Headlights poured across the weatherworn floor of the cabin as the Aces approached the meet point.
Three cars, I counted as their headlights passed over the front window one by one. Heavy vehicles. Trucks and vans like the ones Dies and the others drove in on by the sounds of their tires as they hit deep potholes and drove over sections of puddled road.
Diesel rolled his shoulders back and lengthened his spine, hiding a wince as he passed the cane to Tiny.
“Boss, you heard what the vet said—”
“Get rid of it.”
Without another word of protest, the Saint took two steps to his right and chucked the cane out the shattered back window of the cabin.
Diesel adjusted his footing before taking two steps forward and then three steps back. Testing his ability to appear uninjured.
He did a damn good job of it, but I knew it wouldn’t be without a monstrous amount of effort that his face stayed placid as a lake. I’d done a damn good job of fucking up his Achilles, and if he kept walking on it, it wouldn’t ever heal properly. I was no doctor, but I was pretty sure he’d wind up with a limp for the rest of his life doing that.
Though, I understood his need to appear strong. Especially now.
I caught his gaze flick to me as he returned back to his place, standing elbow to elbow with the rest of us to the far right side of the cabin. This side had the only window other than the one next to the front door and therefore the only side with an alternate means of escape.
Though the other side was more heavily strewn with old discarded furniture that could prove useful as cover if it came to a gunfight.
With Rook and Grey beside me, I felt an odd sense of responsibility for them. Like, if something happened to them it would be at least partially my fault as the person who was at their side. Meant to have their back. Meant to cover them from fire.
From their tension and the way they both inched ever so slightly nearer to my sides as the sounds of heavy thudding footfalls ascended the stairs outside, I knew they felt similarly.
I counted the footsteps.
Eight of them coming inside. Another five? Maybe six waiting outside by the idling vehicles.
We were six in here.
Eleven in total.
Decent odds for normal people.
Fucking amazing odds for us. I knew I could take at least four before they saw me coming. And my guys? They could easily handle the rest, Diesel or no Diesel.
My own certainty surprised me, but I felt it like a truth carved into my bones, and lifted my chin as the Aces entered.
I clocked weapons as they came in. Finding the tactical edges of bulletproof vests poking out from under collars and sleeves. They were ready for this to go south, too.
Nothing bigger than a handgun, though, unless someone had a particularly deep anal cavity.
I searched the faces of the Aces here tonight, trying to decide which one could’ve been Becca’s beau. The man who’d manipulated and conned her. The one who was after my Crows.
Their eyes betrayed nothing.
The man from that night in the yard of the warehouse emerged from the group, putting himself at a slight lead from the others at his back. Diesel did the same.
I recognized him easily enough. He had a distinct look about him. A thin, angular face with coiffed hair that made him appear taller than he was. And suddenly I was back there, knelt down in the shadows of the trees, watching as Lenny Ace and Diesel St. Crow spoke. As the Ace on the end of the row eyed Corvus, his trigger finger twitching.
It was that one thing that sealed my fate. If that other Ace hadn’t tried to kill Corvus… If I hadn’t saved his life.
I might not be here right now.
“Lenny,” Diesel said.
“Diesel. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Lenny sounded bored. Almost annoyed. It was clear from his tone he wasn’t happy to be here. That it was a major inconvenience.
Not the sort of tone Diesel St. Crow would take kindly to.
“Have you nothing for me, then?” Diesel pressed, his hard stare unwavering on Lenny Ace.
Lenny had the decency to look confused at the question. “Should I?”
Diesel bristled, and I thought he was going to end this meeting right here and now in a hail of gunfire, but then the atmosphere around him shifted. The switch reminded me of something—someone—else, and I glanced at Corvus, finding the same practiced restraint in his features and stature.
“You have nothing to prove your man’s death is on us,” Lenny continued when Diesel didn’t give him the courtesy of a reply.
