AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Silas makes some low noise in the back of his throat and I take it as he doesn’t want to tell me. I shift my focus to Bane and arch a brow. That asshole always knows more than he lets on.
Bane takes a sip from his own colorfully-painted mug, smirking at me over the rim. “Strangest thing happened last night. I heard our girl in the kitchen, but I was still in her bed. That you, Nova?”
I pretend to think it over, really hamming it up with an exaggerated brow wrinkle. “Hm, me? Nah, I wasn’t in the kitchen last night.”
Bane tsks with a faux-frown. “Strange because I heard her, and you know how loud our girl is, yeah?”
“Oh, I’m well aware.” I grin, the salacious quirk of my mouth as my mind instantly supplies me with the pitch-perfect sound of Evangeline coming on my tongue and then on my cock. It’s the sweetest noise I’ve ever heard, and I have half a mind to make it my new ringtone. Except then everyone else would get to hear her, and those are for my ears alone.
Well, mine and theirs, I guess. Nah, the sounds I elicit from our girl are different from what she gives them, I just fucking know it.
“So if it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you, that leaves”—Bane pauses because apparently I’m not the only one who loves a good dramatic pause—“you,” he says, using his coffee mug to gesture to Silas.
He glances over his shoulder at Bane first, then me, his trademark scowl deepening the V between his eyes. But there’s a little something in his eye. Vulnerability, maybe.
“Glad to see you got your head outta your ass, brother.” I’m surprised to find that I actually mean it. I’m mad as hell that he didn’t tell me about Ma, but I’m not so far gone that I don’t appreciate how fucking good Evangeline is for him. For all of us.
He turns around with a noncommittal grunt and continues cooking. Something about it feels disrespectful, even if he doesn’t mean it that way. I suppose I’m just looking for an excuse at this point.
“Nothing to say, hm? How very diplomatic of you. I thought you were always the type to kiss and tell.” I snag an apple from the fruit basket on the island and sink my teeth into the tart fruit.
“It’s too fucking early for this shit,” Bane says from the table. He’s drinking his coffee with one hand while his other flies over the keyboard on his laptop. He’s been running some kind of program, scouring the intel he’s being sent by whoever the fuck he activated when all the shit went down.
“Hey, you started it,” I say around a mouthful of the red apple. “And you know what? I don’t ever think it’s too early to give your brothers some shit, yeah?”
That gets his attention. Bane’s head rises slowly, his gaze shifting to me. But I’m playing my own game now, so I keep my gaze on my apple in front of me, taking a nice slow bite.
Every once in a while I have a fleeting thought that I’m not addicted to chaos, but maybe more so justifying my need to stir the chaos pot. As if I’m owed a little havoc simply because my world has been flipped on its head. And if all that shit didn’t go down, if we didn’t walk into a fucking trap, and if we didn’t come home to find our girl missing, then I might’ve brought this shit up earlier. But as it stands, I’m just brimming with untapped rage.
“You got something to say, Nova?” Bane asks.
I can sense the tension in the air, seeing the flexing of his arms as he grips his coffee mug.
I’m nodding before he finishes his question. “Yeah, man, I do. I’m going to take Evangeline to visit Hunter.”
Silas spins around, spatula in the air and the same frilly half-apron tied around his hips. “The fuck you are.”
I glare at him. “You really think she’s a danger to him?”
“Of course not,” Silas says with a scoff. “I told you I didn’t mean it like that. But we don’t know who took her yet, which means someone could follow her. She’d unknowingly lead them right to Hunter, and she’d never forgive herself for it.” Silas shakes his head, more to himself than to us. “No. No, I’m not doing that to her or us.”
“We’ve been down this road before, man. We know how dark it can get?—”
“You’re proving my point, Nova,” Silas snaps.
I sigh and glare at him. “My point is that we’ve done this song and dance before. And I’ve been tap dancing my way across the city for the better part of a week. And by tap dancing, I definitely mean?—”
“We know what you mean,” Silas interrupts me. Again.
“Tossing bodies in Whispering Pines, delivering a couple to the cleaners, and even returning one to sender,” I finish with a smirk. I’m fucking proud of that last one. “My point is, I’ve been all over and I haven’t seen a single thing out of place. Not even a glimpse of a Savage or a Hell Hound.”
Bane takes a slow drink of his coffee, and I can practically see the wheels turning inside his head. “That’s because you take out every one you set your sights on.”
I snap my fingers and point at Bane. “Exactly. So it stands to reason that I’m the most well-equipped one to take our girl for a visit to my favorite nephew.”
“At some point, they’re going to hit us back, you know.”
I shake my head. “Not if we take them all out beforehand. Hard to retaliate when you have no more men to use as cannon fodder.”
