Chapter 31 #2
With their wet swim shorts sagging on their hips, Ash, Bohnes and Widow grab their own towels from the shelf.
Ash uses his to dry off like a normal person, swiping away droplets of water from his taut nipples.
Bohnes drags the fabric over his abs, highlighting the hot, wet mountains and valleys of his ghost-white muscles.
Widow puts the towel around his neck and hangs onto either end with tight fists, scowling at anyone who dares glance his way.
“It’s quite troublesome to me that we have a guest at our gates and I have no idea who it might be.” Alexei takes a second towel and wraps my hair up with it before letting me lead the way out of the bathhouse and down the hall.
“Troublesome?” Bohnes repeats, shoving his wet trunks to the floor and leaving them in a splatted heap on the ground.
“You mean disturbing. I’m mildly wounded, not dead.
I should know everything.” He throws his towel around his hips when he sees me glaring.
Alexei is horrified at the abandoned shorts just…
just…lying there on the floor! Ash takes his own shorts off and then picks up both pairs, giving Widow a look.
I pretend like I’m not staring at their dicks, but we all know that’s a lie.
“The laundry room is right here.” Ash pushes a wood pocket door open to reveal a space as large as the first floor of my grandmother’s house.
There are two industrial-sized washers, and two huge dryers inside.
A bank of cabinets and a sink. Some weird rich-people dog shower thing with a removable showerhead.
Racks for drying delicates. “Give me your shorts, please.”
With a sigh, Widow kicks off his swim trunks and hands them to Ash to throw into the washing machine.
“You shouldn’t even be in that bath with your wounds,” I remind Bohnes, and he sighs dramatically. “The thing I did was like, a Crimson Crew thing, okay? It was one phone call that led to this surprise, so don’t act like I’m sneaking around and keeping secrets behind your backs.”
I flick my own towel onto the floor, turn, and take off running naked through the house. In order to avoid any possibility of running into Gram, I use the secondary staircase that’s hidden behind a bookshelf to get to the second floor.
I know all four boys will chase me. I know they’ll catch me. They know that, too.
It’s still fun.
Twenty minutes later, we’re all standing on the driveway for the big reveal.
Nisha tosses me the keys, so I can unlock the trunk of the ‘61 Jaguar convertible that my girl Shirley drove today. This vehicle is also registered to the Borisov Group trust, meaning it’s unlikely to be targeted or pulled over. Love that for us, don’t you?
“Well, hello there,” I say with a bright, cheery voice, grinning a Bohnes-maniac-type grin at the bleary-eyed woman that’s tied-up and gagged inside the trunk. “Miss Navarro.”
“So, basically, one of my girls has an on-again, off-again fuckboy who works part-time at a scrapyard. His boss is married to this chick who plays bridge with a woman that lives next door to a lady who does Doordash. And that lady just so happened to deliver an order to Miss Navarro. That’s how I knew where she was.
One phone call to activate my gossip network.
One day to hear back. And a few hours to bring our guest home. ”
I’m sitting with my back against our headboard, enjoying the luxuries of the master bedroom and the four men that live in it with me.
On the wall across from the bed, there’s the door to the bathroom, then the couch that Widow used to fuck me the other day.
Above that couch, there’s the wall-mounted TV that we’re all watching.
See, Valeria Navarro is a new-to-me face.
All I know about her is that she runs some sort of charity for the homeless, that she’s very vocal about her opposition to Mayor Kelly (LOL, typical politics, pretend to be pro when you’re anti and vice versa), and that she was ‘blamed’ for the burning down of the South Prescott Gardens apartment building.
Ya know, the building we chucked molotov cocktails at on my birthday?
But, put her in the cottage with Trish and casually tell them both that we only really need one informant and…voila.
Instant entertainment and a deluge of fresh information.
“There’s no chance of escape from this place, you know that, right?” Trish demands, visible over the live feed from the cottage’s living room. Her right cheek is horribly swollen from the bite and she’s moving a little stiffly, like those neurotoxins are doing God’s work.
“I’m just supposed to sit here and wait to die then?
” Valeria shoots back, turning on her comrade the way these disloyal renegades always do.
That’s why my boys are getting along so well, because they’re the exact opposite of these bottom-dwelling, soul-sucking opportunists.
“Help me, and maybe we can actually get out of here.”