“And you have nothing to prove it wasn’t,” Diesel continued, and it took me a moment to realize they were continuing the conversation from all that time ago at the warehouse. About the guy The Crows found dead in Thorn Valley…with an A carved into his chest?
I didn’t know the particulars. Only what I picked up on from my bug and what I’d heard since.
“It was probably Devon,” someone else behind Lenny piped up. “He was always a loose cannon.”
Lenny turned his head slowly, and the look in his eyes promised a slow death to the man who spoke if he said another word.
He shut up.
“Convenient then, since he’s buried on the spot where he tried to shoot Corvus and can’t defend himself,” I couldn’t help saying.
Lenny’s blue-eyed gaze found me for the first time since they entered, analyzing me from the top down.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“That’s not your concern,” Diesel replied. “And I didn’t ask you here tonight to talk about Randy, though I still think there’s something to be spoken to about his death.”
“Then what did you ask me here for?”
The Aces tensed behind their leader, anticipating a fight.
I could feel it, too. Like electricity in the air that I could taste if I just flicked my tongue out to touch it. My blood hummed with it. With the possibility that tonight, I might kill a man. And fuck if I wasn’t looking forward to it. That inner darkness thirsting for violence.
Rook made a low sound in his throat next to me, and I inched my hand to move to the side, brushing my knuckles with his, feeling a static shock. His dark eyes gleamed in the low light, and I knew he was feeling it, too.
“One of your men is out to get my boys.”
A dark laugh rattled out of Lenny’s chest as he shook his head, dropping it to pinch the bridge of his nose like something Diesel said was funny.
I didn’t find it fucking funny.
My fingers flinched, pulling away from Rook’s to hover at my side, ready to spring for a blade.
“You’re paranoid, old man,” Lenny said, sighing. “No one is messing with you. No one is after your sons. At least, not my crew. I’d start looking to your enemies, there is where you’ll find—”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Diesel interrupted Lenny. “One of your men is out to get my fucking sons. It wasn’t a question. It isn’t a suspicion. It’s a fact.”
Lenny’s lips pressed tight. “If you truly believed that, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
“The only reason we are is because I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt, Lenny. I’m not making your insides your outsides right now because I recognize it might be one of your men acting independently and not on your command.”
“Diesel—”
“I’m not finished. Either you have something to do with it and you have a death wish, or one of your men, someone you trust, is working an angle without your knowledge.”
Lenny’s face was growing redder by the second. Unlike Diesel, he was wholly unable to keep his emotions from playing on his face. And right now, he was angry. Feeling disrespected. I had an urge to push him a little more to see how he might react.
I opened my mouth to do just that, but Grey stepped on my foot. The slight shake of his head the only hint he knew what I’d been about to do.
“You’re wrong, Dies,” Lenny said.
“I’m not. I have the proof I need; what I don’t have is a name.”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“You have ten days to give me that name,” Diesel continued, ignoring Lenny completely. “Give him up and declare peace or you renounce your territory claim and leave.”
“Excuse me?” Lenny scoffed. “We’ve held that territory since my grandfather—”
“I don’t care if you’ve held it since the dawn of time. You give him up, or you better get as far away from northern Cali as you can go.”
Lenny stepped forward, cinching the gap between himself and Diesel. To Diesel’s credit, he didn’t so much as balk at the advance. Actually, he smiled.
It was worse than when he was expressionless. Much worse.
“And if we don’t?” Lenny asked, a muscle in his upper lip twitching as he snarled.
“Then you have chosen the path of violence, and we will not hold back.”
Diesel lifted his hand in a circular motion, and Grey tugged me to follow him from the cabin.
My head pounded with the throb of unspent adrenaline in my veins as we exited back out into the damp night. I stayed by the door until Rook was outside. Diesel and Corvus were the last ones to leave, and I didn’t fall back into step until Corvus tugged me to him, making me follow beside him instead of behind.
I didn’t trust them.
