He was my brother.
My pissed-off brother when we reached him and recounted what we’d seen. “What the fuck? Since when did the Crows have that many friends?”
Mateo shot him a dark look. “Maybe they made some new ones since they tried to join the mafia?”
“Why, though? They’re a fucking shitshow.”
“So were we when we got caught with our pants down. Without Alexei, Cam and Saint would be dead.”
Mateo had a point. One I didn’t want to contemplate while I wasn’t surgically attached to Cam’s side. While I couldn’t fuckingsenseAlexei’s presence behind me.
Also, we still had a van of bullshit to deal with. We needed a plan B, but of course, my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Smoke.
You can’t.
They might see.
Fuck my life.
Sometimes, I needed to speak so bad that my insides felt like they were on fire. Others, a piece of me just fucking died. Today, I was somewhere in between. I didn’t want to jump off the nearest cliff, but if Mateo had offered to jam his fist down my throat and rip my lungs out, I’d have said yes.
He read me, fiery gaze flicking over my face. “Can we dump them somewhere else? So we’re shot of them but the two things aren’t connected?”
I jerked my head at Nash. It was a call Cam would trust him to make.
He nodded. “We need them gone, but we can’t start a fight when we don’t know what the fuck is going on here. Let’s roll.”
We hit the road. Mateo in the stolen car as we returned it, me on his battered Dyna. I didn’t even ask—perceptive motherfucker justknewI needed the wind in my face as much as I needed this brotherhood to survive.
They were the only souls on earth who truly understood me. Before Alexei, I’d never imagined there’d be anyone else, and the thought kept me from losing my shit as we drove into Cornwall.
We ditched our load close enough to Truro hospital that Eric wouldn’t die in a ditch before his by-now conscious partners in crime got him some help. I tapped my fingers to my lips before we left them, the warning clear. Wide eyes stared back at me. Alexei had got under their skin.
Good.
Mateo crouched, a devil at my side. “He’ll hunt you down.”
He didn’t specify who. I didn’t suppose it mattered. Or maybe he was starting to see Cam, Alexei, and me as one entity.
We headed home, me still on Mateo’s bike as he rode in the van with Nash. Cold air hit my open visor, cooling my heated skin, but as we neared our own compound, an age-old panic gripped me, panic I had no business feeling whentwomen I fucking lived for waited for me.
I revved the engine on Mateo’s Dyna, fighting the urge to roar past the van and into the night, chasing the adrenaline rush that was my only weapon when I felt like this.
Violence.
Danger.
Pain.
I craved all three. I’d never fought myself with anything else.
But you have something else. You have us.
I wanted to believe it. Perhaps on some level I did, but Cam’s voice, the one I’d lived by since I’d sworn loyalty—blood in, blood out—to him all those years ago...
It wasn’t loud enough.