Reaper

by Lena North

“Do I wave? Poke you? Knock three times in the table? Or –”

  Wilder chuckled and wiggled her brows at me, which I thought was strange. Olly leaned back, and his face was blank, but I could see humor in his eyes. Hawker looked partially annoyed, but I got a feeling he wanted to laugh too.

  “Raise a finger, then bend it three times,” he said.

  My mouth fell open at the odd signal he wanted me to make, but then I caught the look in his eyes. He was totally laughing at me.

  “I just wanted to know,” I said haughtily, raised my middle finger and bent it as requested. “Got it.”

  “Cute,” Hawker snorted and fiddled with his phone. “Okay. Here we go.”

  He put the call on loudspeaker and seemed to lose himself in thoughts while we waited for whoever we waited for. I wished Hawk had shared some more details and allowed me to share a few things too.

  “Johns,” someone said, and my brows went up when I recognized both the voice and the accent.

  It was the man we had met in the cave.

  “Trevisian,” Hawker replied, and I sucked in air when I heard the man's last name. “I'm with my second. My daughter, Sniper, Reaper and his girl are in the room, and you are on loudspeaker. Out of courtesy, I’ll share that Annie speaks your language fluently.”

  There was a brief silence, and I tried to collect myself and adjust to the unexpected change of circumstances. Then Roman murmured some names of people I had no clue who they were. Hawker seemed to know, and his face hardened.

  “Reaper?” the man said.

  “Roman,” Olly replied calmly.

  “Word is out. Your girl is untouchable.”

  Olly didn’t respond which I thought was rude.

  “Dankon,” I said, giving them my thanks in their language.

  “Nedankinde,” Roman murmured in a softer voice, which immediately turned business-like again. “We’ve cut all ties to the man you’re hunting. It was good business, but we don't do business with people like him.” He paused and said tersely. “He watched my daughters when they were in our swimming pool. They didn't like that.” There was another pause, and then he said, “And I didn’t like hearing that.”

  I guessed Cam was persona non-grata in drug-lord circles these days, and a highly inappropriate giggle escaped before I could stop it. The ensuing silence was deafening.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  Another silence ensued.

  “Well, I am,” I said. “It sounded like you plan to kill him, which made me happy and I giggled. So, sue me.”

  Hawker's brows went up high on his forehead, and Wilder slapped a hand over her mouth. I realized that I was acting well beyond what could be labeled quirky, and put a hand over my own mouth to keep it from blurting anything else out.

  “Right,” Hawker said. “Let’s discuss your presence in our country.”

  The mood on the call turned ice cold, and the two men started arguing. Hawker was apparently in favor of a solution where they stayed away completely, and Roman tried to find a way to negotiate a truce where they were allowed partial presence in our country. When they got absolutely nowhere in the discussion, I raised both my index fingers and wiggled them frantically.

  “A moment,” Hawker barked into the phone and turned to me. “What?”

  “Can I say something?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Get off the loudspeaker, Roman,” I said, ignoring Hawkers rejection of my request.

  Hawker turned slowly, and I thought he'd get up to throw me out of the kitchen.

  “What?” Roman barked out, clearly exactly as unhappy as Hawker looked, but the sound had changed, so I assumed he had turned the speaker off.

  “Banco de Paridio,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don't know,” I said breezily and held Hawker's gaze. “If I were a pilfering drug king-pin I'd hide my tracks better than what you've done.” There was a long silence, and I added, “Although if you weren’t such a nuisance, the information would mean nothing to us, of course. We could easily pretend we don’t know about the accounts at all.”

  “You’re blackmailing me?” he asked.

  “No, no,” I protested innocently. “I’m just sharing a few options.”

  He was silent for so long I started to wonder if he’d closed the call and was leaning toward the phone when he suddenly asked hoarsely, “Who are you?”

  “I’m untouchable,” I reminded him, but added more sternly, “I’m also Morgana Morgan’s daughter.”

  “Mor –”

  “Morgana Trevisian Morgan,” I clarified. “Pietro Trevisian’s daughter. Which makes us cousins, Roman.”

  Hawker straightened, and I felt Olly’s hand twitch on my shoulder, but I kept my focus on the conversation I had with what had turned out to be a relative of mine.

  “Cousins?” Roman asked.

  “Totally. Although my mother thinks dealing drugs is a super shitty thing to do and ran away when she was sixteen, which is why we don’t exactly socialize with your side of the family. Met my grandfather by mistake once, and the rest of you – never.” Then I leaned closer to the phone and added quietly, “I’m not sure about what you’re up to, cousin, and I don’t want to know. I don’t ever want to meet any of you. I’ll give you this, though; You should be careful. It wasn’t all that difficult to find your little stash of cash.”

  He didn’t reply, and I hadn’t expected him to anyway.

  “We're your second-smallest market,” I said. “With Cam gone, you have nothing but a boatload of problems, and Hawker Johns will create a shit storm of epic proportions for you. Profits will dwindle. It would be a sound business decision to walk away.”

  “Someone else will just take our place,” he said.

  “That’ll be my problem,” Hawker cut in.

