Honor

by Jay Crownover

  “I’m going to kill you.” Bayla said it with such conviction and certainty that it made my injured heart kick hard in my chest.

  Key laughed and I was stunned. She didn’t sound scared or worried at all. She sounded genuinely amused and slightly annoyed, nothing more.

  “You already tried that once before. Remember how well it worked out for you? You need to leave, Bayla. Nassir’s new thing is giving people choices, so I’m letting you have one. Go away or take me up on my offer to go somewhere else and start over. He’s mine. This life is mine and there is no room for you in it. There never will be.”

  I saw the blade flash and Bayla’s tawny skin flush an angry beet red. She wasn’t going to listen to reason. Much like Tyler French, Bayla had gone too far to return from the edge of insanity.

  She gave a war cry and started to rush up the steps. I swore and screamed Key’s name while limping forward, but all of that got drowned out as a gun fired and filled the interior of my home with noise and the pungent smell of gunpowder. I saw the knife fall and clatter down the steps and Bayla grab her shoulder and fold into a little ball as blood pushed out through her fingers. Key’s bare feet and long legs padded down the rest of the steps and my eyes widened when I saw the black pistol she held in her hand. She squatted down in front of the other woman and reached out to pull her face up by her chin.

  “I have really good aim, so I purposely didn’t hit anything vital. You can disappear or I can make you disappear.” She was even using the threats and promises that I laid down with my prey. It was ridiculously sexy and arousing. “That deck off the back of the house drops into a gorge that seems endless. I can toss you over the railing and no one will ever find your body. Do we have to have this conversation again? Because frankly I’m sick of trying to explain to you that he loves me, has always loved me, and you never stood a chance.” Holy shit, was she ever my girl. Who knew that watching her toss threats and promising mayhem would be such a turn-on even if it wasn’t the time or the place?

  Bayla was sniffling and, unbelievably, looked at me for help. I snorted, mostly because Key had just delivered the exact same ultimatum I had used against the last woman that had been causing a headache in my life. Key had more than a little devil inside of her. “I’ll help her toss you into the canyon,” I put in. All I wanted to do was lie back down and hold on to my badass girl. Who needed Chuck to watch my back when I had her?

  “I love you.” She whispered the words and I thought Key was going to shoot her again.

  “Maybe you do, but that’s your mistake.”

  Hearing me tell her that her feelings were a mistake must have finally broken through to her. She levered herself to her feet, cast a longing look at me, and then rushed past me and out the door. I didn’t know what kind of offer Key had made the woman before tonight, and when I stopped feeling like my entire body was turned inside out, I was going to make her tell me all about it. I wasn’t surprised that Key had plans of her own for our city.

  Once Bayla was gone, I collapsed onto the floor. Pain radiated along every nerve in my body and I couldn’t stop the ceiling from dipping in and out of focus. I heard Key make her way over to me. She sat down by my hip and reached out to trace her fingers over my eyebrows.

  “What else did Race teach you while I was in the hospital?”

  She laughed softly. “It was actually Booker. Race said he didn’t want any part of putting a weapon in my hands. He said I was dangerous enough as it was. I asked Chuck and he said it was something you would want to show me how to do—handle a weapon and protect myself. I figured I better be prepared since someone is always trying to knock my devil off his throne, so Reeve suggested Booker and he hooked me up. Apparently I’m a natural, which is a good thing when all of heaven and earth is trying to take the man I love from me. I’m not ever going to watch someone hold a weapon on you or on me and not be able to do something about it again.”

  I should be annoyed but I wasn’t. I was proud of her. She knew what it was going to take to stand by my side and protect what was ours.

  “So, that talk you wanted to have about Bayla before all hell broke loose . . . maybe you want to fill me in on that now.”

  She breathed out a little laugh and shifted around so she was lying on her back in the middle of the living room next to me. “Later. We have time.”

  Yes, we did. Time we had fought for, died for, bargained for, and ultimately earned in order to be together. Even spending time with this woman couldn’t come easy and that made me appreciate every second of it . . . and of her, more.

  “You think that’s the last of the people trying to kill you we’ll see for a while?” She sounded like she was kidding.

  “Not even close.”

  That was what it was like to be a dishonorable man with a horrific past in a wrecked city. The consequences never seemed to end and I had a lifetime of them gunning for me.

  Chapter 19

  Keelyn

  Four months later . . .

  The two men across from me in the elevator were talking in a language I didn’t understand. That happened a lot with the kinds of people Nassir did business with. These particular men were Eastern European, and I knew enough and could tell by the way they were looking at me that they weren’t talking about the fabulous, purple Michael Kors heels decorating my feet.

  One of the guys kept looking at the substantial rock that was sitting on my left hand and nudging his buddy. I think the gist of their conversation was that Nassir obviously had a weakness if he was going to put that kind of jewel on my hand and let me be involved in their business, but since I didn’t speak what I assumed was Albanian, I couldn’t be sure. I just kept my eyes on them as the elevator rose up to Nassir’s office, and refused to show any emotion as they continued to chatter away. One of the guys leered at me and licked his lips in a really graphic way and I considered telling him the elevator was wired for both video and sound but figured he would find that out the hard way soon enough. I smirked back at him as the doors whooshed open and revealed the plush office, Nassir on his proverbial throne, and Chuck and several of his men flanking his sides.

