“Being an old man is sacred territory too,” I rasped, aware that Martin was waiting on a reply from me. “He’s beating on her, Martin. We can’t let that shit slide. This ain’t the nineteen hundreds.”
To be fair to Martin, I was surprised he was even willing to talk to me about this shit. Sure, I was on the Rebels’ council, but I wasn’t on his.
He grunted at my reply. “I’ll see what I can do.” Another grunt. “Ama? Take me off speaker. I want to talk with you.”
Her cheeks flushed as she looked at me, but she reached for her phone and did as he asked. Whatever Martin said had her cheeks turning an even brighter shade of red than before, but it had her plunking herself on my lap without asking—and that wasn’t something I was going to complain about.
16
Saint
“Kenzie?”
Keys’ sister refused to look at me. Fuck, she didn’t do anything other than stare at her knees, and if she wasn’t staring there, she was looking at the door like it was the gate to hell.
Maybe to her, it was.
Maybe to her, what was out there was hell.
Considering I’d known Kenzie pretty well before she’d run off—nothing dirty, just as friends—this side of her wasn’t something I was used to seeing.
One word summed her up—mouthy.
That was pretty much it. She had a big mouth, wasn’t afraid to run it, and usually didn’t give a fuck about who she pissed off in the run up.
This?
It was like night and day had decided to fuck and had created some other weird ass entity.
I wasn’t even sure where the fuck Kenzie was inside the body that wasn’t like the one I’d known. Everything about her, from her conversation to her demeanor, her physical appearance and her spirit, had changed.
And that made me want to strangle her old man.
This wasn’t a woman you could easily browbeat, and yet, this motherfucker Hex had.
Agitation had me jumping to my feet, something that was only exacerbated when Kenzie didn’t only ignore my attempt at conversation, but flinched when I began to pace.
I caught Keys’ eye and knew he’d seen everything I just had. The rage flickering in him was so close to turning into a blaze that I knew, point blank, shit was going down. And hell, if he jangled his fucking keys anymore, he’d be writing an angry ad jingle for Harley.
The confines of the bedroom only made things worse. We were trapped in here while Ama tried to work her diplomatic wiles on her grandfather, and though it had been a smart move on Keys’ part, we both knew it wasn’t going to work.
Sometimes, in this world, violence could only be solved with more violence.
Not something the philosophers like to think was true, but it was true, nonetheless.
A fucker like Hex, who thought nothing of beating on his old lady, his pregnant old lady, would understand nothing unless the language was translated via fists. That was how some of these knuckleheads ran.
Just as I started to get worked up, the bedroom walls feeling like they were starting to move in on me, a knock sounded at the door.
Kenzie released a terrified gasp and huddled in on herself. Her shoulders seemed to crumple and if she could, I had a feeling she’d have rolled into a ball to make herself as small as possible.
I hurt for her. Hurt. My God, what the fuck had Hex done to her? She’d barely been gone any time at all, and yet, he’d destroyed her.
My throat worked as I started to call out, “Who is it?” But before the question even finished, the door was pushed open. I braced myself, waiting on Kenzie’s fuckwit of an old man, but it wasn’t.
It was Lucifer himself.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Prez?”
He narrowed his eyes at me, then Keys, then when he looked at Kenzie, he sighed, and for the first time, his gaze softened.
He closed the door behind him and stepped into the room, heading over to Kenzie’s side where he took a seat. She didn’t flinch, but neither did she move a muscle. Didn’t twist her head to the side to look at him, didn’t even make a whisper of sound.
I truly thought she was frozen in terror.
“We have to do something, man,” Keys rasped, breaking the weird silence we’d all fallen into as Lucifer studied Kenzie.
The Prez cut Keys a look. “It’s all in hand.”
“It is?” I demanded. “How?”
He reached up, scratching his stubbled jaw. “Hex is going on the run to Colorado tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to visit my granddaughter.”
Eyes flaring wide in surprise, I questioned, “We’re taking Kenzie?”
Lucifer snorted. “What do you think, boy? Course we are.”
“What about when Hex finds out she’s gone?” Keys asked quietly.
“He’ll think she’s run off.”
“Back home,” he retorted.
“Maybe.” Lucifer shrugged. “If she lives on the compound for a while, she’ll be safe. If he comes around your territory…” He grunted. “I’ll have to figure out a way to sanction shit.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Goddamn meddling granddaughters.”
Kenzie licked her lips, and for the first time, whispered, “He didn’t make me get a tattoo.”
Lucifer’s head tilted to the side. “Excuse me?”
Her cheek caved in as she gnawed on it. “I was pregnant, and the doctors said you weren’t supposed to get a tattoo when you’re pregnant.”
Eyes flaring wide, Lucifer slapped his knee. “Well, looks like we have ourselves a loophole.”
“Doesn’t take away from the fact she’s carrying his kid,” Keys grated out. “He ain’t going to let the kid just leave.”
Kenzie’s face crumpled, and though I wanted to call Keys out on talking like that when she was here, the truth was, Kenzie was in this up to her eyeballs and needed to be here to hear the shit that was going to have to go down to get her out of this mess.
I sounded like a bastard, I knew. But she should never have run off. Sure, I got the fact that some kids hated the life. They didn’t want the MC to tarnish their adulthood because not everyone had a good experience within the club as kids. But to run to another MC? One where your brother and father couldn’t protect you? That was the height of idiocy, and it surprised me because I’d never have considered Kenzie as being stupid.
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.” Lucifer rubbed his chin. “Ain’t like Hex is paternal. He’s a bastard, sure. Might take an interest just to be petty. But for the moment, getting her out of here is all I got. And what I got is more than you’d usually be getting…”
It went unsaid that he was only helping because Ama had twisted his arm. To be honest, I was astonished she’d managed that much. Although, maybe I shouldn’t be. Considering she had a way about her, some wiles that couldn’t be ignored and that usually had Keys and I doing whatever she wanted—within reason, of course—it figured that she’d be the one to save Kenzie.
Even though I knew, point blank, Kenzie had been a bitch to her back in the day.
Kenzie was a bitch, period, but it seemed like that had changed.