Page 21 of Inferno

I did the math. Yesterday morning was Sunday. Inferno had called me at one a.m. on Monday. He’d had his club watching me a full day before I ever said yes to anything.

The morning’s good feeling curdled in my stomach like bad milk. I stood there in the parking lot with the sun on my back and the kid on the bike in front of me, and I didn’t say another word. Just turned around and walked back to my car.

I let Georgia off early and closed the shop. I thought the few minutes it would take to do that would cool me off. It didn’t. The drive to the Kiss of Death compound took twenty minutes, and I used every second of it to get good and fucking mad.

I pulled up to the gate and, surprisingly, they parted and a man waved me through. I parked next to a row of bikes in the same building I’d been to before. I didn’t get out for a long moment, caught between being mad enough to spit and scared stupid. What the fuck was I doing?

Finally, I got out of my car, marching toward the big warehouse. Two women waited by the steps. Darby leaned against the railing with her arms crossed, one boot propped on the bottom step. Another woman stood beside her, hands in her jacket pockets, watching my car with patience and stillness.

“Hey, cupcake,” Darby said as I approached. “You look like you’re about to break something expensive.”

“I might.” I stopped a few feet from them. “Did Inferno send you out here to run interference?”

Darby laughed. The sound carried across the empty lot. “No. Zero did. Called me and Hannah both after you talked to him at that sandwich shop. The rule in the clubhouse is, no woman walks in here angry with a room full of bikers with nobody in her corner. So here we are.” She pushed off the railing. She hiked her thumb as the other woman. “Hannah is Knuckles’ old lady. Knuckles is the president of Kiss of Death so, as you can imagine, she carries some weight around here.” She glanced at Hannah before continuing. “And for what it’s worth, the way they handled putting a tail on you was bullshit. Straight up.”

“Darby,” Hannah said, her voice low and calm.

“What? It was. The man decided he was your bodyguard before he asked if you wanted a bodyguard.” Darby shrugged. “That’s a dick move, and I’ll say it to his face when he comes down those stairs. But the rule’s the rule. You don’t walk in alone.”

Hannah chuckled and shook her head. “You’ve got a solid friend in your corner with Darby, Juniper. Come on. Inferno’s upstairs. He knows you’re here.”

“Of course he does,” I muttered. “Do I go the same way I did last time?”

“Yeah,” Darby said as she and Hannah walked me through the common room to the lift at the back. They rode up with me until I got off. “Juniper?” I turned to look back at her. “Don’t let him off easy.” She grinned. “He deserves what’s coming.”

Moving down the hall at a brisk clip, I made my way to his door. I found it slightly ajar. Figured. He was expecting me after all.

I pushed it open without knocking. Inferno stood at the window, back to the door, one hand braced against the frame. He didn’t turn when I came in.

“You had a man on me yesterday?” My voice shook with anger and nerves. My stomach was in knots but I couldn’t say exactly why. Yes, I was angry. Spitting mad. But it was more than that. “A full day before I said yes to anything. Before you called me at two in the fucking morning telling me about Brett’s past.”

He turned. His face was carefully blank, like he’d decided he was right and might just be willing to die on that hill. “Yes. I did.”

“I agreed to help at the bakery. That’s what I agreed to. I did not agree to a man following my car. I did not agree to be watched.” My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets. “Do you have any idea what this is like for me? I already suspected there was something not quite right about Brett’s behavior. After he grabbed me and you found the prior complaints? Yeah. It scared me. You know what else scared me?” I might be stretching this a bit, but I wanted to make a point. “Realizing I’ve had someone following me for a full day, watching me at my home, my job, any time I’m moving about. I expected it would be Brett. But now, I find out you’ve done this! Have I got two psychopaths fixated on me now?”

“One of those psychopaths you chose.” His voice didn’t rise. “The other one you didn’t. I’m trying to protect you from the one you didn’t.”

“You had Knight digging through Brett’s life before you even told me his car was at my shop. You had a whole fucking file on a man who’d just ended things with me, and you and I have known each other less than a week! Doesn’t that sound just a tad bit fixated?”

“That’s not the same thing and you know it, Juniper.” Again, he sounded so reasonable it made me want to claw his eyes out.

“Do I? Because from where I’m standing, it looks exactly the same.” The words came faster now, hot and sharp. “The whole point was you took away my choices. You knew I’d balk, and you decided it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“I’ll never apologize for trying to keep you safe. I told you why.”

“What would it have hurt to just ask me? I’m not a child!”

“I’m not trying to hurt or control you, and I think you know it.”

“You’re treating me like I can’t take care of myself or make my own decisions!”

“I’m trying to keep you alive.” The words came out clipped and sharp, the first crack in his facade. “The Audi circled your block for six days. The fire marshal couldn’t rule out arson on that storage fire. The storage unit belonged to his ex-girlfriend soon after they broke up. Brett Calloway has a history of escalation with women after they part ways. And you walked away in front of a bar full of people with another man wrapped around you. So yeah, I put eyes on you. And I’d do it again.”

“Without asking.”

“Without fucking asking.” He didn’t blink. “Every Goddamned time.”

We stood there in his living room, gold light from the rays of sun filtering through his blinds spilled across us. Inferno stood close enough that I could smell the soap on his skin and feel the anger radiating between us. My chest ached. I clenched my jaw so tight I could feel the tendons in my neck standing out like cords. I had more to say, but all I could focus on was the man standing in front of me and the fierce determination on his face.