God, looking at her I was reminded that half of my DNA was formed from pure evil and I cut myself some slack for my not infrequent bad behaviour. It was only natural given my origins.
“Why aren’t you greetin’ your mama, girl?” Reaper asked, a frown crashing down over his features and setting me at ease again.
I did as I was told, moving forward to be enveloped in her heavily perfumed arms. “Hey, Mum.”
“Better,” she whispered in my ear before smacking her lips in a loud ear kiss that almost made me deaf on the left side. “I knew you’d be happy to see me. The Maycomb women back together again.
I was no Maycomb. I never had been.
I was a Garro through to the marrow of my fucking bones.
But I’d play this game if she wanted to.
I perched on the edge of a chair, settling in. “So, how’d you two meet?”
“Met her ’fore your fuckin’ dad did, babe,” Reaper told me. It was obvious he hated that, that he had counted the minutes of difference between Zeus meeting her and him doing it, that he blamed the sixteen minutes as the reason they hadn’t been together all these years.
Interesting.
Reaper had a lifelong hard-on for my mum.
Disgusting.
But useful.
I knew by the way Farrah’s smile slithered across her red painted lips like a snake in the grass that she knew this to be useful as well.
“Ran into her at a bike show a few weeks ago. She gave me the runaround, but fuckin’ got her in the end,” he ended on a roar of laughter as he pinched her ass and she playfully slapped at him.
Gag me with a fucking gun.
“How nice,” I said mildly instead.
“It’s good to finally be with the man I should have had all along,” Farrah preened, placing her hand on Reaper’s bloated chest. “Now we can be a family again.”
“And King?”
She made a face. “He chose your father, but then again, he never had your brains, did he?”
She was right, he didn’t, he was much smarter than me.
“What about Honey?” I asked.
Farrah waved her hand again. “The little shit runs off sometimes, ungrateful girl, but she’ll come back. She always does.”
That “ungrateful girl” should’ve been in high school, not getting hooked on drugs and having sex on camera. Fury coursed through my blood so hot I felt like I glowed with it.
“Was tellin’ your mum how proud she’d be to know you been with us for a solid three years, first with Cricket, RI-fucking-P, now with my brother, Wrath.”
He was proud of me for that, his chest puffed out, his cheeks ruddy with the force of his own compliment. In another life, a lesser one, without Dad and Danner and King, I wondered if I would have been weak enough to fall under his spell.
Pride was no equal alternate for love.
“He thinks you’re loyal enough to know our plans for your daddy’s club,” Farrah sing-songed, her fingers walking a path over Reaper’s chest and down. “I’m not so sure.”
I shrugged as if I couldn’t have cared less when really, bile was biting metallic teeth at the back of my tongue. “I don’t need to prove anything to you, Farrah. At this point, Reaper is more my parent than you are.”
I saw my volley score two points, one in the cruel twists of Farrah’s lips, and the other in the shocked look of pleasure shown by the Prez.
Yeah, two could play at this game, bitch.
“We’re going after The Fallen cargo tonight,” she snapped, her patience gone. “What do you have to say about that?”
I shrugged again and looked at the chipped black nail polish on my fingers. “That’s club business. You’re new around here, but that kinda stuff stays between brothers. It’s not my shit to disturb.”
Reaper chuckled and when Farrah shot him a look he shrugged. “Told you she’d say that, sugar lips. Give the girl a break. Why don’t you go get us some beers so we can celebrate this reunion fuckin’ proper-like.”
Farrah pursed her lips before her entire expression transformed into the perfect doting girlfriend. “Sure thing, Reaper honey.”
As soon as she was out the door, I raised a brow and said, “Really?”
Reaper guffawed, moving around his desk to sit down in his big leather chair. “Sucks better ’an a Hoover and swallows too.”
A full body shiver of violent disgust rocked me and I let out a little gag. “Fuck me for asking, eh?”
He laughed again then sobered. “You know not to screw us tonight, H.R.? You’re the Berserker princess now, not part of them Fallen and I won’t have you tippin’ them off to the ambush off exit 78.”
I stared at him for a long minute, watching as he stroked his mustache and kicked his dirty boots onto the top of his desk. There was absolutely no way, no matter how much he may have liked me, that he would give me the exact location of their heist unless he was testing me.