Chapter Three
Copper
L ike the dutiful pet she’s become, Stormy trails after me. She normally has plenty to say, but at the moment, she’s as quiet as a church mouse. I hadn’t been lying when I said Hansel and Gretel were outside. They love the snow and the chilly weather. Most days, I have to drag their asses out of the lake, even if it is cold as fuck. As I wind my way through my massive home and down the stairs, I can’t help but wonder what her hang-up about dogs is. Since no one had any at Koyn’s, I never saw this side of her.
“Take a seat,” I instruct, motioning for one of my red leather barstools. “I’ll make you a drink.”
The chair scrapes across the wood floors as she hops up on the seat, shooting daggers at me. I’ll give it to Stormy. The bitch has balls. It was only hours ago she showed her hand pissing off one of the most notorious MC gangs alive, yet she sits here being a mega bitch like she has reason to be angry.
I walk into my kitchen that’s rarely used and over to my Keurig machine. Once I get a cup of coffee started, I leave her to hunt down a blanket. Her slutty biker babe clothes probably feel stupid now that she’s been ousted. I grab a gray chenille blanket off the sofa and toss it at her on my way back into the kitchen.
“Sugar? Creamer?” I glance over my shoulder to discover her already wrapped up on the blanket.
“Both,” she mumbles, absently fingering the shock collar.
I start a cup of my own and then fix them both up. After I set hers down in front of her, I sip on mine, leaning my ass against the island so I can watch her.
“Why?”
“I already told you,” she snaps. “Because you and your brother are terrible men who need to be brought down. Especially you, dirty Fed.”
“Spare me the morality lesson. You spread your legs for information. We’re not as on uneven ground as you think.” I sip my coffee, enjoying the reddening of her cheeks. “I needed information. Only difference, I didn’t suck dick to get it.”
“Fuck. You.”
“Sorry, babe, but it’s not happening. Keep trying, though. It’s cute to see you thirsty for my dick.”
Her blue eyes flash with fury. “I hate you.”
“Feeling is fucking mutual.” I sit my mug down and scratch at my scruffy cheek. “Why do you have such a hard-on for justice when it comes to Koyn and me? What did we ever do to earn your obsessive need to take us down?”
“What didn’t you do?” she huffs. “You’re awful criminals!”
I approach the counter in front of the bar, placing my palms on top and leaning forward. “I know this. Koyn knows this. Question is…how do you know this?”
“I’ve watched you kill—”
“Before, Stormy,” I bark out. “When you were a Fed in Montgomery, Alabama, how in the fuck did the Koynakovs get under your radar?”
Koyn is a mastermind at computers. Before losing his family to a psycho motherfuckers MC gang, Koyn amassed a fortune with defense contracts with the NSA and other government affiliations because of his extensive hacking and programming abilities. Koyn was and continues to be the very best in this game. Anything relating to the Koynakov name was essentially erased from existence and any new information on us was rerouted to Koyn so we’d never be under anyone’s watch.
“You were too clean, Copper. Stood out like a sore thumb.”
I shake my head at her. “Stop bullshitting me and tell me. All it’d take is letting Hansel and Gretel in to make you squeal like a pig. Do not make me be an asshole.”
“Too late,” she seethes.
My dogs are big pussies, but she doesn’t know that. I almost feel bad about using her fear against her. Almost. When I start past her, she grabs my bicep, her fingernails digging in.
“Jesus,” she yelps. “I’m trying to get to it. Do not let them in.”
“Start talking.”
She shrugs, allowing the blanket to fall off one shoulder. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ever think Stormy was hot. Hell, any man with a working dick got a chub whenever she’d walk in the room. If she and Filter hadn’t been a thing, I would’ve probably fucked her until she couldn’t walk straight. But now, after the traitorous shit she pulled, all attraction for this woman is gone.
Her body is still fine as fuck, but a monster lives in that head of hers.
“It all started with Erin.” She sighs. “My best friend.”
“Living room. Let’s go,” I instruct. I grab my coffee before settling on one end of my L-shaped couch. She sits on the other side, as far away from me as she can get, hugging her coffee mug to her like it’s her lifeline. “Continue.”
