by Eva Ashwood
Zaid’s fingers flex against my chest, again commanding me to keep my mouth shut and let them walk away. Getting into a fight with Stanley or any of these guys is dumb as hell, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the angry smirks on their faces as they turn and walk away. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to punch Stanley in his smug face until blood coats his teeth.
My whole body is tense, but Zaid reminds me with a cock of his head that we’ve still got work to do—meeting with Damian. The rest is a routine that puts me back into a better headspace, familiar stuff like debriefing with our leader, checking up on syndicate business, and letting him know how our assignments have gone.
It passes by in a blur, and soon we’re back in the car, tension still hanging on my shoulders. Forcing myself to take a deep breath and let go of it, I stare out the window as Zaid starts the car and pulls out of the parking garage.
We’re barely out of the alleyway before he slams a hand against the steering wheel. “Goddammit! That fucking cocksucker.”
I almost grin, although there’s nothing funny about this. He’s better at keeping his emotions under control than I am, but I should’ve known he’d explode as soon as we left the club.
“I can’t take this anymore.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t fucking take it.”
I grimace. “Yeah. I know. We’re all strung out right now, but we need to just stay chill and—”
“No. Fuck that.” He curses under his breath. “I don’t want to chill out. I’m pissed as fuck. I’m pissed at those old fuckers for blaming Grace for shit her dad did. Shit she didn’t even know about! And I’m pissed that Grace doesn’t trust us, that these are the circumstances that brought us back together. Jesus, I thought about her for years after she disappeared, hoping I’d see her again one day. Hoping she’d come back.”
“Yeah.”
I clench my jaw. Zaid and I are close as hell, and I know exactly what he’s talking about. I find my own emotions mirroring his. All the anger I stuffed down to keep from hauling off and decking Stanley is rising back up.
“Fuck, man.” Zaid scrubs a hand through his hair again. “I spent so long wondering if this moment would ever happen. Grace coming home. And now that it has, Damian’s on her back, there’s a mole in our syndicate, and she hates us.”
“She doesn’t hate us,” I mutter. I’m not sure if I’m saying it because I actually think it’s true, or because I just can’t stand to think of Grace despising us.
I mean, hell, the way she looks at me sometimes… the way she looks at all of us? It seems a lot closer to love than hate. But the fucked up part is, every time she gets that soft look in her eyes, it always vanishes eventually, hidden behind the walls she keeps putting up. I can’t blame her. The way our lives collided was violent and fucked up—not the kind of thing you’re supposed to build something real and lasting on.
But I want to. Even though it seems impossible. I want her to look at me with love and desire in her hazel eyes, and I don’t want the lingering remnants of distrust to infect that anymore.
I just don’t know how the hell to get there. How to reach that point.
“I know Hale has something for her, and I’m not exactly sure what that is, but honestly, I’m jealous,” Zaid continues. His hands flex on the steering wheel, and he keeps his gaze on the road. “I’m jealous because I want to be the one to protect her. I want to be the one she goes to.”
My fingers tap out a sharp rhythm on my thigh as I consider what he just said. Even though I know that shit’s gone down between Grace and each one of us, even Ciro, it doesn’t make me want her any less.
But who gets to have her? Ultimately, which one of us will she choose? Or will she never be able to let go of her distrust enough to truly care for any of us?
I’ve thought about the same thing my brother has… Hale has some unspoken claim on her that goes deeper than lust, something that’s going to get him into a shitload of trouble.
He’s falling in love with her.
I’m fucking sure of it.
“I’m not willing to back off,” I say slowly, admitting to my brother something that’s been brewing in my head for a while now. “Just because he feels whatever he feels for her. Grace is her own person who can make her own choices. And if it’s Hale, so be it. If it’s not Hale, then it’s still our job to step in and make sure she doesn’t feel like a fucking prisoner.”
Because that isn’t how it is.
Grace is a guest in our house, whether she realizes it or not. Sure, maybe in Damian’s book she’s still a prisoner, but not to me. It’s an honor to have her with us, and believe me, if she were a prisoner, she’d be treated a whole fuck of a lot differently. Our prisoners usually don’t get a guest suite with a king-sized bed and free access to anywhere they want to go in the house.
“Hale may be in command when it comes to anything syndicate related, but Grace isn’t the syndicate.” It sounds like direct defiance, but it’s the truth, and even Hale knows it. “If he gets pissed about the fact that we’re not willing to back down, then fuck him. He doesn’t get to decide how we feel about Grace, or how she feels about any of us.”
Zaid doesn’t say anything in response, and we fall into a brooding silence on the rest of the drive home, each contemplating our own shit.
When we get home and pull into the garage, I glance at Zaid as he pulls the key from the ignition. “Go on in. I’ll head inside in a little bit. I just need to… get my head on straight.”
He grunts in acknowledgement of my words, punching my shoulder lightly before sliding out and slamming his door shut behind him. I open my own door but don’t get out of the car right away. Instead, I just stare at the dash, trying to untangle the knot of emotions in my chest.
It’s up to Grace to decide how she feels about us.
