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“You won’t need to seek her out to say your piece,” Bailey told him as they inched forward with the moving line. “I got the feeling she means to make her apologies to you soon as well.”
He grunted. “On a more important note, did you talk to the others at the center and ask if anyone has seen Ginny like I asked?”
“I did. No one has a clue where she is.” Most only came into contact with her at the center anyway, and Ginny was now barred.
“Enforcers will keep watching her place.”
The problem was that Ginny likely knew that, which might explain why there had been no sign of activity so far. Surely the woman would have to come home eventually, though. She probably thought that Bailey’s Alphas would call off the enforcers if she just gave them time. And what an incorrect assumption that was.
“As soon as she’s back from wherever she’s gone, we’ll know,” said Deke as the line once more moved forward. “The enforcers will nab her and take her to the Alphas.”
And then Ginny would be none-too-gently questioned. Both Bailey and her mamba were looking forward to it.
Once Bailey and Deke had finally stacked their meals and drinks on a tray, they returned to the stools they’d claimed near the front window.
Deke unfolded the wax paper to reveal his baguette. “So,” he began, pinning his gaze on Bailey, “tell me how you became a loner.”
She blinked, stilling with her drink halfway to her mouth. “That came out of nowhere.”
He shrugged. “Neither of us are into small talk, and there are a lot of things I want to know about you. Starting with this.” He bit into his baguette and stared at her expectantly.
Bailey inwardly sighed. This wasn’t a subject she much cared to touch. At all. Ever.
But … she’d have to tell him sooner or later, wouldn’t she? Because they had no chance of building anything if she held back from him. “Okay.” Her snake curled up, displeased. The serpent didn’t like venturing down memory lane.
Bailey sucked a gulp of bubble tea through her straw and arched her brows at how good the Thai Milk concoction tasted. “So … the Umber Nest is basically made up of a bunch of people who don’t care what’s legal and what’s not. My parents were pretty much a non-murderous, Bonnie-and-Clyde pair.” She set her drink down on the counter. “Whereas most couples in our nest took their kids on jobs to teach them skills, mine felt that I cramped their style. I was often dumped with different people in the nest.”
Deke’s eyelids dropped, and his jaw tightened. “Dumped?”
“Yup.” Exhaling heavily, she unwrapped her baguette. “The last time my parents left me to go on a job, they didn’t come back.” At first, she hadn’t been worried. They’d often gone off to Vegas for the weekend to “celebrate” after completing a job—and they’d blown most of their “earnings” while doing so. “I later heard the job went wrong and they were killed by the people they’d targeted.”
The aggravation in his expression gave way to sympathy. “Shit. I’m sorry, baby.”
“Really, it had only been a matter of time—they were reckless as hell.” She took a bite of her baguette, unable to truly appreciate the tastes of beef, mayo, onions, peppers, and crusty bread due to the topic of conversation. “Anyway … there’s an iron-clad rule in my old nest. You can do as much illegal shit as you like. But if you fuck up and get caught, you and your children—who are sometimes targeted in place of their parents—will be banished to protect the nest from dealing with retaliation for the crime committed. So I was taken to Corbin, and the rest is history.”
Deke’s face reddened. “Fuckers,” he spit out. “They should have been helping you work through the grief of losing your parents, not tossing you away to protect their own asses.”
“Corbin and my girls helped me work through my grief. To be honest, my parents’ death didn’t hit me as hard as what it might have if we’d been a normal family. I wasn’t close to them. Never had been.”
“Why?”
“They loved me, but I was an after-thought to them. They were, like, super tight. Too wrapped up in each other to make emotional room for anyone else. So I got passed around from person to person. Like I was a pet that they needed others to watch over while they went off to do this or that.”
Anger flared through Deke’s gut and rushed through his cat. “Basically, they had no issues treating you like you were an inconvenience, even though they knew it had to hurt you.”
Chewing on her food, she inclined her head in confirmation.
He couldn’t imagine such a scenario. He’d grown up with loving parents who’d never once made him doubt how important he was to them. He and his siblings had been their priority. Bailey? She hadn’t been anyone’s priority but her own. That made his throat ache.
