JAX
Damn.
That went better than I’d expected. I’d been gearing up for a fight, or at the very least a righteous speech about how stealing was bad, bad, bad. Not that Olivia struck me as particularly righteous, what with her petty thieving and trespassing. She just…surprised the hell out of me.
She was so prissy and perfect. It made me want to prove how bad I really was.
“I want my knife back,” she said as she rushed to catch up to me. I liked that, too. Her following me, eager and helpless. I ignored her demands—more to keep pushing her buttons than anything—and was rewarded with another prissy huff at my back.
Callum was still at the door, hovering over Ryle without trying to be too obvious. Nate and Zola were locked in another foreplay match. Madoc was gone. So was the binder. Olivia clocked it with a frown and leveled accusing eyes on me. “Tell Count Chocula to keep his thieving hands to himself.”
I blinked at her. “You mean Madoc?”
“Madoc.” She made a face like she’d just swallowed something rotten. “That’s the cretin.”
“He wants your knife,” I said, resisting the sudden urge to poke her cheek. I suspected she would bite me, just latch on like a furious chihuahua. “And I don’t tell Madoc anything.”
Madoc lived in a world of his own. Usually, it felt like a privilege just to be part of it.
“What’s the verdict, boss?” Nate perked up in his chair, one arm slung over the back of Zola’s. “We making it like the wind and blowing this crypt?”
“Not yet,” I said, catching Callum’s eye. “We made a deal.”
Callum grinned and whispered something to Ryle, who snorted loudly into his hand.
I shook my head at the pair of them. Morons, all of them.
I glanced at my watch, the black face turned in on my wrist. “I want to be at the extraction point by nightfall. We’ll set up camp on the beach.
That gives us six hours to do what we need. ”
“What deal?” Zola asked, zeroing in on Olivia by my shoulder. I knew that look. That look meant I’d have a fight on my hands after all.
“Olivia won’t talk,” I explained bluntly. “In exchange, we’ll help her dig up some dirt on Salvadore.”
“Will we now?” Zola repeated, her eyes dangerous. I raised my brow at her tone. Her face was blank, leeched of any emotion. Nate shuddered beside her.
“Not now,” I warned her.
Zola smiled coldly. “Fine.” It wasn’t a win. Just a temporary cease-fire. I knew I’d cop an earful later. “Since we’re apparently bringing in outsiders, you should know the painting is a cover.”
I frowned at her. “A cover for what?”
Her smile sharpened. Sometimes I forgot who she was before she joined my crew. Then she smiled like that, and my balls shriveled up into my stomach. “Go see for yourself.”
That was how we ended up in Salvadore’s office.
Like the rest of the house, it was charmingly rustic, with panoramic windows on one side and floor-to-ceiling timber shelves on the other.
A large, Narnia-style wardrobe stood next to the door, clearly antique and very expensive. But that wasn’t the main attraction.
Fixed on the wall behind the large mahogany desk was our painting. It wasn’t as large as I’d expected, though it was no motel art. It was also bright and abstract, and a bit of an eyesore compared to the rest of Salvadore’s collection.
I found Madoc sitting cross-legged on the desk, looking up at it with the kind of rapt attention most would devote to their favorite soap. I was overly aware of Olivia, the unknown addition to our party, examining the bookshelves with the same level of attention.
My thighs hit the desk as I stood behind Madoc. “What’s the verdict?”
“Ugly,” Madoc said without turning. I leaned over his shoulder and saw him fiddling with Olivia’s knife. It didn’t bode well for her if he’d claimed it. “You threw up.”
I reared back, abruptly self-conscious. Madoc turned his head and smirked at me. “Feel better?”
“I won’t until we’re gone.”
“That could be a while.” Madoc’s gaze zeroed in on Olivia, who had turned away from the books and stood at the window looking out.
I didn’t blame him. She was nice to look at.
The sun made her skin glow and found the streaks of copper in her hair.
Her legs were something else. Long, shapely.
Weapons in their own right. I forced myself to look away, straight into Madoc’s cutting, glass-green eyes.
The same weird heat boiled between us and, as usual, I backed out.
Zola bumped into me hard and pointed at the painting. “Go on. Take it down.”
Callum did the honors. As soon as he lowered it gently to the floor, we stared, speechless, at the wall behind it. No, not the wall. The safe.
“Huh,” Ryle said with a slow nod like it was exactly what he expected. “I guess he does have some secrets.”
“It’s digital,” Zola said, even though we were all familiar with safes. In fact, we’d made a decent living from cracking them. I slanted her a look, and she met my eye smugly. “Waterproof, fire-resistant, pry-resistant with a three-strike lockout mechanism.”
“So we need the code.” Ryle started to root around the desk. “What are the chances he wrote it down on a sticky note?”
“Slim.” Zola crossed her arms and leveled Olivia with a cold look when she wandered over. “He used a hundred-million-dollar painting as a cover. Whatever’s inside is clearly very valuable. There’s no way we can crack it in under six hours.”
To her credit, Olivia didn’t look perturbed. “I thought you guys were, like, professional burglars?”
“This isn’t some spy movie,” Zola scoffed, examining her claws. Us men in the room exchanged wary glances, gonads mutually retreating.
Clearly, Olivia didn’t have the same instincts. She met sass with sass, cocking her hip against the desk. “Really? A band of thieves? A locked safe? A hundred million dollars? Seems pretty 007 to me.”
“Bond girl,” Nate whispered. He flinched back at Zola’s dead-eyed glare.
“We don’t just turn up and crack a safe, sweetie,” Zola said, smiling. “It requires weeks of planning. Manufacturers’ instructions. Meticulous background research on the mark.”
A flush stained Olivia’s cheeks at the patronizing tone.
