“As enticing as that sounds…”
I close the distance between us, prowling until I reach her. Bracing an arm against the bark above her head, I encircle her throat with my fingers. Her pulse jumps and her lips part, a pink tinge coloring her cheeks.
“Either you learn to protect yourself or I make you a permanent fixture in my penthouse. I promised you a pretty cage once, didn’t I?” My mouth crashes over hers and she curls her fingers in my jacket. I speak against her lips. “If you’re going to stab me when I piss you off, you might as well learn how to do it with lethal accuracy.”
The sound of Rowan’s laugh unfurls an unfamiliar feeling in my chest. Her gorgeous eyes gleam with feistiness. She’s beautiful like this, so full of life. I brush my thumb underneath her jaw and steal one more kiss.
Admittedly, it turned me on when she threatened to stab me. My stubborn girl. Her fire is the thing I’m drawn to most. I thought it was a passing infatuation, but I’ve only grown to like her more, evident in every rule I’ve broken to bring her in closer instead of keeping her away. That bold courage is how I know she can hold her own and belongs in my world at my side.
In the distance I hear the muted echo of car doors slamming closed. Everyone else has arrived.
We reach the shooting range first. It’s a fully functioning private facility that covers a wide array of practice options, and includes a lounge and kitchen. Rowan takes in the large facility with wide eyes as I show her the outdoor areas before taking her inside to the weapon storage room.
“This is legit.” She squints at me, poking my chest. “What do you need an arsenal like this for?”
“Always be prepared for anything.” I size her up and take a Glock from the wall. “This should do.”
I walk her through the basic parts of the gun and make her repeat them back to me three times before I deem her ready to learn to use it.
Once she’s equipped, we return to the outdoor range and find the guys and Maisy waiting there for us. It makes me pause for a moment when I realize it’s only ever been the guys out here. Fox and Penn have come here, but not Penn’s girl Serena. Maisy and Rowan are the outsiders we’ve let in.
Things are shifting around. Not only in me, but for all of us, change as present in the air as the leaves turning orange.
“Ready to add another level of sexy to your hotness factor?” Colt teases. “I’m sure the big guy hasn’t told you, but his favorite movie franchise is Lara Croft, which, yeah.” He rakes his teeth over his lip. “I’m about that, too.”
Jude snickers and elbows Colt. Rolling my eyes, I lead the way.
“Is that for knife throwing?” Rowan points to the area Levi spends most of his time.
“Yeah. I’ll show it to you later.” Levi flicks his tongue against his lip ring, casting a longing look at his favorite spot to train. “First, you learn to use that.”
“You guys expect us to learn everything in one day?” Maisy scrunches her nose. “I’m really more about peace and love.”
Fox tucks her against his side. “Knowing how to defend yourself makes a difference. You only have to use the skills to stay safe.”
“I know,” she murmurs.
The two of them share a private moment when her features become closed off. Colt mentioned before that she was targeted as collateral by the same bratva syndicate we’re up against now.
We reach the clearing for the range. Jude and Colton grow serious. Levi’s focus is always laser sharp when he’s here, and Fox never fails to follow in his mentor’s footsteps. They each spread out and take a position for target practice. Rowan remains with me.
She watches Levi’s precision as he hits an entire magazine of headshot bullseyes in a row. “Damn, are you all secretly marksmen?”
“We’ve trained in a lot of areas. Mostly fighting. Lev’s the one who’s essentially an unregistered lethal weapon.” Checking the clip, I load her gun and hand it back to her. “Your turn. Unload it, then reload it and aim like I showed you.”
Her tongue sticks out from the corner of her mouth and her face pinches in concentration as she finds the release, examines the clip for the magazine of bullets, and clicks it back into the gun. Taking position, she aims.
“Good. Lower your shoulders.”
