misunderstoodebook (36 page)

“Tried to. She’s not budging.”

“You think?” Johnnie sneered.

“I
know
,” Stretch said with impatience. “A man named Logan is there with her and he said he’ll take real good care of her.”

Johnnie sped through the parking lot, barreling his bike through the wooded pathway, kicking up dirt and twig, soon arriving at Christopher’s and Megs’s house, his heart hammering, scenarios running through his head and not one of them were good.

Fuck, if anything happened to Little Man because Dinah
refused
to fucking get her head out of her ass…How the fuck had Logan gotten her to go with him
anyway?
But, more than that…Jesus…

“Come with me,” he ordered Kendall and dismounting. She gave him a blank look, so he grabbed her hand and ran to the gate, not surprised to find it unlocked. The dogs should’ve run to greet him but nothing. Not one of them when four normally guarded the place.

Johnnie pulled his Glock and ignored Kendall’s frightened cry. His grandfather had orchestrated it all. The attack on his and Christopher’s house. Val’s beating…

He raced up the back steps, shoving Kendall behind him. He threw open the door, unable to comfort her and soothe away the shock in her features. She shouldn’t be going through this right now, especially pregnant, but, fuck. He had to get to that miserable old fucker.

Nothing but fucking silence greeted him. Jesus. No babbling from Little Man. No whining from Dinah. Rushing through the mud room and reaching the kitchen, Johnnie skidded to a halt…his brain working to process the scene before him.

Photos plastered everywhere. A clothesline hanging from one end of the wall to the next, more photos dangling from them. Disgusting pictures of a much younger Logan with young girls.
Big Joe,
as he looked years ago, with young girls. Other photos. Those girls drugged. Beaten. Bound and gagged.

“Is that me?” Kendall asked in a horrified voice. She gripped the table.

He staggered back.
Yes,
it was Kendall, her legs spread and on the hood of her car when Johnnie had fucked her. The photos flashed before him as his gaze roamed from one to the other. Zoann, sunlight gleaming on her, the frame of a window shadowing the background, her hands in her hair as she pinned it up. Bailey, standing in the middle of a small apartment, her head cocked to the side, a frown wrinkling her brow. The shot had been too close for it not to have been taken from
inside
her apartment and from her expression, she detected someone’s presence. And, finally, the last shot. Megs, next to a refrigerator in this kitchen—
her
kitchen—a pair of spiked red heels on her feet. And nothing else.

The one thing every, single one of these photos had were all four of them—Bailey, Zoann, Megs, and Kendall—were naked, the images snapped at some of their most intimate and vulnerable moments.

“What’s this, Johnnie?” Kendall whispered. “Who took that of me? Did you?”

“Hello, boy.”
   

A roar of rage escaped Johnnie at his grandfather’s voice and he lifted his gun, cocking it.

Logan smirked at him. “Don’t you want to find your nephew?”

“Where is he? Where’s Dinah?” he snarled, his vision blurring, his hand shaking. “You said you came in
peace
.”

“I do,” Logan responded with a shrug.

“Then what’s this bullshit?” Johnnie gestured wildly to the photos. Of Kendall. Megan. Zoann. Bailey. The faces rushed through his head. The unknown girls, some of them younger than Meggie.

“Money,” he answered.

Money. Females. Prostitution. “We don’t peddle women,” Johnnie gritted. Especially
their
women.

Logan clucked low in his throat, his expression genuinely offended. “Wouldn’t do something so fucking coarse. I thought you had more respect for me than that.”

“Then what the fuck’s this?”

“Just what I said. M-O-N-E-Y.”

The horror of his grandfather’s depravity finally,
finally
hit Johnnie. He’d known all along, but he hadn’t wanted to see the full extent. Somewhere hidden inside of him was the boy with the hero worship of a man who wasn’t worthy of it. Had
never
been worthy of it. Every dirty layer of Logan was stripped away, revealed in the agony on the faces of each of those unknown girls. The violation of the women close to him.

Pull the fucking trigger and fuck everything else.

He’d find Little Man and Dinah without Logan’s assistance. He’d do himself a great fucking favor getting rid of his grandfather.

