Marked (Branded Book 3)

by Scarlett Finn

  “So that’s it?” Tag said. “I’m the past?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “You love him so much that you would betray me? You would turn your back on me? Kick me out of your life?”

  “That’s not it,” she said. “Please try to understand what I’m saying. I love you. I love him. But I have no desire to leave and start again.”

  His fingers curled around the back of the chair. This wasn’t a conversation they should be having in front of an audience. Nya didn’t want to embarrass or humiliate Tag, but his pride would be wounded and she was worried that he was playing to the crowd.

  “How many times have you come to me and asked for my help?” he asked. “Every time you asked me to do something for you, I said yes. Every time I helped you and this is how you repay me? You’re a selfish bitch, Nya Yorke, and not the woman I thought you were. You want him? Have him! But don’t you dare come fucking crying to me when he leaves you in a gutter.”

  This conversation, this argument, couldn’t be going any worse. If he got angry like this before, she would do whatever she could to calm him down and that usually meant giving in to whatever he wanted. But she couldn’t do it this time, if she gave in and went with Tag, that would mean giving up Archer, and she just wasn’t capable of doing that. Her life without Archer would be unbearable.

  Tag spun around and marched toward the door. Gio hesitated and stumbled about a bit, but when Tag opened the door, Gio went after him and darted out of the apartment first. Tag turned to look at her one last time. Nya sealed her lips, praying he’d change his mind and apologize.

  “You’re not even worth my time,” Tag said and stepped outside to slam the door.

  She opened her mouth wide but all she could feel was the tingling around her diaphragm as her heart tried to keep up with the anxiety and adrenaline that was pulling her in different directions. A weird kind of wail came out of her mouth and her legs buckled. But somehow Archer was there to catch her and hold her up.

  “I got you, baby,” he said, hauling her up into his arms. “You stay fucking there, don’t move.”

  The last stern statement must have been for the stranger in the living room. But she was sobbing into the crook of Archer’s neck as he carried her into the bedroom and put her on the bed.

  “Squirm, baby, look at me, Squirm,” Archer said, stroking her hair away from her face. “Come on.”

  Clinging to his tee shirt, she lifted her head to look into his sorrowful eyes. “Archer,” she croaked.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked, almost angry at her.

  Oh no, the last thing she needed was to fight with Archer too. “Why? Why did I do what?”

  “You told him to go to hell,” he said. “For me, you actually… you chose me.”

  It made sense to her now why he’d come in with that look on his face. Archer had expected her to leave with Tag. Her lover had expected her to turn her back on him, to give him excuses and slip out of his life, proving that he had no intention of following her even if she wanted to go with her friend.

  But Nya had known Archer wouldn’t live his life like she would, he wouldn’t follow Tag from city to city, job to job, apartment to apartment. And one thing she was sure of about Archer was his need for stability. That was why he’d lived in the same apartment for so long and why he’d put her in one so close to his. Why he stuck to his rules.

  Archer didn’t want to be a nomad like his mother, like Derren and didn’t want to run away from his responsibilities like his biological father had.

  Somewhere between Tag mentioning Phoenix and her saying she wasn’t going, she’d put all these pieces together in her head without even realizing it.

  Pushing away from Archer, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and sat up. “You thought I was going with him.”

  “Yeah,” Archer said, sitting up to face her. “I did. Squirm, I did.”

  There was something incredibly sad about the look on his face, not that he looked sad, but that he was so surprised she’d made the decision to stick with him. It was a tender look, but a confused one like he just couldn’t figure out why he was enough or what he’d done to earn her love.

  “I need you, Chase,” she said. “And I just got you back. Losing Tag, the only man I’ve had in my life constantly for all these years, I don’t know how I’ll…”

  Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with a hand to prevent another sob from escaping. But Archer curled his fingers around her wrist and drew her hand down.

  “I’ll make sure you never regret it,” he said. “What you did tonight, I… no one surprises me. I mean I always know walking in what will happen, I always know who the players are, what their motivations are, and I have a good idea of what they’ll say and how they’ll act. Something I’m sort of proud of is always being one step ahead.”

  It was almost funny that he was so incredulous about this. “Well you stepped the wrong way this time, Fella,” she said. “I didn’t even think about going with him for one second. Not one. The only place I want to be is here with you. Right here… with you.”

  Leaning in, she cupped his face and pressed her mouth to his. But as she deepened the kiss and tried to climb into his lap, Archer pulled back. “I can’t fucking believe I’m going to say this, but we have to wait.”

  If there was a moment meant for making love, this was it. Archer had never told her they couldn’t be intimate, not while they were in a relationship. He loved sex as much as she did, so she couldn’t figure out why he’d be reluctant now.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “I’ve got to talk to Shaw, get some things straightened out with him, figure him out. But I want you to lie down right here and don’t move an inch.”

  Nya had forgotten the dude was even out there. “Shaw’s the guy in the living room?” she asked. Archer nodded. “Do you trust him?”

  “Don’t know him well. I’m about to find out.”

  “So this is the conversation?” she asked.

  Archer didn’t tie everyone to his pipe, didn’t brand them and cut them and beat them. He tried the charm first; if he could make friends with the person they became more useful to him than they would be as his enemy.

