Chapter 6
Dull brown eyes peer at me across the open pallet box between us. Winter air funnels into my lungs, stabbing the organs like serrated icicles, making my chest prickle, urging me to cough. I can smell the rich scent of wood wool spilling out of the slatted container, housing a fresh production of 12 gauge automatic shotguns.
This is what I’m here for.
This is what I do.
“Well,” the guy starts, sun-aged, white skin wrinkled around his eyes, dark hair threaded with silver at his temples. He lifts his gaze from the gun in his scarred hands to me, “Decent,” he says, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth like he’s trying to bait me.
Won’t work.
I might be a grumpy fucker, but I’m not so easily riled. Well, not on the surface anyway. On the inside, I’m boiling.
His guy beside him swallows, my own men at my back unmoving. I’m counting to ten inside my head, and it’s as though everyone inside this warehouse can hear it. Everyone except this fucking idiot fingering our product. I think of Flint, and how he fucking hates smears on the matte metal. My eyes rove subtly in his lover’s direction, and even looking at Phoenix, his brown eyes narrowed, I know he’s thinking the same thing. Jaw set tight, a muscle thrumming up the side of his neck, it almost pushes a smile to my lips.
Since Flint’s on babysitting duty, Nix is my right hand today. This isn’t usually his scene, but he can morph when necessary. Moving between skins is easy to him, the one he usually wears is the prettiest among us, rich brown eyes, soft, bouncy blonde curls, angelic, soft. It says, come play with me.
It’s extraordinarily misleading.
I’m the silent enforcer. The muscle. The one with both brains and brawn. I’m the quiet. Calm. Logical. The one who holds everything together when no one else can. Reliable. The one who sees truths and lies as clean cut as black and white. I’m the backbone. The foundation. Trusted.
Still counting, I get all the way to eight before the guy places the gun back down into the pallet, his hands curling over the wooden side of it, fingers flexing.
He looks up at me, the smirk gone, “I’ll take them for forty percent off.”
That’s when I smirk. Roll my gaze dramatically to the right, Phoenix’s warm eyes already knowingly on mine.
“Pack ‘em up,” I order with a sharp nod before directing my attention back onto the man before me, a smug little smile on his face thinking I’m accepting his ridiculous offer. I keep my attention on him, my face blank, as I speak to Nix without looking at him, “We’re not wasting our time here.”
Turning sharply, giving the men my back, I have no fear of an attack. Not that I think these morons would try anything anyway, but still, showing your back to a potential rival or enemy is really fucking stupid.
Guess I don’t really give a fuck.
Jerking my head at Phoenix, a small smile curling his lips, he huffs a small chuckle, hiding it beneath the syrupy softness of his evenly spoken order, “Okay, pack ‘em up, let’s go.”
Clean concrete beneath my booted feet, I make my way towards the door, one of our guys stationed beside it plants his palm on the steel as I approach, pushing it open for me, watching the scene unfold at my back.
“We’ll take ‘em,” the other guy calls out, just as my feet hit the threshold.
Silence fills the space instantly, and slowly, I turn my head over my shoulder, eyeing the two guys, the original talker sweating, the one who called out looking almost desperate.
“It’ll be an extra ten percent,” I reply, without raising my voice, without changing my monotone.
One second, tw-
“Okay,” both of them mutter, and with a short nod of my head in Nix’s direction, he gets everything moving once again.
Outside, the day is grey, dreary. I feel bone tired, everything heavy, like my feet are dragging around a corpse after the events of last night. And I still have to show up at the gym. Those young lads count on me, a safe space for them to get their shit worked out. It’s probably a full house today, having likely fucked up and caused more mayhem last night that even I won’t be able to get them out of. Much as I’ll try.
Nails scraping over my short curls, I scratch them lightly over my scalp, down the back of my neck, pinching the muscles in the cup of my hand at my nape. I blow out a breath, massaging the tight flesh, trying to stop the yawn that escapes from cracking my jaw, when I feel him move up beside me.
Phoenix tucks his hands into his pockets, looking out across the gravel lot into the distance. The city is barely waking up, the curve of the earth breaking with the dull glow of the sun hidden behind thick black clouds.
We stand for a few minutes, comfortable silence between us, neither one of us big talkers.
