31. Cairo
THIRTY-ONE
cairo
“What the fuck?”
Not the reaction I was looking for.
However, Bay just opened her eyes, and I was the first thing she saw, so I can’t be that surprised.
She quickly sits up in bed, the navy-blue tank top she wore last night still on while her raven-black hair is a mess on top of her head.
I’d say she looks cute if cute wasn’t a pain in the ass who went off pulling hero missions.
“Good morning to you, too, Little Terror,” I greet placidly, elbows on my knees as I stare blankly at her.
I wish I understood this woman.
She just strode into Matteo’s little rat pit and pulled Reeve out of there like she was the damn SWAT team extracting drugs. I know she likes him, and he fucking loves her regardless of his drug-riddled heartbreak, but I owe this girl more than she knows right now.
Without her, Reeve would be dead as a warning sign and a casualty of war.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Matteo did it out of spite just because I beat his ass in the Titan fight.
“What are you doing here?” she clips back, almost breathlessly as if my being in her personal space defies all decorum. She looks around then, realizing she’s back in her own room, and looks at me. “How did I get here?”
“I drove you home.”
Because her sleeping on Reeve’s floor bothered me .
She wanted to check in on him to make sure he was still breathing. She didn’t trust that Matteo’s coke wasn’t laced with fentanyl even though I told her I’d check.
She wanted to do it.
I’d come back to inspect by cracking the door open and found her staring at him while he slept through his high.
It wasn’t until about four in the morning that I found her curled up in a ball, snoring softly next to his mattress.
“You sleep like the dead.”
Bay narrows her eyes. “Who drove my car?”
I knew this was going to be an argument. However, I wasn’t going to leave the damn thing at my house.
“Me.” She opens her mouth to pop off when I reach out to give her what I brought. “I got you breakfast.” It’s the only thing I could think of doing. “As a thank you.”
Her brows immediately knit. “A thank you?”
“You did have Muncy’s son contact me, correct? You rescued Reeve?”
I watch her expression drop from curiously startled to downright shut down and void of any emotion. “Right.” She glowers at me. “Thanks for sending Torin to the rescue.”
“He was the closest.” She snorts at that, and I know it wasn’t ideal, but I needed her to have backup ASAP. She needed me. I was shocked as shit she found a way to reach out, and I wasn’t going to have two bodies I knew would disappear under the eyes of De Leon. “That was a stupid move.”
“Did you or did you not tell me I did good after you pulled me through a broken window?” She glances down at her bicep. A bullet grazed her last night, and I’m pissed about that. She can’t be catching lead, or Levi is going to kill Ozzy for not looking out for her, and then I’m going to kill Wallace for touching my brother. “You fixed me.”
As I stare at her, she doesn’t look so complicated when she’s in bed. When she’s not out there trying to survive and look out for her family.
Which is mind-boggling because she just bitched at me two nights ago about leaving and protecting them. But she still goes out to save Reeve.
She’s in love with him.
Either that or still thinks highly of the asshole.
“Make sure you clean it a few times,” I reply. “I made sure you had antiseptic in your bathroom.”
“Anything else?” Her blue eyes skate up to me under those long eyelashes.
“Like?”
She lifts her shoulders. “I dunno. You’re obviously trying to keep me alive for that Titan seat. Maybe you should’ve just let gangrene take over.”
“You’re disturbed.”
A giant smile takes over her face. “Yes, well…” She kicks the white comforter off her legs and begins to climb out of bed. “I’ve been pretty dark lately.”
Holding out an aluminum-foiled burrito, I hand it to her. “Eat. I made it myself.”
Bay’s blue eyes descends to my expression of gratitude. “I’m sorry, but…poison wasn’t the way I saw myself going out. More like a giant ball of fire or gunfire?—”
“Please,” I scoff haughtily. “That’s so basic I’m almost embarrassed that you said it.”
She extracts the temporary peace treaty from my palm and surprisingly opens it. “What’s in it?”
“Eggs, turkey bacon, red potatoes, peppers, and spinach.”
“Thanks.” Peeling the tortilla open, she immediately begins plucking the spinach pieces out like a child.
“Eat the damn spinach, Bay.”
“Now, you’re gonna tell me how to eat?” she drones, chin still tucked in her chest. “How about you get lost, Antonio Banderas.”
Cute.
“It’s good for you,” I retort. “You look like—” Her ocean blues slices up to me when I catch myself, and I quickly try to think of how I would tell one of my sisters that they look like shit if they did.
You look like shit.
It’s literally what I would say.
But Bay isn’t a sister, she’s South Shore, and therefore, she’d punch me in the balls quicker than the rest of the words would leave my lips. So, I opt for something more…normal?
“I look like, what?” she presses, picking up a potato and popping it in her mouth in a silent challenge for me to finish the rest.
