by Marata Eros
“Just like he wanted your father.”
My stomach bottoms out, right there. The nose of my pistol dips.
Sudden movement on my right has me pointing and shooting simultaneously.
Grass burps out of the ground in a small eruption, dirt flying as the report claps my ears with ringing pain.
A hand chops at the forearm of my gun hand, and my muscles spasm, releasing the weapon automatically.
Fuck. I duck, turning and plunging my left fist into the guy’s nutsack.
He falls, and I stand, arms loose and ready. The element of surprise is long gone, and there are still three men to deal with. Tommy is recovering, despite the red ruin of his face, and the man I struck is on his knees, gasping for air.
He starts throwing up, and I sidestep the mess without taking my eyes off the man who keeps talking—trying to distract me.
His eyes fall on his men on the ground. “You’re full of surprises, Angela.”
I don’t know this man’s name. I knew Tommy because he introduced himself the first time he popped out of a dim corner to threaten me.
“I’m not doing anything for Ricci. I put him in jail. I’m an attorney, not a mob slut.” My voice shakes, not with my conviction—though that’s in there—but with fear.
“She’s somebody’s slut,” one of the men five feet to my left drawls with rich sarcasm.
Giving him my attention is a luxury I can’t afford. My gun is on the ground. If I make a move to retrieve it, I’ll never get it in time. They’ll be on me.
I have no chance against three men. None.
The realization makes my palms dampen enough that I don’t think I could hold my gun.
The roar of bikes shatters the silence. At first, it’s only a rumble of gravelly music in the distance, but it gains volume as the noise draws nearer.
The mob enforcers look toward the sound of approaching engines. Loud pipes sing their melody into the air, making the night vibrate.
The lead man scowls in that direction. “Grab Tommy and Aaron.”
I flatten my palms against my car, and my heart beats a frantic rhythm as I inch down the side. My eyes are trained on the guy calling the shots.
He steps forward.
“Tell me why you mentioned my father. He’s dead; he’s been dead for fifteen years.”
We face off just three yards from each other.
The sound of the bikes grows.
“He didn’t do what he was told, Angela.” His voice is smooth, low—convincing.
I’m not convinced.
“Did you wonder why we didn’t have guns on you?”
I had.
“We don’t want you dead. We just want you. Can’t kill you, so we’ll do the next best thing.”
Headlamps blaze near the entrance. The other mob guys have managed to drag Tommy and Busted Balls away to the forest border.
“We’ll be in touch, Angela,” Talker says, backing up.
“My father—” I begin then bite my lip. Do I want to know?
Yes. “Your innuendos aren’t going to win me over to whatever demented plan you have.”
Talker winks. “But torture will do what everything else has failed at.”
Then he’s gone as the first of the bikes purr up beside my car.
Lariat’s eyes meet mine, and several things hit me at once. I care for him when I shouldn’t—really care. Which changes everything, doesn’t it?
And how did he find me?
The last thing I’m certain of is that he has found out about Mini. It’s in the set of his broad shoulders and the tightness around his eyes. His face contains a clear, pure rage that no lack of light can contain.
But more than that, his gaze travels the dark, shadowed corners of the cemetery, then comes to me again.
“Who the fuck was just here, Angel?” he growls.
How does he know anyone was here? They’ve gone like apparitions on the wind.
My heartbeats cram into my throat, and I find myself fighting yet another panic attack—because Lariat is coming toward me and I’m scared again… and exhausted.
I can’t handle one more thing on my plate.
The ups and downs of my life’s emotional roller coaster have me tangled, while deep inside, a small part of me unravels.
Questions crowd my already cluttered brain.
What does Antonio Ricci want from his prison cell? How was my father connected to him before he died?
Why is he having me beaten up one second then trying to get me to discuss an arrangement the next?
I don’t answer Lariat’s question. Our eyes lock in silent combat. He is in my personal space, so close I couldn’t slide a sheet of paper between us. He’s so tall, I crane my neck back to look up at him as the cool metal of the rental presses against the back of my thin blouse.
