Chapter 8 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
H eadlights poured across the weatherworn floor of the cabin as the Aces approached the meet point.
Three cars, I counted as their headlights passed over the front window one by one. Heavy vehicles. Trucks and vans like the ones Dies and the others drove in on by the sounds of their tires as they hit deep potholes and drove over sections of puddled road.
Diesel rolled his shoulders back and lengthened his spine, hiding a wince as he passed the cane to Tiny.
“Boss, you heard what the vet said?—”
“Get rid of it.”
Without another word of protest, the Saint took two steps to his right and chucked the cane out the shattered back window of the cabin.
Diesel adjusted his footing before taking two steps forward and then three steps back. Testing his ability to appear uninjured.
He did a damn good job of it, but I knew it wouldn’t be without a monstrous amount of effort that his face stayed placid as a lake.
I’d done a damn good job of fucking up his Achilles, and if he kept walking on it, it wouldn’t ever heal properly.
I was no doctor, but I was pretty sure he’d wind up with a limp for the rest of his life doing that.
Though, I understood his need to appear strong. Especially now.
I caught his gaze flick to me as he returned back to his place, standing elbow to elbow with the rest of us to the far right side of the cabin. This side had the only window other than the one next to the front door and therefore the only side with an alternate means of escape.
Though the other side was more heavily strewn with old discarded furniture that could prove useful as cover if it came to a gunfight.
With Rook and Grey beside me, I felt an odd sense of responsibility for them. Like, if something happened to them it would be at least partially my fault as the person who was at their side. Meant to have their back. Meant to cover them from fire.
From their tension and the way they both inched ever so slightly nearer to my sides as the sounds of heavy thudding footfalls ascended the stairs outside, I knew they felt similarly.
I counted the footsteps.
Eight of them coming inside. Another five? Maybe six waiting outside by the idling vehicles.
We were six in here.
Eleven in total.
Decent odds for normal people.
Fucking amazing odds for us. I knew I could take at least four before they saw me coming. And my guys? They could easily handle the rest, Diesel or no Diesel.
My own certainty surprised me, but I felt it like a truth carved into my bones, and lifted my chin as the Aces entered.
I clocked weapons as they came in. Finding the tactical edges of bulletproof vests poking out from under collars and sleeves. They were ready for this to go south, too.
Nothing bigger than a handgun, though, unless someone had a particularly deep anal cavity.
I searched the faces of the Aces here tonight, trying to decide which one could’ve been Becca’s beau. The man who’d manipulated and conned her. The one who was after my Crows.
Their eyes betrayed nothing.
The man from that night in the yard of the warehouse emerged from the group, putting himself at a slight lead from the others at his back. Diesel did the same.
I recognized him easily enough. He had a distinct look about him.
A thin, angular face with coiffed hair that made him appear taller than he was.
And suddenly I was back there, knelt down in the shadows of the trees, watching as Lenny Ace and Diesel St. Crow spoke.
As the Ace on the end of the row eyed Corvus, his trigger finger twitching.
It was that one thing that sealed my fate. If that other Ace hadn’t tried to kill Corvus… If I hadn’t saved his life.
I might not be here right now.
“Lenny,” Diesel said.
“Diesel. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Lenny sounded bored. Almost annoyed. It was clear from his tone he wasn’t happy to be here. That it was a major inconvenience.
Not the sort of tone Diesel St. Crow would take kindly to.
“Have you nothing for me, then?” Diesel pressed, his hard stare unwavering on Lenny Ace.
Lenny had the decency to look confused at the question. “Should I?”
Diesel bristled, and I thought he was going to end this meeting right here and now in a hail of gunfire, but then the atmosphere around him shifted. The switch reminded me of something—someone—else, and I glanced at Corvus, finding the same practiced restraint in his features and stature.
“You have nothing to prove your man’s death is on us,” Lenny continued when Diesel didn’t give him the courtesy of a reply.
“And you have nothing to prove it wasn’t,” Diesel continued, and it took me a moment to realize they were continuing the conversation from all that time ago at the warehouse. About the guy The Crows found dead in Thorn Valley…with an A carved into his chest?
I didn’t know the particulars. Only what I picked up on from my bug and what I’d heard since.
“It was probably Devon,” someone else behind Lenny piped up. “He was always a loose cannon.”
