REAPER'S KISS Read Online Free PDF Page B

ourselves. Play this smart.” Sid rubbed
his jaw and looked at me. “Tell me about the daughter.”
    “What about?” I asked, almost
defensively. Enough so that Sid gave me a grin.
    “She in on this?”
    She has to be, Prez. A woman
that beautiful at that shit hole store? She ’s working …
    “I don’t know,” I said. “She was
terrified. That was for sure. She thought I was there to hurt her. The MC, I
mean. So she was pretty confused about the entire thing. That was half the
reason I went into the back room.”
    “You didn’t kill Frank, right?” Sid
asked.
    “No. I just busted up his nose a
little.”
    “That’s been done a million times
to him,” Sid said. “No worries. Okay, everyone break up here. Go find something
to eat, drink, or fuck. We’ll talk this thing out tomorrow.”
    The group all split up but Sid
stayed in place. I didn’t think I was going to get to skate away that easily.
    “What is it, Prez?” I asked. “You
don’t have to fuck around with me. I know I fucked up. What can I say? I saw
that fear… if Frank took out Jake and did something to Ava… how would that help
us?”
    “It doesn’t help us either way,” Sid
said. “Sticking your nose in other people’s shit only makes you smell like
shit.”
    “Then let me stink,” I said with a
grin.
    “Yeah, right. Jace, you put
yourself in this and you’re going to stay in it. I want everything on Jake and
his daughter.”
    “I can make that happen.”
    Sid offered his hand and we shook.
He then started to walk away but stopped. He pointed at me one last time.
    “Before I forget. If your little
crush turns out to be heavily involved in anything that goes against this town
and the MC, she’s going to disappear. I’m just being up front about that.”
    “I know how this works, Prez.”
    “Your eyes tell me otherwise, Jace.
Fall between her legs, brother, not her arms.”
    I nodded.
    What the fuck did Prez know?
    I didn’t do the relationship thing.
    Even if Ava was beautiful.
    Even if I was already plotting
my next move to see her again.
     

 
    chapter ten
     
    (ava)
     
    *NOW*
     
    I pulled my hair back and looked at
myself in the mirror. I was tired and I felt beat up. Sleep came and went and
morning came too soon. Dad’s coffee was expired and bitter. His milk had chunks
in it so I had to drink the coffee black. I took two sips and called it quits.
Dad woke up and rushed to the bathroom. In between getting ill he swore to me
it was something he ate. His face was bruised and more puffy, all because of
getting beat up.
    There was nothing I could say to
Dad. I brought him coffee and toast in the bathroom. I grabbed a washcloth and
wiped up his face the best I could.
    “Sit, Ava,” he said to me.
    I grabbed a kitchen chair and sat
outside the bathroom.
    “What are you going to do?” he
asked me.
    “I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “I
wish you would stop keeping secrets from me.”
    “All I’ve ever done is protect you,”
he said. “I’ll keep doing that. Even if I have to let you go. You need to go to
the outlaws. Trust them. Let Jace take you in. Tell him everything you know. I
don’t care.”
    “Tell what I know? I don’t know
anything.”
    “That’s fine. Let them dig. Let
them do what they need to do.”
    “And if that means they hurt you?” I
asked.
    Dad leaned forward, hanging over
the toilet.
    I couldn’t watch.
    I stood up and left. I left the
apartment and went down to the store. I went to the back room where everything
had gone down. I saw the blood stains on the concrete and didn’t know whose
blood it was.
    It made me shiver.
    I walked to the front of the store
and stood there. That’s when I broke down into tears again. My mother used to
be in the store, whistling, working, loving it. There was music playing all the
time. It was clean and inviting. She worked long hours and never complained
once.
    I didn’t know where in the store
she was murdered. Sometimes I felt like it was better not