I walk her through the next steps. Nodding along, she fires at the target. It’s not perfect, but she hit it. Not bad for her first try when she’s never shot anything before. I offer a correction and let her try again, allowing her to figure most things out for herself. It’s important for her to get used to it so her body builds the instinct and muscle memory.
“This isn’t as weird as I thought.”
“Shooting at the blank outline of a person is easy. The harder part is looking them in the eye and pulling the trigger. You have to be able to do it though. It could mean your life or theirs.”
A lie for her benefit. I lost the empathetic part of my humanity long ago. Maybe I didn’t have it to begin with. I have no trouble pulling the trigger on someone I decide to shoot. I’m not haunted by the lives I take. They deserved what they got.
Watching her learn, I’m struck by the urge to kill the guy who stalked her all over again. I took my time, painting the room we use for interrogation at the Nest red, but it wasn’t enough. I should’ve brought her his bloody heart. For her, I’d readily kill anyone who tried to harm her.
“You’ve been quiet for a few minutes.” Rowan angles her head to peek at me. “Watching my ass and thinking of Lara Croft fantasies?”
My lips twitch. “You do look good with a weapon in your hands.”
“I thought I’d hate it, but I kind of feel like a badass bitch.” She aims carefully and squeezes the trigger. She emits a delighted yelp when her bullet hits inside the target outline for a chest shot. “I finally hit it right!”
“Well done.” A warm ember expands in my chest.
As much as I love control, this is better. It fills my head with dangerous thoughts of a future I never thought to wish for, but with her…I want it.
Levi comes over when he runs out of ammo, generally bored by guns. He stands as a sentry, arms crossed, assessing everything around him. After several minutes, he speaks in low tones.
“You seem better since meeting her.”
I cast a sidelong glance in his direction. He isn’t the emotional type to use his words—none of us are, really—but for those he considers family, he takes notice. He doesn’t elaborate, but I know he means the worry he harbored for me in the last few months. I’m still a brutal, cruel monster, but with Rowan around I’m less empty, latching on to a new sense of purpose.
“Come on,” Levi says to her while he signals Fox and Maisy. “I’ll show you a move to disarm anyone who comes at you close range with a gun.”
It speaks volumes that he takes an interest in training her the same as he’s trained the rest of us. Colton and Jude finish up, goading each other and exchanging money for the bet they challenge each other with on who can hit the best shots.
“Come on, you might have beat me on accuracy this time, but you have to admit how masterful that last shot was,” Colt argues. “I gave him a smiley face in his chest cavity.”
“Creative, but it doesn’t beat hitting the kill zones. You play with your food too much.” Jude’s grin is wide. “Let’s go again. I’ll win your money all day.”
I follow Levi, Fox, and the girls to another open field. Fox volunteers to help Levi show them the basic movements, pulling the gun on Levi several times. Each demonstration ends with Levi’s fast reflexes disarming him by grabbing his wrist and turning the gun around on Fox by the barrel. Maisy whistles, impressed.
“This depends on a few factors.” Levi nods to Fox to go again while he explains. “Timing, positioning, and how recently the gun was shot. The barrel might be hot. Come try.”
He has Fox come at Rowan and stands behind her, talking her through the steps he showed them. She tries a few times, then Maisy takes a turn. Colt and J
ude eventually make their way over to watch the lesson. Jude chuckles and Colt claps when Rowan gets it right. A burst of pride fills me.
“The girl is ready for a special fight night.” Colton snaps his fingers. “Maybe I can program a premium livestream. It’ll be dope.”
“I heard that,” Rowan calls.
Colt sticks his pierced tongue out.
“The privilege of that fight is reserved for me and me alone,” I rumble.
Jude smirks and shakes his head. “Gotta say, I’m enjoying this side of you.” I arch a brow and he scratches the tip of his nose. “Usually it’s the eager chicks at the Nest. Someone you can use and throw away. But this girl makes you different. You treat her like one of us.”
A flash of somberness crosses his face. It’s the look he gets when he’s thinking about the past, before Pippa screwed him over and turned her back on him. When he was in love with her and she was his world.
