19. Riley
A few days later,I’m still grateful… but I’m also frustrated as all hell that we still don’t have a solid plan about how to get Chloe away from West Point yet.
True to his word, Maddoc has included me whenever they discuss it, but they’re still not sharing everything with me. I even understand why, but that doesn’t make it any less maddening to hear the three of them bat around ideas only to have the planning stall out due to details I don’t understand because it’s gang business.
Reaper business.
Not, as it’s been made crystal clear, any of my business.
It’s midmorning, and I’m going stir crazy with nothing to do besides pace around my room, so I finally slip out into the hall and head downstairs. I’m not really hungry, since I ate breakfast just a couple hours ago, so instead of turning toward the kitchen when I reach the first floor, I glance toward the back of the house.
I’ve never been back that way, so I don’t technically know if it’s considered a “common area” or not, but I decide that it probably is… or at least, I could easily argue that I thought it was if Maddoc finds me and gets pissed again.
A hallway leads toward what looks like the door to the back yard, and there are a few other doors off the corridor. One of those doors has been left open, and I peer inside as I pass. It looks like an office, which piques my interest immediately—but it’s not empty.
Maddoc is sitting behind the large desk that dominates the room, and he looks up at the sound of my quiet footsteps.
My heart lurches, and I clear my throat. “Is… um, there a bathroom down this way?”
To my total shock, Maddoc doesn’t turn cold and deadly or whip out the gun he’s always got tucked into his waistband and just shoot me in the head. Instead, he almost looks… amused.
“No,” he says, setting down the tablet he’s holding. After a beat, he adds, “Any other questions?”
Oh, I’ve got a million questions. I just have no idea which ones will get me killed.
I shake my head. “No. I’ll just leave you to do… whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Riley,” he says sharply when I start to back away. “Come over here.”
I hesitate, but he gestures me closer, and since I’ve clearly already broken the no-stupidity rule I gave myself once, the last thing I need to do is break it again by defying him.
Besides, if I’m being honest, I don’t want to. Maddoc may be intimidating as hell. I may hate him—I do hate him, even though I’m grateful for his help. But there’s also something about him that’s pulled me toward him from the start, like a moth to a flame.
“West Point,” he says once I reach his desk, tapping the tablet he set down, “is shooting itself in the foot.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, instantly on high alert now that I know he was working on something that has to do with Chloe’s captors.
He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, then seems to catch himself, dropping his hand and hardening his gaze, as if he didn’t mean to let me see him in anything less than total control.
“I mean they’re fucking stupid,” he growls. “Too willing to sacrifice their own people for short-term gains. No idea what it actually means to build an organization of strength. No concept of true loyalty.”
He spits out the last sentence like he’s disgusted. It’s the exact feeling I have anytime I let myself think too hard about Frank selling my sister, so I can completely relate to his anger for once.
I do wonder what exactly he was working on that got under his skin like this, though.
I glance down at the tablet since he invited me over in the first place, but the screen has timed out and gone dark, so it tells me nothing.
Maybe Maddoc will, though.
“I thought gangs looked out for their own?” I ask.
“Only the ones who want to survive,” he says, his eyes going hard. He swivels partway around to glance at a map of the city on the wall behind him, a hard smile spreading across his face that reminds me just how ruthless this man has to be to lead the Reapers. “And without understanding loyalty, they won’t.”
“Is that how your gang has made it so long?” I ask when Maddoc stands up and goes to the map.
“Yes,” he answers shortly, running his hands over it. His touch is possessive, proprietary, intense, and for some reason, even though it’s the map that he’s touching and not me, my skin breaks out in goosebumps.
“I’ve seen maps of Halston before,” I murmur, daring to move closer, “but never quite like this. What does it all mean?”
My shoulder brushes against his bicep, but Maddoc doesn’t react. For a second, I think he won’t answer, or worse, that I’ve overstepped. Pissed him off by pushing for information when he’s made it clear he doesn’t want me poking into the Reapers’ business.
But after a moment, he taps the map over the area that we’re in right now. The whole thing is covered in hand-drawn lines and multi-colored shading that splits Halston up in ways I don’t understand despite having lived here all my life, and the Reaper house I’ve been staying in with them is right in the center of an irregular section of shading in the same pale gray as the lightest part of Maddoc’s eyes.
