Alexei
Saint was obsessed with keeping me warm.
Cam was fixated on making me eat.
It was an interesting way to spend my time and made being cooped up at the Rebel Kings compound less irritating.
“You don’t have to stay here,” Cam told me a week after our necessary domesticity had taken hold. “You can work at my place.”
“Saint is not here.”
“So?”
“He would cut out my heart and eat it if I left you unprotected.”
Cam rolled his eyes, a growly, frustrated sigh rumbling from his chest. “No one’s trying to kill me anymore.”
“You think that makes it better for these people? They don’t have as much faith in me as you do.”
“Saint does.”
“Only because I am with you every moment he is not.”
It was true. And it was an arrangement I enjoyed more than I cared to admit, and not just because the stench of a frightened hostage still lingered in my penthouse flat, days and days after I’d returned Gianni Sambini to his family. Odd as it was, I liked the company, even at the compound where most people stared at me as if I’d come to burn it down.
I walked with Cam to the café where Nash was re-laying the floor.
“Didn’t feel like scrubbing it clean,” he answered my raised brow.
“How did you dispose of the old one?”
“Incinerator, with the chapel one too.” Nash chanced a dark grin in Cam’s general direction. “No offence, boss, but you made a hell of a mess.”
Cam grunted and disappeared into the back.
I crouched, watching Nash work. This one was good with his hands. Handsome too, gold hair, blue eyes.
“You should spend some time with Orla while you’re here,” he said. “If you’re important to Cam, you’re important to her.”
Nash had an earnest gaze.
He’s in love with her.
I gave him a smile that I saved for people I liked. “I can do that.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
I nodded.
Nash wiped his hands and pulled a cigarette box from his pocket. He lit a cannabis joint and offered it to me.
“No, thank you.”
He shrugged and jammed it in his mouth. “Do you think the yard can turn enough profit to support the club?”
“That depends on the depth of support it requires.”
“I think Cam’s going to pull our crews off the construction sites the Sambinis control. That’s a lot of guys who’ll be looking for a wage.”