32. Threx Cold Math
thirty-two
Threx: Cold Math
Returning to Seattle without Daphne was like turning my skin inside out.
A new kind of breaking that made the lights a little more hostile and the world twice as fucked up.
Suddenly, I was aware of all my demons and the part of me I unbound to keep her.
It's funny, I never thought I could feel like any more of a monster until Daphne looked at me and said, I love you anyway.
Fucking hell.
So then why did I taste blood in my mouth?
"You look…" Wolfe tilted his head from the curb, giving me a once-over. "Different." His smile twisted.
I suppose he was proud of himself. From the Chuck Taylors on his feet to the double cup, no foam, fucking triple whatever he always balanced in his hand, he thrived on that kind of mathematical control. The kind I wanted to punch down his goddamn throat.
"You drove?" I asked, scanning for Nathem or Jessie. But it was only Wolfe, skulking in the morning shadows of the SeaTac terminal, wearing a black hoodie and an expression I couldn't quite read. He looked tired; the black under his eyes making graveyards of his face.
"Not anymore." Wolfe tossed me the keys. The man hated to drive! Weird, given everything else he preferred to control. "We need to talk."
My eyebrows perked at the red in his tone, and I nearly fucking laughed.
Here it is: my reward for dragging my dark, violent thing into hell.
"Just say it," I swallowed, throwing the marriage papers at his chest before climbing into the driver's side. "I am not in the mood to play games."
Wolfe paused, stared at them, then slipped into the seat next to me. Another odd move. Ever since I met him, he has been a back seat driver. Whatever he had to say must be bad if he needed to watch my face.
"She signed them?" he asked, blinking as he ran his seatbelt over his chest.
"You thought she wouldn't?" I watched, searching for the break, a crack, fucking anything.
I don't know why, but I wanted Wolfe to fight me, to fucking scream, to have any emotion but that cold, calculated expression that told me everything was falling into place.
"I hoped she would," he answered, tracing her name with the slow of his eyes. "Is she okay?"
Anger lined my insides at the tender way his voice fell into pools around her.
I did not want to share Daphne with Wolfe, not her soul, not her body, not her attention.
That she had refused to let him go in her pathetic excuse for a kitchen made my throat swell.
Wolfe was my placeholder, and eventually she would realize that.
But for now, I respected her love. Understood that they formed together in shapes that weren't mine to play with, and grasped that if I tore her from him without it being her choice, it would break her heart.
Her beautiful, pretty, fucking heart.
"She is pissed we left her behind," I grumbled, turning onto the freeway toward the licensing department.
The sooner I get this done, the better. "But she has to wrap up matters with Golden Boy and explain to her Seattle preceptor why she is leaving the internship in Maine.
She won't admit it, but I think we made things messy for her. "
"Messy?" Wolfe breathed, lighting a cigarette and handing it over. "That's one way of putting it. How is she going to practice from inside the club?"
A real question that I couldn't answer.
"At some point, it will become too dangerous for her and those she serves to be associated with us."
"I know," I growled, taking the off-ramp into the clusterfuck that made up downtown Seattle.
I was fairly certain whoever mapped out the road system was tripping balls off opium because nothing connected; you had to go six blocks to turn around, and it was all uphill until, of course, you slid into the dirt bag behind you for riding too close.
"But it is not like we're going to ask her to give it up. "
"More like redirect her services to the Underworld."
"Pff," I slammed on my brakes. "FUCK YOU, BUDDY!
" I screamed at the douche with his pant leg tucked into his sock.
Bike riders had a death wish, and I could give a shit about eco-friendliness.
"All so what?" I tossed a glance at Wolfe.
"So she can get shot in the face when a rival's baby is stillborn, or God forbid, they don't agree with one of her choices? Fuck no."
"Well," he said, bracing against the dashboard. "We're going to have to figure something out."
That Daphne had to give up any part of herself for me made me want to vomit.
"What did the cookie say?" I changed the subject, veering up the hill before turning right. "Also, thanks for stealing my clothes, asshole!"
Wolfe smiled, but it was tired, slumping off his face like a half-dead cat crawling from the center of the road.
"That is what I need to speak with you about," he sighed. "Plus, you didn't need to be Threx in Maine. I took your armor to help you turn it off."
"How poetic of you," I glared. "What did the fortune say?"
"It didn't say shit. It was coordinates," Wolfe said, pausing as I parked the car. "Do you want to file those first?" He signaled toward the door.
"No. Just tell me."
"It led to a camper way the fuck up in Bellingham. The guy was dead when we got there, but apparently, he had been running an acquisition report on our club for the last year."
"Fucking hell." I hit the wheel with both hands until my knuckles burned bright white. It was only a matter of time before Marianne's grubby hands went for our loyalty.