Lenny turned his head slowly, and the look in his eyes promised a slow death to the man who spoke if he said another word.
He shut up.
“Convenient then, since he’s buried on the spot where he tried to shoot Corvus and can’t defend himself,” I couldn’t help saying.
Lenny’s blue-eyed gaze found me for the first time since they entered, analyzing me from the top down.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“That’s not your concern,” Diesel replied. “And I didn’t ask you here tonight to talk about Randy, though I still think there’s something to be spoken to about his death.”
“Then what did you ask me here for?”
The Aces tensed behind their leader, anticipating a fight.
I could feel it, too. Like electricity in the air that I could taste if I just flicked my tongue out to touch it. My blood hummed with it. With the possibility that tonight, I might kill a man. And fuck if I wasn’t looking forward to it. That inner darkness thirsting for violence.
Rook made a low sound in his throat next to me, and I inched my hand to move to the side, brushing my knuckles with his, feeling a static shock. His dark eyes gleamed in the low light, and I knew he was feeling it, too.
“One of your men is out to get my boys.”
A dark laugh rattled out of Lenny’s chest as he shook his head, dropping it to pinch the bridge of his nose like something Diesel said was funny.
I didn’t find it fucking funny.
My fingers flinched, pulling away from Rook’s to hover at my side, ready to spring for a blade.
“You’re paranoid, old man,” Lenny said, sighing. “No one is messing with you. No one is after your sons. At least, not my crew. I’d start looking to your enemies, there is where you’ll find?—”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Diesel interrupted Lenny. “ One of your men is out to get my fucking sons . It wasn’t a question. It isn’t a suspicion. It’s a fact.”
Lenny’s lips pressed tight. “If you truly believed that, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
“The only reason we are is because I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, Lenny. I’m not making your insides your outsides right now because I recognize it might be one of your men acting independently and not on your command.”
“Diesel—”
“I’m not finished. Either you have something to do with it and you have a death wish, or one of your men, someone you trust, is working an angle without your knowledge.”
Lenny’s face was growing redder by the second. Unlike Diesel, he was wholly unable to keep his emotions from playing on his face. And right now, he was angry. Feeling disrespected. I had an urge to push him a little more to see how he might react.
I opened my mouth to do just that, but Grey stepped on my foot. The slight shake of his head the only hint he knew what I’d been about to do.
“You’re wrong, Dies,” Lenny said.
“I’m not. I have the proof I need; what I don’t have is a name.”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“You have ten days to give me that name,” Diesel continued, ignoring Lenny completely. “Give him up and declare peace or you renounce your territory claim and leave .”
“Excuse me?” Lenny scoffed. “We’ve held that territory since my grandfather?—”
“I don’t care if you’ve held it since the dawn of time. You give him up, or you better get as far away from northern Cali as you can go.”
Lenny stepped forward, cinching the gap between himself and Diesel. To Diesel’s credit, he didn’t so much as balk at the advance. Actually, he smiled.
It was worse than when he was expressionless. Much worse.
“And if we don’t?” Lenny asked, a muscle in his upper lip twitching as he snarled.
“Then you have chosen the path of violence, and we will not hold back.”
Diesel lifted his hand in a circular motion, and Grey tugged me to follow him from the cabin.
My head pounded with the throb of unspent adrenaline in my veins as we exited back out into the damp night.
I stayed by the door until Rook was outside.
Diesel and Corvus were the last ones to leave, and I didn’t fall back into step until Corvus tugged me to him, making me follow beside him instead of behind.
I didn’t trust them.
There was a vibe there. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew there was something more to this feud than what it appeared on the surface. If I was right, it wasn’t going to take much more for the tenuous truce to snap.
Before there was all out war on the streets.
A sharp whistle and Diesel’s other men exited the tree line, surprising the small gathering of Aces waiting by the idling vehicles on the left side of the parking lot.
They strode past them like wraiths and the Aces watched as they hopped into the van with Axel, silent.
“Get back to Sanctum. I want you combing over those tapes for anything we can use,” Diesel told Pinkie. “Go with the others.”
Pinkie nodded before going to the van.
“I want the rest of you ready. Wait for my orders at Sanctum.”
“Where you going, boss?” one of them asked as Corvus continued to drag me slowly to the Rover.