8. Maddoc
I lean backas I watch the girl, Riley, walk away.
This night just took a very unexpected turn.
I make it a point to know what’s going on in my territory, which means there’s no way in hell I should have been caught by surprise twice in less than a week. And the fact that both the shooting and this Riley woman have ties to West Point? Calling that a coincidence seems pretty fucking unlikely, but whether it’s a setup to be avoided or an opportunity to be exploited is yet to be determined.
I narrow my eyes, tracking her movements as she settles into the booth I told her to sit at. Her hair shimmers blue and purple, like a butterfly’s wings, as she shifts it over her shoulder. She’s fucking gorgeous, but in truth, that’s not her most interesting feature. She’s clearly smart enough to know that coming here was a risk, but the way she holds herself—head up and back straight, like she’s got balls of fucking steel tucked away in those tight little pants of hers—tells me she’s not one to let fear stop her.
“She seem overly interested in your meeting with Ruiz last night?” I ask Dante without taking my eyes off her.
“Not even a little bit,” he answers, staring over at her the same way I am.
I blow out a breath through my nose, glancing between my seconds. “Still a hell of a coincidence.”
It’s an invitation for them to share their opinions, and I’m not surprised that right away, I get a disgusted hiss from Logan.
“Coincidence?” he repeats, his angular face set like stone as he glares over at her. “In my experience, there’s no such thing.”
He thinks she’s a honey trap, and the coiled tension in his body promises pain and retribution if his suspicions prove true.
It’s clear he sees her as a threat to us. Neither that belief nor the icy hatred in his eyes comes as a surprise, since it’s not like Logan would trust a woman even under the best of circumstances. And having Riley barge in here just as we were discussing retaliation against West Point? Definitely not what anyone would call the best circumstances.
But just because Logan’s response is predictable doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
Of course, it doesn’t mean he’s right either, and my jaw clenches as I scrub a hand over it.
“Dante?” I prod. “Your thoughts?”
He’s watching Riley with pursed lips and his head cocked to the side. He was quick to say she wasn’t acting suspiciously last night, that she wasn’t overly inquisitive about the meeting with the rep from the 17th Street gang, but the way he hums quietly to himself, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table, tells me he’s replaying whatever went down between them to see if there are any cracks in her story.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” he says after a minute, disputing Logan’s opinion. “I believe her about the sister. I think that’s why she came.”
I nod. The threat of tears paired with all that fiery determination? Yeah, Riley definitely sold the part about the sister. Sold it well enough that I believe her too.
But that still doesn’t make it our problem to fix.
Austin fucking McKenna, on the other hand, is definitely becoming a problem we need to fix, so even if she wasn’t sent by West Point, we’d be fools to ignore any situation he’s involved in.
Dante is clearly thinking along the same lines, because he adds, “West Point’s been giving us a hell of a hard time lately. Everywhere we turn, they’re in the way. How many of our recent deals have they fucked with?”
“Too many,” Logan bites out. “They’re trying to break into our territory. Taunting us. Goading us.”
“But I still think this thing with Riley is something else,” Dante says in a deceptively lazy drawl, heat flashing in his eyes as he glances back over at her.
I don’t necessarily disagree, and I can’t blame him for the heat either… but Logan scowls.
“Quit thinking with your dick,” he snaps. “That’s obviously what McKenna wants here.”
Dante raises his eyebrows. “Setting Riley up to infiltrate our ranks? Nah. He’s not that smart.”
Dante would know more about the subject than most, but his argument clearly doesn’t satisfy Logan. The blond man leans across the table, narrowing his eyes.
“If McKenna really took her sister, it was for a reason,” Logan insists, keeping his voice low even though every last person in this place knows it’s a good idea to give us our privacy when we show up.
Well, every one of them except Riley.
I smirk, throwing another glance her way as Dante and Logan argue quietly. I know for sure that she can’t hear us from where she’s sitting, but when she notices me staring at her, she holds my gaze and lifts her chin as if in challenge.
Something about the wild, almost feral glint in her dark brown eyes makes me want to keep looking, but I drag my focus away from her and turn back to my seconds.