  Everyone in the room was glaring at the two guests and I felt the level of their confidence and bluster plummet as they walked ahead of me into the office. They were immediately surrounded and checked for weapons. Of course they were armed. It didn’t seem to matter if it was the good guys or the bad guys coming to see Nassir, whoever was knocking on his door came equipped with guns and an agenda. The two guests shot nervous glances at each other as they were disarmed and shoved into the chairs on the opposite side of that massive desk. I maneuvered my way around them and went to lean against the side of Nassir’s leather chair. I put my arm across the top of it and he reached out a hand and placed it on my knee. Together we stared at the men, who were both now sweating profusely and nervously shifting their weight from side to side.

  Nassir’s thumb moved in a lazy circle on the inside of my knee and I saw one of the men gulp as he realized maybe I was more than just the hostess showing them to their meeting or a trophy that sat prettily on Nassir’s shelf. That had been my biggest fear, but every single day he put something else in my hands, some part of the business, some part of his life to make sure I knew how equally invested he was in our future. We weren’t simply partners; we were a team, and sometimes that made me feel like we were unstoppable.

  “You come into my town without asking. You bring girls that are too young and have no say in whether or not they want to work for you. You make money off of them and then don’t pay them a dime. You even had the nerve to try to recruit Point girls to work in your flophouses, and you think I’m going to let any of that slide?”

  Really, the new skin peddlers had been quiet about what they were doing. If it hadn’t been for one of the young girls they trafficked in escaping and running into Noe and asking her for help, there was a chance we would’ve never known. The young street hooligan had brought the battered and dam
aged girl to Nassir and I could see that he decided on the spot that hell was going to rain down on everyone involved in the operation. He took over the responsibility of vengeance and I took over making sure the girls got out of the city and somewhere safe. I was finding that for every one girl I managed to get somewhere safe and settled into a new life, three new ones popped up on the streets or on the stage to take her place. As long as there were choices for them to make, I felt like I was doing the right thing, and when I thought I couldn’t love Nassir any more than I already did, he offered to help me fund the project with some of the legal money he made from the strip club.

  I turned him down because it was my baby and it was my heart. And honestly I think him and the life he offered were sometimes too tempting for the girls to say no to. I used his contacts and his name when the doors I wanted to open wouldn’t do so, but now that I had his ring on my finger, my own name had almost as much sway as his did, and that did more for the part of me that was worried about my losing my sense of freedom and self than any of the gestures Nassir made to keep me feeling included. I had my own power, and even if a good chunk of it came from being the one and only woman to tame the devil, then so be it.

  The first step in Nassir’s revenge plot was making the new operation think he wanted to go into business with them; that’s why these two were here.

  These were the moneymen. The men who decided where to set up shop and how much to spend on getting an operation going. They were the ones that paid human traffickers for warm bodies and made the johns pay up when they were done. These were the guys that couldn’t turn down an opportunity to meet with the man in charge of the underground parts of the city when word got out that he might have an offer to make them. Greed made people stupid.

  One of the men cleared his throat and in very broken English told Nassir, “We do what you do.”

  I felt Nassir tense, and if I could see his face I knew his golden eyes would be narrowed. “No. You force women to have sex and then profit off their suffering. You hold them captive and torture them. I’m simply a man that offers the people in this city a choice.”

  The hand that wasn’t resting on my bent leg started tapping on the top of his desk. I knew he was really annoyed if he was allowing himself to express emotion like that. He was usually so calm and still when he faced down an opponent.

  “I’m shutting you down and running you out of my city.”

  One of the guys threw up his hands. “You cannot!”

  The hand that was on my knee lifted and reached for the laptop in front of him. He pushed a button and the monitors behind us lit up. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know they would show not one but two of the brothels run by these thugs’ bosses being raided by police and immigration officers. As much as Nassir didn’t trust Titus, having a tenuous working relationship with the cop was proving to be beneficial. Titus hadn’t batted an eye when Nassir called and asked him to help get the girls free and the competition out of town; neither did he jump on board without hesitation. It was a well-choreographed dance between the right side of the law and wrong. It all depended on the situation who was going to lead and who was going to follow, but so far both men had managed to navigate the dance floor without stepping on each other’s toes.

  “The police, immigration people, and the federal authorities are stripping everything you have down to the bones as we speak. There will be no more girls, no more johns, and no more ways for you to make money off of someone else’s suffering.”

  The two foreign gangsters were baffled, and I could see that they literally had no clue what to do. They started to talk to each other in their native language, but the tone was frantic and the pace quick. There were a lot of hand movements and glances flying around the room in panic.