“Beautiful,” I utter safely. “You look beautiful.”
“Do I?” She doesn’t sound convinced, nor is she stupid. We both know my ass wasn’t going to say that. “How beautiful?”
“Almost fuckable, Little T.”
Bay smiles and lets me off the hook. “Almost.”
“Mhm.” I lean back in the wooden chair I extracted from the other side of her room. “You shouldn’t be runnin’ around?—”
“Don’t start that shit again,” she whines, shoving the burrito in her mouth as if it’s going to keep her from hearing what I have to say. “I already get enough from Levi about it. I don’t need you on my ass.”
I’m sure she has. Which is why I’m surprised her leash isn’t tighter.
“How do you get him to give you so much freedom?” I ask, intriguingly watching her chew away with her mouth open and zero fucks given.
“Respect,” she replies immediately. “And apparently, too much of it.”
“You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“Matteo wouldn’t kill me. Not yet, anyway.”
“Let’s not and say we did for the next time, alright? I put my number in your phone.”
“Under what?”
“Cairo?”
She tsks. “Boring.”
“I think putting the King of Wharf Bay would’ve been too conceited.”
“That’s what you are, isn’t it?” She lifts her shoulders and shoves another bite of burrito in her mouth.
“I am. I’m officially getting crowned for that shit soon.”
“Really?” I nod. “Like a whole ceremony and shit?”
“Like a whole ceremony and shit,” I confirm. “I’d love for you to be there.”
Bay stops chewing and immediately begins rocking her head back and forth. “Can’t.”
We’ll see about that.
The sooner the Forsaken Crew sees she rolls with me, the sooner we start pulling this shit together. How I’m going to get her there is going to take some work. However, Ozzy might be able to put in a word for me with Wallace and how beneficial it would be to do it.
“Well, I owe you, anyway,” I reply. “Consider it the next time you need something done, and I’ll make sure it’s yours.”
“The video,” she prompts. “I want it.”
“I know.”
Her eyebrows clench a bit together. “The real one.”
I lift my head in acknowledgment. “The one that clears your name.” She takes a bite of the burrito and bobs her head. “Do you know where it may be?”
“Unfortunately, no,” she replies with a mouthful of food. “Since I haven’t been around him in so long, I don’t know his hiding spots anymore.”
“Do you remember his old ones?”
“Some.”
“Then I’ll take them and see if anything comes out of it.”
Bay stops mid-chew and gapes at me suspiciously with narrowed eyes. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“I could be lying.”
“You could be.”
“It could be an edited one.”
“So, that would mean you’re possibly innocent because why would there be an edited one?”
Bay snorts and takes another bite of the burrito even though she has some still in her mouth. “Because he’s a fuckin’ asshole.”
“Who still has a vendetta against you, apparently.”
“It’s a perfect play,” she replies evenly. “Two boys all over me. It pits South Shore against The Landings again and possibly Wharf Bay.”
“I have nothing to do with Wallace and South Shore.”
“But Torin does with The Landings.”
I lift my shoulders. “And until a hair is touched on my brother’s head, I don’t move.”
“What about his brother’s head?”
I see what she’s doing here.
All roads lead to her if you look at it from the outside. However, I’d like to say that I know this girl a bit. I might not fully understand the stupid shit she does or why, but there’s a difference between that and murdering someone.
And she doesn’t strike me as someone who’d do something like that unless she absolutely had to or your name is Matteo De Leon.
My evidence—Levi Wallace.
She could’ve had him move at any moment, but he didn’t. Their little impromptu dating is something that never sat right but was surprising all the same if it were true.
“Can I ask you something?”
Bay lifts her shoulders. “Sure.”
“Were you dating Wallace?”
Her blue eyes roll as she leans back and catches herself on one arm, but she surprises me by not evading and just answers. “No.”
Huh.
“Then why do it?”
“Because Levi wanted me to get closer to Torin so I could get closer to Emilio.”
Of course, he did.
“And what was your plan?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
Ambitious.
And stupid.
“Many have tried, and none have succeeded,” I emit. “But I’m assuming the daughter card was something you were going to use to your advantage against Emilio.”
“Something like that.”
“So, you never liked Torin?”
“I didn’t want to like Torin,” she retorts lightly. “And now I don’t.”
“That’s a lie.”
“If you experienced what I did, you wouldn’t either.”
“You’re the female version of him, minus the hair. You are two peas in a pod.”
“Almost,” she mutters. “But not quite.”
“And you still want to prove your innocence to him.”
She peers up at me again, and I see a bit of sadness in her eyes. “Consider it my last fuck you for the trouble.”
She’s hurt, there’s no mistaking that. And I’m not going to sit here and tell her she doesn’t have a right to be.
She does.
