Chapter 9
WOLF
“We can just hike out and leave,” I say as I collect the burger patties from the fridge. “Pack a bag, take the trail deep into the woods, and be counties away before anyone realizes we’re gone. Fuck all of it.”
Roman sneers. He’s braced against the counter with both hands, head down, the muscle in his jaw clenching.
“I’m serious,” I add, though I’m not, mostly. “You did the right damn thing. You saved Lucy, and here we are, rewarded for it with a visit from Mr. Colby and his little dust cloth.”
“I almost put his face through the window because I was so fucking furious.”
“Lucy won’t press charges, man. Chill.”
“You don’t know that,” he snaps.
I toss the loaf of bread at him, and he catches it without looking. “We barely know her, yet everything about her says she doesn’t have it in her to sink a man who saved her. So breathe.”
He turns the bread over in his hands as though he’s about to compress it between his huge palms. “I’d protect her again right now, same way.”
“I know you would.” I grab the salad bowl. “And fuck me, so would I.”
“It’s what Mr. Colby was really saying.” Roman’s voice drops. “We’re the convicts. So if a man ends up bleeding in these woods, they don’t ask what happened. They come for us with cuffs already open. We’re guilty the second a phone rings.”
“That’s the deal we signed.” I keep my voice flat because one of us has to. “Six more months, and then no man alive gets to put his hands on us again.”
He exhales through his nose. “If they send me back before that, I’m not staying. I’ll break out and live in these trees like an animal before I sit in a cell again knowing she’s out here.”
“Hey.” I cross the kitchen and set my hand on his shoulder. He’s wound tight. “Deep breaths. Nobody’s going anywhere.”
He drags in one, then another, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
“But seriously.” I ease off. “After that kiss last night with you? She’s not going anywhere. Besides, she’s our scent match. So instead of me talking about prison breaks, maybe we spend the time showing her who we actually are.”
A grin breaks across his face. “Man.” He scrubs a hand down his mouth. “You have no idea how good she tasted. I’m hard just thinking about it. If they put me back in prison, I’m breaking through the walls and fences to get back to her.”
“Yeah, yeah, stop bragging.” I take the bread back before he pulps it. “Come on, before Grayson gives up and goes hunting for our dinner with his bare hands.”
Roman huffs a laugh, because we both know he’d do exactly that. Grayson’s the kind who’d have a rabbit skinned and on a stick before the rest of us finished arguing.
“Mr. Colby’s a prick, but he was following procedure. Plus, Eve had to report it. Some stranger got knocked out cold in these woods, and if he decides to report being jumped by a criminal, she needs it on paper that she flagged it first. Protect all of us.”
“I fucking know.” He says it to the floor. “Doesn’t make him less of a prick.”
“Nope. It surely doesn’t.”
We head out with our arms full, and the agony of losing Lucy, of being torn apart from her, is gnawing at me too. And if anybody knows what it feels like to get sold out by someone close, it’s me. That day circles back around as though it never really left. Six years, and it still haunts me.
My father storms into the house with two men behind me, yelling, “Grab him!” His henchmen each take an arm before I get a chance to run. I fight it, panicked, scared to hell as I twist and throw an elbow but get nowhere.
“What the fuck is this?” I snarl, being hauled against their grip. “Get off me. Dad, what the fuck!”
My mother’s on the stairs, crying, one hand pressed over her mouth, not saying a word to stop it. Then my father steps in close and grabs my jaw, squeezing until it hurts.
“Tonight, you finally do something to make me proud.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been skimming from me.” His thumb digs into my cheek. “Months of it.”
“Bullshit, that wasn’t me. It was your own accountant. I told you that weeks ago.” Dread coils in my chest because I’ve seen him like this toward others, those whom he sells drugs to, the enemies, anyone trying to stop his empire.
He scoffs right in my face. “So prove your loyalty. You take the hit. The Feds are already on their way here, and every piece of paper in this house points at you.”
My stomach hits the floor. “Are you fucking serious? You want me to take the full hit for your production? Your labs? All of it?”
He doesn’t even blink, the bastard.
Sirens wail outside, and there’s more than one, coming fast.
“Take him out front,” my father barks, and he’s already turning, reaching for my mother’s arm, the two of them running toward the back of the house. “Make me proud, son, or by tomorrow, you’ll have a bullet in your head.”
“Don’t do this!” I shout, thrashing against the two men dragging me toward the door and the blue light bleeding through the windows. “Dad. Dad, don’t you fucking do this!”