“This is Reaper territory,” he says, caressing it almost lovingly. Then he presses his lips together. “And these,” he grunts, stabbing his finger on a red X, then on several more X’s, “are places West Point has breached it. Tried to encroach on our turf. Hurt my people.”
“What’s this part?” I ask, touching a smaller chunk of two-toned shading that includes Club M.
“Those are allies,” he tells me, still staring at the map as he touches the shaded section, then trails his fingers over several others. “And enemies.”
I look up at him, my brows furrowing. “You make it sound like a war.”
His eyes turn flinty. “It is. It’s a war for every street. Every block. It’s how we survive. How we’ll dominate. It’s always been a fight and it always will be, Riley. If you don’t understand that, you’ll never make it in this world.”
I swallow, my eyes tracing all the familiar parts of this corner of our city but seeing them in a new light. It’s hard to comprehend how difficult it must be for the gangs to gain territory in a city so crowded with criminal activity and how ferociously they have to fight to hang onto it once they’ve claimed it.
“Don’t you ever want to do something else? Stop fighting a never ending battle just for more territory?” I ask, thinking of the expression on his face when he scrubbed his hand over it.
Exhausted. Burdened. Determined.
Maddoc huffs out a laugh, breaking the tension even though I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s funny. He takes my arm and steers me back to his desk. “It’s not always that simple. This is the life I was born into, but the battle isn’t just for territory.”
“Then what is it for?”
I want to bite my tongue as soon as the words are out. The last thing I want is for Maddoc to think I’m fishing, not after how suspicious he still is about why I’m here. But he surprises me again, answering instead of jumping down my throat in anger.
“I was born into this life, and it’s not something you can just walk away from. My father taught me everything he knew. I’m still here because I learned from his mistakes as well as his successes. And one of those lessons was that territory matters, but it’s not enough on its own.”
He’s talking about loyalty again. About people. About belonging to something and not being alone.
“Is your father a Reaper too?” I can’t help asking, despite the feeling that I’m walking on egg shells with this odd mood Maddoc seems to be in. I want to know more, though.
He shakes his head. “The Reapers didn’t exist back then. My father did a lot of illegal dealings, but he was disorganized about it. Sloppy and short-sighted. Eventually, he did form the beginnings of this gang, but he’s six feet under now because he couldn’t see the bigger picture.”
I study his face as he stares at the map. “And you can?”
“Yeah. I can.” Maddoc touches it again, tracing Reaper territory. “I’m the one who formed his loose connections into a true organization. I madeus into a real and cohesive crew, with stability and vision and fucking ambition.”
He says it fiercely, although I can still see that same exhaustion in his face that he tried to scrub away when I walked in. It’s clear to see that the mantle of being the leader weighs on him even though he wears it proudly.
“You’ll do what you have to, because they’re your family,” I whisper, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
It’s not like stripping was what I always wanted to do with my life. I had other aspirations once. I’ve long since accepted that they’ll never come to pass, and I’m okay with that. I do what I have to do too, and stripping is the best way for me to make the most money for my family. For Chloe.
I’m not sure if I’m entirely happy to be finding common ground with Maddoc, but I can’t deny that I relate to his drive and dedication.
“I understand fighting for that,” I add when he turns his gaze sharply in my direction. “It doesn’t matter what we want when we have people to take care of. It doesn’t matter what we have to do or how fucking hard it is, as long as it means things can be better for the people we care about.”
Something passes over Maddoc’s face, as if he’s surprised by my words. The corded muscles of his neck move as he swallows, and then he nods. “Exactly.”
I can hear the sincerity in his voice, and it strikes me that I don’t even know how many sacrifices he’s made for the people he leads. How many nights he’s gone without sleep, how many tough calls he’s made. How many times he’s put their survival over his own.
Fuck, I hate this feeling of connection.
I don’t want it, not with him, so I look away, blinking quickly. My emotions feel constantly raw and exposed these days, and talking about Chloe has only reminded me of all the ways I failed to protect her enough.
I swipe at my cheeks, trying to banish the tears before Maddoc notices them. “I should go.”
“Not yet,” he says, taking my chin and turning me back to face him, not letting me hide.
I know he sees that my cheeks are wet, but he doesn’t offer me any false comfort, thank fuck. I may understand him, but we’re not friends, and we’re sure as hell not anything else.“I’d like to see a picture of your sister first. Do you have any? We’ve got our people watching the West Point gang.”