Pull the fucking trigger.

“Where’s Little Man? Dinah?” Johnnie asked, blood roaring in his eyes, an angry buzz starting.

“Have patience, boy. They’re around.” He snickered. “But I have an offer.”

“Not interested in hearing it,” Johnnie snapped. “I just want—“

“I know,” Logan interrupted, “CJ and Dinah.” Smiling, he walked around the island, picking up a photo here and there. A couple times, he raised one to Johnnie, throwing them down and stepping on them when Johnnie lunged for them.

“Ever wonder how we got so high up there?”

At the moment, he didn’t give a fuck. He leveled the gun.

“Came armed with a few bucks. Money talks, as they say.”

Fire.
“Not all money is good money,” Johnnie snarled.

Logan tweaked his ear and waved his hand in dismissal. “I beg to differ. Not all money is
clean
money.”

“Get to the fucking point, so I can blow you the fuck away and look for CJ and Dinah myself.”

Logan’s face fell. “You’d do that to me? After all the love I gave you?” He gestured between them. “All this? It was supposed to be yours one day. But, after your mother’s death, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.”

“You should’ve fucking thought of that before you sacrificed her to a card game. As you did Aunt Patricia. And Zoann.”

“I didn’t fucking sacrifice Pattie,” he snarled. “That bastard took what didn’t fucking belong to him. Used and abused my little girl and got her with that fucking devil. Every time I looked at that filthy spawn, I saw in him the man who’d fucked over me. Made a fucking fool out of me.”

Rage and hurt twisted inside of Johnnie. On his own behalf. On Christopher’s behalf. “And you didn’t see that in me?”

“Look at you. You have nothing for Sebastian, except, maybe his height.”

“You’re a fucking lunatic. If you were so pissed at Cee Cee, you wouldn’t have handed my mother over to him, three months after he raped Aunt Patricia.”

“I owed him a bitch, Johnnie,” Logan snapped with impatience. “I’d lost a fucking cunt. She’d gotten away and jumped out a moving fucking truck that was bringing her here. Cee Cee had put in a big investment and she was the third of five girls.
Fuck!
What did you want me to do? Let him fucking kill me?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“How we made our real money.” He gestured to Kendall. “She might be a little old, but she’d get us a lot of money if we get her to the right people. And Megan, Big Joe’s daughter, she’d fucking pay our bills for a year. Her pussy is worth its weight in gold.”

Was he hearing…no…yes.

“Some fucks who don’t care where they stick their dicks would even want to fuck that mongrel,” he continued, gesturing to Bailey. “But this club’s for me and you.
Not
Christopher.
Not
a son of his.”

Jesus. What would he do if something had happened to that child? He shoved his Glock into his jacket and stepped forward. “Grandda,” he said softly, the term of endearment bitter on his tongue. “I appreciate your generosity. But…you’re…slavery…that’s what you’ve been doing. Isn’t it?”

Logan’s eyes widened. “That’s what it’s called?” His brow furrowed and he scratched his thin hair. “Never knew that. Don’t seem like slavery to me, though. But that’s just me. Who the fuck miss these girls? I just do society a favor.”

Johnnie’s stomach turned. He’d never despised anyone as much as he despised Logan. Or himself for believing his grandfather’s bullshit “Go outside, Kendall. Get back to the club. Follow the pathway. I need to speak to my grandfather alone.”

Kendall stared in horror at the photos and at his grandfather. “Caroline?” she whispered in a strangled voice. “Where’s my sister?”

Logan’s face split into a grin. “Stupid bitch fucking killed herself.”

Johnnie raised his gun. “Shut the fuck up, old man. I mean it.”

A keening wail escaped her and he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her up. “You killed a sixteen-year-old girl.”

A buzz started in Johnnie’s head and he choked, remembering that girl, the strange look in her eyes, part plea and part fear. Nothing he’d recognized then, because he’d never seen it. He’d been too focused on getting to his grandfather to pay full attention to the girl. But, now, he replayed the scene in his head. The way Logan grabbed her and whispered to her. He tightened his hold on Kendall, her sobs hitting him in the center of his chest and right in his gut. “Kendall, I need you to be strong, sweetheart. Please. I’ll take you to her.”

