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“Feel better?” he asks, raising his pierced brow.
“Yes,” I lie.
He leads me down the hall to his bedroom, and I shuffle inside after him, watching as he deposits my things against the wall near the closet. I linger near the door, feeling awkward and uncertain about being in his private space like this—not that I should feel bad about it, since he and his brothers have invaded every aspect of my life with impunity.
There’s a bottle of whiskey on his nightstand, and Ransom picks it up, shaking it a little as he holds it out to me like a peace offering.
“It’ll take the edge off,” he tells me. “Might help you sleep tonight.”
I accept the bottle and take a little swig, grimacing as a burning feeling hits the back of my throat. I’m not much of a drinker, but it does help. After one more sip, the burn settles into a tingling warmth that spreads through my belly and out into my limbs.
“It’s good, yeah?” Ransom takes the bottle back and lifts it to his lips, taking a sip himself. “We’ve got a liquor shelf downstairs, but this is my favorite whiskey, so I keep it up here to keep Malice from drinking the whole damn thing.”
He passes it to me again, and this time, when I raise it to my mouth, I’m keenly aware that his mouth was just on it. This feels strangely intimate too, and it makes it hard to not think about the way he kissed me the night he dropped me off at my apartment.
“Come here.”
Ransom sits on the bed, patting the mattress in an invitation for me to sit too. I do, and we pass the whiskey bottle back and forth a couple more times. It’s relaxing and calming in a way I didn’t expect, and some of the tension bleeds out of me. I feel strangely at ease with Ransom, and that makes me nervous.
“What will you do about whoever is poking into Nikolai’s death?” I ask him after a while.
He shrugs. “We’ll figure out how to handle it. Figure out who it is and take care of them.”
I realize that ‘take care of them’ means kill them, and I’m a little horrified at how easily he says it. Like it doesn’t matter one bit that they’re going to take a life. But it also would mean that I’d be free, so there’s a part of me that can’t help but hope they succeed.
“So… what is this place?” I ask, glancing at the bedroom door and raising my hand to indicate everything beyond it. “It looks sort of like a garage, but you live here too?”
He smiles, the whiskey bottle dangling loosely in his hand. His blue-green eyes gleam with good humor as he cocks his head.
“You sure you want me to answer that? Knowing more about us could be dangerous for you.”
I shrug one shoulder. “I saw Vic shoot a man through a pillow tonight. And I saw all three of you kill that Nikolai guy. We’re pretty much past that point anyway, aren’t we?”
“Guess so,” he agrees with a low laugh. “But yeah, we live here and work here. We needed something to do for work, to get money coming in, so we opened a chop shop when Malice got out of prison.”
That last bit catches my attention.
Malice was in prison?
I guess it makes sense, since some of his tattoos look like prison ones. I want to ask what he was put away for, but at the same time, I’m scared to poke too much. Despite what I just told Ransom about it being too late, I’m certain that getting to know these men well would definitely be dangerous.
“Oh.” I nod, picking at a loose thread in the blanket on the bed. “I didn’t know that.”
“You don’t seem too surprised by it though,” Ransom says with a chuckle. “I guess that makes sense. Malice has a… way about him.”
“You could say that,” I murmur, thinking back to every time he waved a gun in my face. “How long was he in there?”
“Several years. It was supposed to be longer, but then… well, he got out.”
The vague way he ends that statement makes me certain that it wasn’t as simple as he’s making it sound. Did they break him out somehow? Or did he get out early on good behavior? Somehow, I find that possibility hard to imagine.
“What about you?” Ransom asks, changing the subject before I can decide whether or not to ask anything more about Malice. “We’ve got our shop. What are you gonna do with your fancy degree once you get it?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I admit. “I’m a sophomore, and I haven’t declared a major yet. I need to soon though.”
The truth is, I have no idea what I want to focus on. I know what my goals are, and I know where I want to end up in life, but I’m not sure how to get there yet, or what degree would be best. And it’s not like I have a lot of authority figures in my life to ask for advice. The thought of asking my mom what career path she thinks I should pursue almost makes me want to laugh. Or cry.
Ransom slides the piercing in his tongue between his teeth. “I’m sure you’ll pick something good. Have you always lived in Detroit?”