“If West Point sent her, what’s their end game here?” I ask them both, interrupting their argument for the moment.
“We’ll… find out,” Logan finally says, his face pained with the effort of admitting he doesn’t see it either.
“But does it matter right now?” Dante asks with a grin, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his broad chest. “We know they’ve got her sister. We use Riley, we’ve got the perfect chance to hit them back.”
I snort. Not because he’s necessarily wrong, but because he’s too fucking sold on the idea already.
Definitely letting his dick do at least part of the reasoning for him.
“The downside is that Logan might still be right,” I remind him, looking for the holes in Riley’s story so that I can poke at them. “This whole thing really could be a trap. Even if it wasn’t set up by West Point, any other gang who wants to take us down could be calling the shots.”
“Nah,” Dante insists, shaking his head. “I would have caught on last night.”
“Unless they targeted her after you fucked her,” Logan says. “Or because you fucked her.”
Dante cocks his head, narrowing his eyes as he thinks it through. I know the club he went to last night, and it’s a fucking dive that lies in the kind of unclaimed territory where the smaller gangs fight for scraps and keep each other busy and out of our hair. In other words, it’s as close to neutral territory as you can find in Halston, which is why he chose it.
But neutral territory also means anyone could have been there… seen Dante with Riley… and decided to use it.
“You gotta admit, it’s pretty fucking convenient that she shows up here with her sob story plus this bullshit”—I shove the fat envelope of cash she left on the table in Dante’s direction—“right after she hooked up with you last night.”
He leans forward, his grin turning a little savage as he picks up the envelope and taps its edge on the table, then holds it out to me. “All the more reason to accept her offer, Madd. If another gang is trying to use her to fuck with us, we need to keep her close.”
I take the envelope, trying to get out of my own way and think about what he said.
Logan makes a noise in his throat. “You just want her close enough to keep your cock warm.”
“Hey, I’m not above multi-tasking.” Dante lifts an eyebrow. “You should try it sometime.”
“Pass,” Logan says with one of his patented icy glares.
The big tattooed man shrugs, not affected in the least by our friend’s reaction. “Your loss.”
Logan’s glare turns into something even glaciers would retreat from. “Not all of us are ruled by our dicks.”
Dante smirks. “And not all of us have mastered the art of being such a dick,” he says… then waits for it.
No one can get under Logan’s skin quite like Dante can.
And there’s no one, other than me, who Logan would defend faster if there was a threat.
It takes a couple seconds, but then Logan’s lips finally twitch. It’s only the barest hint of a smile, but for a man like him, it’s practically a shit-eating grin. “No need to shower me with compliments. You can save that garbage for her.”
He jerks his chin in Riley’s direction, and Dante laughs.
“Ah, come on now, have a little more faith in me. I’m pretty sure I can find a way to sweet talk her a little better than that.”
Logan rolls his eyes. “Sounds like you already did that last night.”
“Fuck yeah, I did,” Dante says as his grin turns a little feral. My cock reacts to the idea of what he must have done with her to put that look on his face, and he glances over at me like he has some kind of sixth sense, raising his eyebrows in a clear question. “Wouldn’t mind doing it again either,” he adds. “As long as Maddoc decides to say yes so I’ve got the chance.”
Logan looks to me too. I know he’s still against the idea of us getting involved with Riley’s problems. That’s just as clear as how enthusiastic Dante is to bring her into the mix. But the reason we work, the reason I never doubt their loyalty, is that they both know I value their opinions, but that the choice is ultimately mine.
I made the Reapers out of nothing.
I put the Reapers first in everything.
And I lead the Reapers, have the loyalty of my gang, because every fucking one of them respects those two facts.
But this time, I’d be lying if I said I weighed it all out before coming to a decision. There’s something about this girl that pulled me in from the moment she walked in the door, and I think I knew even before I sent her away that I was too intrigued to say no to whatever she had on offer.
But the other thing I know?
If saying yes turns out to be a fucking mistake, my seconds have my back. We’ll do this on my terms, and no matter what goes down, we’ll find a way to use it and come out on top.
We always do.
We always will.
And that’s why the Reapers will always win.