by Nicole Banks
Ivy grabbed her cell—her only link to her sister—and handed it to Bruno. He quickly stuffed it in his pocket and handed her an entirely different phone, one that had no connection to her sister, and she wanted to fling it across the room.
“It’s an extra incentive for you to get the job done—no distractions.”
Ivy stopped herself from rolling her eyes. This was more about control than getting her to get the job done. Whatever the case, the quicker she handed Bruno what he wanted, the faster she and Eve could leave with the falsely bright lights of this city in the rearview.
Don’t think freedom is at the end of this, especially when the man who possesses your body without touching it finds out you betrayed him.
That little voice in her head spoke up, reminding her that she was trading one set of chains for another. While she’d be free from Bruno, she knew Otto and Smoke were going to hunt her down seeking their revenge. Her form of freedom would forever be on the run.
Smoke pulled up to Tres Bellas just in time to see Gia walking toward the door. She heard his bike and only spared him a glance over her shoulder before resuming opening up the shutters and unlocking the door.
He stepped off his bike, exhaustion making his body ache. He hadn’t slept in what seemed like forever. He caught a few cat naps here and there, but he’d been up a full twenty-four hours with no end in sight. He had to leave soon for a gun run in DC and there were no stops on that trip. They were going and coming right back. Sofia needed them as a means to back up, and Carter never had a problem helping Sofia. If he did, Smoke always had a reason in his back pocket why it was a good idea to help Sofia and her crew.
Smoke was going to be gone a day—maybe a day and a half at most—if everything went straight. He could have called Gia to let her know, but he wanted to see her with his own eyes before he hit the open road.
He had stopped by her house first. They always came to Tres together when she had to open. He would pick her up on his bike, and they would ride over with her small hands clutching onto his waist for dear life while she giggled in his ear anytime he went way past the speed limit. It was such an odd sensation feeling her joy vibrate through him anytime they rode together. It was something he was becoming accustomed to though, and something he looked forward to. It was why it put him in a sour mood when he knocked on her door and she wasn’t there.
It was juvenile for him to expect her to always be there waiting for him. They hadn’t verbally agreed to anything, and she knew that while Sofia wanted the Unhinged Brothers to stay in New York, they still had their own club business to attend to, and Smoke wouldn’t always be readily available to her. He had no idea why he was silently fuming about Gia dissing him, but he wasn’t going to sulk all night by his bike trying to figure it out.
Smoke stalked toward her just as she swung the door open to Tres. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” The words were out of his mouth before he could swallow them, and he wanted to punch himself in the face for how he sounded. He sounded like a whiny child who’d been left out of some fun activity and he hated it.
Gia didn’t spare him a glance. She just walked into the club, turning on the lights as she went. “I wasn’t aware I was supposed to.”
Her voice fell flat to his ears. She sounded like he was annoying her, and Sofia’s words from this morning ricocheted in his skull—Gia isn’t going to give you the time of day if you keep fucking anything on legs in front of her. It gave him pause, just like it did when she first said it to him. It was one of the reasons he ended up dropping off whatever her name was without fucking her.
The words Sofia spoke to him made him think about his growing attraction toward Gia. He wanted to fuck her, of course. She was gorgeous, but he didn’t want to “one and done her” like he’s done in the past. She wasn’t like the women who hung around the club begging to suck his dick. She was cool as hell and probably one of the only women aside from Sofia he’d go to war for.
Gia’s high-pitched scream broke into his thoughts and had his feet moving at a jogging pace. He pulled out his gun and stopped short when he saw the woman he took home the night before badly beaten and tied to one of the stripper poles.
What the fuck?
Smoke tapped Gia on her shoulder, and she yelped before turning around with a gun in his face. “You carry a gun and know how to shoot it?” Smoke asked in disbelief. Out of everyone in the Council, Gia was the one who looked the most misplaced. She looked like the nun on a bus filled with criminals off to a fucking convent.
