Marked (Branded Book 3)

by Scarlett Finn

  “Stoned?” he asked.

  “Tweaked.”

  The shift of his jaw made her nervous and he slapped a hand onto the wood beneath his palm. “Open the door, Ny, or my boot’s going through it.”

  Not much of a dilemma, turning in the cocoon of his arms, she was so close to the door it was tough to find the lock. As soon as Nya turned the handle, Archer shoved he door open. Bowling her aside, he stormed into the room, seized Tag’s jacket, spun him around and threw him face first into the wall.

  “Archer!” she shouted because she didn’t want Tag hurt.

  He was digging in Tag’s pockets, holding him on the wall with his powerful forearm. Tag objected, but Archer didn’t stop frisking him and it wasn’t long before he pulled a bag of white powder from his pocket.

  Archer swore and leaned hard on the arm pressed into the width of Tag’s shoulders, holding the bag in his face. “You sonofabitch, you don’t bring drugs into this club, never again, you hear me? Ny is cleaning this place up, you fuck! You fucking bring drugs in here again and you won’t get back in.”

  “You can’t stop me,” Tag spat over his shoulder, his cheek pressed to the wall, he couldn’t move under Archer’s compression.

  “Every guy in this place was vetted by me,” Archer snarled in his ear. “If I say no, you don’t get through the door. I don’t give a fuck who you are, you’re not gonna fuck this up for her.”

  With a pounding heart and her hands over her mouth, Nya was in shock that Archer was so vehement. After receiving the deeds, Nya had rehired every security man that Hexam had laid off. “You’re no one to her,” Tag said, trying to push away from the wall Archer had him pinned to.

  Archer relented enough that Tag could shove from his grasp. “I’m more to her than you are,” Archer sneered.

  Tag yanked down his jacket to straighten himself out. “Not a fucking chance! You’re temporary. In six months, she won’t remember your name!”

  No way was that true. Nya was offended, Archer would be too. “Tag!”

  She didn’t think Archer heard her because he got in Tag’s face. “Long as you keep fucking up and putting her in danger, I’ll be around,” he growled. “You better get used to my face, ‘cause I’ll be looking over your shoulder for a long time.”

  Tag cursed and shoved Archer but he didn’t go far, and shoved back. Nya sped over because this was going to escalate fast. “Both of you stop it,” she said, getting between them. She grabbed a handful of each of their shirts and glared at them both, but they were still snarling at each other. “Stop it! I love you both and there’s room in my life for the two of you. But goddamn it, don’t make me knock your heads together!”

  Tag tried to surge forward and her elbow bent, but Nya used the wall that was Archer to straighten her arm and push Tag back. “Let me go, Yorkie!”

  Adrenaline increased her panic. “You’re not fighting in here!”

  “Outside,” Tag said still tussling to get past her.

  Pulling away from her grip to pull off his jacket, Archer tossed it onto the desk. “Let’s go,” Archer said.

  Leaping around her love, into his path, she splayed a hand in the middle of his chest. “You’re armed,” she said, thinking of the knife he always kept on his belt.

  Reaching behind, he dragged the knife from the sheath and slammed it onto her desk. “I don’t need a weapon to take down this piece of shit.”

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Tag declared, heading for the door.

  Archer was amped, but Tag was halfway out the office. Rushing over, she tried to block him, but he was too intent, he’d knock her down before stopping, so she hurried to the door and slammed it. “Stop it! If you do this, I won’t talk to either of you again!”

  Archer was by the desk, his scowl set on his face. Tag was glaring too, but he was focused on her. “This has fuck all to do with you, Yorkie, get out of the way! I’m gonna take this guy down! He treats you like shit, he broke your fucking heart! This is long overdue!”

  Going to her friend, Nya took his shoulders. “You’re emotional, Tag. Archer’s not gonna touch you while you’re like this.”

  “He’s a chicken-shit,” Tag said.

  Archer stormed over and shoved him to the side. “Get your ass to the street, Taggert! It’s past time I took you down.”