“Erin and I met in college. She and I were friends even when I went to Langley. We kept up with each other. Erin took a job in Houston as an accounts manager for a huge oil and gas firm.” Stormy’s lips curve downward, pain etched in her features. “She called me not long after asking if I could look into someone for her. A guy named Urbano Vidal. When I pulled him up, he came out clean, but there was just something about his picture that gave me a weird vibe.”
I would tell her that Feds don’t work on weird vibes, but that’d be a lie. Being good at your job means listening to your gut. I nod for her to continue.
“Vidal is in the modeling business. Recruits some of the biggest names to ever grace the covers of magazines. He found her in a club one night in Houston and all but begged her to do some modeling for him. Erin is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but in more of a girl next door kind of way. She’s not magazine or runway material.” Stormy sighs. “I told her he sounded like he just wanted to get in her pants and to stay away from a sleazeball like that.” Her blue eyes lift to mine, pain flashing in them. “She got angry with me. Said I was jealous—that I was always jealous of her.” She swallows hard and absently tugs at the collar around her delicate neck. “We ended the call on bad terms.”
“I’m waiting for you to get to the part that has to do with me and my brother.” I sip my coffee, pinning her with a glare. “Is there a point to this walk down memory lane?”
She flips me the bird and gives me her signature bitchy look before continuing. “I’m getting to it, asshole. Be patient.” She leans forward to set her coffee down on the table, giving me a delicious view of her cleavage. The girl has a nice rack, that’s for damn sure. “So I continued to dig on this Vidal guy. He was a clean slate, but I noticed he came to Tulsa a lot for business. I’d discovered he was always meeting with a guy named Cypress Collins.”
One of my dogs barks, scratching at the door, and Stormy’s spine goes rigid, terror gleaming in her eyes.
“I can’t leave them out in the cold,” I explain, hating what a pussy that makes me sound like. I should want to punish her and make her cry for what she did tonight, but I just can’t use the dogs against her like that.
“Please,” she whispers, her face paling.
“I’m letting them in. They’ll sit on the floor and won’t go near you. I promise.”
Rather than waiting on an answer, I rise to my feet to go let my bad dogs in. They’re trained to know to wait so I can clean their feet off so they don’t track mud through the house. Once I clean them up, I command them with short whistles and snaps. The siblings trot into the living room, curious about Stormy, and settle on the hardwood floor near the fireplace, their eyes on her. She wraps up tighter in the blanket, her entire body trembling. I sit back down, this time beside her.
“Continue,” I instruct. “They’re not going to bother you.”
She lets out a ragged sigh that has Gretel whining in concern and Hansel cocking his head. They want her to pet them now that they realize she’s not a threat, but won’t dare come forward unless I allow them to.
“So, um, I took a weekend to come to Tulsa to look into Vidal and this Collins character. Vidal was recruiting models at a big event downtown, but he was meeting regularly with Collins. At first, I thought Collins was some super-hot guy Vidal wanted to recruit, but after some time, I realized Collins was just a suit in a tower. A partner of sorts. Whatever his business was, he kept it vague and quiet. To an outsider, maybe it seemed like investments or an accounts manager. But, something niggled at me. I had to dig deeper.”
I’m tired as fuck and have had a long day. This is the story that keeps on telling. I want her to get to the part that involves me. “Another wormhole.”
“Exactly,” she says, flashing me a brief smile. “You, of all people, know how it is. Once you get on the hunt, you have to keep pulling on all the threads until it’s unraveled at your feet.”
“So you came here looking for some douchebag who put pretty ideas in your not-so-pretty friend’s head, found a mysterious motherfucker in the process, and then somehow decided to fuck me and my brother over?”
She rolls her eyes, the action making her seem younger now that she doesn’t have her usual Stormy makeup plastered on her. If she’s a Fed, she can’t be too young, but she still has to be at least twenty years younger than my old ass who’s pushing fifty.
“I decided to meet with Collins. I found his office and went right up to it. Pretended to get lost looking for another place I was to interview for.” She frowns as she rubs the top of her mug with her thumb. “He was just a normal looking businessman, but he was interested in me. I could tell he liked what he saw. Collins asked me if I wanted to meet with his friend Vidal. A modeling scout.”
Stormy modeling is something I could imagine. She has legs for days, perfect tits, and hips that were made for digging your fingers into. Where Koyn’s woman, Hadley, has the innocent look of a pageant girl, Stormy looks like one of those sexy yet still angelic Victoria’s Secret runway models.
