Bones’ looking at me, shaking his head before he answers the un asked question.
“I take it you haven’t seen what she can do with her favorite little knife huh? Asshole here is lucky your friend interrupted. For bring that god awful shit in our house and attempting to drug her, I’m sure his sins would have been aplenty.”
Luca can’t help but open his mouth, “His sins?”
Bones laughs, “Why do you think she’s The Priest?”
“Wait, I thought it was just Priest…are you telling us she’s THE Priest…” Gio’s shock has the rest of us men looking at him sharply, confusion unmasked. Gio with his dark hair shakes his head like he’s trying to shake loose a thought, then looks us in the eyes like were insane for not knowing what the hell they’re talking about.
“Remember that ring fighter that showed up to a fight with a cross branded in the back of his hands…because he’d been molesting his thirteen year old step daughter? Are you saying she did that?” Gio asks, looking at her as she stands off with Cobra heads duked down while it looks like they are having a heated discussion…Probably about her father.
Bones nods, “the mom was a friend of Cobra’s and Priest, before I came along, but the daughter told Priest and that sort of started her…feminist campaign for justice and mercy…at least that’s what my girl calls it,” he shrugs and begins to walk over to his boss, but stops and looks us all in the eye, “And it wasn’t just his hands she marked.”
“what do you mean?” Antonio asks.
Bones looks over at the girl in question before looking back at us, “She wanted to cut the fuckers dick off , and probably would have, if Cobra hadn’t explicitly forbidden it. I was there, and trust me when I say, she almost disregarded his order…instead she meticulously removed his family jewels…in another life she probably would have been an amazing surgeon.” He shakes his head and laughs.
Gio turns away from Bones and looks at me, a look that says this might cause trouble for the family, it’s not like she’s exactly hiding what she’s doing. While I know that Alonzo will happily accept her with open arms, I know there are a few men in our family as well as branch families who might become problems for her, not child rapists, Alonzo would strangle them with his bare hands, but I know for a fact that Andretti has been known to smack his woman around, and I don’t get the feeling that’s going to go over well.
“Yeah, she gets a real hard on for people who hurt kids and woman…” Bones mutters as he continues walking to his boss who is now having a hushed conversation with Priest.
Cobra gives an angry huff as Priest hops in the back of the truck, her boots making a thunderous sound, but I swear I hear the oft sound of a switchblade being released.
Right before Vin lets out a squeal like a pig, Cobra looks at Gio and I and says, “Call your boss. Find out where he wants to do the interrogations that I’m assuming he’s going to want, as well as meet with Priest.”
Priest
If I didn’t know and trust Cobra with my life I would probably think he was setting my ass up to get killed. Which might be why I’m taking out a little of my aggressions on the asshole who tried to drug me.
I’m not sure when it started exactly, my little crusades as Cobra called them, soon after Mom died I think. It all started when some of the girls from the club mom worked at started getting assaulted. The police didn’t do anything about it, a bunch of strippers being rapped didn’t seem like anything worthy of wasting money on. I’d just turned sixteen, mom had been gone for six months, but the clubs owner, Burty, knew me. Without telling Cobra anything, I snuck out of the house, went to the club and did a shit job of Mom’s routine, under a fake name and even more fake ID.
I did it for a week before the guy jumped me on my way to my car. Little did he know, while I wasn’t the best stripper, I was the best damn 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.”