True to his word, twenty minutes later, we rumbled up on the meeting point I hadn’t bothered to ask about. It was another abandoned building, and honestly, this shit could get in the sea with Rubi and Cam’s 1001 Ways with Potatoes. I was sick of it. Literally. As I rolled off my bike, my stomach gave that ominous lurch it had recently every time my emotions got the better of me.
Was I going to puke?
Not this time, but it was close.
“Come on.” Cam popped up beside me. “They’re here.”
“Good for them.”
“Don’t be a dick. It won’t help.”
“Help what?”
Cam grabbed my elbow, wrenching me around to face him. “Take a breath.”
“No.”
Cam shook me, rattling the bruises left behind by Ranger’s fists. “Nash, listen to me. I know it’s fucking hard, but these aren’t people we can piss off right now. Youknow this. Don’t you think that cunt is just waiting for you to fuck up so he can nick you?”
That cunt. Bear. Because I’d punched him in the face and broken his jaw. Because he’d looked at Willow with eyes that reminded me of the first man I’d ever killed, a man Cam had helped me bury at sea without ever knowing why I’d unalived him in his parents’ bedroom.
Because he’d neverasked, and why couldn’t this be like that? Entombed on the ocean floor, never to be spoken of again.
We aren’t that lucky.Not about this, but if that gave us some good fortune somewhere else, I’d take it.
I puffed on my vape and got my shit together enough to guard Cam’s back as we approached the dilapidated storage unit.
Bear and his sidekick waited inside, seated behind old desks like last time, like they were pound-shop mafia dons, and it was in moments like these that I wished Rubi was more active in the dodgier side of our business. There was no way he’d let this shit slide. No fucking way.
Locke wouldn’t either.
My belly tightened again, flooding me with nausea that didn’t feel entirely mine, and it was a weird feeling that spread to my chest, squeezing air from my lungs brutally enough that I missed the opening speeches of this grand fucking meeting, only tuning back in to Cam’s growl.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Bear smirked. “Haven’t we been over this?”
“About eight fucking times,” Cam shot back. “How many different ways do you want us to say it?”
“Seems to me there is nouswhile you’re doing all the talking.” Bear slid his creepy gaze to me. “You had plenty to say with your fists, McGovern. What else have you got?”
I leaned back in my seat, feigning nonchalance, swallowing a cough. “I don’t have anything. And neither do you. We only came to stop you hassling our boys on the road.”
“We haven’t done that.”
“But you will. That’s how it always goes when you lot have been up our arses for nothing. Harassment. Entrapment.”
“Big words.”
From me? Never. And I longed for Rubi again. He’d wipe the floor with this turbo twat—he’d hated him from the start.
“Lazy bellend. He’s like a septic blister, Nashie. Pops up when all the work’s done, no good to fucking anyone.”
It galled me that I’d answered that tirade by telling Rubes to give this dickhead a chance.
The conversation went on around me. Twice, Cam looked to me for backup, but I had nothing to say.Die before you rat.And I fucking would, sooner rather than later, if Bear got his way.
He wrote a date on a Post-it and slid it across the table. “That’s our limit. If you haven’t made a decision by then, we’ll make it for you.”