by Layla Reyne
“I’ll work our health department contacts,” Hawes continued. “Helena, you work the legal, and if you’re near the station—”
“I’ll make sure Brax gets a visit too,” she said with a smile.
“Are we expecting any blowback from the job tonight?” Rose asked.
Hawes shook his head. “It’ll get media attention, but all went according to plan. It’ll look like suicide. Won’t be tied to us.”
“All right, just one more thing, then. What are we going to do about your new shadow?” She nodded at the surveillance feed of the hallway outside his condo.
All quiet, no sign of Dante.
“Has he left?” Hawes asked Holt.
“Negative.” Holt flipped the footage over to the front of the building. Dante’s bike was still parked under the streetlamp. “Unless he went out the balcony doors, but the security system reports no doors or windows opened since you left.”
Hawes checked his watch. Almost two hours ago now. Almost a day and a half since Dante Perry had sauntered into his life. Was the PI pulling a string too? Or helping to hold the fabric together? Hawes had certainly felt unraveled last night. The good kind, though, that had helped him relax and sleep for a few hours before this morning’s job. But one of Dante’s motives couldn’t be argued—he had admitted to using them. As such, Hawes felt no guilt using him too.
“Continue as if he’s a potential threat,” Hawes said to Holt. Caution was warranted. “Did you find any payments? Any connection to Isabelle? She meant something to him. Their paths had to have crossed.”
“Not that I can find. And no one’s paying him to be here or to investigate us. I tracked his recent deposits, and everything lines up with completed jobs.”
“But something else doesn’t,” Helena said, her skepticism unwavering.
Hawes couldn’t deny there were holes in Dante’s story that required filling. “Keep digging,” he said. “I’ll proceed as if he’s a source. See if he knows about the investigation Campbell mentioned.” He gestured at the monitors. “Keep tabs on him after. I want to see if he takes the information and runs to someone.” Authorities or traitors.
“Should we keep the meet today?” Holt asked. “If the buyer gets wind of anything amiss…”
“Canceling would be a bigger red flag.” Except under one circumstance, which anyone, including their buyer, would understand. “Unless we need to cancel to be with you and Papa Cal,” he said to Rose.
She shook her head. “You’re right. You need to go ahead with the meet.” Her approval quieted Hawes’s doubts. “The last thing Callum would want is for the organization to stop running because of him.”
It was also the last thing Hawes wanted. What they’d done that morning mattered; they needed to keep doing it. He might not have agreed with Papa Cal’s reign of terror, or his parents’ robotic efficiency, but with Holt and Helena by his side, and Amelia and Rose on board, he could shape the organization into something that worked for this generation and their legacy. Something for good.
Hawes emerged from the entry hall and stared at the gorgeous, hilarious sight in front of him. “She’s got you trained already.”
Dante spread his arms where he sat at the dining table. He looked hotter than he had any right to—olive skin glowing in the morning light, hair in a messy top knot, a book in one hand and a spoon in the other. That was the gorgeous part. The hilarious part was Iris’s back paws on his denim-clad thighs, her front ones on the table, and her face in his cereal bowl. “She didn’t give me a chance to finish.” He tossed his book on the table. “Just jumped right up and claimed it for herself.”
“That’s my fault.” Laughing, Hawes followed his nose to the pot of coffee in the kitchen. “I don’t like cereal milk, so she always gets mine.”
“You don’t like cereal milk?” Dante gasped. “What kind of monster are you?”
“I don’t know.” He filled a mug with coffee, sipped the life-giving brew, and leaned a hip against the island. “You’ve had four hours here alone. You tell me. What monstrous things did you find?”
“Only one that was truly evil.” He shooed Iris off his lap, stood, and pulled a cookbook out of the many on the buffet table. Hawes suspected he knew which one. Dante brought it over to the island and tossed it onto the granite countertop.
Suspicion confirmed. Cooking Vegan. A gag gift from Holt on their thirtieth birthday.