I shiver from the cold and from Lariat’s boiling presence.
“You didn’t tell me.” His voice is low, careful.
I shake my head, relieved he doesn’t question me further. “I should have.”
“Yeah.” He cups my chin with his strong hand. “You should’ve.”
We stare at each other, and tears fill my eyes, making my vision shimmer. “I’m so sorry,” I say in an agonized whisper. Nobody wants Mini alive more than me.
Lariat wraps his arms around me, crushing my face against his chest as my sadness soaks his leather vest.
“Nah, babe, don’t take this on. You didn’t kill Mini.”
“I did,” I vehemently deny. “I didn’t get her bail figured out fast enough. I didn’t petition for extra protection.”
He props my chin up again, his thumb closing my lips. He searches my face as though he’s counting my pores.
I become aware in excruciatingly slow moments that we’re not alone. I need to come clean about what happened with Ricci’s mob goon squad moments before—the men he already sensed had been here.
But I can’t speak as Lariat strokes the side of my face with his thumb. I am transfixed by his presence and his gaze.
“I can help you, like you tried to help Mini, but I need you to do something for me, Angel.”
I don’t like owing anyone anything. I keep my own counsel. I’ve been doing it my whole adult life. “It depends,” I reply carefully. “I don’t want to make things worse for you.”
Lariat’s smile is a twist of lips. “Babe, I’ve got broad shoulders. I can handle it, trust me.”
I take a deep breath, sort of half-collapsing against the car, and his palms go to either side of my shoulders, caging me in.
“What do I need to do?” I’m already in so deep, and in ways I can’t extricate myself from.
“I need you to be my property.”
My mouth gapes. “No way.”
I’m never going to be owned by any man. My foster dad couldn’t do it, Ricci won’t do it, and this man that is a tornado of hotness won’t—even though a tiny part of me wants what he lays down at my feet.
Lariat scowls. “It doesn’t have to be for real.” He puts my messy hair behind my ear and wraps his long fingers around my bare neck. The gesture about undoes me.
Almost. I teeter on the brink of a yes.
Then I listen to his words replay in my mind. His bid for me to be his “old lady” is a false one. He can’t even vouch for me for real.
Whatever.
I ignore the sucking chest wound that seeps blood and guts between us and do what must be done.
Slapping my cool lawyer face on, I nod, step away, and duck underneath his arm, scooping my purse and gun from the ground as I do.
I retreat a few steps. “I’m sorry about Mini. God knows I take it as a personal failure on my part.”
He frowns, studying me.
“But I’m nobody’s property.” I search out the other three guys who are with him, leaning casually against big bikes like his.
Their faces are hard, giving nothing away.
My attention returns to Lariat. “Thanks,
but no thanks.”
Lariat’s huge hands fist into meat mallets, the same hands that left tracks of fire all over my body.
And on my heart, I belatedly realize.
I swallow, sensing what I might be giving up.
In the end, I’m protecting him. But Lariat doesn’t need to know that.
Ever.
“Angel, don’t be stupid. You can’t fight the mafia. It doesn’t work.”
He knows they were here, threatening me. Somehow, Lariat knows.
I glance at him, my hand on the door handle. He steps back and I open the car door and slide inside. I insert the key blindly through a wash of tears and turn the engine over. Pressing the button, the window rolls down.
We stare at each other for a heartbeat then Lariat closes the small distance to my car, his hands gripping the top of the window frame where the glass is halfway open.
“Don’t do this.”
His face is hard and unsettled when I turn and look at him. A streetlamp inside the cemetery perfectly illuminates us both.
“I’m not stupid, and I am doing this. Goodbye, Lariat.”
I press the window button again and the glass ascends, establishing a barrier between us.
He steps back, big hands dropping to his sides.
Reversing, I turn the car around and force my eyes off the rearview mirror.
