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“It’d send them a fucking message,” he snapped, his shoulders squaring like he was preparing to go head-to-head with me rather than backing down.
I shoved my chair back and stood, more than ready to meet him where he was. “It’d fucking have them out for our blood more than they already are!” I bellowed, my fists clenching.
He jerked up out of his seat and came at me, fists raised. Before he managed to land a punch, Nitro had his arms around Hyde and halted his progress. “Not a fucking good idea, brother,” he said as he spun him around and pushed him away from me. “We’re all fucking exhausted and need to get our heads together. This kind of bullshit is what the feds want.” He looked angrily between Hyde and me. “They fucking want us to fall apart and take ourselves down, and I refuse to let that happen. I am not fucking going back inside because you two motherfuckers couldn’t hold your shit.”
Fuck.
I blew out an angry breath.
He was fucking right.
I glared at Hyde one last time before sitting back down. “Right, this is our fucking plan going forward. I’m gonna pay Stark another visit and push her to do what we need her to do. The fact we took care of her husband should go a long way towards us getting what we want. Kick keeps watching D’Amato until we sort Stark out. Everyone else gets on with our usual shit. With any fucking luck, we’ll have figured everything out and taken care of Gambarro by the end of this fucking week.” I exhaled sharply again. And then I can spend the weekend fucking my woman without having to think about any of this bullshit.
Hyde hit me with a filthy look as he stalked out of the room. I ignored it. We’d had worse trouble between us before. This shit would blow over.
“For what it’s worth, I would have done what you did with Stark,” Devil said after everyone left.
I nodded. “Yeah, brother.” I believed he would have. We’d handled some stuff together that had shown me how similar we were in some ways.
He watched me thoughtfully. “You okay with this shit?”
I knew what he was asking. Had it stirred up memories for me when I’d walked away from Isabel Stark? Had it reminded me that I allowed Margreet’s killer to go on living after I discovered he was a single father to a daughter who needed him more than I needed vengeance?
Devil was the only brother who knew this story of mine. He’d caught me in a bad moment one night, and after some whisky loosened my tongue, I’d shared some shit about that with him.
I nodded and jerked my chin towards the door. “Go. We’ve got a lot of shit to get through today.”
My phone rang as he exited the room.
Ivy.
“Don’t tell me you’re calling for me to fucking take you somewhere today. I’m busy,” I said as I answered it.
“I really need you to swing by, King. There’s something wrong with the tap in the shower, and I can’t get it to turn off. Brian’s out taking one of the girls to an appointment, and I’m worried about the amount of water we’re wasting.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “I’ll send one of the boys over. Sit tight.”
She turned silent before saying, “Oh, okay. I thought if you came, we could talk over some more of that stuff you helped me with the other day.”
She’d made me sit and listen to her plans for getting back on her feet. She hadn’t asked my opinion on anything, and I hadn’t given it, but it had felt like she’d expected me to make offers to be by her side while she got to work on it all. That had thrown me, but I hadn’t brought it up. I figured I was reading too much into shit, because surely she realised we didn’t have a shot at ever being a couple again. But here we were again, and I knew I had to deal with this before it got out of hand.
“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” I said and ended the call.
I didn’t have the time for this today, but it was something I had to make the time for. I’d meant it when I told Lily that Ivy was in the past. Now I had to make Ivy understand that, too.
“Thank you,” Ivy said when I entered the kitchen after fixing the shower. “Brian would have been super stressed about the cost of all that water if he’d come back to a running shower. He seems worried all the time over money.”
I dumped my tools on the table. “It’s why I like working with him. He runs a tight ship.”
“I wasn’t saying it was a bad thing, King. He seems like a good guy.”
“That’s because he is a good fucking guy.”
She frowned, coming towards me. “Why are you so short with me today?”
I raked my fingers through my hair. I’d been in a mood from the minute I’d stepped foot inside the place. Knowing I needed to discuss shit with her had me on edge. I was a bastard for what I was about to do. I’d fucked Ivy up in the past, and now I was about to cut her loose again, and that shit didn’t sit right in my gut. But I couldn’t figure out another way through this.
“We need to talk about some stuff,” I said, holding her gaze, trying to get a feel for her mental state. So far, she’d been happy to see me and had jabbered on the whole time I’d worked on the shower. But fuck knew, Ivy could switch gears as fast as I could, so I needed to tread carefully.
