I let the bolstering breath out. “Firefighters are like soldiers. You learn everything until it’s engrained in your DNA, but some skills come easier than others. I could drive the engine the wrong way through rush hour traffic with my eyes shut. Climb a ladder to the top of the Shard like I was running upstairs to get laid. My brother’s different. I mean, he can do all those things, and he walks through fire like it’s the fuckin’ rain, but his superpower is in his gut.”
“Instinct?”
I hummed around another absent nod. “Lo rocks up to a blaze and he can tell you how and when it started before they’ve pulled the hoses out. Got a nose for it.”
“And that got him in trouble with Frank Crow,” Nash surmised, all too familiar with the Dog Crow’s historical penchant for arson.
“In the nineties, Frank bought up a load of old terraced housing. Butchered them into flats and stuffed them full of tenants.”
“The multiple occupancy things?”
“HMOs. Migrant families stuffed into these places like fuckin’ sardines. Rigged electric, dodgy gas. It’s a wonder they didn’t burn down spontaneously.”
Nash rubbed a slow circle into my belly, as if he could soothe the evil tale out of me without me having to spit the words. “Insurance job?”
“Yup. After the buy-to-let market crashed, he decided the properties were expendable, booted all the tenants, and lit them up. Except, you know what Crows are, right?”
“Incompetent?”
“And lazy. Whatever morons they sent to clear the houses, they didn’t do it right, and they set those fires with a refugee family sleeping inside. The parents got out, but three little kids died.” My throat grew thick. I’d never told this story out loud. “Lo was on shift that night. He carried those babies out, and he never really got over it, cos you don’t, even when you haven’t got kids of your own waiting at home. You have gloves on, all the gear, but somehow you can still feel their skin. It’s so fuckin’ weird.”
My eyes stung from the bitter wind blowing me off course.
Nash still held one of my hands. I squeezed his fingers, leeching strength from him. “Logan knew it was arson and he wasn’t quiet about it. Frank came to me and told me to shut him up, but I couldn’t do it. Not that I tried that hard. Those fuckers murdered those kids and they didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t let that pass any more than my brother could.”
“How far did it go? Did they get nicked for it?”
“Someone did. A fall guy. I know you have them too.”
“Not anymore. Cam would rather take the years himself than see a brother behind bars.” Nash’s gaze flickered, stress flaring before he shut it down. “Did Logan testify?”
“Not in person. He wrote a report that was used by the investigation team. Day after he filed it, Frank told me he was going to kill him. Laughed in my face and said he’d kill my kids for fun unless I gave him a reason not to. So I did. I gave himme, and he gave me to Priest.”
Nash moved impossibly closer and pressed his face to the side of mine, his lips grazing my jaw. “I’m sorry.”
What the fuck for?After the Crows imploded, I’d still spent every day at their mercy. Torture didn’t have to be fuckin’ literal. He’d been my respite. Orla. My kids.Logan, when the stars aligned enough for us to share oxygen.I miss him. So much my chest ached, though that might’ve been the lingering mess in my lungs.
Nash kissed my cheek and backed off. He slid his hand up my torso to the caged bird tattoo on my chest, perhaps sensing the deeper meaning. I knew this kind-souled cat, though. He wasn’t gonna ask me to explain it. He was gonna tell me he loved me, as if I didn’t already feel it in every cell of my body.
I said it first. “I love you.”
Nash had killed people. In cold blood as much as self-defence. Club business, whatever. I knew this life. But his smile as he absorbed the sentiment held a shy innocence that stripped away patches and rank, leaving behind a man who couldn’t quite believe my words were for him.
My arm hurt, along with other aches and pains that crept back in as the afterglow of a good fuck and hardcore nap faded. Nash knew, somehow, and helped me stretch it out, my pain his as the stab wound made itself known. “You need some drugs? Alexei said he gave you some.”
“Gave them back,” I gritted out. “Can’t have that shit around Folk.”
“He’d be okay.”
“Don’t care. Not doing it.” We’d had this conversation before and agreed to disagree. Didn’t matter that Folk was the strongest motherfucker ever, I couldn’t be the reason he felt like shit, even if Nash’s worried frown was breaking my fuckin’ heart.
He got up. Walked his naked self around the bed and disappeared. He was coming back, clearly, but his absence made my skin itch every second he was gone.
All twenty-six of them.
He crawled back into bed with a bottle of water and Orla’s time-of-the month bag. “She has some good shit in here.”
“I don’t need it.” Lies. Pretty much everything hurt. Muscles, bones, my goddamn ear. But I knew the pills he was talking about, and while Orla could take them and run an empire, I was a heavyweight wimp. They’d put me in a fuckin’ coma, and I couldn’t be out cold while my kid was getting up early and hitting the road.