Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
ANVIL
We’re in a bar called Lumos. It’s one of those flavor-of-the-week clubs that plays whatever’s popular on the radio and has gimmicky cocktails.
Rachel’s trying a green drink called a Lantern that’s a concoction of lime, bourbon, crème de menthe, bitters, and honey.
It’s disgusting, but she keeps sipping at it until I take it away and order her a gin and tonic.
Trick returns from the bar with the eyes of half a dozen women following him.
He’s relaxed and joking, even more so than usual.
I don’t miss the pair of scratches on his forearm when he pushes the sleeves of his shirt up.
He’s played with some girl earlier in the night who got her nails on him.
He doesn’t usually let them, so things must’ve been wilder than usual.
“What’s that?” he asks, looking at the nuclear-waste-colored cocktail.
“Uranium,” I say. “And piss.”
Not even three seconds pass before he takes a taste. He grimaces and then flashes a grin.
“That’s shite,” he says, his accent a throwback to his old man’s. The guy was an Irish gangster. We were all born of criminals.
I take a swig of Coke. Mine’s unadulterated. I want my mind sharp.
“What dungeon did you go to?” I ask, knowing he’s had the kind of sex he likes best. He’s in too good a mood not to have.
He smirks as he looks away. “What do you care? You’ve got Instagram Wednesday Addams to play with.”
I say nothing.
“She’s a tougher cookie than Zoe by a hundredfold,” he says. “How you gonna train that out of her?”
My eyes are on Rachel who’s wearing a black dress with cut-outs above the hips that were replaced by emerald lace. She has a lace choker too with satin cords tying it in the back. If we were in a different kind of club I’d fuck her against the wall, not caring who was watching.
She stands on the edge of the dance floor, moving to the beat.
“Maybe you could send her to a pet-training class with Mistress B in New York,” Trick says. “I can make a call.”
“No.”
“Right. Hands off,” he says with a grin. “I’ll text you the number, and you can do it.”
I roll my eyes. “Am I gonna stalk a girl for three years, relentlessly, if she’s not already exactly what I want?”
His gaze moves to her and then back, curious. “Perfect, as in our kind of perfect?”
I sigh. “As in I’ll be the one to show her new things, and whether she takes to them or not is irrelevant.”
“You say that…” he says skeptically.
“I say it, and I mean it.” After a beat, I add, “I’m not you.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you’ll always be looking around the corner for the next thrill, the next beautiful girl to tie down, the next business for us to take over. You’re never satisfied. It’s not in your nature.”
“Lucky for you,” he says, pouring his drink down his throat. “Or we’d still be taking orders from Frank and watching him break kids down to bone chips. We’d also be a billion dollars short of our billion point two five.”
I smirk.
“And you wouldn’t be here with her. Because Frank would never have let you get this close.”
I don’t argue with him. He’s both right and wrong.
He did cause us to exit Frank’s organization like bats out of hell.
But he’s wrong that our exodus was necessary for me to get my hands on my raven.
This thing was inevitable either way because if I’d been at Frank’s house when Leone was around, he’d have given himself away as poison for her, and I’d have dealt with that.
“Leone woke up, by the way.”
“Good,” I say because I didn’t want her carrying that weight. She’s already carried too much for too long. I’m going to put an end to that shit.
“If we turn on our phones and you carry mine to alibi me here, I can go back and take care of things in Coynston.”
“Nah.” I turn my head to look at him. “But I know you would. From the jump, you brought us more than luck.”
He looks surprised for a second, then covers it. “Your girl, four feet and closing,” he says.
I turn my head to watch Rachel approach. She’s breathtaking.
“Hey, Trick. You made it. Can I buy you a drink?” After a moment, she adds with a rueful smirk, “With money I’ll borrow from Sasha?”
Trick’s game face is back, which for him includes a smile.
“I’ve never known Anvil to loan people money from his personal stash. I thought it was all in an underground bunker. You’ve seen that he lives in a cement box. Prisoners in Sing Sing have posher digs, so I know he’s gotta be hoarding it for something big.”
She smiles and looks at me. “Why do you live like that, Sasha? Where does your money go? Are you single-handedly financing a coup somewhere?”
“Yeah. I care about international politics. I sit on my metal staircase and dream of dead dictatorships to resurrect.”
They both laugh, and it’s good. The tighter she is with my crue, the more likely it is that she’ll stay mine. Because that’s the way I think of her now. As mine.
