Because I liked her. Far more than I should. All of them really. Verging on a negligent way.
There was my heart, dangling at the opening of a shredder.
I turned to the laptop and clicked around, trying to orient myself. Mostly it was folders with a ton of old files containing Talon & Torque documents for at least seven years.
I figured the best I could do would be to get their current payables and receivables up to date, send out late invoices to the umpteen service invoices that remained unpaid, and make sure their accounts were balanced.
I wasn’t sure how they stayed afloat, but I had an inkling the shop wasn’t their only source of income.
Those boys bad, even though it was getting harder and harder to view them that way.
Elena kept rocking Kai who was steadily drifting to sleep. The child seemed to be able to conk out wherever he was.
“So, what’s on today’s to-dos?” she asked, also trying to clear the heaviness away, a bright smile tacked to her face.
I made an annoyed sound at the back of my throat. “Getting all of those handwritten invoices into the system.”
I gestured at a giant stack I’d already sorted.
“Eww, why did I volunteer?” she teased.
“This is no gift shop,” I returned. “You won’t find any glitter around here.”
I got it then. All the notes and the cute things. It fit her perfectly.
“But one day you’ll have a store full of it.”
“I hope so,” she whispered, then both of us jolted with the clatter of activity that suddenly echoed through the air.
All the machinery clipped off in the shop while a bunch of shouts lifted.
Elena shot to her feet. I couldn’t stop her before she rushed out the entrance door.
I was right behind her.
“Goddamn it, Elena, get back in the office, right now,” Silas growled, halfway across the lot and heading in the direction of the big open gate.
Only she was frozen.
Pale and ashen.
So clearly going weak.
I pulled Kai out of her arms and stepped in front of her, trying to make sense of what was happening as a bunch of Crows went stalking toward a middle-aged guy who stood out on the other side of the gate.
Maybe in his mid-fifties. Salt and pepper hair and beard. Scruffy and mean.
He didn’t step over the boundary line.
I was pretty sure he was aware if he did, he’d be writing his own obituary.
Energy blasted and shook. Hate shivering through the rays of sunlight and setting them askew.
Both Silas and Brody were at the front of the pack, while Trevan and six other bikers I didn’t know the names of came up at their rear and sides.
The guy sneered, though he lifted his hands and shouted, “Want to see Kai.”
That was all it took for me to know. For my own hatred to blister like a forest fire through my veins.
