3. Maddox
MADDOX
Ihadn’t expected to give Hales a second thought, but she lingered in my mind as I walked to my car. She wasn’t my type. Too quiet. Too edgy. Not blonde. Not Kaylor.
And yet...
My mind drifted to her when I should be thinking about crew business or training camp starting next week.
Maybe it was the collision. The way she’d stumbled back, coffee-stained and flustered, trying to rebuild her composure, or those wide, unusual eyes.
They had caught me off guard at first, but upon closer inspection, she did in fact have two different color eyes.
Maybe it was how she’d insisted on buying me a replacement drink, her words tumbling out too fast, defensive and apologetic all at once.
Or maybe it was the fact that she’d turned Mason down.
Girls never turned Mason down. He was the charmer, the easy one, the twin no one took seriously. He was the definition of a playboy. Girls flocked to his side. I was the scarier one, the one who made people take a step back and decide whether approaching me was worth the risk.
If anyone was built for rejection, it should’ve been me.
Not him.
And that I had to admit made her intriguing as hell.
I pushed through the back entrance of my father’s club, and the bass hit me immediately, low and thrumming through the walls.
The sound vibrated in my chest. This place smelled like expensive whiskey, leather, and decisions that couldn’t be undone.
I’d never been a huge fan of the club; Raine and Kreed spent far more time here than I did.
I’d rather drink at home, alone, than surrounded by desperation.
The rooftop lounge was quieter, insulated from the chaos below. Mason was already sprawled on the leather sofa, one ankle crossed over his knee, scrolling through his phone with his iced coffee melting on the table.
He glanced up when he heard my footsteps and grinned, spotting the cup in my hand. Daily Dose was a popular spot in Elmwood, and it was no surprise we both ended up there before coming here. We must have just missed each other.
I dropped into the chair across from him, the leather creaking under my weight. “I heard you got rejected today.”
He blinked once. “What are you talking about?”
“Mallory Hales.” When he still looked confused, I added, “The girl in the coffee shop. The one you gave your number to…”
His chuckle brimmed with amusement. Most guys would take rejection personally. For Mason, it was a game. He loved the chase. The more difficult the conquest, the more enticing. “How do you know that?”
“I ran into her as I was leaving. She thought I was you at first, but I was surprised how quickly she realized I wasn’t.”
“And that bugs you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Something about her definitely got under my skin.
Mason’s brows arched, a ghost of a smirk on his lips. “You interested?” His tone was light, teasing, but his eyes were sharp, reading me in a way only my twin could.
“What?” I scoffed, rolling my shoulders back. “No.”
“You sure about that?” He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, fully invested in whatever emotional crisis he thought I was having.
“There’s only one girl.” I didn’t have to tell him who she was. He knew.
Mason picked up the deck of cards from the table. “You’ve got to let that go, Mad. She is literally in love with your brother.”
“For now.” There was still plenty of time for Kaylor to wake up and realize she had chosen the wrong Corvo.
He shuffled the deck in his hand. “We might need to get your head checked out.”
The lounge door opened again before I could find a deflection that wasn’t transparent bullshit. Raine, my eldest brother, entered first, all casual swagger and that perpetual sarcastic grin.
Nash, Kreed’s best friend and fellow Raven, followed, hands in his pockets, and behind him was Kreed with Kaylor beside him. I stopped seeing anyone else but her. She was like a damn angel with a halo of light emitting around her, lighting up the entire room.
My jaw locked as I dragged my gaze away—too late to hide the half second it lingered, long enough to be noticed.
Kreed caught it. Of course, he did.
His expression darkened, jaw clenching, and I could practically hear his thoughts: Still? We’re still doing this?
Kaylor wasn’t mine. She never had been, but it didn’t stop the old ghost of wanting from stalking me anyway, showing up uninvited at the worst possible times.
I was that cliché. The guy who fell for his brother’s girl, but in my defense, she hadn’t been his when I’d fallen for her. She hadn’t been anyone’s, but it didn’t make accepting that she had chosen Kreed any easier.
The two had moved out of the house at the beginning of summer, finally getting their own place and putting physical distance between us. Everyone kept saying the space would help. That time and separation would kill whatever feelings I hadn’t managed to bury yet.