“You know where she’s at?”

“Yes, but, please just go to the club right now.”

Logan frowned as he watched her stumble away. He didn’t seem in the least concerned that Johnnie had a gun on him. Because he
knew
Johnnie always listened to him. In the end, no matter what he said and what he did, Johnnie had always found
good
in him.

“You shouldn’t have done that, son. Letting her go. That’s Spoon’s bitch.”

“No, she’s
mine
,” Johnnie gritted.

“I have to get going, boy.” He shrugged. “We’re done talking.”

“No. I want answers. Where’d you get those letters from? What—“

“Remember Leonidas?”

“The fucker who jumped me when I was fourteen?” he growled. “The one who was too chicken-fucked to face me on his own.”

Logan nodded. “Spoon’s son.”

“The fuck you say!”

“Before his dick died on him, he did make a few brats, you know?” He rubbed his chin. “But that’s not important. Anyway, Boss let me have some contact with people from here. He swore…he described in fucking detail what he’d do to me if I returned. So I stayed put. Didn’t fuck with Joe. The man is…” he swallowed and scratched the side of his head. “
Was
a lunatic, you know?”

“A few weeks ago, I started getting the letters. Then, strangest of all, Cee Cee called me out of the blue. Hadn’t talked to him in at least five years. I just figured he was still transporting the girls and receiving my shipments. Didn’t have any more problems from the fellow, at any rate. He said he was coming here to talk to you and Christopher. I told him leave you the fuck alone. Why fuck with your head? If he wanted Christopher, then I told him have at him. But not
you
.”

Not him. Never him. Christopher’s life and feelings had always been expendable.

“I was getting so much information about who was running the club. Cee Cee started insisting it was Christopher and I kept getting Joe’s letters. It didn’t make sense. I just figured Joe was on one of his European trips and Christopher was filling in.” He snorted. “Couldn’t take the thought, so I talked to Spoon. Promised to get him in the club if he gave Christopher other things to think about. But I was kind of pissed with Joe, too, you know? After all these fucking years, he wanted to make amends? I wanted to get both of them, although my revenge on Joe wouldn’t be open. I’d just see his daughter—Christopher’s wife—upset. Maybe, destroyed, that Christopher would cheat on her. That’s where Kendall comes in. Grabbed her little sister for her fuck up. I fucked Caroline. Some of his men fucked her. We had to break her in so we could get money. In the meantime, Spoon made Kendall pay for her fuck up. Stupid bitch couldn’t even fuck Outlaw. Told me all about it. I had visions of him choking her with his dick while Caroline sucked
mine
.”

He patted his shirt and pulled out a photo. Two photos. Then held them out to him. “Dumb slut got pregnant the night you fucked her.”

Numb, Johnnie took the photos from his grandfather and stared at the image.

Logan scratched his head. “Where was I?” He looked confused, then said, “Yeah, the knocked up cunt. Spoon’s going to take care of that for you, son. Don’t even fucking worry. The moment you let her go, he’s waiting for her. I don’t need a weak-spirited whore carrying my great-grandchild. Pity you couldn’t stick your dick in that little Megan. She’s a scrappy little bitch.” He shrugged. “Joe’s genes, I guess. But I have it all set up. Taking care of Kendall. Bringing down Christopher. Our empire. Spoon’s grabbing me a big shipment of girls—“

“Fuck off. That shipment isn’t happening. And, you remember,
I’m not the one to run this outfit. I can run the lab. Keep the business operations going. Heading the club? No. Never.”

“And Christopher can?”

“He has been,” Johnnie said quietly. “If you love the Death Dwellers, you’ll tell me where CJ is. If anything happens…it’ll destroy Megan. Destroy Christopher. The club you’ve worked so hard to build would go down in flames.”

Logan wrinkled his nose, his stare blank, his lucidity questionable. “Going down in flames, anyway, boy,” he said gruffly. “Nothing lasts forever. That dirty idiot took Big Joe away from me. Don’t know what possessed him to touch drugs, but Christopher had no right to pass judgment on Boss.”