roll the wheelchair Grim’s way. He
didn’t say a word as he passed Grim, and his hair obscured his eyes.

Grim stuffed his hands down his
pockets and watched Misha trying to get inside through the door. Grim
eventually pulled it open and gestured for him to enter. Misha looked around
the empty lounge, cautious as if he were on enemy ground.

“Is that the only reason why you thought
it wasn’t him? Because he was disabled?” he asked quietly and groaned as soon
as he wheeled over to the steep stairs to the second floor. He muttered some
curse words under his breath.

Grim smirked. No matter how angry
Misha was, he still needed Grim’s help. But the question hung in the air like
toxic gas, making Grim’s stomach flip. “Do you want to tell me something?”

Misha punched the wall.

Grim leaned against it and stared
at Misha without a word.

“I was so stressed about this.
Being in a wheelchair doesn’t make him a good guy,” Misha groaned and crossed
his arms on his chest, pretending there were no stairs he needed to conquer.

Grim swallowed hard. “I ... don’t
do this kind of stuff. He’s weak. He can’t defend himself. Like a bird with
broken wings can’t get away from a cat.”

Misha looked up the stairs and
then back at Grim. “The less challenge the better. This isn’t about you having
fun. We need to get this guy to save Dennis. And he’s a child molester, for
fuck’s sake!”

“Maybe you should have stabbed
him then, if you think it’s so fucking easy!” hissed Grim, folding his arms.

“Maybe I would have if I wasn’t
counting on you. Why don’t you install knives in my wheelchair? That would make
things so much easier.”

Grim frowned, and all of a
sudden, he could see many places that could be used for hiding weapons so that
Misha would always be safe, even without Grim around.

“So what? If you find out Zero
has a peg leg, you won’t kill him anymore?” Misha grumbled.

“But he doesn’t!” insisted Grim, pulling
away from Misha.

“That’s not the point!”

Grim looked away from him. He
couldn’t explain why, but the thought of hurting someone who couldn’t freely
move around had always been something he found despicable, and having Misha
unload on him like this was even more depressing, especially after the failure
of the previous day. “No? I think it is.”

“It isn’t! If he had prosthetic
legs or whatever, it wouldn’t make him a good person. Christ!”

A backdoor opened not far away
from there, and Priest peeked out at them. “Is everything all right?”

And there it was, Misha instantly
moved closer to Grim, and Grim’s hand trailed over his nape. It was such an
immense relief to touch him again.