Black Widow (Black Knights Inc: Reloaded #5)

Prologue

Red Delilah’s Biker Bar, Chicago, Illinois

Sabrina Greenlee had worked at Black Knights Inc. for nine months.

That was precisely eight months and thirty days longer than any stretch of sustained happiness Hewitt Birch had ever known.

From the back booth, he watched her laugh at something the bartender said. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find the shadows that once clouded her eyes. Couldn’t find the horror that once haunted her pretty face.

She was better. Brighter. Healing.

A spring flower that had shoved through the frozen ground of her grief and trauma. Fragile yet fierce. Ripening. Resilient.

Sabrina…

Named for the Roman river goddess.

Fitting, since she had the grace of a gentle stream and a laugh as clear and sweet as a babbling brook. Plus, she had a pull on him no mortal had ever managed.

It was wild how his life had shifted since she’d come to Chicago.

Once, he’d been content to hole up in the old menthol cigarette factory-turned-motorcycle shop, nose buried in a book, satisfied to let the outside world fade away.

Now? He found himself out among the unwashed masses because she’d grin that Sabrina grin of hers—all sparkling eyes and mile-wide mouth—and say, “It’s Friday night.

” Or Saturday. Or Tuesday. Didn’t matter, really. “Let’s go have some fun.”

And damned if he could say no. He didn’t want to say no, because just being near her made him happy and—

“You look like hammered shit,” Boss said from across the booth, dragging Hew’s gaze away from the river goddess.

“Ayuh.” He glanced at the big, black Garmin Tactix on his wrist and scratched his beard. “Took longer than usual for the insults to start. Ya feelin’ okay, Boss?”

“If I were insulting you,” Boss countered, the gray in his spiky buzzcut catching the overhead lights, “I’d say something about you crawling out from your cave near the Earth’s core to join us tonight.”

Hew cocked an eyebrow.

“You know.” Boss shrugged a bowling ball-sized shoulder. “All that heat and pressure explains why you’re so antisocial.”

“You’re one to talk.” Becky smacked Boss’s arm. “When’s the last time we came here?” She gestured at the peanut shell-strewn floor and the three well-worn pool tables. Red Delilah’s was a holy Mecca for guys who liked leather, chrome, and machines that rattled their bones. “Two months? Three?”

“When you said the girls were with their aunt and uncle tonight, I figured that meant we’d be using our spare time for a little…” Boss wiggled his brows. “Not coming here.”

Becky rolled her eyes. “Like having our daughters home has ever stopped us from a little…” She matched the eyebrow wiggle.

“It stops us from doing it on the kitchen counter,” Boss argued. “Or on the living room couch.”

“You mean the kitchen counter where we make our kids’ food? And the living room couch where they sit to watch cartoons?”

“There’s such a thing as bleach, you know.”

“For the couch?”

“No!” Boss threw up his scarred, wide-palmed hands. “For the kitchen counter.” His grin turned wolfish. “We can just throw a blanket over the couch.”

Becky gave him a playful elbow, then turned to Hew. “As you can see, my better half has no business giving you grief for being a homebody. I had to twist his arm nearly out of its socket to get him here tonight.”

Boss’s sigh was drawn out and long-suffering. “I’m just saying, we could’ve stayed back at the shop and had a couple of beers around the fire pit instead of being forced to listen to other people’s music.”

Boss craned his head toward the jukebox near the front door. Someone had spun Katy Perry’s “Firework.” It was a bold choice considering the usual mix heard inside Red Delilah’s tended toward classic rock or outlaw country.

“It’s too hot for the fire pit,” Becky declared, pulling a root beer-flavored Dum-Dum from her pocket. “Shove this in your mouth,” she said after handing it to her husband. “It’ll give your tongue something to do besides complain.”

Boss grumbled but dutifully unwrapped the lollipop. Then, he pointed the round head of the sucker in Hew’s direction. “Your report to the higher-ups said the mission went as planned. How come the shadows under your eyes tell a different tale?”

“Just ’cause a mission follows the plan doesn’t mean it went smoothly,” Hew muttered as he shifted uncomfortably at the thought of just how unsmoothly things had actually gone.

“Bad intel? Bad equipment? Or both?” Boss asked.

“Intel was fine,” Hew informed him, his tone bland.

Boss nodded in understanding.

Frank “Boss” Knight had been the head of the original twelve-man crew at Black Knights Inc.

Like the current six-man team, the OG covert defense firm guys had taken their orders from and reported directly to El Jefe himself, the president of the United States.

But the change in leadership at the White House had resulted in a change in BKI’s active-duty roster.

The new madam president had wanted to form her own clandestine, fast-response team, made up of men loyal to her and not the previous administration.

Enter: Hew and his five teammates.

“So how bad was it?” Boss asked, using his tongue to swap the sucker from one bewhiskered cheek to the next.

“The Bell 412 the RIB gave us was a friggin’ pile,” Hew lamented with a distasteful twist of his lips.

“I didn’t expect their best, but I’d hoped for more than a Huey held together with duct tape and dreams. After we rescued the hostages, we made it twenty klicks from the Boko Haram base before she started fallin’ apart midair. ”

Becky’s eyes widened. “Jesus.”

“Ayuh.” Hew nodded. “I was prayin’ to him and anyone else listenin’. It was sheer luck I could bang a uey and limp us over the border into Nigeria.”