Maybe they were right, but corpses didn’t always stay buried just because you wanted them to.
She might not live with us anymore, but she was still a part of the family. My father made sure of it. And it might make me an asshole, but a part of me was glad he’d essentially tricked or trapped her into the crew. I wanted her close.
Late-afternoon light softened the rooftop, taking away the usual grit.
Sunlight slanted through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting everything it touched gold.
The city drifted up from below, car horns and distant sirens muted by thick glass.
This wasn’t a space for casual conversations.
It had never been. Deals were made up here.
Bloodlines were tested. Lines got crossed, then redrawn in ways that made everyone involved complicit.
Raine perched on the arm of one of the leather chairs, scrolling through his phone with his free hand, thumb moving in quick, precise swipes.
The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, the sleeves rolled up.
He looked like he’d had a long day and probably had.
As the eldest, Raine shouldered the bulk of my father’s legacy.
Nash stood near the windows with his arms crossed, backlit by the golden afternoon sun. It picked up hints of copper in his chestnut hair.
Kreed sat at the end of the couch, pulling Kaylor down in his lap. It was still so strange seeing her here, included in crew business. I know how much it bothered Kreed. He wanted out of this life, and he sure as hell didn’t want his girl mixed up in my father’s dealings, yet here we all were.
But this wasn’t crew business. Not officially.
This was personal.
Rusty was dead, but the damage he’d done didn’t get buried with him. The network he’d built. The people who’d helped him, the men who’d paid him…they were still out there…still breathing.
“Any sign of Silvia?” Nash asked, getting straight to it.
Raine shook his head, setting his phone down on the chair’s cushion. “Nothing solid. If she made it out of the fire alive, and I think she did, she vanished clean. No digital footprint. No bank activity. No ID hits at borders or airports. Nothing.”
Frustration lined Kreed’s expression, and rightly so.
This woman was responsible for holding Kaylor captive, prepping her to be sold on the black market.
None of us wanted to consider what might have happened to Kaylor if we hadn’t gotten to her in time, least of all Kreed.
“Silvia’s probably not even her name. She most likely has a new identity by now. If she were smart, she would.”
“She’s the key,” Kaylor said quietly, leaning against Kreed. “She knows the girls. She can give us names.”
“And buyers,” I added, leaning forward slightly, elbows on my knees.
The cards in Mason’s hands stopped shuffling, silence filling the space. “There’s no way she disappeared without someone helping her. If we can find them, we can track her.”
“Or unless she planned for it,” Raine countered, picking up his phone again. “Had an exit strategy ready. Offshore accounts. New identity. The whole escape package.”
We all knew the truth probably sat somewhere between those two options.
“Rusty might be dead,” Kreed said, his hand resting on Kaylor’s leg. “But the rest of them don’t get to walk free just because he took the fall.”
My father didn’t see it that way. Or maybe he did and just didn’t want us involved, didn’t want his sons digging deeper into a network that went beyond Elmwood. Either way, he’d been keeping us busy lately with crew shit.
He still underestimated us.
Always had.
“Did you get the list of names who were at the auction from Brock?” Kreed asked, looking at Raine.
Raine nodded. “Yeah. Fynn forwarded it to me this morning.”
Mason snorted, flipping a card on the table in front of his feet. “What? Are you guys, like, besties now? Sending each other good-morning texts? Planning brunch?”
Raine didn’t even look up from his screen. “Shut the fuck up.”
Kaylor’s mouth twitched. She had the most enticing damn lips, which I definitely shouldn’t be looking at.
Raine stood, crossing to the table and setting his phone down in the center.
The screen glowed in the afternoon light, displaying what looked like a spreadsheet.
He slid it toward the middle so we could all see.
“There are buyers on here we already knew about,” he said, tapping the screen. “But there are others.”
A thicker silence fell, heavy with implications.
Nash pushed off from the window; his expression didn’t change, but the center of his eyes went colder. “This list doesn’t leave this room.”
“No,” Kreed agreed, his gray eyes fixed on the phone as if he were memorizing every name. “We keep our circle tight. I don’t want to risk anyone getting word we’re looking for them.”
Looking wasn’t a strong enough word. We were fucking hunting them. One by one.