I can’t watch through my wave of fresh tears as Lariat becomes a receding dot in the reflection.
Chapter 14
Lariat
Fuck her.
Fuck Angel twice. Oh yeah, I already did.
I stalk back over to the guys, swing a leg over my seat, plant my ass on the bike, and shelve hard fists against my thighs.
“How’d that go?” Noose asks to the sky, cig jammed in his craw. Perfect loops of smoke rise to be eaten by the dark.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and give me a smoke?” I answer without missing a beat.
Noose cracks a smile and jerks his chin up. “Testy.”
Leaning forward, my middle finger pops out of my fist.
“Hey now, Lariat, that’s Noose’s trademark, not yours,” Wring comments.
I grunt, my mood so foul I can’t think past it. I know those mob dicks were around. I saw the depressions in the grass from footprints. And I saw Angel’s heartbeat thumping in her throat from residual fear.
I also see the remnants of a bullet hole in the perfection of the graveyard lawn.
My eyes follow Snare as he moves like liquid to the spot I just noticed. Stooping, he takes something from the ground. He’s doing what I should’ve been doing, but I’m too fucking unnerved to explore shit. Angel’s aloof face keeps riding in the forward edge of my brain.
He lifts something small between his fingers. “Slug just lying around in the cemetery—nice.”
“Gun fired,” Wring states, narrowing his eyes at Snare, who nods.
“I’d say—not that I’m one of those forensic dicks.” He winks. “But looks like it was your girl who did the shooting.”
I nod. “Yup.” I saw her pick up the gun and her purse.
“She blow you off?” Noose asks with a flick of inch-long ash.
“Yup.” My gut rebels, doing a slow, thick leap and roll. “Fuck her.”
“Just restating the obvious,” Snare begins in a dry voice, “but sounds like you did that, brother.”
Hate him voicing my earlier thoughts. Because they’re true.
“Just pussy,” Wring says, crossing his arms and lifting his chin, giving me a dead stare. “That’s all she has to be. You didn’t petition Viper with old lady status.”
“And the tie is broken,” Noose states in a low voice. “Mini is gone, man. You don’t owe this bitch.”
I nod again. I’m doing a lot of that lately. “I know. More than that, I want to know who killed Mini in prison. Why.” My gaze scores them with my contained grief. “Mini was in there because she murdered a man who was beating her. Okay. Sure, she could have done it in self-defense instead of bashing his brains in while he slept.”
Chuckles all around.
“But she didn’t. Why would anyone else give a shit about your cousin but you, Lariat?” Snare’s words are hard, but his eyes hold compassion.
The silence is complete.
Noose shrugs. “Maybe it has nothing to do with Mini.”
My eyes slim on him. “What do ya mean?” The whole fucking convo is painful as fuck. Mini was all the family I had left.
Now I have nothing, not even Angel. But I never had her, not really.
“I’m saying,” Snare says slowly, “maybe Mini was killed because of the lawyer.”
“Angel?” I make a noise somewhere between a cough and a grunt. “No way.”
Snare rolls his shoulders, striding back. He opens his palm, and a shell casing from a small gun gleams dully in the pale light from the streetlamp inside the cemetery.
“She had company.” Noose’s pale gray eyes look eerily silver with the artificial pool of bluish illumination cast by the streetlamp.
“Yeah, she did.”
“She knows we’re former SEALS. Like we wouldn’t know when a weapon’s been discharged.”
A laugh shoots outta me. “I think Angel suspects we know. And what I find truly fucking fascinating is she didn’t ask how we all showed up, Johnnies-on-the-spot-style.”
“She’s running scared,” Wring says factually. “Reacting. Not thinking shit through.”
I cock my head and slant a look his way. “What do you mean?”
“Really?” Wring leans back and folds his arms over his muscular chest. He has been seriously hitting the weights, and it shows. “What I think is she’s into you, but Angel doesn’t know how to handle it. What with her client getting killed and the mob up her ass. Then you charge in there without a plan and start popping other lawyers in the face.”