  “Yeah,” Roman said, and was silent again. We waited for him to make up his mind and finally, he spoke again. He sounded calm, but his voice was full of annoyance. “We’ll back off. I’ll clear it with the top, and call you in a day or two, Johns.”

  “You do that.”

  They said their goodbyes and I said nothing at all and kept my eyes on the table. When the call was closed and the room silent, I glanced over at Olly.

  “I should probably have told you?” I asked weakly.

  “That would have been good,” he agreed.

  “It’s not like I hang out with those guys,” I said.

  “Okay, babe,” he said calmly. “You’ve been hacking into their bank records?”

  “Totally.”

  “Okay,” he repeated. “Do they know?”

  “Oh, please,” I muttered. “Did you know?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Annie…”

  Wilder suddenly started laughing, and both Miller and Mac were grinning.

  “Your life will probably never be boring, Olly,” Mac snorted.

  “I’m pretty convinced it won’t, Mr. Lie-about-losing-his-virginity-at-fourteen,” Olly said calmly. “I know so much shit about you guys I’ll laugh until I’m fifty, I’m sure.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Parcheesi

  “Where do you want to live?” Olly asked as we stood on the porch and watched the cars disappear up the road toward Norton.

  I tilted my head back and tried to figure out what the calm look on his face meant.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have to live somewhere, and until the shithead is taken down we’ll have to be with your grandfather, here or at Double H. Marshes might work too, but I’d really prefer to be closer to the mountains. Close to Hawk and the others.”

  “Where do you want to live?” I countered.

  I knew what I wanted, but he might have other ideas.

  “Nuh-uh,” he said. “I asked first.”

  “I can live in either of the places you mentioned,” I said.

  “I
t’s just until we’ve dealt with him,” he murmured. “Then we can go anywhere.”

  I leaned my forehead on his chest and thought about that for a while, but nothing I could come up with made me change my mind.

  “I wanna live here,” I mumbled.

  “Say again?” he asked and slid his hands down my back.

  “Here,” I repeated. “It makes me really, really boring, Olly. I know. But I want to live here in Norton.”

  He blinked.

  “Here?” he echoed.

  I nodded.

  “In this house?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “But we could –”

  “I’m a genius,” I said, and he raised his brows in surprise. “And I like computers,” I added.

  “I know.”

  “I can sit for hours and hours, just losing myself in whatever I'm working on. Days even. If I lived in a big city, I wouldn't go out. I'd be that weird chick who never talks to anyone.“

  I paused to look up at him, and the way he smiled told me he understood, but I spelled it out for him anyway.

  “I have to live in a town where people butt into my business, Olly, and you know what? The other day an old lady came up to me and told me to come over for coffee. She didn’t invite me. It was an order, and I don't even remember her name, but I have to find out because I think she’ll inflict damage if I don’t visit with her.”

  “Vera Pearson.”

  “That's the name,” I said and nodded. “Wilder and Mac just pop in. Your father is here. You keep saying that everyone is in our faces, but don't you get it? To me, that's a good thing.” I paused and whispered, “And I don’t like cats.”

  He blinked a few times and then he murmured, “I mostly understand even your quirkiest moments, but you got me on that one, babe.”

  “Weird hermit-like women always have tons of mangy cats. I don’t want to be a cat-lady, Olly.”

  He burst out laughing and tried to hug me, but I sidestepped.

  “If you want to live somewhere else then I’ll be happy there too,” I said. “We won’t have any cats, and I’ll try not to become a hermit, but you asked what I wanted, and it's all here. We can travel to wherever, whenever, but I want to have my home here, where being a little bit different means you’re just like everyone else.”

  The way he smiled at me made my insides tingle, and I knew without a doubt that he wanted to be in Norton too.

  “Da will love it.”

  “I know,” I said.

  When he leaned his head to the side and narrowed his eyes slightly, I knew he’d figured it all out.

  “That’s what you told Da to snap him out of his grief? That he wouldn’t be alone because we would be here?”

  “No,” I said immediately.

  “Yes, it was,” he countered.

  “No,” I repeated. “It wasn't, Olly.” I swallowed, and he waited for me to continue. “I told him that it might not be me, but that there would be someone. Said that there would be grandchildren, but I explained clearly that they might not be my kids.”

  He smiled softly at me, and said, “You told him that if they were yours, they’d be raised here.”

  He didn’t put it as a question, but I answered anyway.

  “Yes.” Then I added quietly, “Promised him that if there were a girl, we'd call her Maria.”

  “Oh, Annie,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  We watched each other in silence for a while and then he grinned crookedly.

  “I can’t believe it, but I’m gonna do a Dante.”

  “A what?”

  “A Dante.”

  I thought about it for a while, but it made no sense.

  “I do not understand,” I admitted.

  “Come,” he said and pulled me inside. “I’ve been laughing at him forever. Thought he was ridiculous.”

  “Okay?”

  When we were upstairs, he pushed me gently to sit on the bed.

  “Annie,” he said quietly as he crouched in front of me. “You know I love you.”

  “Yes,” I said because I did know that.

  “We've known each other a while, but we've been a couple for a very short time.”

  I smiled at him, thinking that it sounded so sweet to hear him talking about us as a couple.