“To try to find Chloe?” I ask, hope surging in my chest.
“No.” His eyes go hard again. “For… other reasons.” He gives me a tight smile. “But if they know what she looks like, they can keep an eye out for her too. Maybe even get an idea of what McKenna is doing with her, and if—”
“If she’s okay?” I interrupt before he can say something worse. I don’t give him a chance to answer because I don’t want to hear it. She is okay. She has to be. “I have a ton of pictures… on my phone.”
I arch an eyebrow, reminding him that he’s the one who has that particular device, and he laughs—a dark, gravelly sound that seems to resonate through my entire body.
“Right,” he murmurs, then pulls it out of one of the desk drawers.
He tosses it over to me, but not before I notice a familiar envelope at the bottom of the drawer. It’s the one containing the money I offered him the night I showed up at that bar.
I’m a little surprised it’s just sitting there, unused and seemingly forgotten, although I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. Having seen how large their territory is and the lifestyle they lead—not crazy extravagant, but definitely in a different stratosphere than Chloe and I have always lived—it’s hard to imagine that the few grand I offered for the Reapers’ help means much to them.
It doesn’t really matter that they haven’t spent it yet, though, so I pull my eyes away and don’t comment on it as Maddoc slams the drawer closed again.
I unlock my phone, pulling up my photo gallery and then having to fight off the hot prickle of tears all over again as I start scrolling through pictures of me and Chloe. They’re mostly stupid pics we took while we were just goofing off and having fun, but before I can find something more posed that will give him a good image to share, Maddoc crowds in next to me and takes the phone out of my hand.
He swipes back to a picture I just passed. Me and Chloe in the middle of dying our hair last summer.
She put hot pink streaks in hers and I went candy-apple red for a month. You can’t see that yet in the picture, though. It’s a selfie she snapped while we both had our heads wrapped in Saran wrap and our tongues out for the camera.
My breath hitches, pain lancing through me. She looks so fucking happy.
Maddoc swipes again, to a picture of Chloe laughing, her head tipped back. He scrolls through a dozen more pictures, and I have to curl my hands into fists to suppress the urge to snatch the phone back.
This man has seen me terrified and angry. He’s seen me raw and helpless. He’s seen me naked. Hell, he’s had his fingers inside my body, and still, none of that makes me feel as vulnerable as letting him see these candid glimpses of what I lost when Austin McKenna took my sister.
But if it will help him help me get her back, it’ll be worth it—even if I feel bared in front of him and oddly embarrassed by the smile that tugs at his lips as he flips through these little snapshots of my life.
“Will any of those help?” I finally ask, chewing on my lower lip.
Maddoc looks up, an unexpected softness on his face that throws me off kilter.
“Yeah. They’ll help.” His eyes rove over my face like he’s seeing it for the first time, and he reaches up to brush my cheek with his fingertips, holding my gaze. “You know, not everyone would do what you’re doing.”
I shake my head. “Anyone would, for the person they love. Isn’t that what loyalty is?”
“It is,” he says, something flaring in his eyes that’s completely at odds with the gentleness of his touch.
The confusing combination pins me in place as he trails his fingers lightly over my skin, leaving a cascade of soft tingles in their wake and making the air surrounding us feel electric.
I can’t look away.
I don’t want to.
I have no idea what it is that’s building between us, but it’s potent and inescapable and intoxicating. It makes me take a step toward him before I can think better of it, before I even realize what I’m doing.
Maddoc’s tattooed fingers trail down to my jaw, and he cups it in his large hand, tilting my face up a little.
“You’re not what I expected,” he murmurs. “When you walked into Clancy’s that night, your hair shining like a butterfly’s wings, I had no fucking idea what was under the surface. You’re…”
He trails off, like he’s not quite sure how to end that sentence. Then he suddenly blinks, stiffening and pulling away. He drops his hand and pockets my phone, his movements abrupt and jerky.
“Thank you for the pictures,” he says, his voice turning cool and impassive as he turns away from me. “We’re done here.”
Whatever bubble was surrounding us for a moment pops, and I don’t even bother to answer him, spinning on my heel and making a beeline for the door. I want to be pissed off at his cool dismissal, but I’m too unnerved by whatever it was that just happened between us.
Because something sure as fuck did.
And no matter how unaffected Maddoc tries to act, he felt it too.