I mull his words over. It’s impossible to hide how I am around her in front of the guys who know me best, who understand how my mind works.
The girls huddle together during a break, whispering. My attention shifts between their plotting and Levi, waiting for what they’re planning. He calls them to come at him together and my head jerks with a snort. They tag team him, but underestimated just how much of his life he’s spent honing his body to fight. It’s an unfair match for two inexperienced people to take him on.
Maisy jumps on his back and Rowan goes for his legs while he has one of her arms incapacitated. Satisfaction fills me when my clever girl unbalances him by breaking the foundation of his stance. It’s not easy to best him. The three of them topple to the ground in a heap, the girls cracking up and high fiving.
Fox huffs, smile soft.
“Nice.” Their laughter cuts off abruptly, exchanged with yelps when Levi pulls a counter maneuver that ends up with both girls tied up by their own hoodie sleeves.
“Dude! Not cool.” Maisy squirms, but even her flexibility from yoga doesn’t help her out.
Rowan bumps their shoulders together. “We’ll get him back later.” She shoots him a cunning look. “I know his weakness.”
“I have no weaknesses.” He gets to his feet, dusting his hands as he continues his lecture. “Next time don’t make your attacks so obvious. We’ll work on projection and masking your intent another time. Back to work.“
Once Levi’s satisfied they have it down, he waves me over and hands me the unloaded gun. Rowan shakes out her hands and locks eyes with me. The corner of my mouth lifts.
“Come at me, big guy. I’m ready.”
“That’s what you think, kitten.”
I circle her, keeping her guessing when I’ll make my move. She bares her teeth playfully and swipes at me. When I think she’s dropped her guard, I move.
She played me. Her fingers latch around my wrist and the gun swings to point at me. Triumphant, she bounces on her toes. With a ferocious sound, I pull another trick to overpower her, kicking out her balance. We go down in a tangle of limbs, rolling until I land on top of her.
“Well that’s just cheating the exercise. Let me even the score if you’re going to play dirty.” Rowan locks her legs around my waist and grinds against me.
“Fuck,” I grit out. “Brat. I’ll punish you for that later.”
She wraps her arms around my neck to whisper against my jaw. “I’ll probably like it.”
Somewhere behind us, my brothers heckle us. One of them wolf-whistles.
It would be too damn easy to haul her ass over my shoulder and hike down the hill to my place, lay her out and devour her body. The desire to let her all the way inside my walls flares in me as I meet her dancing gaze.
My heart gives an odd little clench. It aches in my chest.
Would allowing her to know me fully be a mistake that puts me at a disadvantage? Countless broken rules or not, I’m still unsure if it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Twenty-Five
Wren
Carpe regnum.
The parting words my father said the night of the gala still linger. It’s been just over a week. This is the kind of instinctive suspicion I won’t leave alone. If there’s a stone to overturn for information we can use, we’ll grind every rock to dust.
Beneath the Crow’s Nest, I pace the main room while we work with what we’ve been gathering. Using what we know about people’s secrets, we’ve applied pressure to discover how many of the city’s businesses had stakes in SynCom, Stalenko Corp’s shell company. Most shares were sold in the last year, so this has been going on under our noses.
We know from Rowan’s solo expedition to the docks that the Stalenko underlings aren’t all happy they need to rely on the investors. Levi and I questioned the guy who killed our informant and stalked Rowan, but we didn’t get anything useful out of him. Not that I gave him long to answer before the rage won out.
My gaze flickers to the laughter coming from the open door of the gym more than once. Maisy and Rowan are doing yoga. Since the shooting range yesterday, the knot of tension Rowan carried with her from the moment we met has eased slightly.
The broken pair of glasses that I’ve hidden from her will bring that tense worry back and I’m reluctant to do that. I’ve kept her brother’s glasses to protect her from the pain of reality and loss that awaits her.
