In my mind, all I can picture is Memphis’s stepmother being hauled out of the SUV and dragged toward us. My blood, already running cold, slogs along in my veins.
But I’m wrong.
It’s not Cynthia Lockwood. It’s someone completely different.
As soon as Primo gets the woman out of the back and carries her across the gravel construction site, kicking and screaming and with her hands bound in front of her, a wave of relief washes over me.
Teal.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Thankful I have one hell of a poker face, I mask every single thought I’m having in this moment. If Dom knew what was going through my head, he’d empty the entire magazine into my chest and tell Primo to bury me under an ocean of concrete where no one would find my body.
From behind me, I hear a swiftly inhaled breath, and I pray like I haven’t prayed in years that Drew—Memphis—keeps her fucking mouth shut.
With that prayer sent up, I return my attention to Dom, who is watching Teal as she’s brought closer. Her mascara runs down her face in black streaks. She was probably fucked up when they found her.
“Ms. Fancy Tits here thinks she can go wherever the fuck she wants and run her mouth about my business,” Dom says with his lip curled.
Teal’s short party dress rides up as she struggles in Primo’s hold. The terror on her face as she tries to squirm free strikes a chord of pity inside me. Finally, she’s sober and very fucking aware of the consequences of her actions.
I’ve been trying to get through to her for months to make her understand that life isn’t a fucking game. She couldn’t keep expecting her sister to cover for her while she fucked off, making us all look bad. Which was when I started cutting her shifts, letting her work just enough while I found a replacement. Tanya was supposed to break the news to her that she was fired, but we both know how that went sideways. I still can’t get Teal’s meltdown in the break room out of my head.
I was brutally honest with her then. She didn’t take it well.
Now here she is, her blue eyes full of tears, pleading for me to help her. Again. Except this time, she must have gotten mixed up in something new and different for Dom to want her dead.
“What did she do?” Feigning indifference, I slowly shift my head and keep the weight of the moment out of my tone.
“Got smashed at one of Gabriel Legend’s underground clubs she gets intousing my nameand then runs into that fucking Rossetti punk, Donny Linetti.” Dom’s furrowed face takes on a ruddier hue. “From the video footage we’ve already hacked, he cornered her and she started talking. Saying shit aboutmyorganization.”
All the hair on the back of my neck stands up as Dom recounts Teal’s cardinal sin.Fucking hell.The only thing I can’t figure out is why the hell he brought her to me, because for that, she should already be dead.
I wait in silence for Dom to continue.
“Donny starts to drag her out of the club, and Legend, that fucking upstart who’s out to prove he’s king shit, intervenes and kicks out the Rossetti crew.And then she uses my fucking name againwith Legend as a get-out-of-jail-free card. He had her brought to my brownstone this morning, with a bow and a note that said I owed him a fucking favor now for saving one of my girls’ asses. Do you believe that shit? The audacity of that fucking bitch and that punk?”
The lines between Dom’s eyebrows deepen as his temper flares and his teeth grind together.
Oh. Fuck.
“I don’t hand out favors unlessI want to.” Dom turns and taps the butt of the Sig he offered to me against Teal’s temple. “You hear me, little girl? You fucking cost me, and I didn’t give you leave to cost me shit. And that doesn’t even begin to cover whatever information you might have given to the fucking Rossettis. You caught your last chance, girl. Now you’re done.”
Teal crumples, sobbing hard as tears roll down her cheeks. I know she can cry on demand, but this isn’t that. This is knowing you fucked up and you’re going to die.
And yet I hear myself saying, “She has a problem. She needs help, Dom, not a fucking bullet to the head.”
Words spill from Teal’s lips as she drops to her knees, her fingers gripping the fine weave of Dom’s suit pants. “I didn’t tell him anything, I swear. I didn’t. I don’t know anything. I don’t. I was fucked up. I swear whatever I told him was bullshit.”
Dom shakes her off and steps away, his fingers still wrapped around the barrel of the Sig. Before he shifts his grip to where he can pull the trigger, I have the urge to snatch it out of his hand.I’m not like him.I won’t let him execute Teal right here, right now.
And then there’s the reason I thought he was hunting me down.Drew.No,Memphis.
She and I aren’t in the clear yet either. At best, we’ve gotten a mere stay of execution. While Dom’s not looking, I reach behind me and find her cold fingers, giving them a quick squeeze before jamming my hand in my pocket.
I hope like hell she knows to stay quiet and let me do all the talking, because that’s the only way any of the three of us are making it out of this construction site alive. And the only way I’ll ever be able to find out what the fuck she was thinking when she slipped right into my life like she belonged.
Did she belong? Was any of it real?Obviously, now isn’t the time for that conversation, but I’m going to make sure we have it, goddammit. Dom isn’t stealing that from me too.