“Hell yeah we are,” Dash says with a grin.
More celebratory sounds break out, but I barely notice. My eyes are fixed on Drex’s back until I see a familiar face whirling around in an electronic wheelchair with one cast-covered leg sticking straight out. The other cast-covered leg is bent normally and resting where it’s supposed to.
With shaky legs, I slowly make my way to the bottom of the stairs just as Drake stops in front of them with a cocked eyebrow.
“Well, I never thought I’d see the day Drex Caine loved a girl. Guess hell just froze over and the devil is getting a fur coat.”
“I can’t believe that just happened,” I say quietly, ignoring the part about his assumption Drex loves me.
I slowly sit down on the bottom step while Drake ruffles the hair on my head like I’m his kid sister.
“It’s not that surprising,” he says with a shrug. “Organized crime has a formula. You get a shady, high-income business, then you clean the money using your legit businesses. Usually you find something you all bond and go bromantic over. Some have gambling rings, some have poker night, and some ride motorcycles with pretty little matching cut-off vests. One thing they all have in common: everyone wants everyone dead. The end. I just want to put some ink on people. How the fuck I got dragged into this, I don’t know.”
I half laugh, half groan, while scrubbing my face with my hands.
“Are you going to be a member of the new club?” I joke, trying my damnedest to not let the gravity of the situation sink me.
“Never,” Drake scoffs. “I like my clothes to be more original,” he adds, causing me to laugh lightly, even though I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.
It’s vain to say this is all my fault, since it’s not, but for some reason, it feels like it would have never reached this level without my presence.
“Don’t worry, Eve. One thing is for certain… More people fear Drex than Herrin. This won’t go over well, but no one is stupid enough to start a fight with the son, when everyone knows the father is a coward.”
I look back up at him, but before I can speak, a shadow falls over me, causing me to turn my head to see Drex staring down at me with that stoic expression he wears too easily.
“Are you okay?” I ask him softly.
He nods slowly, studying me, but not speaking. Standing slowly, I watch him, but he just seems to be gauging me, almost like he’s waiting for a reaction of some sort. I move closer and put my hand on his cheek, and his eyes close as he leans into the touch and pulls me closer, tugging me by the waist until I’m against him.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he says before glancing over his shoulder. “Eyes on the cameras tonight,” he tells someone else. “Ears on the grid,” he adds.
I have no idea what that last one means, but I don’t ask questions. Instead, I turn and jog up the steps as Drex takes them two at a time behind me. The second we’re in the room, I turn to face him, but his lips come down on mine and swallow anything I was going to say as he pulls me against him and drinks me in like he’s searching for something.
Someone bangs on the door, and Drex breaks the kiss before turning and looking over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“They’ve left the town limits. Looks like they’re heading back to the other warehouse in Culvan. Thought you’d want to know,” Rush calls through the door.
“Thanks,” Drex says before turning back to me, running his thumb over my chin. “Shit’s going to get real, baby. You still sure this is where you want to be?” he asks.
I see the dread in his eyes, so I don’t make him wait long for an answer.
“I’m not going anywhere. But I do have some questions about all that.”
He pushes a hand in my hair, tugging it to tilt my head back before dipping his head and tugging my bottom lip between his teeth. He sucks on it and teases it with his tongue before releasing it, and I shiver against him while pressing my front to his, keeping my neck craned back so I can continue to stare up at him.
“Ask me your questions later. Right now, I want you naked.”
Chapter 33
DREX
Eve is sprawled on top of me as the noon sun beams in on us. I should probably get out of bed and go downstairs, but I’ve barely slept, and my mind keeps replaying last night like it was all a dream. Pop isn’t going to just let us go and claim his territory. He’s a coward, but something like this will cause an uproar within his own group.
Hell will be coming.
My hands continue to roam up Eve’s back, and I think back to how her first concern last night was me. The first thing she did was ask if I was okay. My father came to kill her, and she asked if I was okay.