There was a vibe there. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew there was something more to this feud than what it appeared on the surface. If I was right, it wasn’t going to take much more for the tenuous truce to snap.
Before there was all out war on the streets.
A sharp whistle and Diesel’s other men exited the tree line, surprising the small gathering of Aces waiting by the idling vehicles on the left side of the parking lot.
They strode past them like wraiths and the Aces watched as they hopped into the van with Axel, silent.
“Get back to Sanctum. I want you combing over those tapes for anything we can use,” Diesel told Pinkie. “Go with the others.”
Pinkie nodded before going to the van.
“I want the rest of you ready. Wait for my orders at Sanctum.”
“Where you going, boss?” one of them asked as Corvus continued to drag me slowly to the Rover.
Diesel’s eyes found mine, and I stopped short, dragging Corvus to a stop with me.
“I’m following my sons back to the Nest,” Diesel told him. “I need to have a little chat with our newest member.”
The van door slammed and the engine turned.
Diesel held my stare for another moment before his eyes flicked to Corvus and then to Rook and Grey. “You make no stops. We don’t need to give them any advantage or opportunity. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Corvus replied gruffly. “I got it.”
There were no surprises on the route home, though I half expected an ambush, and by midnight, we were pulling up alongside the Nest with Diesel’s headlights bouncing behind us.
“He’s going to want the intel only Becca can give us,” Grey said solemnly as he shut off the engine. “He’ll want you to get it.”
“I know.”
Grey twisted in his seat to see me in the back, trying to gauge something from my stare. Perhaps whether or not I would comply. I wasn’t yet sure if I would either, so it was anyone’s guess.
Depended on how Diesel did the asking and whether or not he would agree to certain…stipulations.
I knew from the email Becca sent six hours ago that she landed, was safe, and had gotten rid of her phone like I told her to. It put me at least moderately at ease to know she was so far away. Out of his reach. Well, maybe not entirely, I didn’t know how large his web of contacts expanded, but I was counting on it not being large enough to reach her there. At least not this quickly.
Diesel’s headlights behind us blinked off, and we all stepped out of the Rover, meeting him outside.
“Here,” Grey said, going to Diesel’s side to try to take his arm, take some of the weight off his injured ankle. “Come on, I think we might have something you can use for a—”
“I’m good.” Diesel waved him off, walking alone unassisted instead, though he was no longer trying to hide his limp. “It’s splinted.”
“You still shouldn’t be walking on it,” Corvus said, agreeing with Grey, but Diesel ignored both of them as he passed, making for the front door.
“You want to help? Stop yapping and let me in so I can sit down.”
Corvus opened the door for Diesel, and we all followed him through the dark house to the living room, flicking light switches as we went. All of us on edge as the rooms each lit up in turn, as though there might be monsters waiting in the shadows. Because…there might be. Not the kind with big scary teeth and claws, but the kind with guns, or in my case, syringes full of fucking sedatives.
I only allowed myself to partially relax once we were all seated in the living room. I thought about trying to get out of joining this little chat, but knew Diesel would only insist if I tried.
Awkward didn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere in the living room in the minute between sitting down and when someone decided to break the silence.
“Want a whiskey?” Grey offered Diesel, pushing the low coffee table nearer to him so that he could lift his leg to rest on its edge.
“No.”
“Fuck yes.”
Diesel and Rook said at the same time.
Grey’s face screwed up into a sneer at his brother. “Dude. Get it yourself.”
Rook huffed as he pushed off from the sofa next to me and went to the kitchen, the sound of rattling glass and tinkling ice the only thing to be heard until he returned.
“No need for small talk then,” Diesel said, his eyes roving over each of his boys with a flicker of disappointment before they settled on me. “We need intel only Rebecca Hart can give us. I know she skipped town. I have a rough idea where she is and the area gets narrowed down by the hour. I have no interest in sending my people in to get her, but I need her back here. Now.”
I rolled around his words in my mouth, contemplating spitting each one back in his face.
