Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
EMORY
“Fold,” Emory said and tossed his cards to a table too intimate for poker.
The Queen of Hearts sopped up condensation that pooled at the base of his glass. With a coquettish smile, Amelia fanned herself with a straight and scooped up her winnings.
“Are you sure you’re good at this?” she teased and organized her chips in mismatched stacks that drove Emory wild, almost as wild as her lips that pursed with a bad hand and fingertips that mindlessly stroked her collarbone.
It was the deal they’d made after a morning of incredible sex—hands off each other for a little while; let their bodies recover as they came up for air. That task grew harder with each successive round of cards.
Emory laughed. “I was until I taught you.”
He shuffled the deck and dealt another round.
Oddly enough, Amelia’s winning streak didn’t fan his competitive flame.
It ignited other fires, though. With each win, she’d lightly gasp with surprise and bounce in her seat, breasts jostling in the tight confines of a black tank top.
Emory collected the sights and sounds and layered it over visions of her in his bed; how she had gasped beneath him with a quiver and quake, clung to his shoulders, clawed at his skin.
Neither could leave it alone, whatever they’d started, so sublime magnetism prevailed. On the third floor, they spent the day listening to music, playing poker, and stealing kisses every chance they got.
The room boasted the fine antiques Liam’s late wife had collected—woven rugs that brightly adorned terracotta tile, curios with odd functions, dusty books with well-worn pages.
The space was chiefly a grand gesture of love.
“I’ll always be her husband,” Liam had told Emory years after Francisca died, “and in this room, she’ll always find a quiet place to rest.”
Through the window, a balmy breeze carried in the scent of lemon blossoms, and a strip of sunlight laid across Amelia’s bare thighs.
All afternoon, Emory watched the light roam her body—across her face where it revealed the rich russet of her eyes, along her breasts, pooled between her legs.
Soon, his lips would forge that same path down her body.
On the table, his phone buzzed. SoCal calling…
“Do you need to take that?” Amelia asked on the third ring as Emory debated whether to answer.
The shadow had already been cast, so he patted his knees and stood with a sigh.
“I do.” He motioned to his cards face down on the table. “This is trust. Don’t peek.”
“Trust,” Amelia said and handed him her cards. Back lit in the afternoon light, she gazed up at him with a winsome smile.
Jesus Christ, stop my fucking heart. She’d tossed that look at him all afternoon. It heated his blood and flooded his cheeks with warmth. Emory tucked her cards in his back pocket and leaned down for a kiss, but his mood soured as he stepped into the hall.
In solitude, he led best. His men festered with a feral need for vengeance, though. Over the past few days, all twelve captains had separately sought his private audience. Emory had listened to liquor-induced tirades about retaliation and a few composed appeals for a tactical counterstrike.
Wild dogs needed to be kept on a short leash, though, so Emory stolidly refused bloodletting in the streets. The corpse of an important man trumped a mass grave of nobodies. Once Gio was put to rest, the red shroud would lift and they’d all see clearly what must be done.
In the meantime, Emory sent his most vengeful men on a mission to sate their bloodlust. If Scumstache was smart, he would’ve skipped town east bound.
Instead, he was holed up in a casino hotel waiting to be rescued.
No one was coming to save him, though, and there wasn’t a stone in Vegas Emory couldn’t overturn.
He lifted the phone to his ear without greeting.
“We got him,” Corey, captain of San Diego post, relayed. “You know that prick only shadow walked a year ago?”
Not surprising. Greed and glory sent the young bloods off the rails. They weren’t slick enough to mastermind schemes or connected enough to guard against blowback.
“If he’s that green, how did he know our plans that day? Someone had to’ve been working him.”
“We’ll make him chatty,” Corey said with glee registering in his gruff voice.
“Please do.”
Emory hung up the call with a pit in his stomach.
The kid was just the stem. He still had to dig out the roots.
Back in the room, the air was honeyed with Amelia’s perfume, and the light suffused with cloud cover.
In luminous contrast to the dark deeds done in the hall, she beamed at him as he took his seat.
Emory returned her cards and tended to his hand—an ace high, but nothing more.
He dropped his chips to the table and sipped his drink to bury a smile.
Amelia’s brows knit as she studied her cards.
She searched Emory’s face and chewed her bottom lip.