If it wasn’t for Matteo, they’d still be fucking everywhere and staring at each other like a couple of love-sick fucking morons.
“Alright, Little T, your wish is my command. I’ll get that over to you as quickly as I can find it. However, if you’re right, Torin will be broken with grief about it.”
“Boo-hoo,” she deadpans, tearing savagely into the burrito with her teeth as if it’s his head.
“Make him pay, Bay, but don’t let him drown in it.”
I swear to God, she almost chokes before swallowing what she had in her mouth whole then abandons the burrito and quickly removes herself from bed.
“Thanks for stopping by,” she dismisses me, walking over to her dresser in nothing but booty shorts that cup her fucking ass and have me staring for a second too long. “But you should follow your own advice and not enter places that may kill you.”
“I hate using this card, but Ozzy is my free pass.”
Bay slowly glimpses over her shoulder at me and narrows her eyes. “He doesn’t even have a free pass.”
“He’s your husband.”
Pushing her cheek out with her tongue, she spins on her heels and strides toward me. Her hips swaying ever-so-sexily, not even needing to try—Bay Astor just is.
South Shore born and bred.
She’s the equivalent of untouchable as if she were royalty herself.
You don’t touch.
You don’t look.
And you definitely don’t fuck.
“I don’t like that word,” she remarks, stopping until her thigh brushes against my knee. “And do you wanna know why, King of Wharf Bay?”
I can gather several reasons in my head, but I have a feeling she’s going to surprise me. “Why?”
“Because the idea of being trapped inside a loveless marriage makes me want to slit my own throat open. It reminds me of being under Emilio’s unyielding plan to get me to love him. It feels forced .”
“And you’re telling me that if it were someone else, you’d be okay with it?”
“Depends on the someone else.”
“Reeve.”
“Before or after I told him to fuck off?”
“You’re self-sabotaging, Little T, because you’re hurt. But don’t get it fucked up, that moron still loves you.”
“But he’s too fucked up to tell. I destroyed him, and I will never forgive myself. But to answer your question,”—she leans forward and levels her face with mine, —“I would’ve thought about it. Down the road, after all this shit was over, it would’ve made him happy. I don’t think I would’ve changed my last name, though.”
“I get that. You don’t wanna lose that part of your dad.”
Her expression softens. I never did get to tell her I’m sorry for her loss. “Yeah. I’m never going to give that up.”
“I think he’d take it. Your last name, I mean.”
“Think so?”
“All you’d have to do was ask, Little T.”
“But I can’t,” she reminds me. “It’s over. And I need to fully accept that.”
“I didn’t take you for someone to give up so easily or accept anything you didn’t want to.”
Her sad gaze falls to my lips, and I force my body to still and be calm. When you’re a man in front of Bay Astor, you’re prey whether you want to be or not. This woman could flip a priest into giving up his life with God.
She’s nothing I’ve ever experienced.
She’s wild and reckless, kind and loyal, and intoxicating to your senses. I can understand why De Leon still holds an obsession.
However, I wouldn’t say it was love. I’d call it using her as a tool for his gain and the fact that she doesn’t want him anymore.
“Says the guy who told me to stay away,” she professes evenly. “Make up your mind, Sinatra.”
I can’t seem to do that.
She's as annoyingly fascinating as she is dangerous as hell.
“I see when you are all together. You forget the bullshit. You forge forward.”
“Right. You like to watch.” Her weight falls on my thighs when she props her palms on top of them. “And I’d love to believe that. But I think we dreamed too big and too high. This world…this war….it slayed us. It made us do stupid things. Maybe you were right.” She straightens her spine, and I lose her touch as she towers over me. “You’ll never hear me say that again.”
“What else won’t you do again?”
“So many things. I can’t lose anyone else.”
I get that.
We’ve all lost something or someone.
Torin lost Judah.
Reeve lost Rosalie.
Ozzy lost his parents.
And I lost a family but was lucky enough to find one when my father and mother adopted me.
Bay lost my brothers, minus Oz, and her father. She won’t sacrifice any more. Which is why my obligation to her suits me just fine. I can’t have my brothers severed and on the wrong path. I need them with their heads on straight because De Leon is getting antsy again. His power-hungry ass didn’t get the Titan seat he was hoping for, so he moved on to mental warfare.
“Text me if you need or think of anything.”
She smirks at me and shakes her head before heading back to her dresser. “No, thanks. I won’t need it.”
“Don’t play hard to get, Little T. If I need to pass along information?—”
“You can give it to Ozzy,” she retorts. “He can give it to me.”
Alright, fine.
Rising from my chair, I did my good deed and showed my appreciation. Now, it’s time to leave.
“We’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks for the burrito,” she replies. “It was good.”
“Anytime.”
And, as much as I’ve admitted it before, I’m glad she’s not mine.
The woman would give me a damn stroke.