  Spinning to pin her rage on him, she pushed Archer’s chest. “If you won’t fuck me when I’m drunk, you won’t beat him when he’s high!” That must have gotten through because some of Archer’s bluster eased until he backed down. “Now sit your ass in here, Fella. I’m gonna put Tag in a cab and I’ll be back in two minutes!”

  It took closer to twenty. She got him outside, but Tag still thought they were fighting and wanted to go back in for Archer. She calmed him down, but it took two security guys to get him into the cab. She gave the address, paid the driver, and promised Tag she’d call to make sure he got home.

  After that drama, she had to deal with Archer. Setting the office in her sights, she ignored the patrons pouring out of her club, as it was closing time. Even if Archer thought he was going to get away without facing her wrath, she would be going to his apartment. The best part was, Ester was at his, so Nya was guaranteed to get inside.

  But when she stormed into the office, Archer was there in her chair, swinging side to side. Throwing the door closed, she went to him and shoved her knee to the inside of his thigh to stop his movement.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked.

  His arm shot out in the direction of the door. “He brought drugs into your club. If he was anyone else, I’d have tossed him onto the curb, forced him to eat the lot and let him die in the gutter.”

  Archer needed to learn to temper his feelings for Tag; she didn’t often see him this riled. “But fighting?” she asked, pushing her knee into his leg, but his thighs were already far apart, pressed into the arms of the chair. “Why would you want to fight with him when he’s so messed up?”

  “Your boyfriend is always messed up.”

  Eurgh, just the sound of that word on his lips in such a snide way tempted her to lift her knee higher to drive it into his groin. “Don’t start,” she said. Grabbing his jacket from the desk, she thrust it at his chest. “Just get the fuck out of here, go home.”

  “He gets the royal treatment and I get tossed out for saving your ass?” Archer said, shooting to his full-height to shove his arms into his sleeves. “You took him outside, got him a ride; I bet you paid the driver too.”

  “Yeah, I did,” she said, going around to snatch up his knife from the desk. “Because his best friend just screwed him over, he’s lost a bunch of money, the girl he loved just dumped him ten days ago and now he’s picked up this stupid habit.” Grabbing the bag of coke from beside Archer’s knife, she shook it. “How the fuck do I get him off this? Far as I know, he hasn’t touched coke since he was twenty-one.”

  She tossed the bag to him. Archer examined the plastic wrapped powder. “With your boy, Tag, you have to pick your battles. You act like he’s together, but he’s a fucking mess and he’s dragging you down.”

  Nya couldn’t remember Archer ever saying a positive word about Tag and it hurt her heart that they continued with their feud. “Why don’t you like him?” she begged. Standing his knife on end, she pressed her weight onto the butt of it, driving the point into the desk. Nya couldn’t care about defacing property when her best friend was on a path to self-destruction. “If you could support him, help him… Arch, you could make such a difference.”

  But he was still angry and groaned. “Don’t ask me to like him, Ny,” he said, shoving the drugs into his pocket. He reached over to swipe the knife from her. She fell forward, but righted herself as he returned it to its sheath. “I’ll mop up the shit around you. Anything that might touch you is my business. But I spent a week in South America with him and I didn’t see a single thing I liked. I won’t go an inch further than I have to for him in the name of
protecting you.”

  It was frustrating that Archer could be so cool and detached when Tag’s life was falling apart. How could two men she cared about so much be at such opposite ends of the personality spectrum? Neither would agree to bridge any distance between them, even though it would mean so much to her.

  “Don’t put your hands on him again,” she said. “If there are drugs in this club, they’re my problem.”

  “Suits me,” he said, but she’d seen how angry he was. Maybe Archer felt an affinity for this place because it was him who had put it into her hands. He could’ve owned it himself; all he’d have had to do was sign his own name at the bottom of the deed instead of hers.

