by S. Massery
I look down.
Hadley wraps her arm around my waist. She doesn’t seem to mind that I’m soaked. “It’s okay,” she says. “Was it Marco?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “No, he’s never done anything so outright vicious,” I say. I take a deep breath. “It was Dalton.”
Zach shakes his head. “Such a hothead.”
Hadley sucks in a breath, her eyes going to Griffin. “Someone needs to talk some sense into him.”
Griffin shrugs. “Zach might have better luck. I need to get these stitches out. Okay, Grace?”
I’m creating a puddle on the floor. “Maybe I should change first.”
“Yeah,” Delia says. “Do you have more clothes? You can borrow something of mine.” She looks down at her leggings. “I’m on a strict diet of stretchy pants. You’re a little taller, but it should be okay.”
I nod and follow her up the stairs. I almost hope to run into Dalton, but he’s not in our room when I pass it. His wet clothes are, though. At least he came back.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Delia in Jackson’s room.
She digs through her luggage but straightens at my words.
“You don’t have to be,” she says. “Did anyone ever…?”
“Hit me? No.” I exhale. “Dad liked to intimidate Mom, though. I just remember she did a lot of cowering when we all lived under the same roof. Toward the end.”
“That had to be hard.”
“She didn’t even think to take me with her,” I confess. “That hurt the most. She knew what kind of man he was—”
“Maybe she thought he might track you both down if she took you.” Delia winces. “If you were left with him, he was probably satisfied with it.”
I shake my head, but it makes sense. “Yeah. I think her sister lives around here. I want to look her up before we go.”
“Grace!”
Our heads whip around as Griffin thunders up the stairs, stopping in the doorway.
“You need to see this.”
I take the leggings and shirt, quickly changing once Griffin retreats, then we go down the stairs. Griffin gestures for me to sit, his med kit spread out on the table next to Mason. I eye his computer, which is connected to Dalton’s phone.
“Why do you have his phone?” I ask.
“He left it on the table.” Delia rolls her eyes. “Ever need to steal—borrow—a phone? Go for Dalton’s. He’s oblivious.”
I crack a smile.
“This text came in,” Mason says, lifting the phone and handing it to me.
It’s from a contact named Luca. “I met him once,” I blurt out. “I think he was Dalton’s friend, but he worked for the Argentos, too.”
The Argentos are waging war on you and your friends. There’s a hit out for everyone. Dead or alive.
I swallow. “Is he telling the truth?”
“I looked into it,” Mason says. “And yeah, an alert went out.”
“What do we do?”
Griffin has begun to pull stitches from my arm without preamble. I look to Hadley, then around at the rest of them. “I know I just met you guys, but he put a hit out on all of you? Do we just… leave Miami? Leave Florida?”
“I don’t know, love,” Dalton says from the stairs.
I flinch.
He glares at me, pinning me in place. “You could just marry the man.”
“Dalton,” Hadley hisses.
He ignores her, stalking right up to me. He leans down, his hands on the arms of my chair, and gets in my space. “Think about it. You can be the big hero and save us all.”
I slap him.
“Enough,” I murmur. “You’re being—”
“Ridiculous? Just matching you, lo—”
I slap him again, and he grins.
“Don’t you fucking call me that—”
He stops my words with a wet, open-mouthed kiss. I bite him hard enough to draw blood, and he leans back. His tongue darts out and catches a bead of red, and his smile just widens. “I think I love you, Grace Jones.”
“I think I hit you too hard,” I say, looking away.
“You done, Griff? Me and Grace here need to have a chat. Privately.”
“You can’t just keep having sex.” Zach laughs. “You’re gonna have to deal with reality at some point. And the reality is, Marco wants all of us gone.”
I shrug, glancing around the room at my new friends. “He has an army… we just need a bigger one.”
Dalton smiles. “You’re brilliant.”
I watch him take a piece of paper, writing something down and tossing it on the table before he grabs my hands. “You. Me. Upstairs.”