Hawes smiled into his mug. “Does that offend your Italian senses?”
“More than you will ever know.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ve never opened it.”
“Marginally.” Dante circled the island, coming to stand in front of Hawes. “You were gone early this morning.”
“Duty called.”
“You left me here.” He stepped closer and slid a hand over Hawes’s hip. “You trusted me enough to stay in your condo without you.”
“Iris is a good watchdog.”
“So’s your brother. The security system was armed. He’d know if I left.”
Hawes shrugged and set his mug aside. “He’d know, but you were free to leave.”
“You assumed I’d search the place?”
“You’re a PI, aren’t you?”
Dante returned his shrug with a smirk, which Hawes promptly wiped off his face with a kiss. The one he’d wanted in the dark of morning, for his own reasons. Reasons that were still tugging at Hawes’s gut and other places south. He dove deeper into Dante’s mouth, indulging in the taste of sweet cereal mixed with Dante’s rich, mysterious flavor.
Dante matched his fervor, sucking Hawes’s tongue in farther and tugging his shirt loose from his pants, unraveling Hawes’s control while conversely stitching him together into the prince, who had additional reasons, other than just his desire, to keep Dante close. His vibrating phone was a well-timed reminder. He slipped out of Dante’s arms and started down the hall toward the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes in his wake. “I need to shower.”
As Hawes had intended, Dante followed. “Can I get in with you?”
“Not if I’m going to make my meeting in an hour.” He tossed his phone on the vanity, opened the glass door over the spa tub, and turned on the shower.
Dante pressed against his back, making Hawes dizzy with want. “You sure about that?” His hands snuck under the waistband of Hawes’s boxers and pushed them down. They fluttered to the floor, and Hawes’s cock jutted the opposite direction, begging for attention. Dante gave it to his balls instead, tugging. Hawes groaned and dropped his head back onto Dante’s shoulder. Dante ramped up the torture, dipping his tongue into the crook of Hawes’s neck and driving him wild. “Maybe I’d let you return that favor from last night.”
Hawes rocked his hips, ass rubbing against Dante’s erection, even as he did the math in his head, counting minutes and drive time. As much as he wanted to accept Dante’s offer, there was no way he could make it work. Dante circled the base of his cock, and Hawes jerked out of his hold before it was too late. “No,” he said, spinning. “You stay right there”—he pointed at the half wall across from the shower—“and answer my questions.”
Dante did not look pleased, but he complied, hopping up onto the wall. Hawes stepped into the shower and turned the water to cool, tamping down his erection. “Did you know Walter Campbell?”
“Fog City have you and your siblings to thank for that?”
Shampoo bottle in hand, Hawes stared at Dante blank-faced. “For what?”
“Walter Campbell committed suicide. It’s all over the news.”
“If the news said…”
Dante scoffed. “The court said he was innocent, which was also a lie.”
“Well, then.” Hawes closed his eyes and washed out his soapy hair under the showerhead. “It sounds like justice was served.”
“Is that what you do now? Vigilante justice? The winery, the warehouse, Campbell.”
Rather than answer and officially incriminate himself and his sibl
ings, Hawes reverted to his original question. “Did you know him?”
“Other than from the trial coverage, no.”
“What about anyone else in local politics or at the courthouse?”
“I have my contacts,” Dante said. “Same as you all do, no doubt.”
Hawes continued to wash while working his source for information. “You said someone is trying to unseat me. Are they trying to do that legally too?”
“What’s this about, Madigan?”
“There’s an investigation, under seal.”
Dante hopped off the ledge. “That’s not the tip I had.”
“About that tip…”
“I showed you what I had.”
Hawes washed off the last of the soap. “And yet I still don’t know why you’re here.”
The shower door opened, and cool air rushed in. Hawes turned, meeting Dante’s cold, hard eyes without the glass for a shield. “I told you why.”
