Chapter 8 #2
Webber took the turn that would lead us to my place, and I paused. “You’re not taking her home?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Unless you don’t want her to go home with you.”
The thought of taking her to that shithole sounded just about as bad as it could be.
I didn’t want her anywhere near her place until I could get some eyes on it.
Which led to me asking, “I have a favor.”
“You want eyes on her place,” he guessed.
I shot him a look. “I want eyes on everything. Inside. Outside. Her car. If it’s possible to get a view of it, I want it. But I’ll take care of everything on my end. I just want to see if you’ll get Silver to run by Dru’s place and get her some things.”
His eyes went a little haunted. “I’m not sure she’ll want to go back.”
“Fuck.” I mentally slapped my face. “I forgot.”
When Webber and Silver were just starting out, an incident had taken place at Silver’s apartment that’d sent her to the hospital.
“Dru was the one to call you,” I murmured.
Dru had been the one to call Webber to tell him about Silver being hurt. She and her sister had lived in the same complex that Dru’s sister managed.
“Yep,” Webber said.
“She doesn’t live there anymore,” I said. “The sister quit her job in a spectacular way, and Dru had to find a new place in a really unsavory area.”
“Let me guess, downtown, and not the good part of downtown.”
“You got it,” I grumbled, hating that she lived in the practical slums.
“Why’d she move there?”
Before I could answer, we hit a bump that caused Dru to stir and sit up, her face a mask of confusion. “Where are we?”
I looked around at the houses that only got bigger and bigger and said, “Heading to my place.”
“Oh,” she said. “He’s dropping you off first?”
“Dropping you off together,” Webber covered for me. “Those officers wanted y’all to be together in case they had any other questions.”
She scrunched up her face. “How’s that going to work when I have to go to work tomorrow morning?”
“You have to work tomorrow morning?” I asked.
She let out a deep breath. “Unfortunately. My bills don’t cover themselves.”
They wouldn’t for now, but I had a feeling that I’d be paying them for her eventually. I only had to get to that point in our relationship where she was comfortable accepting help.
“Guess you can stay the night with me, then go to work in the morning,” I offered.
She pursed her lips. “I guess that’s a good thing. My sister will be stalking my place, and I just don’t have the energy to deal with her shit right now.”
“Why would she be stalking your place?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
Webber turned down the street that led to the gated subdivision I lived in and came to a stop at the iron gates. He inputted the code that all of my brothers knew and waited for the gates to swing open.
I looked back at Dru to see her staring in awe at the houses that we were passing.
“Why is she stalking you?” I pushed.
Dru’s eyes slid to mine before she said, “I found out that her fiancé was cheating on her with our aunt.”
Webber choked, and I tried really hard to look surprised as I said, “I’m sorry, what?”
“That’s why I was in DC,” she admitted. “Eugene is a lobbyist.” She settled a look on me. “You know that, though, don’t you? Because you were having dinner with him.”
“Yeah, but definitely not because I wanted to. He wouldn’t stop hounding me, and a few senators wanted me to have a meal with him so Eugene could share his ideas. I listened to them, and now I get to tell him and them that I’m not interested.”
Dru flashed me a grin. “That’s good.”
“What’s also going to be even better is that I’m quitting,” he announced. “I’m taking that plane crash as my sign that I’m not going back. The thought of getting on a plane anytime soon sounds abhorrent.”
Webber’s head whipped around and he stared at me in shock. “You’re leaving?”
“Leaving,” I confirmed.
His shoulders slumped.
Damn, I’d been a complete ass. I should’ve seen what I was doing to my family.
“How does that work?” Dru yawned. “You just go, ‘I’m done?’”
“I can step down anytime I want. The hard part of replacing a representative is on the state’s end, not mine,” I explained.
“Fuckin’ finally,” Webber said as he pulled into my driveway.
My fully packed driveway.
“Is everyone here?” I laughed.
I swear I heard Dru gulp.
I looked back at her and said, “As if you didn’t have enough excitement, my family decided to come over.”
“Your friends?”
I corrected. “My family.”
She smiled apologetically. “Are you sure you don’t want to drop me off at home?”
Over my dead body. “No. Stay.”
She swallowed and nodded.
She was terrified.
We got that a lot.
The Truth Tellers weren’t for the faint of heart.
We did illegal things, and the government was having a hell of a time proving it.
Everyone who was anyone knew what we stood for, though.
We ran on the mantra of an eye for an eye. You fuck with us, we fuck with you. There was no hesitation on our end, and that gave a lot of people pause.
Including, apparently, Dru.
But she’d warm up to us.
Everyone started out a little weary at first.
“Come on,” I said as I got out and opened the back door. “They won’t bite.”
She muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “I’m not so sure.”
I took her hand and led her up the front walk to my home, ignoring the small crack in the brick next to the door from that one time Tavi had dropped his bike and it’d chipped the brick there.
I also ignored the scuff on the hardwood floor from where he’d thought it would be funny to slam a hammer into the wood paneling when he noticed a spider.
There were a lot of those memories at my home, and if I let it, it’d overwhelm me.
Instead, I focused on the woman and how I wanted to pull her protectively into my side.