fighter he’d ever come across. He’d ended up in the hospital after I left him in that parking lot, leaving him with the first of my little cross reminders directly on his right cheek.
That had been an accident, really, but somehow it became my calling card. When he came back to the club a few weeks later the bouncers wouldn’t let him in and personally escorted the girls to their vehicles…every strip club in the state got the tip off from Burty, and he was eventually convicted when he went after someone in a traditional dance studio.
Vin makes a bitch squeal when he sees the knife coming at him, and I fight the urge not to roll my eyes.
“Come on big man, shut up or I’ll put it on your fucking face rather than your neck. Choice is yours,” I can’t contain my anger, I don’t want to be dragged into this new world that I can feel breathing its way down my neck.
Or maybe it’s the four sets of eyes I can feel following my every fucking step. Alex looks impressed by the whole thing, like he finds it justice. The other three are in an array of different states ranging from something bordering on the incredulous, to apprehension, and the readable. But I have a code, and whoever they are, they aren’t going to stop my justice.
Vin screams like a baby as my knife meets the side of his neck, but he holds still probably out of fear of having his jugular nicked, but I know what I’m doing. It doesn’t take me any time to leave my cross, and while men often disregard the mark, the women of this state know, any man baring it isn’t be trusted. It’s honestly the lease I can do, maybe help some woman like Mom one day. Hell a girl could hope that’s for damn sure.
I wish someone had marked the guy who’d killed Mom before she’d ever met him, so she could have stood a chance.
Once I finish up, I get out of the back of the truck, the four unknown men standing there, faces now schooled to show no emotions. Bones hands me a rag and without looking away from the four unknowns, I clean my knife.
“Priest,” is all I say as I nod my head in their direction.
“Giovani,” he’s about the same height as Alex, but his hair is lighter, and in a crisp fade cut that screams badass when you take into account his facial scruff and eyes that scream that this man takes no bullshit. His face is broader than Alex’s making his cheek bones span across his face, his jaw line sharp and angular, but it’s the muscular build, less than Bones but still built that catches my attention. this man physically exudes authority with the way he fills out his clothes, a combination of clubbing clothes but on an elevated level that makes the jeans he’s wearing with the leather jacket over the dark colored v neck shirt.
He takes a step forward and offered his hand, and I can’t tell if I think that’s a smart move or not. I’m sure they just saw me carve the cross into that guy, so this could be a sign of respect, but at the same time it feels like it could be a way of trying to dismiss me.
I decide that it’s brave so I take his hand, and that seems to cause the other three to relax a breath I didn’t realize they were holding, and I get a sneaking suspicion that this had been some sort of test.
God I despise fucking mind games.
“These are my brothers,” I quirk my eyebrow at him. None of these guys look alike and they all look to be about the same age, just a little older than me, he continues, “my childhood best friends, mi famiglia.”
He smiles a little, like this is some hilarious thing, and his friends either crack a smile or have a twitch of their lip, but since I’m not in on what makes the statement funny, I make no comment.
I’ve never really been one to talk just to talk, and as having been raised in one of the darkest parts of the city, I learned that you usually learn more interesting facts about a person just from observation than from what they are usually willing to tell you.
“You’ve already met Alessandro,” Giovani says, and Alex nods his head at me, and I nod back,