Tristian searches my eyes and then mutters a curse. “You’ve got your gun?” When I tug up my shirt, his eyes dart down to catch its gleam behind my waistband. He jabs a finger into my chest. “You fucking call us if anything goes sideways. I mean it. Don’t let him send you into something you can’t handle alone. Killer might be done with him, but he’ll still have your back.”
I close the door on the daggers he’s glaring at Daniel behind us. “Killer’s right, you know.” When I turn to face him, Daniel is sitting in his chair, looking carefully distracted. Such an obvious tactic, acting like none of this matters to him. “Story isn’t violent unless she’s pushed into a corner, and even then, it’s more about protecting someone else. She’s all about the emotional punch. If she wanted to hurt you, it wouldn’t be by taking out an innocent.”
I say all this because, in a way, I get it. From where he’s sitting, it doesn’t look good for her. But he didn’t see that gut-wrenching look on her face when she found out about Vivienne. He didn’t spend night after night on the phone with her, listening to her pour out her nightmares about Ugly Nick in that alley, dead and bleeding. He didn’t hold her afterward in that cabin, didn’t feel the sobs against his chest—sobs she tried so hard to hide. He doesn’t know her.
Not like we do.
“You’re going down to the Avenue,” he begins, sorting the papers on the desk. “I have a bit of property I need moved. Nicholas will meet you there.”
“Is this really worth it?” I ask, more pissed about it than curious. “Is losing your own son worth winning?”
Daniel finally looks at me then, and he doesn’t need to answer. I can see it crystal clear in his eyes that he’s washed his hands of the business of caring.
Still, he answers.
“That boy was lost to me the second she stepped foot in your house.”
He comes out of the shadows the minute I get to the corner. Pretty Nick slinks out of the alley, looking both in and out of place. He’s comfortable down here on the Avenue, with the hustlers and whores, the muscles in his body loose and easy. But his face? Well, I’m not particularly into dudes, but everyone knows this kid lives up to his name. The ink tattooed down his temple doesn’t diminish his good looks. There’s a reason Daniel chose him to defile Story that night in the pit.
“Hey, man,” he says, sticking his fist out. I look at it for a beat, taking the gesture for what it is. No hard feelings. The thought of what this guy was going to do to my Lady down in the pit makes me want to peel the tattoos off his skin with the knife tucked inside my boot.
But it wouldn’t be fair.
He’s caught up in Daniel’s bullshit as much as I am. Hell, Nick probably has his own debts he has to pay off down in the pit. In our world, enemies have to be chosen with care. Checks and balances. Add up the columns, see if it’s worth it. Making an enemy of Nick wouldn’t be. He and the Dukes are so low on the list of people who have pissed us off, it’s hard to even give a fuck. Frankly, until we figure out who the fuck Ted is and stop him, all the frat stuff—The Game, the partying—seems trivial in comparison.
I reach out and bump his fist with my own, indulging him in an old-school, over-involved South Side shake that neither Tristian nor Killian have ever bothered to master. Nick’s good people at the end of the day, even if he’s been slumming it beneath Daniel’s heel a bit too long. Like Killian, Nick is a Forsyth legacy. Duke legacy, to be exact. A born and bred Bruin, through and through. But unlike Killian, he’s abdicated it. Left all the glory to his big brother, Sy, so he can play in the sewage with the rest of us.
Nick quirks me this easy little grin like he knows.
I might be a Lord, but down here, he and I are birds of a feather.
“So,” I start, shoving my hands into my pockets and following him down the sidewalk. “Any idea what this job is about?”
“Just transporting some stuff,” he says, casually. Too casually. Drugs? Guns? Whores? Whatever it is, it can’t be good. I interfered with Daniel’s little sex show, and I’m not dumb enough to think he’s let it go. Sure, he took the money I offered him to be the one to have sex with Story in the pit, but it wasn’t the money that did it. He likes money, but he loves control more, and by taking every cent I had, he put me right where he wants me. Desperate. Broke. Indebted. The nervous twitch in my gut tells me wherever Nick is taking us isn’t going to be pleasant.