“Isabelle Costa.” Hawes hoped his voice didn’t tremble as much as his insides. “You said she mattered, but that’s all I’ve gotten from you. Why have you inserted yourself into my life and family business, Mr. Perry?”
One of Dante’s hands flattened on the glass, the other closed around the towel bar at the back of the shower, boxing Hawes in. Hawes expected his voice to be cold and hard, like his eyes, but it was soft and tender, guilty almost. “She helped me at a time when I wasn’t in a good way. She didn’t deserve to get gunned down in the street, by her boyfriend or otherwise.”
“She didn’t.”
“She deserves justice too. That’s why I’m here.”
Hawes didn’t disagree with Dante on either of those points. He shoved his hands and face under the shower spray, remembering that night again. The truth that varied from the official story. How the water had run red, then cold, his fingers raw and pruned by the time Helena had dragged him out. Three years later, Isabelle’s blood was still on his hands.
“Hawes.”
A different voice, a different time, and yet things felt all too familiar. Too connected. Except this time, he could do something about it.
He turned off the water and yanked a towel off the rack. “I need to get going.”
“Can I go with you to this meet?”
Hawes shook his head and stepped out onto the bathmat. “A new face might spook the buyer.”
“Buyer?”
“For the prototypes,” he said.
“You’re selling the explosives?”
“The prototypes.” Hawes held his gaze, and his cover. “The prototypes business, actually.”
Dante’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t think that’s motive enough for a disgruntled operative?”
Fair point. He’d been thinking in terms of his new policies generally, not this one specifically. It was another stream of income, another line of attack, cut off to his operatives. The possibility had to be considered. “In the current context, yes.” Someone like Lucas might read this change of course as another example of Hawes being a “pansy.”
For Hawes, it was simply valuing life.
“You’re still going through with it?” Dante asked.
“It’s our empire now—mine, Holt’s, and Helena’s—and this is how we’ve decided to rule it. The prototypes are too much risk. Too high a cost.” Too high a body count, collateral and otherwise. “We’re getting out of that business.”
The kiss Dante laid on him then was different than any other they’d shared. It was slow and deep, not riding the edge of blistering desire they’d been skating the past thirty-six hours. A deeper emotion rippled under the surface, something warm that Hawes wanted to settle into for hours.
Or yank himself back from a split-second later when Dante thrust a gun into his hand. He stared down at the awful weight, made heavier by the conversation they’d just had. “What the fuck?”
“If you’re not going to let me go with you, then at least take protection, in case things go sideways.”
“I’ll have Holt with me.”
Dante closed Hawes’s fingers around the pistol. “You’ll have this too.”
Hawes wanted to vomit. “I can’t use this.” He shoved the gun back at Dante. At the man’s frustrated look, Hawes bent, hiked up Dante’s pant leg, and took his knife instead. “Satisfied?”
Dante tucked the pistol back into his waistband. “You don’t like guns.”
“They kill too fast, without thought. It’s too easy to make the wrong call.”
Confusing Hawes further, Dante hauled him in for another kiss. This one, however, was gentler than the last. Lazy, unguarded nips and licks of the sort Hawes dreamed of having the luxury to enjoy with a partner someday. And fuck if he didn’t have somewhere else to be. He reluctantly broke the kiss and rested his forehead against Dante’s. “I have to go.”
“I’ll talk with my contacts at the courthouse,” Dante said after a couple of breaths. “Let me see what I can find out about this investigation.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s two favors you’ll owe me.” Dante stole another kiss, then stepped out of the way, clearing Hawes’s path to the vanity, save for a smack to his ass. “I do plan to collect.”
Hawes grinned over his shoulder. “I hope so.”
