It pleased me more than I could say that Cam had no fear of the organisation that had conspired for so long to kill him, though I was beginning to doubt that the Sambini clan had been as invested in it as rats in Cam’s own club.Cracker. It pleased me too that I’d killed him with my bare hands.
Gianni averted his eyes from me and gave Cam his full attention. “What do you want? We’ve pulled our entire operation out of your county and your crews are no longer working on our sites. I have given it much thought and I don’t know what else you could demand from us.”
“I want information.” Cam drummed his fingers on his bent knee. “And a personal guarantee, from you to me, that you’re not a duplicitous cunt.”
“We already—”
“Not to me, you didn’t. You made a deal with a man I’ve never met.”
“A deal that still stands.”
“Yeah, well. I want a new one to run alongside it. One that protects my club if the rest of it goes to shit.”
The rest of it.Common sense told me Cam meant the myriad of other enemies and threats he’d faced every day of his life since his father’s gavel had become his.
My heart knew it was equally possible that he meant me.He is preparing for a life without me in it.
It was the sensible thing to do. He had asked me many times, with and without words, for a commitment to this convoluted existence we had, and I’d given him nothing but more affection than I had ever given anyone else.
It’s not enough. Tell him you will stay with him forever. That leaving him and Saint would flay you alive.
But the words stuck in my throat.
I do not know how to live up to them.
Suddenly, I longed for Saint. He always knew when the gate I’d dismantled to let Cam through had opened a little too much. He had a sixth sense. An instinct that soothed me in ways I did not quite understand yet.
You love him.
I could not deny that it might’ve been true.
The present seeped back into my brain.
Gianni Sambini was talking.
Rubi was staring at me.
Cam listened to Sambini, but his shoulders were tense.
I had missed something.
Urgency flooded me, and another deep yearning for Saint rocked my foundations. With him close, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Focus.
I could not fathom how many times I had said that to myself in recent months.
“I don’t expect you to trust me,” Gianni said. “That will take time. But I can guarantee that any operation you launch against the Dog Crows will be unimpeded by us. Assisted if you should require it.”
Cam leaned forward. “Assisted? In what sense?”
“You may need men if the Crows have grown in the numbers you suggest. We can help with that.”
“No, thanks. If you want to help, take some roads back off these fuckers. They’re only safe to mule teenagers up and down the country because you don’t give a shit.”
“It’s not our business,” Gianni said. “We should move on. We don’t have infinite time.”
Cam shrugged. “There’s nothing else I want to talk about. If the best you can do is to agree to stay in your fucking lane, we’re done here.”