Gia’s eyes narrowed. “You and my damn brother. Yes, I know how to shoot it, but that shouldn’t be what you’re worried about right now.” She turned to walk toward the stage when Smoke grabbed her, pulling her back into her body.
“Wait. I don’t know if we’re alone.” He leaned down, his lips at her ear. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. He strained to listen in the quiet of the club, but only silence greeted him. He wasn’t convinced they were alone and instinctively wanted to haul Gia out of the club and out of harm’s way.
Smoke’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he let go of Gia to answer it. “Talk to me, Carter.” He kept his voice low.
“Where are you?” Carter barked into the phone.
“Tres. Why?” An uneasy feeling crept up his spine as he heard footsteps come from behind him. He didn’t hear anything Carter was saying to him. He turned around and pushed Gia behind him, throwing his phone at her while he aimed his gun at the door, ready to shoot whoever was walking in here.
Smoke held his breath and kept his finger on the trigger. A pair of black boots stepped into the main room, and Smoke relaxed when he saw it was Otto. He contemplated pulling the trigger anyway, as a warning shot, because he knew it would rile Otto up. Smoke felt Gia’s hand on his shoulder as she peeked around him. As soon as she saw her brother, she stepped fully around Smoke, but kept her hand on his arm. Smoke looked down at her petite hand and swallowed, trying not to read too much into the small gesture.
“We have a problem.” Both Gia and Otto said at the same time.
“Dom called. Nico found one of his female workers beaten and…” Otto’s voice trailed off as his gaze shot to the stage. “She’s alive?” he questioned.
Smoke shrugged. “Haven’t checked the body yet.” He turned his attention to Gia. “Did Carter say anything when I handed you the phone?” Smoke had been too preoccupied with keeping Gia safe to hear what his pres was telling him.
“They found a body at Wolf’s.” She leaned in closer to Smoke like she was seeking out his strength to keep her steady. “It was a female employee...beaten to death.”
Otto and Smoke both cursed, knowing this was the start to the war Sofia said was coming. It was an interesting tactic that left Smoke with a few questions.
“Were the bodies found inside Wolf’s and Nico’s spot?”
“No, Dom said the body was…” Otto’s words died on his tongue as he put the pieces to the puzzle Smoke just connected, together. There was a wolf in sheep’s clothing at Tres.
A loud gasp brought their attention to the front of the club. “Oh my god. Is she…?” Ivy stood closer to the door with her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes bounced between the body on stage and Otto.
From Smoke’s stance, she didn’t appear as shocked as she sounded. It was almost like she was unfazed by death, and it made Smoke’s earlier assessment of her a little more accurate.
Smoke pressed his lips together, making a mental note to have his guy run the background check on all the employees again, especially Ivy. Something wasn’t right with her, and he was convinced more than ever, especially with her reaction to the body in Tres, that she was hiding something. He wanted to figure out what it was before Otto really started fucking with her and brought her into the Council like a Trojan horse and then they were all fucked.
IVY SAT DOWN ON ONE of the bar stools. Her entire body shook, and she was hit with a sudden exhaustion. It wasn’t so much that the dead body�
��Smoke had confirmed the woman was dead—that had shaken her.
She had become numb to it over the years with the number of women who had been raped and sodomized to the point that their bodies had no choice but to give out. She couldn’t even remember when it happened either. One day she shed tears for women she barely knew, and the next she just shrugged it off, thinking they were the lucky ones—they were finally free.
Otto’s hands squeezed her arms, and she felt his warmth through the fabric of her sweatshirt. He’d been talking to her, but she didn’t hear any of it. Her gazed bounced between the woman’s body and Smoke who hadn’t taken his eyes off of her since she walked in. She could see it in his gaze; he didn’t trust her. He probably thought she had something to do with this, and he wouldn’t be wrong.
Directly or indirectly, Ivy was responsible for the death that surrounded her. The bodies that fell here—because she knew this wouldn’t be the last of it—were because she was nothing more than a puppet on strings put in place to get a desired result.
