Lord, give me the strength to get through this. “You’re here under your sister's protection. If you won’t give her any information about who tried to kill you, then how are we supposed to fix it so you can live normally again? Do you really think that Lips wouldn’t kill for you? In a heartbeat, she would take out a whole city if they threatened you.”
He rolls his eyes and snaps, “That’s all well and good to ramble on about, but she’s not going to do shit for me. None of you are.”
I need to put my gun back in my purse before I shoot him for being a whiny little bitch. “I slit a woman’s throat in the garage last week and watched her bleed out, you really think I won’t kill someone who’s threatening a member of my family? You’re Lips’ blood, that’s all I need to know. Now move your ass before we end up dead in a ditch just because you can’t listen to simple instructions.”
I text Ash and tell him to bring the car to us. It’ll take him a little longer to get here but I need to get Noah out of the open in case whoever is after him knows literally anything about searching through security footage. With Jackson busy in the meeting, it’s not like I can get the surveillance cameras around here shut off.
I send a message to Viola, just in case she’s available and can do it.
When Noah tries to walk out of the warehouse again, I stop him, grabbing his arm and tugging him behind me as I murmur to the Crow’s man still waiting for us outside.
“I have a pick up on the way, let me know when they arrive.”
He nods again, his eyes sharp as he takes in the night around us, the sounds of the party still clear from here.
Noah isn’t on board with this plan. “Why the fuck are we staying in this shit-hole? This feels like a trap, are you about to put me down because you’re sick of me? I fucking knew it, you’re so full of shit.”
I roll my eyes at him as I slip the plastic booties over my shoes that I keep in my pockets for my trips down to the slums, ignoring the way he huffs and puffs at my obsessive need to keep my shoes protected from the nightmare that is the warehouse. “What would you know about traps? Keep your hat pulled down low, I don’t want you getting caught on camera here somewhere and whoever the fuck is after you figuring out you’re here.”
He yanks on the brim, his curls squashing down a little more and obscuring his face. “I know enough about dodgy shit to know this is a bad fucking idea. Aren’t you royalty or something? You shouldn’t be wandering around like this.”
His words are dripping with sarcasm but he’s not too far off of the mark. On these streets, I am now the slum version of royalty—the infamous Queen Crow.
The part he’s missing is theruthlesspart of my persona, the part where I was forged in fire, over and over again, and there’s nothing they can do right now that I can’t get out of.
Because my night can’t get any worse, that statement is going to be tested. Outside there’s the sound of a gun going off and then a body hitting the ground.
Chapter Eighteen
I immediately move into action, grabbing Noah’s arm and dragging him as quickly and quietly away from the doors as I can. The warehouse was once a storage place for some sort of mechanic or construction company and there’s still rusted-out pieces of machinery that we duck behind. I have a gun and two knives on me, and there’s no way in hell that I’m handing Noah a gun without knowing that he can actually use it without killing us both.
He also just ranted about how much he doesn’t trust me or his sister, there’s every chance he’d use it against me on purpose, so instead I hand him one of the knives.
He stares at it for a second, blinking slowly like he’s never held a knife before, and I accept that he’s not going to be any use to me right now. Whoever is here to kill us—him? God knows—is my responsibility to take out until Ash and the others get here.
I’ll be fine. Everything is fine.
I say it until my heart rate slows a little more and the gun isn’t shaking in my hand. The last time this happened, Bingley was attacking me at Atticus’ fortress-like mansion and I’d been forced to… disembowel him.
The only goals for tonight are to kill these men without traumatizing myself and to keep us both alive.
When the doors swing open, I can see Atticus’ man is dead on the ground with a bullet between his eyes and I take a second to feel both a little guilty for not even knowing his name, and also very glad I left him out there alone. Callous and cold, but that’s the way of the Bay and I’m not the same girl I once was.
Better him than me or Noah.
“I can smell her fucking perfume; she’s a sweet little bitch.”
Noah’s eyes snap to mine right as I roll them because it’s such typical male bullshit. Of course they’d be talking shit because even with the skin markets gone from the Bay, there’s still more than enough terrible human beings out there.
I motion again for Noah to stay silent and then I watch as the men walk into the warehouse, counting them all and cursing in my head because three or four men would be totally fine. Eight? That’s a bit much.
Ten?
We’re fucked.
My gun has twelve bullets and I don’t have a spare magazine. I wasn’t even supposed to have to use the damn thing and now I’m going to have to start carrying my own arsenal like the freaking Butcher, because this shit just keeps on happening to me. I send Ash a message through muscle memory alone to get his ass here pronto.
Twelve bullets, ten men. I can’t miss any of the shots and I also need to make sure I don’t get shot myself. Can I talk my way out of this? Stall for long enough that backup arrives? Ash is five minutes away, ten at the most.