"There is more."
Because, of course, there was.
"Marianne had gotten to Lyla, which is why she snapped the pic," Wolfe explained. "Making her a double-traitor. And Daph was at the center of the board, identified as the club's primary weakness and source of greatest emotional leverage."
I almost punched his fucking teeth from his skull.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Marianne set the hit on Daphne in motion, knowing we'd move to stop it so that she could cause unrest in the ranks.
Her main objective was to incite a mutiny and undermine my ability to lead once it was clear Lyla was a traitor.
And apparently, nothing gets our group going like a threat on Daph's life. " Wolfe's tone snapped.
I sat in the quiet, the outside world humming along in disorienting spurts.
"We're too small to fight off her crew," I finally spoke. "Eventually, she'll pick us all off if we don't swear fealty."
"I know that, Threx," Wolfe muttered, scratching his knees. "The idea was to take most of us out, anyway. Fuckface decided our club was not made for assimilation."
"Ha," a ragged breath slipped from my throat. Why did that feel like a win?
"Blade and Jessie were out."
Stars smashed into my brain, and I suddenly wanted to strangle Marianne, slowly, making her eyes pop from her sockets until...
Wolfe continued, "They found you acceptable for the risk, as long as Daphne also swears fealty."
My eye twitched, and I turned to look at him.
"That will NEVER fucking happen, Wolfe." I punched the steering wheel, watching the glass over the odometer crack. "Fucking ever."
"No. It won't." Wolfe exhaled through his nose. And that's when I realized, this fucker really loved her. In his bones. Inside the rattle of his mortality, and I couldn't fully swallow it.
"What is your plan?" I asked, peering down at the marriage papers in a frozen shiver.
"I am going to meet with her tomorrow and call her out on her shit," Wolfe said. "See if we can come to an agreement that doesn't involve killing half my men and taking on collateral damage."
It was easier for him to use that term than to say Daphne. Because not even in his world of cold math did one plus one equal her death.
I grabbed the contract from the dash and arched a brow.
"And if that doesn't work?"
Darkness moved in from the north, shadowing the car in the same gray light that made everything feel wet and sticky.
"Then you know what we have to do," he said, shoving the papers clean into my chest. "But first, give her this. Give her you."
I blinked, feeling the world compress. The harsh lines of the big circle may form a cage around me, but it couldn't take this. She was finally mine.
"You want me to go with you to meet Marianne?" I asked, pushing the door open and stepping onto the sidewalk.
"No," Wolfe replied, staring out the window, the coffee in his hand going cold.
"Did you take care of the camper?" I flashed a smile.
"What do you think this is, Threx, amateur hour?" Wolfe shot me a look. "You know this might come down to you and me in negotiations? We're the ones they want."
I hated Marianne. The woman who would use drug addicts to turn tricks into profit can suffocate on her tits for all I fucking care.
Drugs. Guns. Traitors. Fine. But exploitation, that shit didn't feel right to me.
I knew what it meant to be starving to death, to the point you'd eat grass just to make the pain go away. And so did she. That was her weapon.
"We could break her from the inside," I leaned against the frame. "You and I broker loyalty fairly quickly, and it would save the men."
"Making us traitors."
There was nothing more unsavory to my leader than the idea of ending up on the wall.
"To whom?" I rolled my eyes. "Our loyalty is to the club, each other, and Daph. I am not afraid of that bitch, and neither should you be. Nobody plays the game better than we do. But Daphne's off the table."
Wolfe made a face, his mind turning. "Why would Carden let you in on this?" he asked before I turned away.
"I pay the Reapers to look out for her," I admitted, and Wolfe finally smiled. "Carden took the contract as a personal favor for all the work I've done for him."
"Of course you fucking do," he shook his head and shooed me away. "Go get married, Threx. When you're done, I have a present for you."
"Oh, yeah?" I made a face, unsure if I could take any more of his gifts.
"Remember when I had a feeling Rinley was playing both sides?"
My heart twitched a bit, something like Christmas fluttering up from the dark pit of my stomach.
"Well, you'll never guess which one of Karsten's men took out my pretend queen on orders from Marianne," his voice brightened. "I was wondering if you might want to go play with me."
A grin spread across my lips when I slammed the door shut, peeking my head through the window to throw some fuel on the fire. Because I had been waiting my entire goddamn life for this moment.
"Wolfe," I growled, blading my voice like a weapon. "Did you know Rinley took Daphne's virginity against a dirty wall, leaving the blood to drip down her leg like some back alley whore?"
Wolfe went pale, the coffee in his hand dropping to the floor, when he turned to look at me.
And there it was.
The creature! The breaking. All the emotions I was waiting for him to feel.
No more math for you, buddy.
Let's see how far that love will go.