“You know,” she says. “We probably shouldn’t be seen out partying. Not with what’s happening back there. His family,” she adds, her face clouding. “You and I should keep things low.”
The logic’s on target, but I don’t like it. Her hand’s on my side as she talks, and that I do like.
“So your hand on him? That’s on the down low?” Trick asks.
“Shit,” she says, pulling away. “Can’t believe I did that.” She blows strands of hair from her eyes. The club’s humidity and an overheated buzz seem to be weighing it down. Now, in addition to being beautiful, she’s adorable.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
My gaze scans the room, keeping watch. Then I level my stare on her again. I take her hand and put it back on me, pressing it against my ribs, a few inches south of my heart. “Fuck being sorry. You do whatever you want.”
Trick flashes a grin and shrugs his brows at her. “If trouble’s coming, let it come.”
I glance his way. Those words are ones I’ve said to C and Trick more than once when fire was about to rain down on us.
But when I said them, my tone was resolute, but grim.
With Trick it’s something else, almost like he relishes it, like trouble’s something that’s been missing from his life and he’s welcoming it back.
I don’t understand him, not that I really try to.
When he wanted to join up with us a long time ago, he talked to C and C made the call.
I remember C saying, “There’s a freshman who takes calculus with the seniors. He wants to hang with us. Let’s let him. I think we can use him. Last name’s Patrick.”
I’d nodded.
Then C had added, “I hear he screwed the quarterback’s girl and that Jones and his boys are looking to get even. Let’s squash that.”
“The kid might want to hang with us because he’s looking for protection from Jones,” I’d said.
“Maybe. But let’s see what he does. There’s something to him. I think we can use him.”
So we’d blocked Jones’s revenge, but that was only the beginning of the older guys who wanted to pound Trick to a pulp.
Trick, with his male model looks and effortless magnetism, went on to screw a lot of girls who were supposed to belong to other guys.
To his credit, he never looked to us or to anyone for protection.
At one point, C told him to knock it off. That we had better things to do than get into fights with jealous seniors.
Trick was surprised, asking, “Why would you fight them?”
“Because we’re a crue,” C said. “We have to have your back.”
“If we’re working something together, sure,” Trick said.
“No. All the time.”
Trick studied us for a moment and then nodded, understanding dawning.
“Just pick a girl,” C said. “Hell, you got with Bailey. She’s fucking model material. Keep her.”
Trick shook his head. “Too vanilla.”
C’s gaze slid to me and then back to Trick. “What are you looking for?”
“No one I’ve been with.”
“That wasn’t the question,” C said.
Trick cocked his head. “Someone who acts sweet, but who’ll let me do dirty things to her that she can’t control.”
“For some things, it’s easier to pay to play,” C said. “Memberships in certain clubs. Nights with certain women who know the score.”
“Then let’s make some money, so I can afford to buy what I want.”
I’d known then that the kid was not a kid.
He was a year and half younger than us and hadn’t yet had to kill to survive—that we knew of—but that didn’t make him innocent.
In fact, he was like us in more ways than we’d known.
And it wasn’t long before he was the one leading the way down the dark corridors.
And when it came time to kill or be killed, he didn’t hesitate or even flinch that I ever saw.
Rachel’s hand slides down to mine and her thumb brushes over my knuckles. All my focus narrows to her again. This is the new reality. Her with me, and me in the thick of my crue. It’s better than I ever hoped for.
RACHEL
I like being with him. And I’m afraid someone will take that away because I’m never allowed to hold onto the people I care about or to escape the ones I don’t.
I move my hands up to his forearms and squeeze them.
“Sasha?”
He bends down.
“What if we left?”
“Yeah,” he says and turns to Trick. “She’s ready to go back to the hotel. You coming?”
It wasn’t what I meant, but I don’t correct him. I’ll tell him later.
Trick glances around and shakes his head. “I’ll meet you back there.”
“All right.”
Sasha and I bump along through the crowd. Sasha’s behind me, but he puts his arm out in front so there’s always room for me to walk. It’s startling how much easier it is to move through a crowded room with him.
In the Rover, I put my hand over his on the gearshift, wanting a small physical connection.
“Is that all right?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Zoe said there are times when she’s supposed to ask C’s permission to touch him.”
Sasha doesn’t speak.
“Is that what you’d prefer? For me to ask before I touch you?”
He shakes his head.
“What about at certain times? During a scene?” I’m not sure what even constitutes a scene, but I’d like to know. I’m curious.
He shakes his head again.