“Fuck, that looks good,” Bash said as he studied the enforcer’s new ink. “Admit it, Spider. The kid has some skills.”
Masterson clenched his jaw for a moment, then nodded as he turned to face me. “You think you would apprentice Maverick?”
“Thought he already apprenticed under you.” I started cleaning up my workstation.
“He did, and he’s good, but if you teach him your skills too, he would be even better.”
I paused what I was doing and looked up at the man in surprise, knowing what he’d just said was a compliment and it must have cost him to say it out loud, especially in front of his MC brothers. “Yeah. I’ll apprentice him if he wants me to.”
“And I was thinking,” Masterson said, sitting back in the chair so I could tape on some gauze. “If you still want to be partners—”
“I do,” I told him before he could even finish. “I want Mila to be happy. Us working together, being a family, that’s what will make her happy.”
“If you still want to be partners, we can make it work,” he continued. “You can still keep this place, and I’ll run my shop. Maverick can go between the two, wherever he’s needed.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I agreed. “Let me talk to my aunt, and she can figure out the numbers for me to buy in.”
“You’re not buying in,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “Consider it a wedding present.”
“I can afford to buy in,” I tried to argue, but he lifted a hand, cutting me off.
“You are family now, boy. You aren’t buying in to anything.” He pulled his shirt back on and stood. “Hawk will have Gracie draw up the contracts and you can get your lawyer to look them over, but I won’t screw you over, boy. Willa would kick my ass if I even tried.”
Standing, I held out my hand to him. “Thank you, sir,” I told him sincerely. “This means a lot to me—and to Mila.”
“Her happiness is all that really matters,” he said, his face thoughtful. After a moment, he shook his head as if to clear it and looked at the other two men. “Well? You two getting ink or what?”
When I got home that evening, my parents and Aunt Emmie were in the living room with Willa. The four of them were spread around the large room, each of them with legal pads in their laps, but it seemed more storytelling was going on than actual wedding work.
“Good to see you getting along so well,” I commented as I glanced around at their grinning faces after walking in on them laughing their heads off at some story Dad had been telling. No doubt about whatever trouble Luca had gotten us both into when we were stupid kids.
“Lyric, honey,” Willa said with a soft laugh that reminded me of her daughter’s sweet giggle. “I thought my kids kept me on my toes when they were tiny, but apparently you and that twin of yours take the cake.”
“Thick as thieves,” Mom said with a resigned sigh, shaking her head at me. “And as full of tricks as Houdini.”
“Through thick and thin,” I said with a wink at her. “Most of the time, at least.”
Her still-beautiful face became sad. “Yeah. He’s a hot mess, isn’t he?”
Not wanting to think about Luca’s problems, I looked around for Mila. “Where’s my bride?”
Willa’s brows pulled together as she looked up at me. “I thought she was with you at the shop.”
“She left this afternoon to have lunch with Monroe while I gave the Angels tats.”
“I knew that husband of mine couldn’t resist getting some new ink,” she said with a snort.
While she and Aunt Emmie talked tattoos, unease twisted my gut, and I grabbed my phone, hitting Mila’s name. It went straight to voice mail without even ringing. “She was charging it before she left, so I know that damn thing isn’t dead,” I muttered to myself, clenching and unclenching my free hand into a fist at my side. I tried calling again, hoping it was just an issue with her phone and the call would go through this time. But it went to voice mail immediately once again.
“It’s off?” her mom asked sharply, and I nodded, my jaw clenching.
Mila was okay, I told myself. Her phone just died. She wouldn’t let me buy her a new one, just had someone replace the cracked screen, so it was acting up. Or she and her sister didn’t want to be interrupted while they talked, and she turned it off and got distracted. She got distracted a lot lately; pregnancy brain was how all the moms kept jokingly describing it. Mila didn’t think it was funny, though.
She had been trying to get her sister alone so they could chat about their pregnancies for the past week, but both of them had been too busy for more than a quick phone call here and there. Mila thought her twin was purposely avoiding her, and when she’d finally gotten her to agree to sit down for lunch together, she’d relaxed a little.
“Let me call Monroe,” Willa murmured as she grabbed her phone off the table in front of her. “Maybe they just stopped by our house and got distracted.”
But I hadn’t seen either of their vehicles when I’d passed their house only minutes before. As soon as she hit connect on her youngest daughter’s contact, I clearly heard it go to voice mail too. Her face began to lose color, but she gave me a grim smile and called her son. “Mav? Are you home? Where are you then? It doesn’t matter. Have you seen either of your sisters?”