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I knew it was likely to do with the fact that he’d killed a healthy fucking number of people over the past couple weeks, including the things he did to Williams, but I couldn’t help feeling like there was something more to it than all that.
Even after a strike three, he was never this reserved.
He adjusted himself in his seat, pushing his hand into the pocket of his jeans and keeping it there as he took another toke of the joint.
“Hey,” Becca complained, reaching across AJ to steal it back from him before he could finish it. “God, ever heard of puff puff pass?”
Rook didn’t answer, staring out his open window as we turned onto Diesel’s road, the house ahead of us flanked by a line of Saint vehicles. A few of them loitering out by the rose bushes, smoking.
The space next to Diesel’s car in the driveway was reserved for us, and I pulled into it. “In and out,” I reminded the others. People were going to start showing up at the Docks in the next hour or so with or without us and with shit the way it was in Thorn Valley, we couldn’t leave that turf unprotected.
We got out of the car to the sound of Primal Ethos playing on the radio and Diesel smashing his fist on the front window from inside, giving a stern look at the lads smoking near his roses. They fell back to the driveaway, nodding at us in turn as we made our way inside.
Anthem of the Brokenplayed low on Dies’ sound system from the living room, and it didn’t escape Corvus’ notice, a vein in his temple throbbing as he worked his jaw. No doubt overthinking what it might mean. Likely it was just The Edge, but if Diesel was as pissed at Corvus about his musical career as he originally seemed to be, he would’ve changed the station by now.
“Is that Primal Ethos?” AJ mouthed to me behind Corvus’ back, pointing through the wall to the living room on the other side, the box still under her arm.
It was a rhetorical question, but I gave her a nod anyway.
“What the fuck?” she mouthed.
I shrugged, noticing her wince as she shifted the box to her other side, rolling out her shoulder. She was getting scary good with that sniper rifle, but it came at a cost. I’d seen her shoulder when she stepped out of the shower last night, purple and blue in the shape of a rifle butt marring eight inches of milky skin in the groove between her shoulder and chest.
Even butting it properly, like I knew she was, it was still leaving marks. We’d need to give it a rest for a while.
“You good, AJ?”
She stopped rolling it and smiled. “Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing.”
I pushed past Corv to enter the living room, knowing she didn’t need the coddling, even if some foreign instinct inside me wanted to coddle her to fucking death sometimes.
“Hey,” I said, finding Dies with a cigar pinched between his first two fingers, standing in the middle of the living room as he told the mustard gas story to a few Kings seated on his low sofa. He looked up as I entered and stopped right before the climax of the story to the shock of his audience.
“Ah,” he said, eyes bright with drink. “There’s my sons.”
He ushered me into the living room, pulling me into his side to sling an arm over my shoulder. “You know these three, don’t you?” he asked, pointing the gray ash end of his cigar at the three Kings on his sofa. The middle one was Drake, the other two were Lucas and Avery. They were the ones Dies had agreed to implant into Briar Hall to beef up gang presence there.
Drake lifted his beer in salute as he stood to go and get a refill, while the other two said a lame hello, clearly wanting Dies to get back to his story.
“Happy birthday,” I told Dies, who blew off the sentiment.
“Don’t remind me.”
“What are you now, old man?” Rook said, slinking into the space to toss an arm around Dies’ other shoulder. Fifty seven? Fifty eight?”
Diesel balked at him, releasing me to put an offended hand to his chest. It was good to see him in good spirits. Between his birthday and Christmas, they were the only two days of the year we were guaranteed to see him smile.
“Fifty,” Diesel corrected Rook.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Corvus said, entering with Ava Jade and Rebecca Hart on his heels. “You’ve turned fifty the last five years and counting.”
Diesel leaned in close to Rook’s side, whispering in his ear. “That was meant to be our little secret.”
Rook laughed darkly, shaking his head.
It was a running joke among the gang. The oldest Saint members had been bringing balloons and cakes emblazoned with the number 50 for years with no signs of stopping the tradition. If Diesel survived to sixty, I had no doubt he’d turn fifty again that day, too.