He leads the way, closing the bedroom door. His cheeks are still red in the shape of my hands, and guilt spins in my chest.
“I deserved that,” he admits. “I just needed a little time to decipher why you might keep the ring.”
I raise my eyebrow. “And you figured it out?”
He exhales and sits on the bed, patting the spot next to him. I sit, but I bring my leg up and hug it, resting my chin on my knee.
“You wanted to keep it just in case we failed,” he says. “It hit me like I’d been struck with lightning. If you end up back in Marco’s clutches, what is he going to do? Something worse than a diamond.”
“He threatened to tattoo it on me,” I mumble.
Dalton winces. “See, the thing is… we’re not going to fail. Sure, we had a few stumbles. He was tracking us through that fucking ring, I’d bet money on it. He knew where we were going and how to cut us off.”
He picks up my hands, kissing my knuckles. “We’re ahead of him now. You said it—we need a bigger army.”
I shake my head. “Sorry, you’re still not quite making sense. Where are we going to get a bigger army?”
“Who would hate to see the Argentos—and especially Marco, if he hadn’t made it public that Javier kicked the bucket by way of bullet—take over Miami? Who is Marco going to turn his attention on squashing once you’re under his thumb and we’re no better than dust on the wind?”
A lightbulb turns on in my head. “The other families.”
He grins, tapping my nose.
“They’re never going to help us,” I say. “Not together, at least.”
“Temporary truces have been called for less,” he argues. “And luckily for us, we have a star negotiator on our side.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Not you.”
Dalton snorts. “Definitely not me. Jackson is pretty convincing…”
When he hesitates, I squint at him.
“Who?”
“Jackson,” he mutters. “That’s what I said.”
I shake my head, but I let it go. Now isn’t the time to pick a fight.
Someone knocks on the door, and Dalton calls for them to enter.
Zach pushes it open, grinning at us. “She didn’t kill you. Nice.”
Dalton rolls his eyes.
“We’re packing up,” he says. He shoots me a wink. “Preparing for war.”
My chest tightens. “Promise me no one is going to do anything dumb on my account.”
Dalton presses a kiss to my temple. “Can’t promise that, darlin’. It would be a lie.”
It’s a whirlwind after that. I join the girls downstairs, and we watch as the guys load up the cars. Mason is constantly on the phone, pacing in the driveway. Of all of them, he seems the most stressed out.
I point it out to Delia and Hadley, and they both share grim smiles.
Delia explains, “He’s juggling a lot. Besides dealing with this lot, his partner is up for a promotion at work. I think Spike is giving him a bit of anxiety.”
“Oh.” I lean back and cross my arms over my chest. “What does everyone else do?”
Hadley answers me this time. “Zach will probably be procuring weapons and whatever else. He’s one of the best smugglers and fencers in Chicago. Jackson might be coming up with strategy or learning from Dalton how best to approach the families. And Griffin…” Her fac
e goes all soft when she says his name. “He’ll be concentrating on what’s not important, because he can’t bear to think about the bad stuff.”
“Sounds productive,” I say.
Griffin comes over and sits next to Hadley. “You should go home,” he says to her. “You and Delia both.”
She rolls her eyes. “What if something bad happens to you while I’m a thousand miles away? No. Absolutely not.”
“We’d rather be strung up by our toes than leave,” Delia adds. She levels a look on Griffin that makes my palms start to sweat.
He doesn’t even bat an eye. “It’s going to be dangerous.”
“It’s always dangerous,” Hadley argues. “Sorry. No.”
He sighs, then glances at me. “I suppose you’re going to be trouble, too?”
I laugh. “Trouble? Is that what you call them?” I get up and walk over to Dalton, grabbing his hand. This type of affection still rattles me on the inside. I don’t let him know how nice it is to know I can touch him. When Dalton looks down at me, his conversation with Jackson breaking off, I say, “I’m going with you. You know that, right?”