Sweet thing had the easiest tells. She won on luck of a good deal, not a knack for deception.
“Your move,” he deadpanned.
Amelia discarded two cards, and Emory dealt two more. She sifted through her harlequin pile of chips and bid three blue. Emory raised two reds, but Amelia’s resolve collapsed as she met his impassive stare and folded with a three of a kind. Emory tossed down a shitty hand.
“You tricked me!”
She feigned affront, but merry laughter rang through the room. His bluffs enthralled her almost as much as winning.
“I did.” Emory cleared away his chips. “My apologies.”
As he shuffled the deck, silence washed over Amelia. She spun a white chip against the table and fidgeted in her seat.
“Emory.”
He’d never get over his name on her lips. Even now, it sent shivers down his spine.
“Amelia.”
“You know that motel clerk, the one Damon hurt?” she asked and held onto fresh cards like a lifeline.
“Mm-hm.”
“Is he okay?”
Emory anted up with a white chip. “He’s still in the hospital, I think.”
Amelia shook her head and rearranged the cards in her hand with vacant interest. The order didn’t matter, only the distraction.
“That’s awful.” A dissonant pause hung in the air like ending a song off tune. “He was very young; probably just out of high school. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
She couldn’t bluff to save her life. Emory set his cards aside and folded his arms on the table.
“Sweetheart, what is it you need from me?”
His casual affection seemingly set her at ease, and Amelia released a shaky breath. Though the cards crushed in her small hands, she matched his eyes with wolfish determination.
“I want him to be okay.”
At another table negotiating terms, Emory’s worlds collided. He saw the bravery it took to ask, and it both dazzled and disturbed that some part of her still feared him.
“I understand, and I love that you’ve got such a big heart, but there are risks if he makes it too. I can’t rob from the reaper and expect him to call it even, you know?”
Amelia frowned. “I know.”
The divide between Moriarty men and women had its function. It wasn’t a chauvinistic holdover from Joseph’s time as chief, but a practicality meant to guard against that particular quandary. Amelia’s compassion was worth protecting, though, so Emory did what all Moriarty men swore they never would.
“Is that what you want?” he asked as if they were shopping for some glitzy bauble or zippy convertible to make her happy. He sensed it would cost him far more.
A radiant smile unfolded on Amelia’s lips.
Every part of her exuded warm romance as sweet and tender as basking in the afternoon sun.
With a face like that—so angelic and with a heart of glimmering gold to match—he’d be hard pressed to deny her anything, and thus Emory backed himself into a dangerous corner.
He took her hand and lightly kissed the top. “I have a feeling he’ll pull through.”
By early evening, the afternoon haze thickened, and overcast clouds blotted out an already sinking sun. They hung dark and low and crackled with heat lightning.
As a simple man with simple desires, it stood to reason that spaghetti was among Emory’s favorite meals.
As a street soldier, he would drag his exhausted carcass through the door of the apartment he shared with Jack, Pete, and Corey and throw together slop called dinner—noodles and tomato sauce.
It’d been a small comfort when he’d known so few.
And because Amelia blessed him with boundless affection, she cooked his favorite meal and even secured an accomplice, Pete, who’d bought the missing ingredients for her that morning.
At the island, Emory chopped vegetables as Amelia navigated the kitchen with heartwarming familiarity of where the spoons and pots and colander all lived.
On an empty terrace beneath a sky-stained grey, they shared a quiet, uninterrupted dinner until the wind nearly toppled the table, and Emory decided that that was their cue to head inside.
Amelia packaged up the leftover spaghetti and homemade bread as Emory washed dishes in the sink. When his phone vibrated in his back pocket, he dried his soapy hands and fished it out.
SoCal calling…
Emory excused himself into an adjacent corridor and answered.
“You called it,” Corey shouted over buffeting wind before moving inside.
“The kid was a go-between. He heard the plans from Torres, who was in the room when Disco went over marching orders that day. Torres instructed fuck-face to funnel information to a Velasco associate. Kid claims he had no idea he was set up. He thought the associate was working for Viktor.”
“Fuck,” Emory sighed. The boy was expendable. Torres was not. Under Disco’s mentorship, he’d been marked for captainhood. “What’s left of the kid?”
“A couple inches of life. You wanna close it?”
“Yes. Slowly.”
“You wanna do the honors? We’ll keep him alive until you can get here.”