I refocus on the speed of Colton’s fingers moving over his keyboard. “What did cell phone mining get us? Anything new we can use?”
“My loyal subjects are still working on hacking financial reports to dig up concrete proof, but Harrington’s camera roll is filled with a juicy affair, Ludman is embezzling, and Roucher has a secret second family. Scandalous.” Colt uses his tongue to toy with the stick of the lollipop he’s playing with instead of finishing and waggles his brows. “No direct mentions of carpe regnum, but the message logs did have some weird conversations. I’ve been separating those ones out while sifting through the data in the last week. Look.”
Jude and I step closer to the screen while Levi remains leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Each message is cryptic to hide the real meaning, but two in particular catch my eye.
It’s top priority to take care of the rat infestation. The key to our success is at stake.
Our rodent problem has been responding well to Mr. King’s wisdom. Testing bait to see if anything in the historic castle brings more friends out to be dealt with.
Jude ruffles his dark hair. “Rat infestation. Hannigan?”
“An investigative journalist stumbling into something they don’t want found out? Yeah,” I say. “Stalenko Corp’s mafia ties are only rumored, but if it became public who was funding their operation here, the investors’ status or business holdings could fall apart. They might be using Stalenko as their criminal lap dogs for a cut, but when it comes down to it, they’ll protect themselves first. If it were us and he had information on what we do, we’d hold him, find out what he knew, destroy his evidence, and make sure he didn’t talk, too.”
“These dates don’t bode well,” Levi says.
He’s right. These messages date back over a month. According to Rowan, her brother has been missing for three months by now. The last message is from the night before the founders gala.
“Any way to trace the locations of the sender?” I prompt.
“Some originated downtown, but I ran the numbers and they’re using burner phones.” Colt glares at his screen, clacking his tongue ring against the lollipop. “No mention of rats since the last text, though.”
The chance Ethan is alive is slim.
I set my jaw and deal with the information in front of me. “They baited to see if anyone else is a threat. The royal mentions could mean locations, but where?”
“I have some possible ideas, but I don’t know.” Colt brings up a map of the city with several areas highlighted. “A couple of parks, a building on Old King’s Road downtown, a church. There’s a building on campus that sort of looks like a castl
e.”
Scanning the map, my frown deepens. No pattern emerges. What are we missing that has allowed all of this to unfold beneath our radar?
It draws mine and Fox’s attention like a beacon when the girls come out of the gym with towels draped around their necks. They halt at the other side of the couches.
“Well, there goes my zen.” Maisy sidles over to Fox, slipping her hand in his back pocket. “The mood is pretty heavy in here, boys. What have I said about holding in the negative energy?”
“Did you find something new?” Before I’m able to stop or shield Rowan, she’s at Colt’s side, scanning his screen.
“We think these are coded, but they could mean places your brother was kept,” I explain gruffly.
She clenches the towel in her grip. “Where? Let’s go right now and find him.”
“We don’t know,” Jude says. “These are some of the most well-respected people in the city. Tracking them to their meetings hasn’t gotten us anywhere we didn’t already know about and rule out.”
Eyeing the dates on the messages, her shoulders slump. It twists my gut to see her defeated. I move to stand behind her, pulling her into my body. At this point, it would be better if we never found Ethan. Seeing his dead body might break her and if I can keep that from happening, I will.
“Wait.” Rowan points to the upper screen. “Make that one bigger.”
Colton clicks on it and it fills another monitor. He studies her with his brows drawn down. “What do you see?”
“A piece of the puzzle I haven’t given you yet.” Handing over her phone, she shows him the recording she played for me almost a week ago on the day I moved her out of the apartment. Distractions piled up in the days following, leaving me so preoccupied by protecting her that I’d almost forgotten about this. “Isla and I found this on Monday when we spotted this guy on campus again right after you left. What if this is what they’re referring to?”
Crowned Crows of Thorne Point: A Dark New Adult Romantic Suspense Page 21