Smelling blood, Zola went in for the kill. “But who am I to stop you? Please. Go ahead. You’ll have three attempts before the lockout mechanism is triggered.”
“How…” Olivia’s voice cracked. She straightened, clearing her throat. “How long does the lockout last?”
“Could be a few hours,” Zola said. “Could be days. It could also send an alert to the owner’s phone. In fact, I’m certain it does.”
Olivia’s mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. I half-expected her to burst into tears (Zola could make grown men cry), but Olivia proved once again that she wasn’t predictable. She broke into a wide grin, appearing positively chuffed by the news. “He’s definitely hiding something.”
“It could be anything,” I said, hating the way my gut twinged at dampening her happiness. Buzz kill. “It doesn’t prove he kidnapped your sister.”
“It might,” Olivia said, practically bouncing on her toes. Then she noticed Madoc and her knife, and landed flat on her heels, her eyes storming over. “That’s mine.”
Madoc flipped the knife casually in his hand like a toy. “This old thing?”
“Give it back.”
“Take it.”
Olivia clearly possessed enough self-preservation not to rise to the challenge.
I was still confused by Madoc’s need to antagonize her.
It was rare that he found anything remotely interesting enough to annoy to death.
With a huff, Olivia joined Ryle and ripped open the drawers on the desk, sifting through paperwork and stationery with furious intent.
Meanwhile, Callum, with a frosty Zola, carefully secured the painting in the hardshell casing used for transport. At least that was one problem solved.
I turned at the rustling noise behind me. Nate emerged from the wardrobe, looking disappointed. “No secret doors back here, boss.” He hit the liquor cabinet next. “At least he drinks good whiskey.”
“Bingo!” Olivia produced a sleeve of old receipts and waved it proudly above her head. She frowned at our lack of enthusiasm. “He keeps a paper trail. That’s a good thing.”
“I doubt he filed ‘kidnapping’ under goods and services,” Ryle said, giving her a sympathetic smile. “It’s probably just household stuff.”
Olivia shrugged and tucked the sleeve under her arm, undeterred. “It’s a start. Maybe he has a suspicious number of handcuffs and chloroform on back order.”
“You know chloroform doesn’t actually work,” Ryle said, the fun fact of the day. “It’s more likely to kill someone than knock them unconscious.”
“Something tells me you’re speaking from experience.” The fact that Olivia only seemed mildly alarmed by the topic was surprising.
Ryle clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Nah, Jax won’t let us experiment anymore after we blew up our first workshop.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “Blew up?”
“Nate has a thing for explosives.”
Nate raised his hand in proud admission when Olivia looked around, unsure which one of us hellraisers was Nate.
There hadn’t been much time for introductions.
I wanted to keep it that way. The last thing I needed was for any of them to get attached to her.
It wasn’t a problem for Madoc or Zola, but the others were giant suckers for a lost cause.
I could already see the dumb look forming on Ryle’s face, like when he found that old cat living under the porch steps.
Olivia was certainly proving she had claws. “Where is my binder?” She glared at Madoc, unmoved by the weapon he wielded as effortlessly as a dinner fork. I’d seen him spear targets from a hundred feet away. Olivia didn’t know that.
I hoped she wouldn’t find out.
In response to her question, Madoc simply smiled. It was chillingly cold, vacant behind the eyes. It only made her glare intensify. “Seriously,” she huffed. “What is your problem?”
Madoc remained silent. Olivia sighed in annoyance and turned to me with flushed cheeks. “Can’t you take away his toys or something?”
“I’d rather keep my fingers attached, thanks.”
Olivia looked on the verge of stomping her foot.
On top of being stubborn as hell and easily corrupted, she was also kind of bratty.
A total princess. It shouldn’t appeal to me as much as it did.
It shouldn’t make me want to pull on her hair and watch the flush spread all the way down her chest. Madoc was doing enough of that on his own.
The realization stopped me cold.
Madoc was pulling on her hair. Figuratively, at least. He was riling her up, getting under her skin. It made my chest tight and jealous as all fuck.
Whatever expression crossed my face had Ryle honing in like an emotional support wasp.
“Jax? You okay?” Before I could utter a response, my throat dry as sand, he stepped around the desk and eyed me up close in concern.
“Is it your stomach again? I told you that sandwich had a weird look about it. Never trust airport tuna.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sweating, dude.”
“And you’re fussing.” I patted his cheek and shoved him away in the same motion. Then I pushed back my hair—it was pretty sticky—and addressed the room. “Listen up. We do a full sweep of the mansion. Buddy system. No one goes anywhere on their own.”
“There are seven of us now, Jax,” Zola reminded me sweetly. “Who gets stuck with the spare?”
Olivia frowned and then scoffed a second too late when she realized what Zola meant. “I’m the spare? You guys hijacked my mission. I was here first.”
I slapped my hand on the desk before Zola could retaliate. “Olivia is with Madoc and me,” I said, though it might as well have been a declaration of war from the betrayed look that crossed Zola’s face. “We have a deal. You don’t have to like it.”
The way Zola withdrew into herself made it very clear that she didn’t.
“And the safe?” Olivia asked, chewing her lip. “Three attempts, right? I know his birthday.”
“It’s never so obvious, lass,” Callum said. “Let us find his skeletons. They’ll be here somewhere. That might give us a better idea.”
We all knew it was a long shot. Men like Salvadore were too smart and far too devious to be caught with their pants down.
Anything illegal was likely iron-clad, offshore, and untraceable.
The fact that Olivia had managed to find anything at all on him, even if it was mostly conjecture, was impressive.
That didn’t mean anything would stick. And even if by some miracle it did, men like Salvadore with power and wealth didn’t just fold. They fought back. They crushed the little guy. Obliterated the enemy.
Olivia had no idea what she was up against. Or how much she still had to lose.