Chapter 8 – Rook
ROOK
T he moon cast an eerie glow over the road as we veered off the highway and entered Thorn Valley at half past nine.
Ava Jade still munched on cold, stale fries from our fast food stop two hours before. She seemed determined to finish every last one even though she’d been full after just the enormous double decker burger she ordered.
She sighed as she ate the last one and set the paper container back into the bag at her feet, setting a hand on her stomach.
She cooperated well with the pick up after our little stunt at the diner, seeming almost eager as I drew out the blindfold and wrapped it around her eyes, pulling it tight to her head.
I doubted it would do much to dull how lethal she was, but it did the job of hiding the location of the pick up and our arms dealer’s faces from view.
My Ghost checked her phone again, flicking through notifications with a frown. I caught Rebecca Hart’s name before she flicked that one away too with another heavy sigh.
Tricking her felt wrong.
My brothers didn’t seem particularly at peace with it, either, but we all agreed it was necessary. After Grey told us Becca had nothing to do with the texts that had Ava Jade wound up tighter than a top, we agreed on the need to know who did .
It was always the plan to stop. Always the plan to have Ava Jade leave the Rover and leave her phone behind.
Grey was ready with his laptop—the software he’d need loaded up and primed for use—along with a micro-usb cord to connect it all together. It was all beneath the passenger seat.
It would take him some time to decrypt the deleted messages recovered from her phone’s drive, but he had what he needed now so it was only a matter of time.
She didn’t know it yet, but whoever was trying to fuck with her was a dead man walking. No one fucked with the Crows. No one fucked with our girl.
I winced as my lip ring tore through skin, the coppery tang of blood filling my mouth. I hadn’t noticed I was biting on it.
“Think you can still get a movie in?” Grey broke the silence, turning down The Edge as he drove off the main road and up towards Briar Hall.
Ava Jade shrugged. “Maybe. But Becca went out since I wasn’t coming, so…”
She shrugged again.
My phone buzzed in my pocket at the same time Grey’s chimed and Corvus’ chirped. It meant only one of two things and my blood sang in hopes of one over the other.
Please be Julia .
DIESEL
Corv, I need you. Grey, Alicia needs help with the month end shit from September. Go give her a hand before she has a fucking aneurism.
It was sent through our group chat, and I jammed the side button on my phone after reading it in disappointment. Would’ve been fun to take my Ghost to a strike two.
Ooooo, or a strike three.
I wondered if she would join me in the shed like Corvus. Watching over my shoulder as I worked.
I peered at her from the corner of my eye, trying to judge if she’d stay or if she’d run. If it would make her sick...or if she’d want to help.
The prospect of the latter made my cock harden in my jeans and I rolled my hips, savoring in the pleasure that image brought.
“Dies needs us,” Corvus said from the front.
Grey shifted. “For what?”
“The books, for you,” he replied. “That new one he hired is useless.”
Grey didn’t disagree. “What does he want you guys for?”
Corv shook his head. “Just me, and I’m not sure why.”
Corvus thumbed out a message to Diesel and my phone buzzed again as it was received in the group chat.
Ava Jade, no longer staring out the window, sat up straighter in her seat.
“Should we bring her to Sanctum with us?” Grey asked and I snorted, rolling down the window to rest my arm on it, feeling the cool breeze on my neck as I dug deep into my pocket for the cigarettes there, lighting one up.
“He doesn’t need me,” I said, ashing my smoke out the window as they shared a look.
“I don’t want her near Dies. Not right now,” Corvus said to Grey. I might as well have not even bothered speaking. Not that I cared.
“Can’t Rook come stay with me at Briar Hall tonight?” Ava Jade asked, and I tipped my head to one side, considering her in the moonlight. It was a simple enough question, but not one I’d ever expect her to ask.
She watched me string up Billy. Watched me beat him. Carve him up.
She was there the night outside the shed with Frank, too.
Grey hadn’t admitted it, but he didn’t have to.
Corvus and I both knew where he got that too-perfect cut on his arm.
We knew who’d given it to him. Who was watching from the shadows as we unloaded poor Frank, stinking of piss and stale beer, and dragged him to my shed.
She knew what I was, and still she asked the question.
Her sea-glass eyes found mine in the dark, and in them, I saw a resolve few of the strongest men I knew possessed.
My Ghost wanted to know if she could handle me alone.
Maybe almost as much as I wanted to know it.
