by Anne Malcom
I had risen to somewhat of a screech by the end, and my knife had found its home. Right between Jerome’s legs.
The wet sound of blood gurgling around steel should’ve made me sick. It probably meant something about my own soul that it didn’t.
I pushed the dead weight of his body back as I retrieved my knife. I shoved it back in my boot and looked down, satisfied with the blood pooling at my feet.
“Maybe you’ll survive this,” I said. “Maybe you won’t.” I stepped over him toward the door. “And it’s all because a woman missed her bus one night and decided to walk home. Because of you. Remember that, asshole.”
And then I was gone.
I shoved my leather gloves in my pocket. I didn’t really need them. If he did survive, he wasn’t likely going to report the attack to the cops because it would mean them investigating his house, the scene. His house that doubled as a meth lab.
And if he died, the police would eventually find and investigate the scene. But it was corrupted enough with all the comings and goings that they would find dozens of suspects. I wouldn’t be on the list, considering I didn’t know him from Adam and didn’t run with those types of crowds.
Plus, my prints didn’t even exist in the system. Wire took care of that.
It was hard and very fucking risky, but he did it for me. He couldn’t do it for everyone because the chances of getting caught and traced were higher. Plus, almost everyone had a record a mile long. Kind of hard to delete that shit from the system.
I had no record.
Not because I didn’t commit any crimes, but because I’d never been arrested.
Because of Luke.
I walked out the door, not at all perturbed by the gunshot that rang out in the night, or the stares of the group of youths across the street.
Even with this shit clogging my mind, I still thought of him.
It was because I was thinking of him that I was caught off guard as I cut through the alley where my car was parked. I may have had zero to none chances of getting caught, but that didn’t mean I was about to tempt fate by parking my car right outside the scene.
Cutting through the alley, I didn’t think of the lingering stares of the boys as I passed, nor the roughness of the neighborhood or the potential for Jerome’s boys to find him and then go looking for me.
Each and every one of those things could result in death or at the very least grievous bodily harm for me.
I didn’t think of them.
I thought of Luke.
And I still thought of him as someone snatched my shoulders roughly and slammed me against the wall of the alley. The grip my attacker had on my shoulders was viselike and made it unable for me to grab my gun. I tried to kick out my legs, but his entire body pinned me.
“Are you fucking insane?” a deep and murderous voice hissed.
My gaze snapped upward, only then focusing on my attacker’s face.
Luke’s face.
“Of course I am,” I snapped, only relaxing slightly. My heart was still thundering, despite the fact that I wasn’t in any danger. Bodily, at least. “What does that have to do with you attacking me in a fucking alley?”
His glare was unyielding, angry, and foreign. It scared me for a moment, like looking into the face that you thought you knew so well, the man you’d etched into your soul, and finding a stranger.
“Are you serious, Rosie?” he growled. “You just waltzed around one of the most dangerous and crime-ridden areas of LA, into the house of one of the most deranged characters in this neighborhood, assaulted, tortured and maybe fucking killed him, and you’re the one who’s wondering why you’re getting attacked in an alley?” he hissed.
His grip, which was before firm but harmless, was bordering on painful as his anger crept upward. Again, the stranger reappeared, and I wondered if the stranger was Luke now.
“Have you been following me?” I accused.
“Not exactly,” another accented and familiar voice cut in.
My head snapped sideways to see Keltan’s attractive face emerge from the shadows.
Luke’s grip slackened and I stepped away from him. “What are you talking about?” I demanded, pointing all my energy at Keltan.
He leaned on the wall, casually. The man was so laid-back all the fucking time it was a miracle he stayed upright. Or pretended to be. In the times I’d hung out with him and Lucy, which was as often as possible, that mask slipped and you saw the man underneath. The man bracing for the next fucking horror.
He didn’t look like he was bracing now; he looked like he was having fun. “Well, I may not be a native, haven’t been here long, but I’m good at makin’ friends.” He winked. “Think it’s the accent. You Yanks find us Kiwis exotic, of all things. Mad, but it works for me.” He shrugged his impressive shoulders. “My friends have been filling me in on this new woman on the block, causing trouble for the scum of the underworld. Naturally, I thought of you. And I wasn’t exactly tickled pink to find out I was right once I put Duke on you. Wasn’t surprised, though. He was impressed, by the way. Taking down three armed men? Even some of my guys couldn’t do that without at least a shiner to show for it.”
“Yeah, well girls do it better,” I snapped. “And it sounds like your employees must be lacking.” I gave a pointed look to Luke, even though he was anything but lacking.
He was the opposite. All-consuming of the space he was inhabiting. He was in all black, so he almost melted into the inky darkness around him, but the lines of his body seemed to jump from the night air, hinting at his muscles beneath.
Luke glared back at me.
“Perhaps,” Keltan said.
“So is this an intervention, or do you want me to take a workshop or something?” I asked, feigning impatience. “Because trust me, you couldn’t afford me. And you definitely couldn’t handle me.” I directed that one at Luke too.
“We can fuckin’ handle you,” Luke seethed.
I tilted my head. “Give it a try, then,” I invited. “Is that why you’re here, to ‘handle’ the female?”
