Chapter 15 – Rook
ROOK
“ W hat are we doing here, Diesel?” Maverick’s misplaced sense of superiority tainted his voice as it floated up to us from the underbelly of Sanctum.
“We’re waiting for my sons.”
“There are places we need to?—”
“You’ll wait.”
Diesel’s attention turned toward us as we came down the stairs and I shoved past Corvus to make a beeline for Maverick.
“You didn’t catch him?” Diesel asked Grey and Corvus, stepping out of my way as I squared up in front of King’s so-called ‘leader,’ seeing him in a new light.
Watching him cower.
“Tell me about Drake.”
His lips flexed into a tight line, but his stare couldn’t hold mine for more than a second before he turned his attention to Diesel. “What is this, St. Crow? I already told you I don’t know why the boy ran.”
“Like how you know nothing about where Aries went?” I pressed, thumbing my blade from my hip to flip it between my fingers, rolling it over my rings.
“Diesel?” he urged.
“You will answer my son’s question, Maverick.”
“Sit.” I pushed the tip of my blade into Maverick’s chest, guiding him to the seat behind his ass until he fell into it.
I perched on the edge of the meeting table, lifting my foot to rest on the chair next to him, never looking away. Watching the sweat bead at his hairline.
“I’ve already told your father, boy. I have no idea what Drake was playing at. One second he was sitting here at the table with us for the meet. The next thing I know he jumps out of his seat and throws a damned smoke grenade and a flash bang under the table and he’s gone.”
I looked to Diesel for confirmation. He nodded gravely.
“What was he doing before that?”
Mavericks thick brows bunched together.
“He was on his phone,” Diesel answered for him. “Must’ve seen something that spooked him off.”
Corvus and I shared a look.
We already knew Drake had eyes on us at Briar Hall. In the halls. The cafeteria. The fucking kitchens. Why not in Ava Jade’s and Becca’s room? We could’ve missed it. We weren’t watching close enough. We should’ve been checking.
Should’ve.
Should’ve .
I would never should’ve again.
On that note.
I licked my lips, eyeing Maverick’s men behind him. As per Diesel’s rules, none of them were allowed in Sanctum armed, but judging by their shifty looks and hand placements, they weren’t following the rules. And Diesel, dear daddy Diesel wasn’t as on top of it as he should’ve been.
“That motherfucker nearly killed our friend,” I seethed, remembering the feel of Becca’s near dead body under mine as I fought to save her. She didn’t deserve that. “And he might have my fucking reason for living in his filthy hands. You know something . Tell me.”
The truth of it hit me like a Mack truck to the chest. She was my reason to keep going. For years I’d been just getting by. Keeping the ugliest parts of myself choked off, sated. I’d stopped giving a fuck whether I survived our next job. Our next run in with a rival gang.
Ghost was my reason to want to be more cautious. If only to keep from missing a single moment with her. My brothers filled the void. They were close to being enough, but she was more.
She was everything.
Maverick’s upper lip curled. “I don’t know a damned thing.”
I punched him in the face, sucking in a breath at the sting.
His men rushed forward but Grey, Corvus, Diesel, and Pinkie raised their weapons in warning.
I watched the light come back into Maverick’s eyes as they focused on me.
On me licking his blood off my rings and spitting it onto the floor.
“Try again.”
“Rook,” Diesel said, calm. The eye of the storm raging all around him.
Maverick’s chair scraped back as he stood, twisting out from under my shadow. “I’m warning you, St. Crow,” he said, unsteady as he swiped the back of his hand over the blood dripping from the fresh cut on his lower lip. “This is not how we handle business.”
Diesel nodded, and I snarled at him. “He’s lying .”
“And if he is, then he knows what will happen.”
“This is bullshit.”
I lifted my blade to Mav’s throat and within half a second there was a barrel pressed to my temple by one of his men.
“I think you should go, Maverick,” Diesel said.
He swallowed against my blade. “And our alliance?”
“Give me Drake and I’ll reconsider severing ties.”
Mav’s lips parted in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting this. Hadn’t been expecting Diesel to support his sons over this absolute forgery of a fucking alliance.
“I told you, I don’t know what he’s up to.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“Dies?” I pressed, drawing a drop of blood from Mav’s neck.
My father turned his attention to the man with the gun pressed to my temple. “You have exactly one second to remove that gun from my son’s head or I’ll blow yours off.”
“One—”
The barrel dropped, and I pushed off of Maverick, away from the Kings reduced to fucking jokers in a court of bloody nightmares.
“Leave.”
“Think about this, St. Crow?—”
Diesel fired a round into the ceiling, sending them scattering like roaches. “ Leave .”
Diesel remained like that, with his arm raised, the tail of smoke from the shot he fired still rising from the weapon gripped tight in his hand, until they were all gone.
“Now,” he said, holstering the gun. “Someone want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“I still say you shouldn’t have let him go.”
I paced the short span of floor as Grey finished explaining about the painting of Drake and what it meant.
Diesel gave me an exasperated glance before responding to something Grey was saying. “So, you’re telling me the Hart kid’s gang boyfriend?—”
“Becca,” Grey corrected him.
Diesel sighed. “ Becca’s gang boyfriend who was an Ace actually wasn’t an Ace at all but a King?” A pause. “A King who is also Ava Jade’s stalker?”
Grey pinched the bridge of his nose. “Basically, yes.”
“Well, that shit doesn’t make sense.”