  Brett Hexam wouldn’t have wanted to give up Sizzle and she sure made an easier target if he decided he wanted it back. But Archer had done what he saw as the right thing and put the club in her name, she’d worked hard to nurture this place. Deciding to clean it up was the first goal she’d set, Nya was tired of the shady deals and the shifty characters. But it would take time; she was never going to make a palace out of a slum.

  “Great,” she said. “Now fuck off.”

  “I have the car, I’ll give you a ride.”

  Nya was still too angry and although he had his own snit on, he expected her to put their argument aside. She couldn’t. “I don’t want to get in a car with you tonight, Arch. So fuck off now or follow me home. I don’t want to see you.”

  He stopped on his journey towards the door. “You’ve never fucking said that before.”

  “Yeah, well you’ve never almost murdered my oldest friend in the street. What were you planning to do out there, huh? Were you gonna hurt him? You know how much he means to me.”

  “And how much do I mean to you?” he asked. “That guy was so strung out, he could’ve pulled a gun on me or anything. You don’t know what he was carrying.”

  “You patted him down, you knew,” she said. Going to him, she got up close. “When we met, I told you that Tag never loses. But he was willing to give up everything for Farrah and now he’s in a place where he doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him or how to get it together and he thinks Gio’s screwing him over. Then he comes in here and thinks that his oldest friend brought her ex into a private office to rough him up. His life is falling apart.”

  But Archer had no sympathy. “It’s his doing. I won’t feel sorry for him just ‘cause you use those big doe eyes. Gio fucked off because he was tired of hiding, tired of being second everywhere including in Tag’s eyes. Farrah left your boy ‘cause she’s a spoiled brat who gets obsessed and infatuated, then she gets bored.”

  “That’s not his fault,” she said. Leaning back, Nya folded her arms, but didn’t retreat. “Do we pick who we fall in love with, Fella? Of all the girls you’ve ever dated, you probably didn’t think I was any different to them when we started screwing. But by the end, it wasn’t the same thing at all, was it? That’s why I make a fool of myself with you, acting like some pathetic, clingy, stalker. It’s ridiculous and it’s embarrassing. If I could slap myself in the face some nights, I would. I’d tell myself to let it go. I’d pack my shit and I’d disappear. That’s exactly what I should do.”

  He grabbed her arm. “You’re not going fucking anywhere,” he snarled. “Do you know who the fuck I am? There isn’t a place in this country you could go that I couldn’t find you.”

  Yanking her arm from his grip, Nya followed up with a push. “Then own me, Arch. You don’t get to make choices about my club, my apartment, my life, until you’re willing to be proud of me. Remember what I said to you about the man I would end up with? I told you my guy has to be willing to declare me as his openly. I wouldn’t deny our love for anything.”

  “You also told me I should protect you from other guys. I was doing that tonight. Just like you when you kissed me at the bar because you didn’t like that those females were getting too close to me.”

  Nya couldn’t deny what she’d felt at seeing the young party girls who would be a great distraction for him. Archer said he didn’t associate with whores, but that didn’t mean he’d never had a one-night stand. If he was working off the same reserves as she was, it had been thirty-nine days since he’d had sex. He probably needed a release.

  “These are the fights we were supposed to stop having,” she said.

  When they’d broken up, he’d shut her out. When that hadn’t worked and she kept pestering him, they began to talk again and Nya figured out pretty fast that he still cared about her. They had a few sentimental moments, a few intimate ones too when they may have kissed by mistake or she may have accidentally stripped naked in front of him and let him take liberties in touching sensitive parts of her body.

  They seemed to be moving past the denial part of the break-up. Tonight, she’d landed smack bang in the middle of anger.

  He had to feel the same way and didn’t come up with any response. “I don’t know what we’re doing here anymore, Archer. I don’t know what it is that you want from me. You want to make the decisions, but you don’t want me to be your girl. You flirt with me, but I’m not supposed to make a move on you. You kiss me—”

  “You kissed me tonight, Squirm. I’ve kept my lips from yours for ten days.”

  Exhausted and confused, Nya was losing her perspective. “Maybe we need distance, because this is messing with my head.”