“Nah,” I said, my lips turning up of their own accord. “Come back to the Nest with me. Have a drink. One of the others will drive you back to the Hall later.”
“Why?”
“Do you have whiskey in your room?”
She shook her head.
“I do.”
She pursed her lips as though to say can’t argue with that, giving a small one shoulder shrug. “Okay, but I’m not sleeping in that closet of a room. Either you drive me back later or I’ll walk back myself.”
“It’s settled then. I’ll keep an eye on her. It’ll be fun, won’t it, Ghost?”
Grey’s hand tensed on the wheel, and Corvus chewed on my words, his jaw grinding through the side view mirror as I finished my smoke.
Ava Jade gave a low chuckle, settling back into her seat as Grey drove us past the turn off to Briar Hall and around to the road running parallel to its grounds, around and up the mountainside.
The five-minute drive was tense, but when we got to the Nest, that tension broke as Ava Jade hopped out of the Rover. Like she was going to visit an old friend, not off to spend a few hours with a man who’d lost count of how many other men he’d killed.
This girl…
I shook my head as I stepped out of the Rover. The things I wanted to do to her. What would it take to make her scream? To make her beg?
Would she ever?
Or would she die silently? Resolute in her desire to not give in?
Mmmm…
Fuck.
“Rook,” Grey called from his window, and I paused as Ava Jade went up to the front door.
“Yeah, Brother?”
He struggled with what to say, but I saw the truth of what he wished he could say written all over his face. Don’t hurt her.
No. Worse than that.
If you hurt her, you’ll be hurting me.
It stung.
Just as much as the watchful stare of Corvus from the opposite seat. A warning stare.
Where was the trust?
I’d admit I hadn’t earned it, at least not in this respect, but still.
She was taking the trials. A Saint to be. A Crow in girl’s clothing.
We didn’t kill our own.
They should’ve known better.
They should’ve known me better.
I hurt women, sure, but only the ones who wanted to be hurt. They knew the risk. They liked the risk. Just because that one almost bled out last year didn’t mean I would push it that far with Ava Jade. I wouldn’t.
Would I?
I pasted on a smirk. “Don’t worry, Brother,” I crooned. “Her pretty face will be just as you left it when you get home.”
... though I couldn’t say the same for her pussy.
He nodded, his throat bobbing as he shifted gears into reverse and turned the Rover ’round. I watched the red taillights bob over the gravel drive for a moment before looking away.
Ava Jade waited in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. She lifted a brow. “What was that about?”
I stalked toward her, and she shifted to one side, letting me pass to unlock the front door. At least she’d left that handle and the one to the back door alone. I stepped inside, and she followed, kicking off her shoes and trailing me into the kitchen.
“I asked you a question,” she pressed as I pulled two glasses down from a cupboard and poured two whiskeys, one shorter than the other. She took the fuller one before I could hand her the one with less and I smirked.
Too slow...
“My brothers worry too much.”
“About you?”
“About other things.”
“Should I be worried?” she asked, leaning against the counter by the stove to sip her whiskey, her lips tightening in a slight grimace at the taste, though it didn’t stop her from taking another sip. A larger one.
I didn’t answer her, downing my whiskey in one gulp to pour another.
She took my non-reply for what it was: the uncertain truth.
I couldn’t tell her one way or the other if she should be worried. Tonight? No.
In the future? Possibly.
There were too many factors.
Too many nights I didn’t remember, where I woke up covered in red.
But that was before I got clean. Now, I remembered my kills. Now, I have more control.
More than my brothers thought I had.
“They should trust you more,” she said after a few minutes spent in easy silence, sipping whiskey. “You’re family. Their brother. Family means trust. Or, at least it should.”
Her face darkened and I felt something in me darken at the sight. Sea-glass eyes fell to the floor, shifting as her fingers clenched her glass a little tighter than they had a moment before that.
“Who hurt you?” I asked, the words evicted from the dark place inside. The decision to speak them wholly unconscious.
Ava Jade looked up, her lips parted, then closed. She cleared her throat. “No one.”
She kicked at the floor and then grinned. “Do you want to fuck with them?”
“What? Who?”
Her eyes lit with mischief, and I licked my lips.
“The others. They don’t trust you like they should. I say we fuck with them. Tit for tat.”
She watched my tongue travel along my lower lip, her breathing growing heavier as she shifted her feet.
How could I say no to that? How could I ever say no to her?
I grinned.
“What did you have in mind?”