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“Only slums around here are those half-naked girls you keep around,” she tutted in mock disappointment. “Never keep any men around for an old lady like me. It’s very disappointing.”
The brothers howled with laughter as we stepped into Church.
“Don’t go pretending like any of these pretty boys wouldn’t give you the ride of your life, Granny.” I sent her a salacious wink. “Shazam over there jerks off to your picture every night. Don’t you, big guy?”
Laughing, I ducked the man’s sloppy, playful punch. His face burned, his cheeks ruddy as he shook his head bashfully. The man was a giant wall of muscle with a glare that could melt iron, but that was only if you didn’t know him. To us, he was a gentle giant and head over heels for the batty old lady.
Couldn’t blame him.
No one knew for sure how old Granny was. The woman’s background was dodgier than quick-mart Chinese food, but one thing was for sure—she was far older than she looked. Shifters, by nature, aged slower than humans and had a progressively longer lifespan. But even the best of us couldn’t escape aging.
Except that seemed to be exactly what the old bird had done. Her identification, no doubt fabricated, stated that she was fifty-one years old, but the woman looked like she was in her midthirties. Sure, she had gracefully graying hair, and a few wrinkles had started to appear, but that was it. She was well toned and well bred.
She’d raised Wolf since he was a cub. A zealot faction of humans had murdered his parents. The very same faction that had raised me to be a silent assassin. When he rescued me, I’d become Granny’s second son, and she’d raised me rightalongside him. All my life, I had only known pain and hatred. Granny showed me things no one ever had. Love and affection. I was still a weapon underneath, but now I could harness it. Control it. Use it for something good.
“I heard from a little bird that you got yourself a waitress.” Bruiser lifted his brows a few times and licked his lips suggestively. “Should bring her for a visit.”
Granny snorted. “That’s never happening, Bruiser. She’d eat you right up.”
Bruiser shrugged and leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “I’m into it if she is.”
“Jesus,” I muttered below my breath.
“Who’d you hire?” Wolf tilted his head suspiciously.
Granny cleared her throat. “My niece,” she told him. “She’s been having some problems with her family, and I told her she could come stay with me.”
“I didn’t know you had siblings.” Wolf narrowed his eyes at her.
“It’s cute that you think I’ve told you everything about me,” Granny challenged. “What you know about me only scratches the surface, pup.” Wasn’t that true. That woman’s secret had secrets.
“Like why Delta Feed wants your shop enough to threaten you for it?”
Granny’s jaw tightened, and her hands clenched at her side. “Don’t be getting into my business.”
“You are my business,” Wolf hissed. “This town is my business. Or have you forgotten already?”
Her stance widened slightly, her shoulders rolling back as she straightened herself up. The brothers in the room rolled their chairs back, itching to get away from the power flowing from her. Yep, there was definitely more to Granny than met the eye.
“I haven’t forgotten anything, Wolf,” she told him. “But you would be wise to remember who I am.”
Wolf scoffed. “I know who you are, Granny,” he sneered. “Keeper of secrets. Hoarder of them, in fact. You’ve always kept everything so close to the vest, and you only reveal things after it’s too late. I’m done with that.”
“You don’t get to demand from me.”
Wolf stepped toward the woman who’d raised me, power radiating off him in waves. He was his parents’ son. An alpha. A powerful one at that. Alphas, true alphas, were rare in our world. Not just because most of them had been hunted down over the years by more powerful alphas, but because an alpha could only be born of two alphas. Or an alpha and an omega. And omegas were even rarer. If they existed at all.
“What do they want with the shop?”
Granny sighed, a hand running down her worn face. Her face was drawn and resigned. She’d looked as if she’d aged several years in the moments she and Wolf had been arguing.
“Who says it’s the shop they want?”
“If they don’t want the shop, then why try to buy it from you?” I asked.
“Information.” Her face twisted painfully.
“Why do they need to buy the shop for that?” I wondered. “They could just steal it. Unless…”
