“You do believe him then?” Mateo questioned darkly. “No offence, but it could be a set up. We don’t know him and people we don’t know fucking lie.”
It was a reasonable statement to anyone who hadn’t witnessed the bomb my enforcer had dropped on me: i.e., every other fucker in the room. People did lie.Alexeilied, every day he picked up the phone to do the benign day job he still managed to keep and told someone his name wasTeddy Jones, the name he’d given me when we’d met. The name I’d known was bullshit from the start but hadn’t fucking cared.
A name was a name.
I loved him.
How can you love someone you don’t truly know?
Easily. Alexei’s secrets weren’t poison. They were vulnerable parts of himself he wasn’t ready to share. I had to believe that, or I was about to walk my brothers into a death trap.
Anotherdeath trap.
Fuck this life.
Saint kicked me under the table.
Hard. In the shin.
I blinked. “What?”
Every eye in the room pierced holes in me. I’d missed something.Fuck.
Alexei came closer and dropped his hands on the table, leaning towards Mateo. “I was telling Mateo that he is right. People lie. But sometimes they tell the truth, and I believed Viktor. Whatyoubelieve is your choice.”
Silence. Without Embry to defuse the tension, the air was heavy and I didn’t know how to break it.
Rubi, of all people, cleared his throat. “We need a plan and we need to fucking vote. That’s all there is right now, so let me go first.” He knocked his fist on the table. “I’ve heard more of this shit than anyone else and I’m telling you, Butch Crow. McGif. Whoever the fuck they are, they’re fucking psychopaths. We have to take them down or they’ll keep coming, but we can’t do it alone. Taking Russian help is a risk, but it’s saved us before, and without them? Man, we’re gonna be lemons to a gunfight. Listen to Alexei. I’m with him.”
“Seconded,” Nash concurred.
Saint nodded.
No words.
Mateo sat back in his seat, eyes on me, perhaps gauging what I’d done with the unwanted information he’d forced on me. How I felt about it.
I gazed back at him, hoping he saw that I didn’t give a shit. That I loved Alexei whatever the fuck his name was.I trust him, brother. Trustme. Please?
Mateo wasn’t known for his telepathy, but whatever he saw in me seemed to sway him. He brought the front legs of his chair to the floor with a crash and banged his fists on the table.
“All right, boss. I’m in. How we gonna murder these fuckers?”
24
Alexei
If only it were as simple as ambushing a truck of armed Crows and killing them all. But if my time with the Rebel Kings had taught me anything, it was that nothing with these big-hearted, moralistic men was eversimple.
“If the shipment isn’t making it to port, where the fuck is it?”
No one knew the answer to Nash’s question, and frustration burned in Cam’s dark gaze. He was clinging to his sanity. When this was done, he needed time. Much of it, away from the life that was tearing him apart.
You see that because it is your mind too.
Perhaps, but Cam was a better man than me. He mourned the death of his mother with open-souled pain. Me? I was pushing away burning grief that I did not deserve. Not because I was unworthy, but because shewas.
Viktor’s voice was unfamiliar but echoed in my head like the horrible history it was.“Your mother is dead. If the Kings had not made contact, I would have been tasked to track you down. I am sorry you had to find out this way, but Pavel believed it would matter to you.”