“I won’t tell her to come back here, if that’s what you’re asking. Not without guarantees.”
Diesel sat back on his cushion, extending his arms wide over the back of the couch so his reach nearly touched Corvus and Grey spread out far at his sides near the edges of the sofa. “What kind of guarantees?”
“Her safety, for one.”
“Is that all?”
“No.”
He waited.
“You want to speak to her at all? You have questions for her? They go through me. You’ve traumatized her enough.”
A muscle in his temple bulged.
“And I can ask said questions on your behalf while she’s away. There’s no need for her to come back here.”
Not until I’m certain I can trust you, I wanted to add, but didn’t. We both knew that was unlikely to happen. Ever.
“And if I need her to ID a face?”
“I’ll send her a pic.”
Fucking obviously.
“When the heat’s died down and whoever this fucker is, is six feet under then I’ll tell Becca it’s safe to come back to Thorn Valley. She shouldn’t be here right now. The man who was using her for intel knows just as well as we do that she is the only person who can ID him. Who has information that could lead to us finding him.”
I let him fill in the blanks. If Becca came back here, it wasn’t just Diesel she had to be afraid of but also him.
“I won’t bring her back here to die. You can’t ask me to do that. No matter the reason why.”
He held my stare for a long moment. “You care for this girl? Even after what she did to you? Could’ve done to them?”
He indicated his sons.
“I didn’t say I forgave her,” I corrected him. “But there’s a difference between making a mistake and a calculated move.”
He nodded quietly to himself, and I knew he had to see some reason in what I’d said. What good would Becca be to him if the man who was grooming her got to her before we did? Before she could ID him?
“All right.”
“All right?”
“We do it your way. She have good security where she is?”
A vivid image of the man whose voice played over the tapes in the warehouse attacking Becca in her European flat flashed in my mind. “I’ll make sure she does.”
Another nod. “I want an established line of contact between you and her by tomorrow, and I’ll have a list of questions by morning.”
Had we just come to an agreement without blood spilling?
Damn.
I’d be more surprised if it weren’t for knowing the ultimate—and mutual—goal here was the assured safety of his sons. It was the one thing I thought that could force us to work together.
“Want me to drive you back?” Grey asked, pushing up from his knees. “We can get rid of the truck for you.”
Grey’s face had remained impassive all night, and I got the distinct feeling that a war was waging beneath his carefully painted mask. He wasn’t just walking on eggshells with me. He was doing the same with his adoptive father.
It made my heart hurt to watch him.
“We aren’t finished,” Diesel said, staring at Grey until he sat back down. “There’s something else, and I wanted to bring it to you three before I put it to a vote with the others.”
Three.
So, not me then.
Noted.
This had Rook sitting up, his whiskey dangling from his fingers between his legs, forgotten for the moment. “Total annihilation?”
Diesel faced him with the smallest of smirks at the edge of his mouth. “No, Son, not yet.”
Rook grunted and sat back again. His excitement gone.
“I want to ally with the Kings.”
“What?” Corvus roared, his head whipping around to face his father. “Why the fuck would we do that? We’ve never allied with anyone and there’s a fucking reason for that.”
“We trust our own,” Rook added. “No one else.”
“That’s what you taught us,” Grey echoed their opinion.
Diesel’s light eyes found mine for an instant, and I wondered if he waited for my opinion. I couldn’t give it.
The Kings.
They were the reigning gang on the streets of Lennox, my hometown.
I suspected they were also to blame for the death of my father. He was borrowing money from someone. He’d told me as much in so many words. I knew he was in over his head. I just wished I’d acted sooner.
I wished I tried harder to break him of the habit that killed him.
Wishing never got me anywhere.
They continued to argue, and I felt the tension in my shoulders wind until it was close to snapping, every muscle across my back burning like I was standing on a pyre instead of sitting in a living room discussing a treaty with the enemy.
Huh.