Neither of them turns their head. The men throw me forward and run backward, following my father. By the time I get up, the front doors burst open, cops and dogs charging at me, others yelling for me to get on the ground.
And I realize then that my father reported me to the cops he pays out, and I go down on the marble of my own home after being stabbed in the back by my father.
I never begged after that. That night, I learned what begging gets you: fuck all!
Fuck my parents. They never came once. Not a visit, or a call, not a card in six years.
The only people who came to that visiting room were the Gambinos, thanking me for being a good dog and promising to shave time off my sentence with their influence if I told them where my dad kept his labs.
Of course I told them because my father is dead to me.
I buried that family in my own head years ago and salted the ground, while my new family is walking out the door ahead of me and waiting out back with the barbecue. I’d die for them.
Out back, the clearing opens under a black sky, our fire snapping in its ring of river stone, three fat logs pulled around it. My shoulders ease the second I inhale the pure air. This is the only church I’ve ever believed in.
Grayson’s at the flat top with a beer in his hand. “I was about to eat these onions myself and let you two starve.”
Roman chuckles. “We didn’t take that long.” We both plunk down the food and dive into getting it all ready. Grayson puts the burgers on the grill, Roman murders a salad, and I’m buttering the bread.
I’m halfway through tying off the bread when a twig snaps at the edge of the clearing, and all three of us lift our heads at once.
Lucy steps out of the track by the cabin, and I’m suddenly smiling wickedly.
Cheeks pink from the walk, she’s wearing black leggings over sexy legs, a loose sweater sliding off one shoulder with a black bra strap showing against her skin, all that dark reddish hair pouring down past her waist.
And she’s got her chin up like she’s daring us to say something, but her hands are twisted together in front of her. She walked into a clearing full of convicts at night with nerves she’s fighting to hide, and she did it anyway because whatever’s pulling her is stronger than the fear.
“Any chance I can crash your barbecue? It smells incredible from the track.”
“Hell yeah.” Roman’s crossing to her, and the man’s so gone he can’t even fake otherwise. While she comes off hard as flint, mouth quick, I’ve got a good eye. Behind all that fire, there’s grief she’s trying to conceal.
She laughs at whatever Roman says. Grayson grins at her over the salad, and as he flips a burger, he calls out, “How do you like it cooked, little bird?”
Little bird. He met her for two seconds in a hallway, and already the man’s got a nickname for her.
I cross the clearing in seconds, because I’ll be damned if I let those two have her to themselves. I shove the half-tied loaf into Roman’s chest as I pass. “Here. Help Grayson. I’ve got this.”
Roman chuckles behind me.
I steer Lucy toward the fire with a hand at the small of her back, close enough now that her scent gets under the woodsmoke, and I’m gulping it down as though it’s life.
“Warm up, songbird,” I tell her, sitting her on the log nearest the flames. “You walked down here in the cold for our food. Least we can do.”
“I did come for the food.” She holds her hands to the fire, and I plunk myself down next to her. “The company’s a bonus. Small one.” She bats her eyes at me, and my heart races.
“You wound me.”
She turns her head, firelight all over her face, and then she flattens her hand against my chest, leans in as if she’s got a secret, and parts those full lips for me.
“So maybe later you could walk me home,” she says softly. “It gets awfully dark out here, and I’m just a weak little Omega, all alone in the big, scary woods.”
Every cell I own stands up.
“Oh, sweetheart.” My voice drops. “I’ll walk you anywhere you want, all night, if you ask nicely. I’ll even carry you.”
“Perfect. Because I hear there are wolves out here.” She pats my chest twice, her touch on fire, and it takes all my strength to not bring it up to my mouth to kiss each finger. “I’d hate to get eaten by the wrong one.”
Roman and Grayson lose it by the barbecue, chuckling out loud, and it takes me a full beat to catch up to being played.
“Walked right into that one,” Roman announces, pointing his spatula. “Both feet.”
“Fuck the both of you.” I glare in their direction and then back at her. She’s wearing the most satisfied smile I’ve seen on a woman. And I can’t be mad about it. “Touché. Well played.”
“Thank you.” She goes back to stretching her hands out toward the fire, pleased as a cat. “Been saving that for you.”
I narrow my gaze at her, but I let her keep the win because watching her collect it is worth more than the point.
“So what’s the occasion?” She nods at the spread over on the table by the barbecue.