I think of when Flint first brought him to meet us.
His curved jaw bruised, a black eye, busted nose. He seemed so small. Soft. Fragile. I couldn’t understand why Flint would think we’d ever tolerate a natural enemy being in our space, let alone try to bring him into the fold. Our family. Then I saw the way Phoenix looked at Flint like he held the entire world in his palms, the sun, the moon, the stars and every planet in the galaxy. Flint was his hero, and I felt the love between them with just that one look. Naturally, within moments of being introduced, hackles rose along the top of my spine, an immediate instinct to protect Nix. For our brother. Then we got to know each other, and the rest is history. I’m closer with these three men than I ever was with my blood relations.
“Who d’you think she is?” Nix asks softly, still not looking at me, big eyes set on the rising sun, even though it’s mostly blocked from view by the bad weather.
Trouble.
Swallowing, I think of the feel of her body against mine, her blood seeping through my t-shirt, pressing into my skin. The weight of her over my shoulder. Sounds of her muffled cries into my back, her screaming. Begging. Bloody hands fisting the material of my joggers at the back of my thighs as she hung over my shoulder.
She was a fucking mess, and she looked like some prissy rich bitch, so why the fuck she is now in Tower Four with a babysitter, Flint, of all people, is beyond me.
Blaze wouldn’t tell us anything, as is his right as leader. I know he’ll tell us eventually, if he deems it need to know, but even now it makes my teeth grind, thinking of his silence. His stoicism.
What he did with her, to her, it feels too personal for him to just be playing.
She’s dangerous.
“I don’t know,” I reply slowly, tiredly.
I’m so. Fucking. Tired.
“She’s pretty.” He shifts, turning slightly towards me, hands still in his pockets, chin dipped, those big eyes flicked up onto mine, “Think she ever smiles?” It’s asked so innocently, so quietly, smooth, you wouldn’t know that’s what he does to his victims, carves chaotic smiles into their faces, sometimes their throats.
I don’t really have anything to say to that. I have no interest in whatever it is Blaze thinks he’s doing with her.
But still, I find myself replying, “Maybe.”
There’s another moment of silence between us. Peaceful. It makes time feel as though it moves just a little bit slower.
And then, “I could give her the prettiest smile.”
It’s a whispered dream, something Phoenix can feel playing out inside his head. I don’t need to ask him about it, the way I imagine he sees it. Her, all big blue eyes, watery and sad. Plump pout of swollen lips and flushed cheeks. He’d caress her neck and tickle his fingers through her hair, he’d whisper in her ear and lick the salty wetness from her tear-stained cheeks. He’d love her before he carved her up, make sure it was reciprocated. After all, it’s all he’s ever wanted, just a sliver of love.
For a breath, I think I might understand just a little bit of Phoenix’s obsession with smiles, because I strangely find myself imagining hers.
What it might be like.
Last night, she was so timid, shy, her heart thrashing wildly against my back as I carried her to the car. The feel of her arse beneath my hand as I, unconsciously, caressingly gripped the back of her thigh. I only got a brief look at her earlier on in the night, from a distance. But she didn’t smile from what I saw. Not once. I can’t imagine my brother fucking one onto her face either. He’s not really known to be gentle during sex. And that’s all he told us last night, about her. That he fucked her and now she was coming with us.
“Think we’ll still get to play?” Phoenix rasps, his full attention shifted onto me now when I look up. “After Blaze is done, I mean?”
He asks it so softly, so innocently, as though this would be a perfectly normal conversation anybody might have on any given day of the week. Them passing around a kidnapped girl. And I suppose it is, for us. It’s why the four of us fit together so perfectly. All of us coming from weird fucking backgrounds, joining together like little lost boys. We didn’t have anything alone, but we fought everything to have it together.
“Honestly, Nix?” I ask him lowly, a single brow lifting on my forehead, he nods almost eagerly, but still in that slow, patient, methodical way of his. “I don’t know.”
I can feel his next non-question before it drops from his lips, “You think she’s something else.”
Important.
That’s what we’re both not saying.
Because none of us have ever seen Blaze like this.
Obsessed.
“I think she might mean…” I blink, my brow furrowing, almost like a realisation that I’m not entirely sure I like. “...more.”