“Hey, you okay?” Otto asked for the third time. Her gaze seemed to be latched onto Desiree’s lifeless form on the stage.
It wasn’t lost on him that it was the same woman Smoke took home last night, and his thoughts quickly went to a different scenario walking into Tres tonight—that could have been Ivy’s body they found instead. It hit him with a weird sense of urgency that he was going to lose her before he could come to terms with wanting her. What he was feeling for her hit him hard and fast. He wanted this to be nothing more than a case of insane lust, and if he was hopeful, maybe that’s all it would be, but looking into her eyes, he felt a pull in his chest that told him this had the potential for something else.
Otto tried to jar her from whatever trance she was in. “Hey, you don’t have to stay here” He wondered if this was the first time she had ever been this close to a dead body. “Ivy,” he tried again with a tight squeeze of her shoulder.
She jumped and focused on him. “I’m sorry, what was that?” she murmured.
“I can take you home, you don’t need to be here.”
“Are you closing the club?”
Otto shook his head. It was too late. The rest of the workers were going to start trickling in soon, and Sofia told them not to report the bodies to the police if they could help it. She didn’t want any law enforcement breathing down their necks and shutting the establishments down, knowing they were going to drag their feet on an investigation.
“What—what are you going to do with her?” She nodded her head toward Smoke who had wrapped Desiree in a plastic tarp Gia had gotten for him and scooped her up like she was nothing more than trash he had to take out. He climbed off the stage and headed toward the back exit.
Otto had no clue what he was going to do with her, but he wasn’t too keen on Gia being the Bonnie to his Clyde in this. She had gotten her hands dirty enough times. He didn’t want her to keep adding to it; shit like that wears on the soul.
“Don’t worry about that. Do you want me to take you home? You don’t have to work tonight.”
She hopped off the bar stool and shook her head. “It’s fine. I can work.” She walked past him, her eyes glued to the stage. “Um,” she started nervously. “You guys are going to clean the stage before we start right?” Otto nodded. “Okay, good. I can work.”
Otto watched her head toward the locker rooms, and he quickly called a cleaning service to get into Tres as soon as possible. He wanted all traces of the blood and the death that lingered in the air gone.
As soon as Otto hung up, Smoke came back into Tres with Gia on his heels. “How is she?” Gia asked. He looked his sister over, noticing how stoic and unfazed by this she seemed. He remembered a time when she was affected by everything she witnessed, especially at Tres. It was almost as if with Sofia taking over, she learned how to be hardened by this life, and Otto wasn’t sure if he was okay with that or not.
“She’s a bit shaken up. Seeing a dead body up close could do that to a person. I got the cleaners coming. What did Sofia tell you to do with the body?” Otto knew Desiree was one of the few in here who didn’t have family—at least, none she was willing to talk to. As far as Otto knew, they considered her dead already, and as callous as it sounded, no one was going to miss her, so there was no need to notify anybody.
Smoke waved his hand. “Don’t worry about that. We need to see your security cameras. I dropped shorty off at her apartment after you left with Ivy.” He grabbed the back of his neck, and his gaze shot to Gia before he continued. “I watched her walk inside her apartment, and she wasn’t scheduled to work today, so it wasn’t like she was coming in early.”
Desiree’s was the only body that had been found inside the establishments owned by Sofia. The dead bodies at Wolf’s and Smoke and Mirrors had been dumped out front for anyone to see. As far as security footage showed at those places, the most they’d come up with was a car model and the size of whoever dumped the bodies. At Tres someone had to have been let in, and Desiree didn’t have the security codes; only a handful of the employees had them and a copy of the key. Whoever broke in would have to have broken a lock or a window or known the codes to the doors to get in.
Otto nodded toward the office above them. “Upstairs in the office. Though, I have a pretty good idea who was behind this.” He at least thought he knew who made the call to kill the women. This wasn’t so much Bruno’s M.O., but from what Otto had pieced together about Boris, this seemed more up his alley. Otto knew more bodies were going to drop before this was all over.