Keep your enemies close…
If the Kings allied with the Saints then I might get the chance to find out what happened to my father. Who killed him. And return the favor.
I’d always known that vengeance would be mine someday, but this? This could be the opportunity I needed to follow through.
My stomach fluttered at the thought of King’s blood all over my hands.
“He’s right,” I interrupted something Grey was saying. “If the Saints don’t ally with the Kings then the Aces might.”
It was what Diesel was trying to tell them if what I heard in pieces while plotting my own revenge was any indication. But I needed to put it to them plainer.
This needed to happen.
“If the Aces and Kings join together it’ll be a lot worse for us. A much, much bigger mess to clean up if things go south, and I think we all know that’s exactly where this is headed. There will be more loss of life. It’s the logical move.”
I focused my attention squarely on Diesel now. “You should do it. Now. Before the Aces do.”
He considered me as though seeing me in a new light. Maybe one he didn’t particularly loathe. I had to wonder why he didn’t shut me up. He clearly had no desire to hear my take.
He’s learning, I thought. Watching and learning. Seeing how my addition to this threesome would affect his future with his sons. How he could use it to his advantage. Weighing the risk versus the potential rewards.
This man was far more cunning than I gave him credit for. He knew when to speak. When to throw his weight. And when to be quiet; a thing most men in positions of power never quite learned.
Diesel looked around the room at his sons. “Boys?”
“I don’t like it,” Rook said, sneering as he finished his whiskey. It wasn’t a clear cut opposition.
“Neither do I,” Corvus agreed, but he, too, was already nodding, his sights on me. “But they have a point.”
“Grey?” Diesel pushed. “I need the green light on this from all three of you before I’ll move on it.”
Grey’s brows knotted.
“We form the alliance,” Grey said, casting the deciding vote. “But as a means to prevent them from joining with the Aces. I don’t want to work with them. Not unless we have to.”
That would make my plans more difficult, but I’d still take the win.
“Agreed,” Diesel said, and winced as he brought his leg down from the table. The bandage poking out from beneath the hem of his jeans was soaked through with crimson.
I guess we really weren’t going to talk about that. Or the million other things still left unsaid between us over the past weeks. It was probably for the best. If we started talking, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep talking from becoming stabbing.
He hopped to his feet, and Grey got up to follow him.
“Stay,” he told Grey, and his son obediently sat back down.
Diesel paused in the doorway to the kitchen. “Oh. There was just one last thing.”
There was more?
“That business at Briar Hall this morning? What was that about?”
Of course he would know about that, though it didn’t keep me from wondering exactly how he knew.
“Just some cunt fucking around. Probably a prank. Doesn’t seem like the Ace’s style.”
Diesel shook his head. “No. Not their usual MO, but my guys are looking into it anyway.”
“I got this,” Corvus said, his shoulders flexing.
“Do you?” Diesel asked him. “Remember who runs those halls, son. Things like that can’t go unpunished. Clean it up.”
Corv nodded, and Diesel’s gaze strayed to me. To the blade I was unconsciously twirling between my fingers as I thought of brutal ways to use it against our mutual enemies and some of my own.
“And for the love of god, someone teach her how to use a fucking gun.”
Diesel left, but it did little to fix the knots in my stomach or the ones still burning across my back.
I stood.
“Where are you going?” Corvus demanded.
“Back to Briar Hall.”
“For what? It’ll be dawn in a couple hours. Not like you’re going to sleep.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I have an idea,” Rook said, licking his lips as he rose from the couch, trying to dump the last few drops of his whiskey down his throat.
Corvus blanched, and I got the sense that when Rook had an idea it didn’t always end well.
“Let’s blow off some steam, yeah?”
He brushed past my shoulder on his way to the kitchen, his warmth and scent flooding all my senses.
“You coming?” he called from the front door, and the rest of us shared a look before following him from the Nest.
Anything was better than staring at the ceiling for the next four hours, right?
