“Look, all I'm saying is one more handful of vitamins every day isn't a hardship considering what I'm already choking down,” Raid insisted fervently. “Then I wouldn't have to eat kale with every meal.”
Damon gave a good-natured scoff. “All I'm saying is since I've known you, the only thing you bitch about is your wife's insistence that you eat healthy. Far as I'm concerned, you've got it made.”
“He does have it made,” Nasa commented dryly. “The bitching about kale—which he's been eating since him and Athena got together with no negative side-effects—increases when Athena starts in on some new fad diet and the rest of us are about to suffer the consequences.”
“Aw hell, not again,” Damon groaned.
Nasa made a distracted, dismissive sound. “If it's tofu this time, I'll stage a mutiny and install a biometric lock on the game room and turn it into a second kitchen. Is it tofu, Raid?”
Raid scowled darkly, looking for a moment like a petulant little boy.
“Paleo.”
Dillon's lips twitched with amusement to hear him spit out the word like it was a dirty curse.
“It's actually not as bad as you think it might be.”
Raid turned his fierce scowl on her. “I have two terrible words for you: No. Beer.”
Damon nearly cracked a rib laughing, and Raid—a dark, curly-haired hottie with a voice to put Sam Elliot to shame—punched him in the shoulder.
“I didn't get blown up in Afghanistan and recover from paralysis so I could come home and be told by a woman half my size, I'm not allowed to have a few beers whenever the fuck I want!”
Dillon had learned from years of hyper-vigilance to read people, and despite his bitching, it was clear Raid was absolutely devoted to his wife.
It seemed every woman associated with the Perdition MC was cherished and adored by all the members. A good sign to say the bikers were not misogynists or abusive in any way.
“Orgasm denial,” Nasa commented, still only half listening. “Works wonders when you really want your way.”
“Communem gladio.” She didn't dare look at Nasa even though she could feel him watching her.
“Uh... what?” Raid shot her a furrowed look of confusion.
“It's Latin. It means ‘the sword cuts both ways’,” Nasa answered softly, raising the fine hairs on her body.
Dillon shivered uncontrollably at the intensity behind the response, clamping her teeth together to prevent herself from saying anything further.
Silence descended in the truck for a time before Raid gave a thoughtful, “Huh. You speak Latin?”
“Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, a few Arabic dialects, passable Japanese, a few words in Russian to work with Elka, but I started working on conversational Russian in earnest a month ago.”
“Is that all?” Damon drawled teasingly.
Dillon shrugged again and pulled one foot out from under Elka's face, hugging her knee to her chest.
“I spoke French and Spanish before I got a job working as a translator, and I learned Arabic while I was employed by Virginia PD.
“After, I kept learning more languages. I figured if I ever needed to disappear overseas, it would benefit me to not be limited to countries that only spoke English.”
After leaving the hospital, Dillon wanted nothing to do with anything remotely related to working alongside law enforcement, but she couldn't exactly turn off her ability to speak other languages.
It was against the rules of taking on a new identity to do anything related to her past, but Dillon hadn't felt safe enough to go anywhere other than one of the women's shelters she knew of.
The manager there was the one to connect Dillon with her therapist, and it had taken nearly six months of discussion before Dillon was ready to talk about her past.
In doing so, Dr. White suggested Dillon find normalcy in things she'd once loved. Architecture came to mind, but Dillon wasn't interested in going back to school or finding a job where she had to work in public.
Dr. White posed that perhaps something more destructive might help soothe some of the rage festering inside Dillon and offered her a book on DIY home repair.
The first time Dillon dipped into the huge sum of money that came with her new identity was to buy a house barely fit to be lived in by termites.
It was trashed, inside and out, mold grew in the walls, the foundation was rotting, there were holes in the roof, animals nesting in the crawlspaces, and the septic system was a pit of disgusting nightmares.
Every contractor and inspector she'd asked to come look at it all told her the same thing: bulldoze this piece of shit.
The house had been as run down and hideous as Dillon felt, and she'd been determined to fix it. That first one took her nearly a year to complete, mostly because she insisted on doing the majority of the work herself. It became clear to her pretty early on, Dr. White had been right on the money.
The sense of accomplishment Dillon felt, the happiness that came from taking something broken and ugly, transforming into a beautiful home, had in turn, made Dillon feel like she could be fixed.
So, she'd bought another broken-down house in complete disrepair, one no one else wanted because it was so bad off, and started again.
During her sessions with Dr. White, Dillon decided she wanted to make houses safe for women like her, and the psychiatrist put her in touch with a lawyer who helped Dillon set up the Monumentally Foundation.
With every house Dillon renovated, a piece of her shattered soul felt like it was put back in place.
Seventy-three houses had helped Dillon put herself back together, but one faceless monster spilled in through the cracks and fucked it all up.
A ghost who invaded her home and took away her sanctuary. A ghost who gave her warnings of brutal death, and sent her running straight to his enemies for