Griffin groans from behind me.
“You aren’t.”
“I know the families, believe it or not. They’ll want proof—and what can you give them? They know you as a traitor who shot your own security crew on a job.”
Dalton wipes his palm across his face.
Jackson starts chuckling. “She has a point, D.”
“Damn,” Griffin mumbles. “Okay, she wins.”
“I want to be like her when I grow up,” Hadley says.
I turn around and shoot her the finger guns. The three of them laugh. Dalton grabs me from behind, bending backward slightly to lift my feet off the floor. He walks us out the door, to the porch swing, and sits. I tilt my head back, resting it on his shoulder, and look at him out of the corner of my eye.
“Feeling a bit possessive?” I ask.
He grunts.
“Feeling… like a caveman?” I raise my eyebrow.
A small smile creeps across his features.
I smile back. “Feel like talking? Or just sitting.”
“Hush,” he says, his lips at my ear. His tongue flickers out, and I can’t control the shiver that races through me. “If you go—”
“When I go.”
“You do as we say. If I say hide, you hide. If I say run, you run. Got it?”
I eye him, and for the first time, I can see the worry. It’s suffocating him.
I shift a bit, wrapping my arms around his neck, and kiss his cheek. “Everything will be okay. We’ll win them over.”
He shakes his head. “Let Jackson do the bargaining. Okay? They’re going to want something in exchange for their help, and it’s going to be a steep price. I’m just…”
“Whatever it is, we can pay it.”
His hold tightens on me. “Some things don’t have a price on them.” He closes his eyes. “I think you’ll learn that soon enough.”
We start the drive back to Dalton’s club, the Nest.
Things moved too quickly: the packing, the drive. As we left Pompano Beach, I remembered that we were going to track down my aunt. I put it in the back of my mind, hoping that as soon as this is over, we’ll have a chance to find her. And if we can find her, maybe she can lead me to my mother.
What seemed to take hours to travel yesterday only takes forty-five minutes today. To distract myself, I ask him about the name of his club.
He winks. “Caden wouldn’t let me call it the Sniper’s Nest. It was a compromise.”
Once we arrive, things happen in double-time. The guys grab everything and pile it into the elevator. I stand off to the side, looking at the empty bar. It won’t open for several more hours. The dance floor is eerie with regular lights shining on it. The DJ’s platform is dark.
I tip my head back and stare at the rows of half-glass walls. Private rooms, like the one where I met Dalton again, look over the dance floor. And above that…
Dalton’s apartment.
Gulp.
“Coming?”
I jump. Delia eyes me closely, one hand on her stomach. There’s a little bump there now, showing more in this outfit than any of the others.
“Sorry,” I say.
The elevator doors slide closed, and she glances at me. “You seem lost.”
We’re the only ones in this elevator. I frown at her words. Am I lost? “Maybe a little.”
“Once things settle down, the answers will get clearer.”
I rub my eyes. “I sure hope so.”
“I know so,” she says.
The elevator buzzes, and then the door slides open onto a beautiful apartment. I didn’t honestly expect Dalton to own something so… nice. And clean.
He comes over and takes both of my hands, pulling me out of the elevator. My feet had been frozen, but now I move, following his lead.
“Do you like it?” he asks in a low voice. “If you want to change anything—”
The idea of redecorating makes me dizzy. I clap my hand over his mouth, looking around and avoiding his gaze. We’ve stopped by a window that overlooks the street. Light streams in around us, illuminating his apartment. “It’s beautiful,” I say. “So don’t suggest that I should come in here and change…”
“Did I tell you that I was falling in love with you? Or was that a dream?” His words are muffled by my hand.
I drop it, staring at him. I clear my throat. I had brushed off his earlier words, because he… he was still angry. And love and anger don’t go well together. “You said it meanly.”
“I’m not saying it meanly now. I’m pretty sure I’m fucking in love you, Grace. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same. But every fiber of my being wants to touch you, wants to be with you. I want to listen to you talk or snore for hours—no, centuries.”