  So her love had to work and that was why they couldn’t get it on. But he was running his fingers through her hair, over her face, down her shoulders, appreciating her, probably in a way he never had before. She’d just proved how valuable he was to her.

  “You need help or do you need me to stay out of the way?” she asked.

  “Do you want to come and say hello? You think you’re up for it?”

  Lying in here, dwelling on her argument with Tag, wasn’t going to achieve anything. It was never fun to be in Tag’s bad books, but she had upset him before, although maybe not as much as this. She couldn’t do anything about his mood right now, even if she called or tried to go to him, they’d just end up fighting again.

  Her friend needed time, and she hoped that after he’d had a chance to think about her situation, he’d understand her point of view. “Yes… Tag’s angry, he’s not thinking rationally now,” she said. “I’ll just have to be patient.”

  Although her heart was certainly still heavy, just spending these few minutes with Archer had given her a chance to center herself again so she could try to be rational.

  Archer didn’t like it when women got overly emotional; it had caused a rift between them when she’d first cried in front of him. But he was actually doing her a favor, because his discomfort forced her to look at herself before she lost her senses to overpowering emotion, something she often had a habit of doing.

  “You think he’ll calm down tomorrow?”

  Tag might not come to her with an apology, but even if he maintained his anger toward her, he’d be stupid to put up a permanent wall between them. “I think he needs you,” she said and that was the honest truth. “Between whatever you set up for him tonight, and this job he needs to do… There’s a who
le week before he moves and he’ll have to get himself established down there too without pissing anybody off.”

  “He better not expect me to do him any favors,” Archer said. “After what he said to you tonight—”

  “He’s angry,” she said again, sliding a palm over his cheek. “I love you. And I love that you want to protect me, but let’s be patient.”

  “Patient?” he said. “The fucker’s leaving in a week. You’re gonna have to let me mark him before then.”

  “Because he spent time on your floor chained to your pipe?”

  “Because he hurt my girl.”

  “My feelings,” she said, still trying her best to soothe him. “He hurt my feelings and if he leaves next week hating me, disowning me, my heart is going to break. And I don’t know how I’ll cope without him.”

  Which was her way of telling Archer she might be emotional or erratic after Tag left. Archer picked up on what she needed and reassured her. “You have me,” he said, pulling her in to his side. “I’m not going anywhere. We all say things we don’t mean in anger. But nobody should speak to you that way. I was fucking pissed at you and I never—”

  “Please don’t compare yourself to him,” she said, opening a hand against his throat. “I love you. But he’s already put both of you side-by-side tonight. I don’t think of you like that. I don’t think of you and him in the same way, so it’s difficult for me to understand why you both feel like you’re the same. I understand that you’re both men who love me, men who I love, but it’s such a different feeling for me.

  “He’s a brother who I trust and rely on to give me a hug or to buck me up. He knows everything about my past and has supported me through everything, proving his loyalty and his love for me. I can’t put a value on that because it means the whole world to me. He’s a part of my identity; he helps me to understand who I am just by giving me a reference point. I can go to him to talk about anything, any person, any man, any job, any apartment, anything from my past, and he’s always been a part of it. So it’s like he’s a part of my DNA.”

  It showed how much their relationship had grown that Archer let her talk so openly without feeling that he had to take action to fix her life. “Do you think he feels the same way?”

  “I think he got angry fast. I think he’s confused. I think he’s hurt and I understand that. Farrah’s just broken his heart and now I’m doing the same thing just in a different way.”

  “I broke your heart,” Archer said, his mouth in her hair.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “You’re not worried I’ll do it again?”

  “You gave me your word that you wouldn’t,” she said, turning her face against his body. “And my love for you, Archer, is…” Nya had never thought to articulate it before, to put language on the emotions that swirled when she saw him. “You’re my sanity. Everything in my future, in my present, is linked to you and you’re the only thing that always makes sense. I fell in love with you because you were everything that I needed and everything that I want. I can trust you in a way I can’t ever trust anyone else. It’s difficult to describe how much I’ve needed that. How much I’ve needed you all my life. I can’t give that up now.”

  “You could’ve asked me to move,” he said. “To Phoenix.”

  It almost made her laugh that he was making the suggestion she’d discounted. “With Tag? What were we all gonna do? Set up home together? Socialize and party together? No. You’d be miserable. I know you have contacts in various places, but this is where you’re most connected, where you can do your work all over. Any place you walk into there’s someone you know or you know a guy who knows a guy. You’d have to start over in Arizona. Ester would come along. It would mean moving everyone. You give everyone a home base here; we can’t ask them all to relocate.”

  “Kristof and Derren bounce around anyway,” he said. “Ester does too.”

