Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,45

shit was different,” Zeke said. “I was different. Belonged to a world that had no rules or mercy.”

My eyes ran over the ink on his arms. All beautiful work, artistically done. Not crappy prison tats or anything like that. It was a statement, his ink. Something that told the world he didn’t live by the rules.

For once, I didn’t rush to fill the silence between us. Didn’t pepper him with questions. I just waited, tried not to let my desperation for information leach from my pores.

“I was in a gang,” he said after a beat. “They try to call them clubs, for publicity. For the cops. Motorcycle clubs. Peaceful anarchists. Fuck, the TV show didn’t help.”

Distaste peppered his words and shame crept up my neck because I was totally thinking about Sons of Anarchy as he spoke.

“Everyone knows it’s bullshit,” he continued, not looking at me. “It started with a brotherhood with noble intentions, like most shit does. Then people got greedy. Bitter. Whatever. It was a gang. I didn’t give a fuck. I was an angry kid looking to punish the world and wanting to look tough.” He leaned back in his chair, looked up for a long moment before moving his attention back to me. “Anyway, you don’t need my full history—suffice it to say I was a piece of shit. When I got Luna’s mom pregnant, I stayed a piece of shit. After Luna was born, I continued on that path. But I was a piece of shit who loved my daughter. I’d fucking die for her. Would kill for her. But her mom, she was just a stripper I got knocked up. We tried to keep it together for Luna. It was a fuckin’ mess. She was a bitch. I know I’m not supposed to say that about the dead but I’m sure she’d agree if she were here. We got into some shit with a rival player. Cartel shit. Ugly. And they were willing to cut us wherever to make a point. Took Luna and her mom. Had them for two days.”

His eyes turned cold. Dead.

My insides were acid with the pure horror living in Zeke’s eyes.

What happened to Luna for those two days? If she was with a cartel it couldn’t have been pretty. But she still was. Not just on the outside, but on the inside too. She still laughed and it was real. Still had hope and love within her.

“Longest forty-eight hours of my life,” Zeke said, voice quiet, as close to a whisper as a man like that would ever get. “By the time we found them, Mindy was long dead. Luna was holding on. They’d roughed her up. They’d marked her. My fuckin’ baby...” He trailed off, his voice guttural. There it was, that darkness that he carried around like an iron cloak. It was guilt. Blame he wore for what happened to his daughter. What happened to the mother of his child.

“After we got her back, I ripped the patch off my back. Burned it. Shit like that, it’s a big deal in that world. It’s suicide. Once the patch goes on, it stays on. Stays on in the cells you get put in because of it Fuck, you’re buried with it. But I’m not stupid. I planned for this once I started to understand the reality of what I was doing to Luna. Had shit in line enough to disappear. So that the club couldn’t find us. I doubt they’re looking. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. And fuck, even if they are looking, I highly doubt they’d look in a gated community in Black Mountain.”

I digested all of this. Sure, I had a pretty active imagination and spent a lot of time thinking up a backstory for Zeke, but I could never have thought of this. I would never want to imagine this. Not for Luna. Not for that beautiful girl.

“Did you kill them?” I asked.

He jerked like I’d struck him. His eyes were glaciers. “Come again?”

“Did you kill them?” I repeated. “The men that hurt your daughter. That stole her mother?”

He regarded me as if he were measuring whether I was actually asking for the truth or not. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Every last one.”

I nodded in a way that surprised even me. I was sitting across from a killer. I slept next door to one. I’d kissed one. I’d imagined doing a lot more than that almost every waking hour since I’d met him.

But I’d