  Nassir heaved a sigh and leaned forward in his chair. I reached out a hand and threaded it through his long hair so I could rest my fingers on the back of his neck. It was like petting a panther right before it pounced.

  “Enough.” The word wasn’t in English and I saw even more panic and fear start to build in their expressions. “I understand every single word you are saying and understood every syllable when you told your partner that you were going to wait to get my wife alone and show her what a real man can do.”

  I knew they hadn’t been talking about my shoes. I shook my head at them and clicked my tongue. That’s right, suckers. WIFE. That big-ass diamond on my finger wasn’t just for show and Nassir didn’t have a weakness, he had a wife that he would kill for without a second thought.

  “P-p-lease . . .” Of course they would ask for leniency for themselves when they had no intention of showing those poor girls they trafficked and traded any such thing.

  “You’re on a boat back to your homeland in the morning.” I saw both the men sag in relief, thinking they were getting off easy, but I knew my devil wasn’t done playing with them just yet. “But before you go, you’ll be spending the night in our special holding facility under the club.”

  If they weren’t deplorable men, I could almost feel sorry for them. Nothing good ever happened when you had to spend the night in the dungeon under the club.

  Nassir inclined his head in Chuck’s direction and the security team moved forward to secure the men who were now babbling incoherently and struggling to get free. Nassir pointed to the one that had made the lewd comments about me and told Chuck, “The one with the big mouth . . . give him a reminder that it’s wise to think before you speak.”

  Chuck’s gold tooth flashed as his grin lit up his dark face. He muttered, “Gladly,” and hauled the struggling men out of the office. I watched them until the elevator swallowed them up and whisked them away.

  I dug my fingers into the tense muscles at the back of Nassir’s neck and asked, “Really? All he said was that he could show me what a real man is like?”

  Nassir snorted and reached out to turn the screens off behind us and to shut down his computer.

  “No. He said really disgusting, crude things that you don’t need to hear and that I sure as hell don’t need to picture anyone doing to my wife.”

  “Are they going to make it on the boat in one piece or more likely in pieces?”

  He snorted. “Depends on how much of a hassle they want to give the boys. Either way they won’t be in the Point after tomorrow.”

  He tugged on my hand and pulled me around so that I was in front of him with my rear end resting against the edge of his desk. His candy-colored eyes gleamed up at me. They always did when he called me his wife.

  When he first asked me if I wanted to get married, I had laughed it off, thinking it was the painkillers and too many close calls in such a short amount of time. But then he asked me the next day and the next. He asked me every single day for a month if today was the day I wanted to be his wife, and on the last day I finally told him yes. It took me a minute to get used to the idea of settling into something so traditional and steeped in custom. That didn’t feel like us but it was obviously something that mattered deeply to him, and when he showed me his soft side, his vulnerable side, I couldn’t keep saying no.

  He wasted no time. I had a ring by lunchtime and an officiant—along with Chuck and Reeve, because I couldn’t think of anyone else to act as a witness for me—there by dinner for the ceremony. It was fast. It was simple. It was quiet and solemn. There was no flare or show to it. It was so unlike everything in the rest of our relationship that it made me cry because it felt so perfect and special.

  It was such a weird and ever-evolving thing, this relationship of ours. Some days we seemed like a typical married couple, sitting on the couch watching movies together—the first one I made him sit through was Pinocchio; obviously—arguing about whose turn it was to do the dishes, making love softly and sweetly while we told each other how happy we were together. Other days we dealt with people trying to kill us, trying to arrest us, trying to get between us and make us weaker because as a unit we were invincible. The city had no idea what w
ould happen when Hades handed over half of the underworld to Persephone. She came into her own and was unstoppable. Those were the days we fucked, tore at each other, couldn’t get enough as we tried to cram as much life and time as we had together into every second of every day. We were equally appreciative and greedy. It was never the same and it was never boring. Each day left a mark, a memory that I was happy to hold on to, and I could tell that the number of good memories was overtaking the number of poisonous ones from the past. Every single day, no matter what kind of day it was going to be, I faced it being proud to have a place by Nassir’s side, and I never regretted making that ultimate commitment to him.

  My ring sparkled as I brushed my fingers across his high cheekbone. “How about you picture all the things you want to do to your wife instead.” Sitting in front of him on this desk was not a new position for me. In fact, it was one of my favorites. I had a lot of new favorites because of him. There wasn’t a boundary he didn’t try to cross, a sexual fantasy he didn’t fulfill, and yes, being tied up in actual rope as long as he was the one doing it was a lot of fun, and I now had a better understanding of why all the people in this club paid him so much money to chase down their needs.

  His eyebrows lifted up and his teeth flashed as a wicked grin spread across his handsome-as-sin face.

  “My office always turns you on.” His fingers brushed up along my thighs, taking the hem of my tight dress with them. Seeing him behind that big desk playing lord and master over all he surveyed turned me on, and now that I knew he would make sure no one was watching what went on between us in here anymore, I never denied myself having a piece of him.

  “No. You doing your thing always turns me on. Power is sexy and it has always looked so effortless and easy on you.”