The words I said to my brother flash through my head again, and I nod absently. It is up to Grace. Ciro, Hale, Zaid, and I can spend hours fighting over her if we want, but the truth is, none of that will mean shit if she hasn’t chosen any of us.
Because we can’t force her to care about us.
All we can do is try to earn her trust. To show her, in every way we possibly can, that things can be different between us. That the violence and chaos that brought us together don’t have to define our relationship going forward.
With a flare of determination, I get out of the car, slamming the door behind me. Why wait? Why should I waste another hour, another minute, another day, waiting for her to come around on her own? I may not be able to push along the process of weeding out the traitor any quicker, but I’m going to do my best to make sure Grace doesn’t feel like a fucking prisoner any longer.
I’m still not sure if it’s that simple, but why shouldn’t I try?
My mind is still churning with thoughts as I head to the kitchen. Zaid and I do most of the cooking around here, since we actually enjoy it and Hale and Ciro don’t. Lately, our meals have been pretty simple since we’ve got so much other shit on our plate, but I decide that tonight, I’ll make something special. Something Grace loves.
As I’m setting out what I need for dinner, I hear footsteps behind me.
Soft. Almost tentative.
The sweet scent of jasmine tickles my nostrils, and I know without turning around that it’s Grace.
I don’t say anything as I glance over my shoulder. Her expression shutters as our gazes meet, her footsteps stalling as she braces herself against the counter. When she glances back at the door as if she’s about to leave, I take three steps toward her.
No. Not tonight.
For one evening, I want to pretend like she’s ours, like she believes that she’s ours.
Because she does belong here, whether she’s come to terms with it or not.
11
Grace
“Wait.”
Before I can slip out of the room, Lucas strides over to me and grasps my arm, tugging me back toward him. With a gentle smirk playin
g at his lips, he pulls me deeper into the kitchen, pressing me flush up against his body in the process. My skin burns with the fleeting contact, heat settling deep in my body somewhere I pretend to ignore.
“Not tonight, Grace,” he says in a low voice. “Don’t run, okay? Stay with me.”
Zaid enters the kitchen through the side entrance before I can answer, freshly showered and in more casual clothes than I usually see them in. When I meet his gaze, something instantly sparks to life in them. He glances between his brother and me, and something tells me there’s not a hint of jealousy there.
Zaid and Lucas have always been close, the type of close that’s almost eerie sometimes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shared thoughts without realizing it, felt pain when the other one felt pain, so something tells me he’s thinking the same thing that’s filtering through my thoughts now. The same thing that I’m sure is on Lucas’s mind…
That night.
The night Brian attacked me, after I showered and rinsed away the blood and grime from my ordeal. I couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs and found them in the kitchen. Alone.
Something sparked between us, something that’d been building for days. It almost felt inevitable when I found myself sandwiched between them, Lucas’s lips blazing a hot path down my neck while Zaid gripped my hips, kissing me hungrily.
And what would’ve happened if we hadn’t stopped?
If I hadn’t been distracted by suddenly remembering the name Brian had mentioned on the phone—damn Brian, even dead he still fucks things up—what would have happened between the three of us?
I swallow as my imagination explodes with answers to that question. Lucas is still holding me close to his large, broad-shouldered frame, and I can feel his thumb tracing idly over the bare skin of my arm.
Squeezing my legs together, I clear my throat, trying to banish the thick tension that’s flooded the kitchen. I can’t pull myself out of it like I usually can. My pulse thunders in my ears, blood rushing to my head… and to my clit.
But before I can do something monumentally stupid, like try to pick up exactly where we left off that night, Lucas releases his hold on me, stepping back. Heat still lingers in his eyes, but he doesn’t make a move to touch me again. Almost like he knows how much it destroys my resolve when he does, and he wants to make sure I’m clearheaded when I respond.
“Stay with us,” he says again, and I can hear the gentle plea in his voice. “Help us make dinner.”
“You really don’t want me to help you,” I say, trying to come up with an excuse. “I’m terrible at cooking. Never learned how to.”
“Then at least just watch.” He grins. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
Jesus. I get the feeling he’s deliberately trying to tone down the sexual tension that bubbles between the three of us—as if he wants to prove that what exists between us is more than that, deeper than that. But if he’s trying to get my mind out of the gutter, uttering the phrase “at least just watch” is the wrong way to go about it.
His words immediately conjure images of Ciro watching from across the room while Hale fucked me on the bed. Of Zaid fisting his cock desperately, cum spilling over his hand as Hale made me climax with his fingers.
The words “just watch” are fraught with meaning, full of memories that make my body ache so intensely it almost scares me.
I swallow and let out a breath, trying to cool my heated blood.
Lucas’s eyes darken a little, almost like he’s seen inside my head and knows just how dirty my thoughts have gotten. Still, he seems determined to prove the point he set out to make. He doesn’t reach for me again. Instead, he takes a small step backward, leaving me with a free exit.
But I don’t take it.
I stand frozen for a long moment, glancing from him to his brother, trying to understand what this means.
It’s an undeniable fact that I’m drawn to all four of the men who kidnapped me. But what if there could truly be more for us than that? More than just fierce attraction and a desperate craving?