  “I’m not going to ask you to marry me.”

  What?

  “Yet.”

  What?

  “But would you please be engaged to me?”

  I opened my mouth, but he kept talking.

  “I laughed at Dante when he insisted that he and Jinx should be engaged before they moved in together, and we don’t have to be. No one will mind. But I want it. I really want that connection between us. The commitment. Because I love you, and you’re mine.”

  I'd never thought much about being proposed to, which I assumed was what he did in a weird roundabout way, and I didn't do any of the joyful screams, oh my God's, or tears. When I looked into his sweet brown eyes, there was just a deep sense of belonging. I’d felt alone and a little isolated since I lost Byron, and I wasn’t, not anymore.

  “Yes, Olly. Because I love you, and you are mine right back,” I said.

  “I thought about giving you Ma’s ring but decided it would be dumb,” he said. “You’re not replacing her, and I’m not my father, so I wanted something just for you.”

  Then he slid a wide gold band on my finger. I stared at it and tried to get my stunned brain to stop wondering where the hell he’d gotten it from. Had he walked around with it in his pocket? What if he’d dropped it? Or I found it?

  “Shit,” he murmured when I kept staring at it. “I can change it, sweetie. I just –”

  “I’ll shoot you if you even try to do that,” I said. “How could you know that I would have hated a huge stone? Or any stone?”

  “I know you, Annie,” he said.

  I smiled, and he leaned forward to kiss me. It was gentle at first but turned hot and hard and then his hands started moving. It didn't take long until all my clothes were on the floor, but his ended up there too, and he pushed me backward into the bed.

  “Engagement-sex,” I murmured against his lips. “Yay.”

  He started laughing, and when he did, so did I.

  ***

  “You said you didn’t mind we’re in each other’s faces all the time.”

  “Huh,” I murmured sleepily and let my hand slide down his belly.

  “Dante and Jinx just turned off Main Street. Jamieson is in the car too. They’ll be here in two minutes.”

  “What?” I squealed, jumped out of bed and started sorting through the pile of clothes on the floor. “Why?”

  “No clue,” he said. “Bird didn’t know.”

  “Move!” I yelled and threw his clothes at him.

  “Babe.”

  “You have to get dressed!”

  He bent forward and grabbed my hand, pulling it toward him while leaning back into the bed until I fell on top of his broad chest.

  “We don’t have to open the door just because they knock on it, you know,” he murmured in my ear, and I felt his hand slide down over my behind.

  “What do you mean we don’t have to open? Of course, we have to –”

  “No,” he protested calmly.

  “But they’ll think we’re…” I trailed off and met his amused gaze.

  “We are.”

  “But –”

  “Do you want to see them?”

  I thought about it for a split second and decided that yes. I actually did want to see them. I hadn't met Jinx in a while and wanted to reconnect with Jamie as well.

  “Okay,” he said, reading my face correctly. “We should get dressed.”

  The knock came when we were walking down the stairs, me in the process of trying to adjust my clothes and tie back my hair at the same time. Olly in the process
of laughing at me.

  “Hey!” I chirped as I threw the door open and cringed when I heard the exaggerated cheerfulness in my voice.

  “Hey, Annie,” Jinx said. “We’re on our way to Mary’s and will drop Jamie off at Snow’s, but I figured we’d just stop by to say hello.” Her voice shook a little with laughter when she added, “Unless you’re busy?”

  “We are,” Olly said calmly, and Dante started laughing.

  “Of course not,” I snapped. “We're just…”

  I could unfortunately not come up with anything, so Jamie filled in my sentence for me.

  “Playing Parcheesi?” When I stared at him, he grinned crookedly and murmured, “That's a safe excuse for any occasion.”

  “We were just…” I tried again, only to be interrupted by Olly pulling me backward.

  “Beer or coffee?” he asked.

  “We’re not staying, man,” Dante said with a grin.

  “We’ve been playing a lot of Parcheesi since yesterday, and Da isn't back until tomorrow. We can take a break, and I could use a beer,” Olly said calmly and walked into the kitchen.

  I stared at him, and then at the others when they walked by me to follow Olly.

  “You did not just say that,” I muttered, not loudly, but not quietly either and he heard me.

  “Babe,” he said and held a beer out to Dante.

  “Babe, what?” I snapped.

  “You have a hickey, Annie,” Jinx said and pointed to the coffee maker when Olly offered her a beer. “And we are not exactly stupid, so we’d already guessed you've been playing Parch –”

  “Stop calling it that,” I squeaked and walked into the small bathroom next to the kitchen.

  I did indeed have a hickey, right in the curve where my shoulder and neck met. It wasn't big but it was noticeable, and I watched it in silence for a while. Maybe I should have been embarrassed because it did indeed communicate clearly that we had been playing something which wasn't Parcheesi, but if I changed the wide-necked top to a flannel shirt, no one would see it. Slowly, a warm, soft feeling filled me. I'd never had a hickey before, and I liked being the kind of girl who got one.

  We’d talked for a while when Jinx suddenly raised her brows, leaned forward and put the tip of her index finger on my ring.

  “Congratulations?” she asked quietly.