He also came to the startling realization that someone in Tres was still working for Bruno. It was the only way anyone could have gotten in without tripping any of the alarms.
Ivy came out from the locker rooms just then wearing incredibly short shorts and a skin tight T-shirt. Otto’s body hardened in an instant, and he took his time drinking her in. It was going to be difficult getting any work done tonight and keeping focus on anything that didn’t involve watching her take the stage.
“Be careful with that one.” The words were a whisper and he looked at Smoke, wondering if they had come from him, but Smoke was engrossed in a conversation with Gia.
He heard the words again, this time he was sure it was only in his mind, as she looked up at him with a tentative smile on her lips.
Her poison is slow-working but just as effective.
By the time you realize what’s happening, it’ll be too late.
The taunt came out of nowhere, but it left a sour taste in his mouth as dread filled the pit of his stomach.
“My poison Ivy,” he whispered to himself, wondering if he was about to find out how accurate that name really was for her.
Sofia paced the confines of her father’s office—her office now. She hadn’t spent too much time here aside from inducting the Council. The memories of the life before she had to flee to Columbia seemed ever-present in this space, and every so often she’d get hit with the faint smell of her father lingering in the air. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes. It was why she stayed out of this office space. She couldn’t be worried about past emotions being dredged up when she needed to focus on the war she was diving head first into.
She stopped her pacing and leaned her hands on the oak desk. It seemed like she had been fighting since her mom took her out of the comfort of her home here and brought her to Columbia. She was exhausted, and with the Council, her hope had been to bring peace to the boroughs so she could rest. She knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight, but she foolishly hadn’t anticipated the size of the war that was coming.
There was a knock on the door, and she didn’t have to turn around to see who it was. As soon as he stepped into the room, her body went lax, recognizing the peace Dom seemed to bring her. She heard his light footsteps against her hardwood floor before she felt the gentle touch of his fingertips on her bare arms. His lips pressed against her shoulder and then her neck, “My sweet Saffi,” he murmured in between kis
ses.
Sofia turned around. She wrapped her hands around Dom’s waist and buried her face in his chest. She took the comfort he offered her, letting it wash off some of the grimness she felt was trapped on her skin. Dom was both her saving grace and her Achille’s heel. He thawed out the parts of her living this life had frozen but being with him again also made her susceptible to her emotions.
It was hard to go to war with a conscience, but if anything were to happen to the man she was holding on to, she’d burn the city down and everyone in it without remorse.
“Wolf and Nico called. They got rid of the bodies already. We don’t think anyone saw them, so we’re good on the cop end.” Dom’s deep voice rumbled throughout the room, and she felt the vibration against her cheek.
She leaned her head back. “What about over at Tres?” She pulled out of his hold, but he grabbed her hand and interlaced their fingers together.
“Smoke’s taking care of the body. Nico says he’s ready to move in on Boris’s territory with his crew. You just gotta say when.”
Sofia pressed her lips together. She initially wanted them in Boris’s territory last night, knowing he was going to hit her hard. She hadn’t realized how hard he’d hit first though, and she had to be strategic on how she handled the next phases of this. “The Unhinged Brothers are leaving soon, right?” Dom nodded. That left her numbers for extra bodies lower than she would have liked. She wanted to keep as many people as she could as protected as possible.
“All right, tell Nico and his team to head into Brooklyn but to keep their eyes open. Assess the situation, and when the Unhinged Brothers come back, we’ll make a move. Also make sure Nico and Bebo know to keep Natalya as safe as possible. With all this shit, Otto is going to want to ship her and Gia off the planet.”
Dom nodded. “I’ll let them know. Um, two more things. Ethan wants a meeting with you, and that body at Tres was found inside the club.”
Sofia dropped her hand, pulling herself out of Dom’s hold. Ethan wanting a meeting didn’t surprise her. Either he was going to tell her to fuck off and stay out of the Bronx or he was going to want to lend a helping hand for a high price.