What if there could be… this?
The three of us making dinner together. Just being together. Easy and peaceful. Comfortable.
As soon as I have the thought, my heart skips a beat. I didn’t realize until this exact moment how much I’ve wanted this. How badly I’ve been aching to just feel normal for a little while.
“Yeah.” I nod, biting my lip. “Okay, I’ll stay. I’m not gonna just watch though. I want to help.”
Lucas’s smile is so wide it looks like it might split his face in half. Zaid grins too, and the entire atmosphere of the kitchen lightens. Maybe they needed this just as much as I did.
“Great.” Lucas’s green eyes glint with pleasure as he jerks his head, inviting me to come stand next to him near the counter. “I’ll give you an easy job. Promise.”
He’s already set everything out on the counter—an array of vegetables, meat, spices, baking goods, bowls, spoons—and he sets me up with a cutting board and gives me directions on how to cut the vegetables.
As I get started, Lucas begins to work on a sauce, mixing and measuring with ease. Zaid grabs a few more ingredients from the pantry and takes over another section of the large kitchen counter. We continue in silence for a little while, and I find myself smiling as I watch the two of them work together.
“Do you guys ever just heat up a microwave dinner?” I ask, my eyebrows pulling together as I chop carefully. “Or throw a frozen pizza in the oven?”
“That’s no fun.” Zaid winks at me. He’s working on some kind of dough, his hands dusted with flour as he kneads it. He’s rolled his sleeves up in a way that shows off the muscles of his forearms, and I watch them ripple as he works, trying not to notice how fucking sexy it is.
“You guys put me to shame,” I say, dragging my gaze back up to his face. “I’ve never been great in the kitchen, and Brian wasn’t much of a cook either.”
“Brian wasn’t much of a man,” Lucas says shortly. I get the feeling the twins have been trying to keep the atmosphere in the kitchen light and relaxed, but there’s a hard edge to his voice that he can’t hide.
I don’t mind it though. If anything, hearing the anger in his voice makes warmth spread through my chest.
Brian wasn’t much of a man. He was a lying, slimy worm who didn’t deserve even a second of the time I spent with him. And knowing that Lucas and Zaid see it that way too unwinds the knot that tries to form in my chest every time I think of Brian.
He’s gone. I don’t have to let his betrayal wreck me.
“Well, I’m impressed,” I say, distracting myself from my own thoughts.
“Hey, we aim to please.” Zaid waggles his eyebrows at me, and I blush a little.
Lucas chuckles, but his expression grows serious as he turns away from the stove and catches my gaze. “We want you to be happy here, Grace. I don’t know quite how to make it happen, but we’re trying.”
The sincerity of his words knocks me back a little. It’s the most open and honest I’ve ever heard him be, all joking and charm pushed aside until only the truth remains.
They want me here. And they want me to be happy.
My stomach flips, and for the first time, I wonder why I’m fighting so hard against the pull I feel toward these men. I wonder what would happen if I stopped fighting. If I just let go and trusted that they would catch me.
“Can I ask you a question?” I clear my throat slightly, wondering if I should proceed. I know a little bit of their history, but not everything.
“We might not have an answer,” Zaid says, “but you’re more than welcome to ask.”
“Do you talk to your parents anymore?”
I know it’s a pushy question and I shouldn’t ask it, but last I heard, Zaid and Lucas’s parents weren’t in their life anymore. Not because they were dead, but uninterested.
There’s a beat of silence as Lucas looks at his brother, a rapid, silent conversation happening between the tw
o of them.
Thinking about cooking reminds me of families, for some reason. My mother cooked all the time, although she never taught me more than the very basics. She was a perfect mafia wife in that respect, running the household while dad dealt with business for the syndicate. For a while after her death, after we fled from Chicago, my father tried to replicate things she used to cook—but we both knew it would never be the same, and he eventually stopped trying.
“We tried for a little while,” Lucas says simply. “They just never reciprocated.”
“Not long after they handed us over to Damian to pay their debts”—Zaid says the last word sarcastically—“they dropped out of our lives.”
“I’m sorry.”
Anger burns inside me at their parents. I never even met them, but I know their father essentially traded Lucas and Zaid into Damian’s service to clear a debt he owed when they were twelve. They did low-level tasks for the syndicate for a few years, but by the time the term of their service was up, they’d become friends with Hale and Ciro. They stayed, working their way up the ranks to where they are now.
“Don’t be sorry.” Lucas shrugs. “We have a new family now. This is our family. Family isn’t decided by blood. It’s decided by the people who take care of you and who you care for. I don’t miss the old man, or our mom. She put up a sort of half-assed fight when he made the bargain with Damian, but she never really cared.”
“It was shitty growing up knowing we weren’t wanted by the two people who should’ve mattered,” Zaid says, his voice low. The light atmosphere in the kitchen has slipped away again, but unlike the tension that’s been hovering over us for the past week, this feels… different. It feels intimate. “But the only reason we have what we have now is because of them. And I wouldn’t trade this life for the world. They’re the ones who lost out in all of this, not us.”