“Sheer luck and a hell of a lot of skill, I imagine,” Boss interjected.

“Brought us down in what Graham called a hard landin’.” Hew made air quotes. “More like a controlled crash. Light on the controlled.”

“Navy SEALs.” Boss grinned broadly, referring to Graham Coleburn…and also himself since he’d once sported the Budweiser. “We’re nothing if not kings of understatement.”

Hew grunted and took another pull from his beer. He was bone-tired. His ears still rang from the systems malfunction warnings that had blared through the cockpit. And the twenty-six-hour trip home, squirreled away in the belly of a big G17 Globemaster cargo plane, had been anything but relaxing.

And still...

The second he’d walked through BKI’s front door to see Sabrina leaving for Red Delilah’s, he’d dropped his duffel and followed her like a goddamned golden retriever.

“Don’t say it.” Becky’s voice yanked his attention back to the present. The diminutive motorcycle designer shook a finger at her husband’s nose.

“Didn’t even open my mouth.” Boss blinked innocently. Too innocently.

“No. But your face is speaking volumes.”

The couple made an incongruous pair. Becky was tiny and beautifully elfin in appearance. By contrast, Boss was huge and burly and looked like he’d gotten tangled up with a weedwhacker at some point.

Hew flicked a curious gaze between them. “What did I miss?”

“Let’s get your opinion on this,” Becky declared. “What do you think is the appropriate length of jail time for the heinous crime of leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor?”

“According to her”—Boss hooked a thumb—“the answer is a life sentence.”

“Hooks are on the back of the door and next to the shower. You have a wealth of options, and yet—”

“In case no one’s ever told ya,” Hew interrupted their argument. “It’s annoyin’ as hell bein’ the third wheel in your Hallmark movie. Where’s my damn backup?”

He looked back toward the bar and…immediately sat up straighter.

A short, stocky guy with a cleft in his chin rubbed a finger over the back of Sabrina’s hand.

His first thought was…Would you look at the sack on this friggin’ guy? His second thought was to rake his gaze over the man with so much force that he was surprised the douchebag didn’t feel it.

From the top of the man’s salon-styled superhero hair to the bottom of his handmade Italian loafers, he had silver spoon written all over him and giant asshole written on top of that.

Preparing to rise from the booth and rescue Sabrina—she was bound to attract a few bugs when she lit up a room the way she did—Hew blinked in astonishment when Mr. Short and Shiny slipped an arm around her waist. Instead of Sabrina feeding the fucker her knuckles, she smiled at him.

Actually smiled that too big Julia Roberts smile.

And as if that weren’t enough, she then proceeded to catch her bottom lip between her teeth and give the dickwad a flirty wink.

Becky saw Hew’s distraction and followed his line of sight. “Oh, look, babe!” She elbowed her husband. “Martin’s here.”

Martin.

The name rang in Hew’s ears like a death knell. He couldn’t hide the disdain dripping from his tone when he demanded, “Who the fuck is Martin?”

“The guy Sabrina’s dating,” Boss answered easily.

“Datin’?” He swore he could hear the squeaking slide of his testicles retracting into his body. “Since when is Sabrina datin’ someone?”

“Since two weeks ago,” Boss supplied, blissfully unaware that Hew was fantasizing about walking over and punching the unsuspecting Martin in his soft bits. “After you guys left for Africa, she got on one of those dating apps. Matched with Martin right away.”

“They really hit it off,” Becky added unnecessarily. “It’s a good sign, I think. Means she’s feeling better, more settled.”

“I was worried about her for a while there,” Boss agreed. “Thought she might never—”

Boss and Becky continued to talk, but Hew couldn’t hear them. Not because the bar was filled with the jukebox’s music, dozens of conversations, and the crack of pool balls. Oh, no. He couldn’t hear them because the blood rushing between his ears was as loud as a jet engine.

“He’s too short for her.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“Not when you stand him on his piles of money,” Boss joked.

Hew pinned his fellow Knight with a hard look. “What’s that mean?”

“He runs some fancy-dancy hedge fund, drives a Mercedes, and has a sailboat docked at the Chicago Yacht Club. That more than makes up for his vertical challenges.” Boss cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at Hew.

“What’s with the face? Why are you looking at me like I just popped naked out of a cake? ”

“That’s some mental imagery I could have done without.” Hew tried to wipe his expression clean.

Tried and failed, if Boss’s next words were anything to go by. “Are you… jealous?”

That had Becky’s head snapping around. “Wait a minute.” She pointed at Hew’s nose. “I thought you two were only friends.”

“We are,” Hew insisted through a jaw clamped so tight it was a wonder the words found a way past his teeth.

If he had to put a label on things, he’d say they were best friends.

He’d told Sabrina things he’d never told anyone, even his social workers. And she came to him for comfort when the grief over her brother’s death and the nightmares of what that fuckface Eddy Torres had done to her got to be too much.

Their individual traumas had formed a mutual bond between them. She’d become his safe space. And he’d become her emotional scaffolding, giving her the strength and structure to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and start building something new.

“She’s not ready,” he insisted with a hard shake of his head. “She’s still got healin’ to do.”

Becky watched Sabrina squeeze Martin’s bulging bicep. “She sure looks ready to me.”

Hew’s chest suddenly felt like he’d swallowed a box of fireworks. And that sustained happiness he’d experienced for the last eight months and thirty days?

Gone.