“No,” Keltan said. “We’re here—”
“We’re here to ask you what the fuck you’re doing?” Luke interrupted. “You think you’re some kind of Robin Hood? Or do you think it’s up to you to punish the guilty?”
I didn’t blanche at his anger, his fury. “No, but I think it’s up to someone to avenge the innocent, and I’m as good a woman as any.”
Luke’s glare endured. “You’re a woman. Out here on your own. That’s no place for—”
“Be very careful about what comes out of your mouth next, Luke. About what you say I can and can’t do because of my tits. And my genetic predilection for being more awesome than anyone with a Y chromosome.”
“You’re not doin’ this shit anymore,” he said instead.
I raised my eyebrow at the same time I tapped my gun against my thigh. “Really?” I asked placidly. Calmly. In a tone that most men who valued their lives would recognize.
Luke’s face told me he didn’t currently value his life. Or at least he didn’t take me very seriously as a threat to it.
He wasn’t the first man to make that mistake.
He wouldn’t be the last, either.
“Really,” he gritted out.
The following moments could’ve gone a lot differently had it not been for Keltan, a man who did recognize my tone. Mostly because he was a lot smarter and because he was married to a woman who likely taught him about said tone.
“Okay,” he said, fluidly stepping between us. “Let’s not do anything we’ll regret.”
I smiled. “Oh, I won’t regret it.”
Luke’s anger pulsated through the open air and he stayed silent, his version of disagreement.
I’d never met anyone more stubborn than him, apart from myself.
“Oh, I beg to differ, darlin’,” Keltan said casually, his laid-back demeanor cutting through the tension rippling between Luke and me. “Now, how about you
put the gun away and we’ll chat.”
I focused on Keltan and did not put my gun away. “Now, if your chat is going to entail you trying, in your endearing little accent, to tell me not to do something, I’ll tell you that being married to my best friend and having a cute accent isn’t going to change my answer to that question. It’ll just reduce the curse words and death threats.”
Keltan, instead of taking my threat as a promise, smiled. Instead of finding it supremely irritating, it was somehow reassuring, not patronizing as it most likely would’ve been coming from men who underestimated me—i.e. Luke.
“No, I’d never dream of doing such a thing. Unlike Luke, I actually value my nuts. I wanna have kids one day,” he said, glancing to Luke, who was still glaring.
I idly wondered what the record was for the longest continuous glare. Luke was surely close to beating it.
“I’m going to offer you a job,” Keltan continued.
I blinked and said, “Seriously?” at the same time Luke said, “What the fuck?” Actually, he yelled it.
Keltan, interestingly, didn’t look at the man who’d yelled at him. He acted like he’d never even heard him.
Neat skill.
“Surprising, I’m sure, but I’m serious. I’m more serious about talking about this in a slightly more savory environment and with a beer in my hand. Fancy going to our place? I’m sure Lucy would love to see you and hear about your secret identity as Batman.”
I grinned. “Although black is timeless and chic, my secret identity would obviously be Superman. I look kick-ass in blue, plus flying is so much cooler than driving an obnoxious car. Wouldn’t mind the butler, though.”
Keltan grinned.
Luke stepped forward, in front of me and right in Keltan’s grill. “You can’t be fucking serious right now. I called you here to help me stop this bullshit, not encourage it,” he seethed.
Keltan kept his easy expression. “Now I’m sure you know Rosie better than to think anyone, especially us, can stop her from doing anything,” he said. “Stopping her was never gonna work. I’m offering a mutually beneficial solution.”
“It’s not very fucking beneficial,” he clipped.
“In time, you’ll agree with me. For now, let’s get off the street before the fuzz comes.” Keltan looked to Luke. “Guessin’ you’re not ridin’ with me?”
Luke shook his head once and Keltan grinned, turning to leave in the opposite direction of my car.
“Oh, the police are already here,” I snapped to Keltan’s statement, despite him walking out of earshot.
It wasn’t for his benefit anyway.
Luke snatched my arm. “I’m not a cop anymore. You’re well aware of that.”
I thought I did well at hiding the pain his words held. “Once a cop, always a cop. It’s those pesky morals. They don’t disappear as easy as a badge does.”
His eyes glowed in the moonlight. “You’d be surprised what doesn’t disappear and what goes away completely,” he murmured, half dragging me to the car. “Like me imagining the taste of your pussy on my tongue. Or the way it’s gonna clench against my cock when you come. That kind of shit isn’t gonna leave me ever.” He pinned me against my car, my entire body pulsating with his words, the way they roused the memory so stark that I could feel his lips everywhere, despite his mouth being inches away.
“I’ll be turning those imaginings into reality, make no doubt about that,” he rasped. “But first, you’re getting in the fucking car,” he demanded.
Chapter Fourteen
My downstairs area was pulsating as I sat in the car, my panties wet from just the pure sex in Luke’s tone. As he got in beside me, I wanted to jump him right there, forget the rest of the other shit, my anger, our fucking heartbreak.
I just wanted him.
I was close, very fucking close to doing just that when he spoke.
“This isn’t your job, Rosie.”
I started the car, screeching away from the curb, seething in the lost moment, being deprived of sexual release.