Miss Navarro has broken the glass on one of the interior widows, fingers clawing at the steel security shutters like she honestly believes she has some hope of getting out. Trish slumps down on the sofa, holding an ice pack to her face.
“I don’t even understand what you just said,” Widow grumbles, his head in my lap, eyes half-closed as I run my fingers through his fabulous hair.
Having Treasure’s fuckboy on staff means that the boys can get regular trims the way I get regular manicures.
What an artiste, that Jack. “Somebody’s boss’ wife’s something or other…
and you found Valeria like it was nothing. ”
“Not nothing. Years of being part of Prescott’s delicate social fabric.
Years of fighting for a rep and maintaining it.
” I lick the ice cream I’m holding, fingers wrapped around the waffle cone with sticky delight.
I’ve managed not to get any drips in Widow’s luxurious hair, but my poor hand is trashed.
“Still,” Widow murmurs, visiting Mr. Sandman as he drifts off with his head pillowed on my thighs. “It’s impressive.”
I beam, enjoying the catfight that’s just started onscreen. Soon enough, one woman or the other will realize she better start talking or she’s dead. Either that, or they’ll end up talking to each other and revealing information, whether they mean to or not. I figure it’s a win-win.
Alexei is standing beside the bed, butt naked, with his ass cheeks on display for me while he towels off his freshly washed locks with the air of a man returned to his proper station.
Wealth doesn’t look obscene on Alexei. No.
It’s humbled by his presence. Luxury goods pale in comparison, emphasizing that he is always the most expensive thing in the room.
He tosses an extravagant green-eyed gaze over one perfect, porcelain shoulder.
“Do you intend on torturing Miss Navarro with the same kompetentnost that you used on Mrs. Edelman?”
“If necessary.” I gnaw on the waffle cone, glancing over to see that Ash is doing the same.
His hand is as sticky as mine, albeit with a different flavor of ice cream.
Your girl is on her period, so chocolate is my jam.
My boy doesn’t know what he likes, so we’ve got a bit of everything in the freezer now.
Pistachio ice cream. Fudge brownie. Vanilla.
Strawberry. His flavor du jour is green tea.
Bohnes had confetti cake ice cream. It’s gone now, slurped down that gaping monster maw he has the audacity to call a mouth.
He’s on his phone, paying more attention to it than the TV.
Fine by me. Kellin does not doom-scroll.
Kellin does not read articles. Kellin does not play phone games.
What he does do is manage his expansive underground network of informants and lackeys with the swipe of a thumb.
“Necessary,” Bohnes murmurs, shutting the phone off and tossing it onto the side table. “The black widow was a nice touch. Do you know anything about Navarro that we could use against her?”
His voice is practically salivary, his expression heavy with admiration as he turns it on me in full.
I knew he’d like the spider thing. What Bohnes and I find attractive about one another are all the unconventional things.
I love that he knows which brands of tarp are best at holding onto blood evidence.
He loves that I can gossip my way to a person’s deepest fears and wield it against them like a weapon.
We’re a match made in hell.
“Not yet. For now, this is enough. We have other things to do, so really, this is just passive information gathering.” I watch Alexei as he glides into the bathroom, returning naked with a pair of washcloths in either of his freshly gloved hands.
The first washcloth he uses on Ash, taking my lover’s hands and swiping the ice cream off them. Ash is dumbfounded.
“Valeria…I didn’t even know she was one of my father’s people. I…” Ash flushes red as Alexei uses the second cloth to dry his hands off. Ash reaches immediately for his hair, to yank on it in agitation probably, and gets a gentle, corrective slap on the wrist from Alexei.
“No.” Alexei doesn’t elaborate or explain, returning to the bathroom to get another set of washcloths.
He’s coming for me. I shove the last of my ice cream cone into my mouth and hold my hand out like the guilty party I am.
He reaches across Kellin’s lap and Widow’s sleeping body to swipe the chocolate drips from my fingers, caressing and smoothing that hot soapy towel like this is foreplay instead of necessity.
The strong eye contact between us doesn’t hurt either.
“You really think we have enough for Jonas?” Bohnes asks, shirtless and half-draped in a bit of twisted sheet.
His arms are folded behind his head, ice blue eyes finally connecting with the screen and the drama unfolding on it.
“Are you planning on discussing his fate with Burt at P-Trip on Friday?”