“Okay,” I urge. “What happened then?”
“He stepped away to make the call. I snooped while he was gone. Sitting in a file on his desk was a folder labeled Koynakov.”
I tense up, frowning. Who the fuck are these assholes and why were they looking into us?
“It mentioned an MC gang called the Royal Bastards,” she explains. “It mentioned you being a Fed and your affiliation with the gang.”
Fury surges through me. Hansel and Gretel, sensing my sudden change in mood, whine as though they’re worried and don’t know why.
“I’ve been so careful,” I growl. “Koyn and I both have. There’s no way we should have been on anyone’s radar. This makes no fucking sense.”
She shrugs. “It was there in black and white. Knowing a Fed was working with an MC gang, I had to dig deeper. I wanted to take a picture, but Collins returned with Vidal.” Her lip curls up. “Vidal told me I was incomparable, and he could make me a star. Tried to get me to have dinner with him to discuss it more. I played it off like the real place I had an interview at had called to check on where I’d gone to. They weren’t happy that I bolted, but I was no longer interested in Vidal or Collins. I was onto something bigger.”
I scrub my face with my palm, overcome with nerves. A conversation needs to happen with my brother and me, but first I’m going to have to do some digging on my own. When I start to stand, Stormy grabs my hand.
“Where are you going?” Her voice is shrill and panicked, making my dogs whine in response. “Don’t leave me with them.”
Stormy has done nothing but create a shitstorm in my life and the bitch has me feeling sorry for her ass.
“You’re going to have to learn to get along with them,” I rumble. “They’re good dogs. Protective. Why are you so terrified?”
Her grip tightens around my hand. “I…” She huffs. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t like dogs.”
“Stop bullshitting me,” I bite out. “Did you get bit when you were a kid?”
“Bit?” She scoffs, a tremble wracking her body. “You make this fear seem trivial and unwarranted.”
“What then? You’re clearly traumatized as fuck. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re talking about you, not me.”
“You have three seconds to tell me or I’m leaving your ass here with them.”
“I watched three pit bulls maul my mother to death when I was ten years old and there was nothing I could do about it because the twins were toddlers. I had to get them out of there before the dogs got to us too.” She angrily swipes at her tears. “You fucking happy now, Copper?”
I sit back down beside her. “You really do see us as monsters. It’s like you weren’t even there all those months hanging out with us and having fun. Like you forgot the good times.”
She stiffens, unable to meet my stare.
“No, I’m not happy your poor mother was killed by dogs. That’s fucking horrible.” Since she’s still holding my hand, I squeeze it. “Were the dogs put down?”
“No,” she snarls, “because they belonged to him . Her meth dealing boyfriend. The cops couldn’t keep the drugs out of our town, so they sure as hell weren’t worried about a few dogs. If the Feds had done their job when I was a little girl and taken down the web of dealers in Montgomery back then, I wouldn’t have had to see my mother die in a bloody, tragic way. Too many people dropped the ball that ultimately led to her death.”
I whistle for my dogs and they jump to their feet. Stormy curls against me, a terrified moan rasping from her.
“Listen,” I say gently. “These dogs aren’t like the ones that meth fucker owned. They’re only vicious when provoked and extremely protective. Hansel and Gretel are intuitive. They can sense you’re afraid and are worried about you.”
“They can probably sense how you want to rape and kill me too,” she hisses. “Please make them go away.”
I motion for the dogs to approach. They’re curious about Stormy but a little apprehensive too. Hansel reaches her first, nosing at her blanket covered foot. Gretel whimpers from behind him.
“This is Stormy,” I tell my dogs. “You have to protect her.”
Stormy tenses against me. “Like they’ll listen.”
I grip her hand tight, pulling it forward. She’s frozen in fear as Hansel sniffs her fist. Then, he licks it. Gretel mimics his action, familiarizing herself with Stormy’s scent.
“Speak to them,” I tell Stormy.
“No.”
“If you speak to them, I’ll let you come into my office with me.”
She tilts her head up to look at me. “Will you carry me?”
I’d thought this girl would try and get to me using her pussy that I know she wields like a weapon. Turns out, she’s going to use her vulnerability instead—something I didn’t even know she had. And, because I’m not the sick fucker she thinks I am, I’m going to let her use me.
Fuck.
“Yeah, little storm, I’ll carry your bratty ass.”