I lace my fingers together, noting that Noose didn’t hand over a cig yet. “Sounds plausible when you line it out like that,” I finally say.
“Trying to think like a chick is exhausting, but I’m married to one now. And some of their chaotic thought process makes a sort of dim sense.”
I laugh, my eyebrow quirking. “So it’s not all about pussy, eh?”
Wring shakes his head. “Shannon was so sheltered and innocent, I felt guilty for getting a hard-on.”
Noose barks out a laugh. “You got over that pronto, though.”
Wring rubs a hand over his short flattop. His full wasp coloring glows under the light. “Yeah. So over it.”
“Men—we just fight it out, and shit gets resolved,” Noose says.
Well… yeah. And the point is?
“But chicks, they get all buried in their emotions and don’t figure shit out. Even someone as smart as Angela Monroe might not see the forest for the trees. Ya get me?” Noose’s eyebrows rise.
I do and yank a shoulder up. “But she still told me to fuck off.”
“She did? In those words?” The corners of Wring’s lips twitch.
I glare. “No, asshole, in Angel words.”
“Which were?” Snare asks.
Confession time. “I asked her to be my property.” My voice is so low, the guys lean forward to catch my words.
Noose whistles low in his throat, and I ignore him, continuing. “Then when she didn’t seem on board, I told her it could just be for looks, that the status would protect her.”
Noose flicks his spent cig on the ground, and a small spark smolders like a dying firefly. “Mob’s still going to romance her. Or whatever the blue fuck they’re doing.”
“See, that’s it—I don’t know what they’re up to. But that limp fuck Tommy was sent to beat her down.” I spread my arms away from my body. “I stopped that.”
Wring, Noose, and Snare remain silent.
“Then they obviously put the moves on her today, but I didn’t see any new damage on Angel. Thank fuck.”
“We’d have to pop some melons for that sh
it.” Noose gives a small salute, commenting as though he’s talking about the weather instead of bringing death.
The brothers nod. We don’t fuck around when we’re committed. We do what needs to be done.
“So let’s go over the bullshit,” Wring says, ticking off points on his fingers. “Angel is being pursued by—what’s that fucker’s name?”
“Antonio Ricci,” Noose interjects because he knows all that intel shit already, I’d speculate.
Wring snaps his fingers sharply. “While he’s in the pen. And your cousin—sorry to say, Lariat—gets killed right after Angel gets mauled by a mob prick. Not liking the coincidence.”
“Yeah.”
“Right after you save her and get biblically acquainted.”
I scowl at Wring.
“Not asking for deets, my brother, just laying out the facts as they appear from the outside lookinʼ in.”
“Fine.” I spin my hand like Get talking.
“Where’d you put the GPS locator, since you mentioned her transport is trashed?”
I smile like a shark.
Noose sits up from his slouch on the bike seat straight as an arrow. “Like that grin, have to say.”
“On the gun.”
“No shit?” Noose laughs. “Fucking pure, man. Nice.”
“You figured Angel was paranoid about her situation?” Wring asks.
I tilt my head. “Absolutely. It’s as though I show up, go caveman on her, and Angel acts as if she’s still on her own with nobody having her back.”
Snare frowns. “You heard what that mouthpiece Al said. She’s had a rough background.”
I turn from Snare to Noose.
We maintain serious eye contact, and he snatches my question out of thin air. “I can do it, man, but don’t kill the messenger. I found out serious shit on Shannon, and Wring was not a fan.” Noose holds up a palm then slaps it on his thigh.
Wring scowls at him, brows dipping low.
“I need to know what kind of woman I’m working with,” I say.
Noose snorts, lighting another cigarette. “I didn’t give a fuck what Rose was before me. It was all about what she was with me, brother. Think about that. Maybe better ya don’t know. Just let shit happen instead of planning it all to fucking death.” He lifts a shoulder, blowing out two smoke rings that are almost stacked they’re so tight.