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Her faux smile of indifference doesn’t falter. Nor does her hard glare. She’s taken a lot of people’s shit in her short time on this earth. She can’t be much older than Asena. And I’d bet this chick is picturing kicking me in the balls with those four-inch stilettos right about now. She’d make a perfect best friend for my Asena.
“You an undertaker, sweetheart?”
That’s Reaper. An undertaker in our world is someone who organizes the removal of unwanted bodies after an encounter or rivals, to put it eloquently. No doubt if she is an undertaker or works with one, she had a helping hand in the removal of the bodies after our round of target practice with The Druid and his goons.
“Are all your friends such condescending pricks?”
Harlon picks up without missing a beat. “She runs various enterprises for the family.”
The lady with the regal neck and perfect composure steps back in line.
In other words, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to. Everyone knows to never ask where the bodies are buried if you didn’t have a hand in their death in the first place.
“Your name?” I ask point-blank and hold a hand out.
She slips hers over mine. Strong, unwavering. Confident.
“Sapphire Constantine,” she offers.
“My cousin,” Harlon adds on like I can’t connect the dots.
“Fitting name.” Eyes almost the same color as Asena’s watch my every move. Where Asena has shards of a lovely emerald mixed in with the blue, Sapphire’s are just that—deep blue gems.
I’d been busy burying my fist into Ares’ rock-hard chin, but I remember her from Devil’s wake. The time is a little fuzzy around the edges but she’d stuck to Harlon’s side then too.
“A pleasure.”
“Likewise.”
I huff a sound that holds no humor. I doubt it. I lean against the rail and tuck an ankle over the other.
“Strange to see you without your posse and Polaris in tow. What’s up, Harlon?”
“Cassian and Santi returned to Chicago with Polaris. We stayed back an extra day to verify what I am about to tell you.”
The Savages don’t have a problem with other families doing business in our territory as long as they pay the dues. The Genesis men are fast becoming liable connections we consider more friend than foe. Enough to where Nova had no problem sending her sister, Polaris, to work for the men after being abducted and then put through abusive submissive training at the hands of the Volkov twins. The perverted duo of asshats rose from low-life trash with no money to pieces of shit with bank accounts rivaling the billions in the Savage portfolio.
Oh, you thought I was a dead-beat drop-out cop nursing old wounds for a girl nearly half my age?
Well, you’re not wrong, but I’m also well off enough to provide for Asena. She’ll never lack comfort as long as I am alive.
Whether she wants it or not.
And I’ve made it clear to anyone who asks, I hold no remorse for making sure the Volkovs ate lead. With the help of Ares’ bratva family in Russia those two kidnapped women, men, and anyone else they could turn a profit off of for sex trafficking.
You know where I’m going with this. If the Savages and the Genesis men hadn’t stepped in, Polaris would have been lost to the underground world along with a hundred other people. Rage and Riot spent weeks fruitlessly hunting down the ones we were not in time to save. But nothing.
I rub at the center of my chest, the old wound there firing up with renewed rage.
Harlon steps into my personal space, leaving Sapphire on the outer edges of hearing. Reaper and I both give him our undivided attention.
He’s our height, bulky along the shoulders with a feathering of gray along the temples. Distinguished.
“I thought you should know, the word on the street is that your head has a contract out on it. Ten million.” He shrugs with a foreign level of mirth in the twitch of his lips. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the bastard smile before but he thinks a contract out on me is something to laugh about.
I agree.
“Ten million? That’s all. Damn. Is that the price tag for dead? I might be in the mood to cash out on our friendship, buddy.”