  His anger grew. “What kind of distance?” he asked. “Are you telling me you’re going to his bed?”

  Archer knew that she’d slept next to Tag a thousand times. The friends had never had sex, there was nothing sexual about her relationship with Tag. But Archer despised the idea of her lying with him.

  “Not tonight. I hate drugs. The coke made Damien worse,” she said. “When he came home twitchy like that, I knew I was gonna get it for something.”

  He tried to touch her face, but she shrugged him off. “Babe—”

  “Tag knows I hate it, I’ll call him later and make sure he got home. You can go home. You’ll hear me come in, you don’t have to wait. We’ll just give each other space. I was supposed to be going to dinner with Ester tomorrow, but I’ll cancel. I’ll give her an excuse, you don’t have to say anything for me.”

  “This is dinner with her new guy?” he asked and she nodded. “I’m not going to that.”

  As adamant as he was about keeping himself apart from Ester’s casual relationships, Nya was disappointed that he wasn’t willing to make an effort with Woodrow, who Ester claimed to love. “She’ll be devastated,” Nya said. “This means a lot to her, Arch.”

  There was just no wiggle room when he’d made up his mind. “Then you go. I don’t like spending time with her in my own apartment. I’m not going out to be part of some parade. It’s bullshit.”

  Anger infused her again. “Well fine then, you sit in your little hole and you brood. Ester and I will have the time of our lives.”

  “I have business out of town anyway. I was putting it off, but I’ll leave in the morning, get it out of the way.”

  “Fine, you do that.”

  He took a step back. “It means I won’t be around, Ny. You’ll have to look out for yourself.”

  “I did fine for twenty-nine years before you showed up,” she said, although Archer could poke holes in that by pointing out she was only so close to Tag because he’d saved her ass.

  “I’ll be back the next day and you can call—”

  “Oh, Arch, just fuck off.”

  In recent weeks, every time she’d looked at him, her heart had ached because there had been this barrier between what they had and what she wanted. Maybe it was the frustration of that coming to a head that was getting her so worked up tonight.

  Nya didn’t like this phase because it felt like a transition. While he might be able to slip her into a friendship zone and be happy to leave her there, Nya would never be able to move on from what they had, to settle for anything less. Every relationship after Archer would be less potent.


  Yes, she’d been desperate to have contact with him because she wanted him in her life and she’d even once told Tag that she wanted to be Archer’s friend. But she couldn’t go on like this forever. Tag was right that she’d never been friends with exes. Most of the time it was because she wanted to get as far away from the animosity of the breakup as she could.

  She and Archer didn’t have that hostility at the end of their relationship and she thought that meant they could work through their issues and come together again. But it didn’t seem like her faith was going to pay off.

  “Nya,” he said.

  “Just go! Just go! Get the fuck out of here! Go on your little trip! Go live your life, Archer, that’s what you want to do. Go!”

  It wasn’t like she gave him much of a choice to do anything else. Despite his tension, Nya couldn’t appease him. Letting him pivot and stalk out of the office, full of his own attitude, Nya had to accept that it wasn’t her place to soothe him anymore.

  He wanted her to look out for number one and Nya started to think about doing just that.

  three

  “Nya!” Louie called while still ten feet away from the dinner table.

  The wonderful restaurant owner had his arms open wide and Nya stood up from the central restaurant table to go into his embrace. He patted her crown and squeezed her tight, leaning back to look at her and then hugging her again.

  “My beautiful Nya,” Louie said, helping her into her seat again. “Who are your friends tonight?”

  “This is Woodrow,” she said, pointing at the man sitting opposite her at the circular table. “And this, Louie, is Ester.” Presenting her palm toward Ester, Nya knew the Louie would be intrigued by the woman. “She’s Archer’s mother.”

  “Ah!” Louie said, hurrying around to pull Ester up. Ester whooped when she got a hug too, but threw herself into it all the way. “She is beautiful, why have I never met her before?”