Page 87 of Maximus

“My point is, you’re not new. You know Dec wasn’t calling to gossip. He was callin’ to warn me.”

Fucking hypocrite. Dec was sneaking around behind everyone’s back but he called my boss to “warn” him.

“Right. Because Dec’s in a position to warn you,” I snapped.

“Is there something I need to know about Declan?”

“Nope. Just sayin’ he shouldn’t’ve called you because he’s wrong.”

“So you’re not fucking Eva Dawson?”

Damn, his question was like a knife to the gut. I was fucking Eva, but also wasn’t fucking-fucking her. I was also doing other stuff with her, that I wasn’t ready to discuss with Zane or anyone else for that matter. Not that I even could when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

After a few moments, Zane continued, “I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

Fuck.

“I don’t care how you take it and I’ll be having words with Dec later.”

“Remember when Kyle brought Anaya home?”

How could I forget? I was a total asshole to her the first time I met her. Though it must be noted, she didn’t let me get away with it, and rightly handed me my ass in front of both my team and the members of Red Team. Since then, I’ve grown to trust and respect the woman.

“Yep,” I answered, not sure I wanted to know where Zane was going with his line of questioning but I was sure I wasn’t going to like where it led.

“This works out perfectly,” he muttered. “I told you fuckers, the next one of you brings a woman home with the intention of keeping her, I was sending you away. And I cannot believe I’m saying this, since I never thought I’d see the mighty Maximus Brown with all his trust issues in the middle of a hostile takeover, no doubt trying to formulate a battle plan to fortify his Fortress of Suspicion. My plan is perfect.”

If I heard Zane say that to anyone else, I would’ve laughed my ass off, but since he was saying it to me, I wasn’t happy. But I ignored his snarky commentary and honed in on the part I really didn’t like and that was his plan.

“What plan?”

“The plan where you take Eva to Alaska.”

“No fucking way—”

“I know,” Zane sighed. “This is the part where you forget you’re on my payroll and tell me if I don’t change my mind, you’ll take Eva and run. But if you step back, stow your dick, and check your heart for a second and think, you’ll see I’m right. Eva going to Alaska solves everything, and it’s done on our terms in a timely fashion.”

I wasn’t sure that, even if I were thinking clearly where Eva was concerned—which I freely could admit to myself I wasn’t—that I would agree with Zane. His plan sounded easy, but it wasn’t.

“You’re overlooking a few things. Even if I agreed to take Eva to Alaska, you’re forgetting about Liam and Elijah. The other thing is, I’m pretty sure, even though Bubba and Zoey didn’t want to press charges, the Alaskan State Troopers might feel differently.”

“That’s where Tex and Bubba come in,” Zane told me and I groaned.

Eva was going to have a shit hemorrhage if she found out Zane had reached out to Bubba again. She was adamant she didn’t want to involve him. And despite what I told her yesterday, even though we needed his help, I completely understood why she didn’t want to burden him.

“Brother, Eva’s gonna have a conniption about Bubba being asked to help.”

“Don’t see—”

“You don’t?” I cut him off. “Do you think she’s forgotten what she did to him and Zoey? You don’t think she’s so fuckin’ ashamed of what she had to do that she won’t carry that for the rest of her life? Now, do you really think she wants to call on the man she tried to kill and ask him for help? Fuck no, she doesn’t. The last thing Eva wants is to hurt Bubba and Zoey anymore than she has, and that includes mentally by making Bubba think about what happened in Alaska and what happened that made him get in the plane with her to begin with—that being his father was murdered by his asshole brother. And if that shit’s not whacked enough, Bubba then had to witness his brother, his twin, commit suicide. So no, she doesn’t want anyone to call Bubba. And from here on out, we’re all going to respect that and leave Bubba out of our investigation.”

“That’s gonna be an issue.”

“The hell it will. All you have to do is call him, thank him for all his help, but he can stand down.”

“That’s the part that’s not gonna happen. Forgot to tell you, Bubba was the one to call Tex back late last night after he’d talked to Eva and one of her boys. He told Tex he was all in, whatever Eva needed, he’d do what he could.”

Fuck me. Mark “Bubba” Wright throwing down for Eva.