“Well, whose job is it?” I snapped, hands tight against the steering wheel. “It’s not yours anymore. And even when it was, who was it deciding what constitutes right and wrong and how wrong is punished? And more aptly, how to get off fucking easy? Huh? Fat guys in expensive suits with bad hair and worse tans are sitting in their comfortable seats in their big white houses, controlling things. Controlling the law. How it’s enforced. Controlling what we think about the fucking world. What’s good and bad. I’ve seen bad. Experienced it. Felt it. I feel like I know better than those fat guys what constitutes punishment, so I disagree with you there. It is my job, much more than it ever was yours.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing?” he asked, clenching his hands against his knees, obviously in male frustration since I hadn’t let him drive my car. “Skulking around some of the most dangerous streets in America, asking for fucking trouble?”
“Well not just that. I also had a Stranger Things marathon. That show is the shit,” I replied. “Plus, I don’t go looking for trouble. I am trouble.”
“Yeah, I fucking knew that. Just didn’t think you were stupid.”
I glared at him. “And why am I stupid, Luke? Because I don’t know my place in the kitchen, in the nursery, minding the babies? Because I don’t let myself be weak just because I’m a chick? I think that’s reasonably damn smart. But I see from a man’s perspective, one who thinks the man’s job is to shield, protect, it could be perceived as stupid. Never mind that whole perspective being fucking stupid, not to mention utterly dated,” I shot back.
“Fuck, Rosie, this isn’t about whether I doubt your strength, or because you’re a woman. It’s because you’re my woman. Anyone, me included, going out there alone is putting their life in the hands of something that isn’t them. Of people who consider life to be worth less than their next fix, the patch they wear, the crime boss they answer to,” he seethed. “So no, this has not a fucking thing to do with the fact that you’re a woman. This has everything to do with the fact that you’re you. You’re precious. You’re fucking irreplaceable. So yeah, no matter how dated you think my notion is, when a man finds something irreplaceable and he has it in his hands, he does anything and everything to protect it.” He paused, anger filtering away like a deflated balloon. “I thought you would’ve realized that by now. After everything.”
There was something in his voice that had a similar effect on my own anger. It was a kind of hurt, a manly and brisk one, but hurt just the same.
I thought. Backward. Through everything, through every interaction, every sacrifice, every stolen moment.
He did it.
Everything.
For me.
To protect me.
And he might’ve succeeded.
But even he couldn’t protect me from myself.
“Luke,” I whispered.
But we were pulling up to a familiar apartment building. I hadn’t even realized we were this close and I was driving. Driving under the influence. There wasn’t a breath test for that one, though.
I was under the influence of Luke.
Of love. Otherwise known as fucking insanity.
“Okay, so let’s talk about this job,” I said, right after I’d sat down and Lucy had handed me a cocktail. She settled next to her husband, who immediately yanked her to his side, as close as she could possibly go.
I glanced to the purposeful space between Luke and me, ignored the strange and intense pain that came with that tiny space, and focused on Lucy.
“Job?” she repeated.
I nodded. “Your dutiful husband has offered me a job. Though I’m guessing it’s to placate me and I’ll likely be expected to sit behind a desk, look pretty, and do the bidding of various alpha males.”
Keltan stroked Lucy’s arm. “I look like I came down in the last shower?”
I shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”
“I wouldn’t offer you a job doing that shi
t, firstly because I know you’d refuse, and second, I suspect you’d suck at it,” he said, grinning.
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed. My employment career was almost as sordid as my relationship one. I barely stayed anywhere long enough to get to know my manager’s last name. Helping run Gwen and Amy’s store was my longest-running venture.
Legal, at least.
The Sons of Templar men may have promised to stay above the law. I made no such promises.
So that meant I was rarely idle and rarely hurting for money. I also liked shoes, expensive ones, and I had nosy relatives, so I needed the appearance of a job. Not that Wire didn’t already know about my various ventures—fuck, he was involved in half of them. Which was the reason why Cade didn’t know. Wire knew if my brother found out that he’d helped not just run a site on the deep web that worked like an outlaw version of eBay and Facebook merged into one, but helped create it, Cade would likely skin him alive.
But we weren’t under much risk of getting caught.
There was always risk. That’s where the fun was.
“What the fuck is this job, then?” Luke demanded.
I rolled my eyes.
Lucy smiled into her cocktail glass.
“Same job as you have… almost,” Keltan said.
I smiled. I liked the ‘almost’ part. He made it sound like the ‘almost’ was the badass part.
“We’ve become popular since we opened.”
“Four guesses why,” I muttered. “Biceps, abs, ass, face, in that order,” I continued.
Keltan grinned. “Whose?”
“Take your pick. That’s the point.”
Luke let out a low growl at that.
We all ignored it.
“Well, I’d like to think it’s because we’re fucking good at our jobs,” Keltan said.
I shrugged. “That too.”
“The demand is going beyond regular security shit. Which makes sense, since my guys have experience way beyond security. We’ve been getting a few bail skips. Family members of victims whose attackers have been let off on a technicality, frustrated with the police. These are off the record, of course, though the bail skips are legit.”