I shake my head, trying not to smile.
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same. Hell, I don’t even know if this is love—”
“You don’t know?”
He meets my eyes. “I know that this is the deepest, most painful, brightest feeling. I know it feels like I swallowed the sun.”
My eyes fill with tears.
“Oh, Grace,” he says, touching my cheek. “Don’t cry. I didn’t mean for this to be a bad thing, or an overwhelming thing, or—”
“We need to win. I can’t…” If I love him and we lose, I don’t know what I’ll do.
“Grace, we need to go.” Jackson says, clearing his throat. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about joining us…?”
I ignore the hopeful tone in his question and glance down at my clothes. Delia’s black leggings and another black blouse I had borrowed from Dalton’s mom. I go to my bags and rifle through them, finally finding the pair of jeans I need. I reach in the pocket and pull out the necklace I had taken.
The crosshairs glitter in the sunlight.
“You saved it?”
I glance up at Dalton and hand it to him. “You told me I could keep it.”
He motions for me to turn around, fastening the clasp at the base of my neck. The charm is light as a feather. I press it against my chest with my palm.
“We have to go,” Jackson prompts again.
I go over and stand next to him, rubbing my arms.
He barks orders: “Griffin and Mason, you’ll take one car. Dalton, Grace, and Zach will be with me. This is a show of force as much as we’re trying to get a truce, okay, people? Griffin and Mason will bail us out if we hit trouble.”
Zach bounces on his heels, a wide grin splitting his face. He’s strapped to the teeth with weapons: grenades and flash bombs, a semi-automatic long-gun slung on his back, and two handguns at his hips. The rest aren’t as decked out, but they’re still formidable.
I feel vastly unprepared, until Delia comes up and hands me a dagger, hilt-first.
“You look like you’d be scrappy,” she says. She loops a belt around my waist, above
my jeans, and then tugs my pants up over it. She slides the knife into its sheath at my hip. “Careful sitting,” she warns.
“Thank you.”
We pile out, back into the two SUVs. It’s odd to be back in Miami. The city has a new, dangerous feel to it. Like anyone on the street might realize there’s a bounty over our heads. Anyone could shoot us and get the payout.
First stop: St. Ives.
Dalton directs us to a church across town. When we pull into the driveway, one man smoking a cigarette outside tosses it to the ground, vanishing inside.
“We’ve been spotted,” Dalton says.
Mason and Griffin are around the corner. Dalton should be with them, but he already warned that the stained-glass windows make it impossible to get a good angle. Once we go in, we’re on our own until we call for their aid.
And even then, it might not be enough.
Jackson kills the engine, then turns to us. “I go in first.” He taps his earpiece, which we all tested at Dalton’s apartment. “I’ll signal you when to come in. Show of force around Grace, yeah?”
Zach and Dalton both nod, and my pulse races.
He climbs out of the car and pulls open the door, disappearing inside. He’s the picture of calm. They all are.
Me? I’m about ready to jump out of my skin.
“Looking for Parish St. Ives,” Jackson says, his voice coming through our earpieces.
“Who are you?”
“I’ve got a business opportunity for him. Something he won’t want to pass up.”
“You can tell it to me, and I’ll take it to the boss.”
Jackson laughs. “And take the credit for it? No. I also have a message for his ears only.”
“I suppose you’re not going to talk of the nature of the message.”
“Just that if he does nothing, the St. Ives family will be run out of Florida.”
There’s silence, and I glance from Zach to Dalton. Dalton’s hand is on his gun, finger poised to unsnap the piece of leather keeping it in place. Zach is equally tense.
Did I think they looked calm?
“Who’re you, calling on me without warning?” a new voice asks.
Dalton nods, mouthing, Parish. The leader.
“A friend,” Jackson says.
He grunts. “All right then, friend. Let’s leave those weapons where they are and sit. You can tell me whatever it is you came to say.”