Property of Drex (Book 1)(37)

The smell of sweat, beer and smoke drench every breath I manage to get under his suffocating weight.

“Calm down, girl. You’ll like it,” he says through laughter.

Hot tears soak my face, and my voice turns into a hoarse cry when hope dims. But just as the sick fuck gets his pants down, the door bursts open, and an angry Axle storms into the room.

Oh no. Not him, too. I can’t… I can’t…

I start hyperventilating, but before I can go into a full-blown panic attack, Axle storms across the room, and his fist collides with the sicko’s face. At least I assume it’s his face.

Something wet splashes on me, as the weight on my back disappears. My lungs greedily suck in the fresh, cleaner air that isn’t tainted by his stench. It almost hurts when I get too much air at once, and I cough while dropping to the floor.

It’s then I realize the wet sensation I felt on my legs was blood spewing.

“You stupid little shit!” Sicko roars, but I don’t look at him. I never want to see him again. “I’ll have your ass for this. You don’t fuck with me!”

“Get the hell out of Drex’s room now! You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t fucking kill you for this, you stupid bastard.”

I hear rustling of movements, but I still can’t look up. I pull my knees to my chest, burying my head in the crook of my arm as I sob uncontrollably, buckling as reality crashes down on me hard.

I hear more talking, possibly yelling, but it all seems to muddle together, forming nothing more than distant white noise. No coherent sound creeps in until I hear the slam of the door, which forces me to jolt and snap my eyes up.

Axle is alone with me, the muscle in his jaw jumping as anger visibly vibrates through him. He stalks toward me, but I whimper and burrow farther into the side of the bed, thumping against the nightstand in the process.

He halts immediately, and a flash of pity crosses his eyes before he takes slow steps backwards. “Sorry, Eve,” he says gently.

I shiver, but words don’t leave my lips. There’s no telling how broken my voice would sound right now.

“Look, I just want to make sure he didn’t do anything. Can you stand?” he asks, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it.

I shake my head, slinking back once again when he takes a step forward. He curses before running a hand through his hair, before turning his back.

He doesn’t say anything else as he leaves me alone in the room, shutting the door on his way out. This time, my sobs come out louder as I fall apart.





Chapter 19



DREX



“Good news is, the feds didn’t find anything,” Pop says while taking a seat at the head of the table.

We’ve already gone over numerous possible scenarios of what would happen if they realized the vehicles were designed to conceal drugs, weapons, or what the hell ever else someone wants to store.

That’s not our concern. We work in the gray area, not buying or selling drugs or weapons, not distributing them or transporting them, but giving them concealment.

I fold my hands together as the wheels turn in my head. “We must have an informant of some kind that’s giving them tips. But apparently the informant doesn’t know what we’re doing, or they’d have known which spots in the warehouse to check. We call them hidden rooms for a reason.”

Pop nods at me, as though he’s already considered the same thing.

“Which means it’s no one in this room.”

I glance around to the fifteen people sitting at the table with us. Rush leans up, propping his elbows up. I hate it when he’s around, and it looks like he’s about to be here on a more permanent basis.

“I think we should lie low for a while,” Rush says. “At least until we find out who is feeding the feds info. It has to be someone low in ranks, or someone we work with in some form.”

We work with too many people to narrow down that list very quickly, but the fed isn’t directly in our outfit. I’d know it. I’m not dumb like Benny who trusts anyone in his inner circle based off a few loyal shows. Hell, I barely trust the ones who have been in our circle since before I was born.

I never trusted Aaron Marks. I liked him, but I didn’t trust him.

“That’ll take ages,” Pop says on a sigh. “We can’t lie low that long, because our clientele will be gone when we decide to return. Not to mention, it’ll make them leery of trusting us if we just pull out when the heat strikes. We just need to snuff out our rat, and keep all our meetings much more discreet than we already do.”

Rush nods, even though he doesn’t seem to particularly agree. A prison term isn’t on his to-do list, so obviously he’s worried.