Chapter Eleven
Hawes swung Holt’s SUV into the parking lot of the run-down buffet restaurant and parked among the cars scattered across the lot. Ride-share commuters, according to the realtor who had the property listing. The owner was still making money off the site, which had been sitting on the market for years. He was making more than usual today with the fee Hawes had paid to use it. Less than a mile from their South San Francisco warehouse, and only a few from SFO, where their buyer was flying in, the deserted restaurant site worked well for their purposes.
In the passenger seat, Holt was scrolling through news feeds on his tablet, reviewing the press coverage of Campbell’s death. By the glimpses Hawes caught of the suicide headlines, they were still in the clear.
The glimpses of his brother were a different story. Holt’s decline into zombie-dom continued—darker bags under his tired eyes, his auburn beard shaggier, and his washed-out skin contrasting starkly with his colorful tattoo sleeve. Tattoos that stood out more vividly when unobscured by a baby in his arm. Amelia had the day off and had taken Lily and Rose to visit Cal. Holt was jumpier without his daughter in sight, but it was safer this way. They weren’t expecting danger, but it couldn’t be ruled out. Helena was likewise absent, due in part to her job and in part to strategy. Whenever possible, they avoided putting all three of them in the crosshairs. One of them usually stayed back, as Holt had that morning and as Helena did now.
Hawes shifted, reaching into the back seat for the folder containing the sale documents and Holt’s flannel. He dropped the shirt into his brother’s lap. “Buyer’s on time?”
“Landed twenty minutes ago.” Holt tapped at his tablet screen. “And Lyft just ran his card. He should be here in ten.”
Hawes snatched the realtor’s keys out of the cup holder and spun them around his index finger. “Let’s go on in.” He rotated toward the door but was stopped halfway by Holt’s hand around his arm.
“Wait!”
Hawes glanced over his shoulder. “There a problem?”
Holt’s gaze darted all around, looking everywhere but at Hawes. “Are we sure we want to do this?”
“We?” Hawes twisted the rest of the way around to face his brother. “I’m sure. Helena’s sure. Are you?”
“I don’t want my hands in this any more than you and Hena do.”
“Then why are you hesitating?”
Holt darkened his tablet, tossed it onto the dash, and slumped in his seat with a sigh. “The future.”
“This is the future.”
“There are so many unknowns, Hawes, and without this”—he nodded out the windshield in the general direction of their warehouse several blocks away—“it’s another unknown. What if so
mething happens to the cold storage business? Or to our other line of work?” He fisted his hands in his lap. “I still can’t find the source of the leak about Papa Cal, who’s dying. A PI shows up out of nowhere saying someone’s out to kill you, and you can’t keep your eyes off the guy. Brax has gone radio silent, and we’re being investigated without knowing by whom or for what.” His knuckles grew whiter and his breaths shorter, on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Hawes clasped Holt’s arm, trying to shake him loose of the panic. “Breathe, little brother.” And father… That had to be where this was coming from.
Holt confirmed as much when he relaxed his hands and lifted his fingers to his left pec, laying them over the water lily he’d had inked there after his daughter’s birth.
“This is about Lily,” Hawes said.
Holt leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Mom and dad, our grandparents, they talked about legacy all the time, but I never truly understood until now.”
“We all understand better with Lily in our lives. She’s why we do any of this.” To make a better, safer world for her, and to give her options, either in or out of the family business. But as much as she tugged on Hawes’s mind and heart, he couldn’t imagine the responsibility Holt felt. “That said, you’re Lily’s father. You and Amelia have the most at stake here. We all get that too. So if you want to call off this deal, we’ll call it off. This only works if all of us are on board. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will always be.”
“I’m sorry.” Holt dropped his hand into his lap.
Hawes covered it with his own. “Don’t be sorry. I’d rather you talk to me than bottle this up.”
“It’s been a lot.”
“When’s the last time you slept for more than three hours?”
Holt laughed, the sound exhausted and helpless, but thankfully without the earlier panic and doubt.
Hawes settled back into his seat. “What do you want to do here?”
“We go through with it,” Holt answered without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”