  “They’re happy to live like that, but you’re not. I don’t know what Tag’s going to do exactly, but what if it doesn’t work out and he wants to go somewhere else in three months or six? I know it’s not an imminent possibility, but how can you and me speak about having a family and then talk about bouncing around like college kids on a gap year? I want roots, Archer, just like you. I want to stop moving. I want stability and security, things only you can give me.” Drawing back, she took a second to examine him and wondered if she’d made assumptions of her own. “But if you think that’s something you don’t want or you can’t give me—”

  “Don’t talk crazy,” he said. “You think I’m gonna say something to fuck this up or make you chase after him? You know how I fucking feel about him. He screws up your life, he’s endangered it. He’s hurt you. He’s made you vulnerable and it pisses me off. You’re not safer with him. If I thought you were and he was a good guy who really looked after you, maybe… maybe I would tell you it was a good idea or I would consider going with him for you. But I’ll be honest, Squirm, I’m not gonna be sorry to see the guy go.”

  If Archer had said anything else, she wouldn’t have believed him. For a second, Nya wondered if maybe he’d set it up this way to force Tag to leave by hooking him up with people who wanted him in this new city. But Archer said it was Gio who had found this Lucas connection.

  “You said the fifty grand was a buy-in, that’s what Gio had needed it for. But on the phone to Gio you said something about me suspecting something.”

  “Gio wanted to know if I’d set up the meeting, and I had, he was asking if you suspected I was talking to him. He was worried about Tag jumping to conclusions because Gio was never my biggest fan and suddenly we were working together.”

  “Why did you work together? Gio never liked you, he was always suspicious.”

  Gio had made his dislike of Archer known when she started dating him, even before Tag had. “Because when I saw what the guy was doing, it made sense. I knew where he was, it didn’t take long to track him down, but I couldn’t figure out what he was doing or why he was talking to the people he was talking to. Lucas is a shady guy. Then I realized that Gio wanted an in. Yeah, he went around town settling debts and trying to make friends, but it wasn’t to re-build his empire here…”

  “It was to start a new one there,” she said.

  “Yep… And he was damn sure he didn’t want to start small, that’s why he was hitting up Lucas. Dicey, ‘cause I don’t trust the guy, but like I say, Gio was damn sure it was worth the risk. Gio sorta went out of his way to make friends with me. Thought I was gonna fuck Tag up after I told him I had him.” Given Archer’s reputation, Gio’s assumption wasn’t farfetched. “I let Gio keep wondering.”

  Archer never gave away any more information than he had to. Gio might have been worried about Tag’s safety, but Archer would’ve let the guy stew and wouldn’t make any promises. Taking into account how Tag loved to piss him off and how frequently they came close to exchanging blows, Archer probably wasn’t able to make any promises about not hurting Tag when he wasn’t sure he didn’t want to. Breaking his word wasn’t something Archer liked to do.

  “Did you know about Phoenix?” she asked. “Before the meeting?”

  “No, and neither did Gio. The word on the street was about a big op going down here in town, and if the guys involved proved their loyalty, Lucas would name new lieutenants. Didn’t know they’d be set up in…”

  When he trailed off, she finished. “In Phoenix.” So this op was in town. “What is the job and who’s this guy sitting in your living room?”

  “Shit, Shaw,” he said, getting off the bed and grabbing her hand. “Come here.”

  Archer pulled her from the bedroom and into the living room. Much to her surprise, they found this Shaw guy sitting exactly where they’d left him. “Nice place,” Shaw said. “Quiet.”

  It would be quiet right now because the neighbors were out. Well, there was nobody staying in the apartment opposite Archer’s now and she lived downstairs, except she was up here, so her apartment was
empty.

  “We like it,” Archer said.

  “Listen, man, I’ve got shit to do,” Shaw said. “What you want to talk about?”

  It was understandable that Shaw wanted to get going—they’d left him sitting here for an age while they chatted in the bedroom. It had been kind of rude.

  “This op doesn’t seem like your thing,” Archer said.

  Relaxed and unmoving, Shaw couldn’t have cared less that Archer was probing him, which in itself was unusual. “You know who I am,” Shaw replied, nonplussed by Archer’s observation.

  “Yep,” Archer said.

  This was an odd conversation; Nya wasn’t really sure what to do with herself. “Shaw Spencer,” Shaw said to her, bobbing his brows in a hello.

  “Nya Yorke.”

  “You’re Archer’s girl.”

  “Yep,” she said in much the same way Archer had, maybe being curt was contagious, but if the men didn’t want to speak to each other and didn’t want to hang out, why was this Shaw guy here?

  “I know your work,” Archer said. “I know it well.”

  Shaw lifted his shoulders. “I know yours too.”

  “So how come you don’t owe me any favors?” Archer asked.

  “Why don’t you owe me?”

  Oh great, so this was what she was here to see, a pissing contest. Except each man was loose, the conversation seemed more like a joke without laughter than an attempt to gain the upper hand or prove how powerful they were.

  “What’s your specialty, Shaw?” Nya asked, moving slightly away from her man, but not far enough away that he would be worried about her safety. Her question was meant to hurry things along a bit, but their guest didn’t answer it.

  Shaw’s eyes drifted down her body. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “Heard a lot about you.”

  “Yeah?” Archer asked, sidestepping to bring himself in at her back. “Heard what from who?”

  “Plenty from everyone,” Shaw said. “I respect you protecting your privacy. I’m kinda the same about mine. No one thought that Archer would get himself a girl. A lot of people are curious about you, Miss Yorke.”