“So Sarah is really an assassin? I just can’t imagine that,” she says on a sigh, bringing me back to the conversation we’re having as her lips brush over my chest.
“It’s true.”
“And Herrin thinks she’s another FBI leak? What do you think?”
She peers up at me, and I look down at her while bringing her closer. She tosses a leg over my waist, and I let a hand slide down to the bare skin of her hip.
“I think it’s possible. She did betray her own father. But she knows more than the feds know, so… Fuck. I don’t know.”
She shakes her head. “Sarah wouldn’t do that to you guys. She loves Snake. She loves the club. She might have hidden her past, but she’s not like that. It wasn’t her. Please don’t hurt her.”
And that fucking look in her eyes is the reason I’m still in this room. She holds so much trust, so much everything…
“You didn’t realize your father wasn’t exactly a good guy either,” I remind her.
She frowns. “Still having problems believing he stole from you. My dad could literally hack anything. He chose to be good. Stealing from you would have been reckless and not at all smart, when he could have easily stolen from numerous other large accounts where the people were rich and not known for killing.”
I snort derisively. “If he had so many accounts, why were you all struggling financially?”
“He didn’t have enough accounts to keep things going after the accident. Hospital bills were outrageous. Our insurance was terrible. And then my sister’s funeral… Nothing was cheap. It hurt us, and it makes sense that he came to work for you. Under-the-table money, extra pay for illegal account flubbing… I can see him getting that desperate, but not desperate enough to steal.”
She blows out a breath, but I don’t argue with her. Eve doesn’t see the worst in people the way I do. The only person I can’t see the worst in is her.
“And your sister?” she asks, looking up. “I didn’t know you had one.”
I shrug and look back down.
“She’s younger than me by seven years—she’s twenty-one now. She left after she accused Pop of killing her mother. Then she went so far as to accuse him of killing mine as well. She was fifteen, I was twenty-two, and I believed everything Pop told me back then. He’d raised me on his own, and the entire club had told me what a junkie my mother was. Kara wouldn’t listen to me when I was trying to stop her from getting herself eighty-sixed. Pop had no tolerance for people stirring shit, and accusing him of something like that? Something that big? It was treason.”
She continues staring up at me with a perplexed look. How do you explain a life like mine to a girl who grew up like Eve?
“Rush mentioned something about why he hated Herrin having to do with the way Herrin did some girl. Your sister?”
Yeah… Shit really makes more sense with Rush by the second. Not that I would have understood it before Eve. Girls make you fucking crazy apparently.
“Yeah. I think Rush must have been closer to her than I realized. Makes sense why he hated me, since until recently, he had no idea what I did for my sister to save her life.”
Eve’s eyes widen.
“Herrin wanted to kill her for accusing him of killing her mother? Did he kill her mother?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. No one ever will. What almost got her killed—what made him put an outstanding hit on her—is the fact she went to the cops with her evidence. Pop got brought in and questioned, and the whole club got put under investigation for a long time. Heat got heavy. He had an alibi. He always has an alibi. At any given moment, eighty people will lie and say he was with them. So Kara never had a chance. When they turned him loose, she was hiding in a motel downtown, waiting on life or death to happen. I found her, gave her money, and stuck her in a used car I paid cash for. I gave her a burner phone and told her to only call me in case of an emergency, and gave her forty-eight grand—all the money I had left at that time.”
“She was just fifteen,” Eve says sadly. “What did she do?”
“She called me once to let me know she’d found a place to settle in, and was using her fake ID to pass as an eighteen-year-old. Told me she missed me, and wanted me to come out there with her.” I groan, feeling the guilty knot ball up in my stomach. “She didn’t say she was scared; she said she missed me. But in all honesty, now I know she was scared. She was just a fucking kid, even though you mature real fast around here. I should have done something about Pop back then, but I had been trained, Eve. You never go against the P. It’s a death sentence, and we all know it. The cops? Going to the cops painted my sister a target to anyone wearing our cuts. I did what I had to in order to keep her safe, but I should have gone with her.”