As little sense as it made when we came to similar conclusions about Aries. But with Aries, it didn’t fit. His little pansy ass couldn’t have been Ava Jade’s stalker. This guy, though? He could be.
I saw his darkness. A different flavor from mine but it was there all along. I thought it meant he could run with us, a new wolf to join our murder of crows. My Ghost saw it too. It beckoned her. Reeled her in only to trap her.
Bristling on the inside, I shivered on the outside, feeling the drag of coming down from my high like fingernails pulling at the back of my skull.
Corvus stopped stewing, giving the inside of his cheek a break from his incessant chewing. “It only doesn’t because we don’t have all the information. But it fits. It’s him. It has to be.”
About time he fucking said something. My older brother had been a goddamned mute since we left the crossroads in Edgewood. I read between his lines now though, catching onto what he wasn’t saying.
If it wasn’t Drake, then that would mean we had exactly zilch to go on in helping us find my Ghost. But I was with him on this. It did fit.
And without Grey putting the pieces together we wouldn’t have this lead at all.
I flipped open my phone, scrolling to my old Lennox contact to fire him off another text.
ROOK
What the fuck is taking so long? I need my shit.
“I don’t like this,” Diesel was saying. “Rook’s right.”
I scoffed.
“Maverick was lying. That much was obvious, but we don’t know what he was lying about. He might not have a clue what Drake is up to, if that’s even his name.”
“Doubtful,” Corvus muttered, gazing distantly toward the exit before checking something on his phone.
Diesel rubbed a knuckle over his chin, thinking. “Either way, it might come to a fight with the Kings and we’re weak. We lost a lot of men at the Docks and nearly half our fucking force are either down or at least badly injured.”
“Bring in the newer recruits,” Grey suggested.
“They aren’t ready. Haven’t even taken the trials.”
“Make this their trial. It’s better than being outmanned practically two to one.”
Diesel didn’t like that idea, but it was clear he was considering it.
“All right, we bring them into the fold, separate out the wheat from the chaff when this is through and run them through the trials. But we’re outgunned, too, and low on munitions.
We’d need more weapons and can’t risk traveling through King territory to get what we need right now.
And if we go the other route, to the dealers south of the border, it’ll cost twice as much and we can’t afford it. ”
“I might be able to fix that problem,” I offered, remembering a certain someone’s very expensive very fancy Easter eggs. Someone who deserved to have her mansion broken into, her precious gifts stolen. “You still have those art dealing contacts in the black market?”
Diesel crooked a brow. “Yeah, why?”
“I’ll get us the cash. Set up a meet with the Mexicans for a few days from now. We’ll get the weapons and munitions just in case.”
Diesel looked like he might argue or ask questions, but instead he just set his jaw, and sighed, deciding he didn’t really want to know.
“Boss?” Pinkie’s voice drifted into the chilly room from the office by the exit where he was diligently watching the cameras. “St. Vincent’s here. And the boys are back from their patrol.”
Diesel gave Pinkie a nod and the big guy went back to watching the screens.
“I’ll brief the others on what went down here. We’ll have to drop it down to a single patrol on the streets for your girl. I can’t risk spreading us thin right now.”
“She isn’t on the streets.” I wished it wasn’t true, but I knew in my gut it was. He had her.
He’d had her this whole time. The things he could’ve done to her in the days, nearly a week now, that she’d been gone.
The darkness within stirred, both fed by the remnants of the white powder still keeping me going and dulled by the aftereffects of it slowly leaving my system.
I needed more.
Now.
I lit a fresh cigarette with shaky fingers I willed to still themselves, checking my phone again for a reply. Ready to get moving again. We’d done enough standing around.
“We need to keep looking for her—for him ,” Grey told Diesel, mirroring my thoughts. Our father closed the short gap to where Grey was seated and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“I know, Son.”
Grey stood.
“Check in every few hours.”
“We will,” Grey promised as our uncle hollered a hello from the stairs, trotting down to meet us. His nose turned up at what he found, brows furrowing.
“Hey, little brother,” he said in greeting to Diesel. “Why do I feel like I just missed the show?”
Diesel shook his head, making for the bar. “Drink, Damien?”
“You know what I like.”
Diesel lifted his chin in a silent goodbye as we left, finding a new day staining the sky purple, a slice of glowing orange blooming on the horizon.
“I’m going to see what I can dig up on Drake,” Grey announced. “And try to access any cctv footage on the road where we lost him.”
“Good call,” Corvus said, making for Diesel’s car.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going back to where we lost him, try the road to Lennox,” my brother announced. “You go back to the nest with Grey. I’ll meet you there in a bit.”
“We shouldn’t split up,” Grey argued.
Corvus paused with his hand on the handle of Diesel’s car, his back stiffening. “What good am I sitting my ass at home?”
“Corv—”
“Let him go,” I interrupted. “We’ll meet you at home, Bro.”
Grey shrugged off my grip on his arm, twisting away from Corvus as he slid into the driver’s seat of Dies’ Camaro. He always left the keys in it. No one was stupid enough to touch Diesel St. Crow’s car in this city. No one except his son.
Grey stalked around the building to the Rover, a black cloud following him.
“Hey,” I called after him, not even bothering to try to keep up as I lit another cigarette, coughing on the acrid taste of cocaine dripping down the back of my throat. “You still have that shit on all our phones, right? The tracking shit?”
He stopped, spinning on his heel, his brows drawn in question. “Yeah, why?”
“Corvus isn’t going to the crossroads. He’s lying.”
“What?”
“Something’s up and we’re going to find out what.”