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Would she be okay with it?
Sure, she knew I was an arms-dealing biker. And she knew about my racing days.
But would she be able to handle that I’d once worked for the mob? That I’d been a mole for them in the Bratva?
It was a lot to ask of any woman. But it was especially bad for a woman who came from a very normal life, who’d never been a part of this world.
That said, Huck, McCoy, Remy, and Seeley all had normal women. Che was the only one with a girl from the life. I mean, sure, Remy’s girl had been stealing dogs from an underground fighting ring. But that was just about saving innocent lives to her, not crime. And Ama patched up criminals. But, again, that was about preservation of life.
Triss, I knew, would have no problem accepting it. I’d once heard the woman telling the guys that she dreamed of finding a man like she saw in her crime soap operas.
But Maeve was softer, sweeter, more prone to uncertainty, to overthinking.
Maybe I could ease her into it.
Hey, so I was a wheelman for the mafia one week. Then, a couple later, Did I ever tell you I worked as a mole for the Italians while working as a wheelman for the Russians? Crazy, right?
And maybe fuck her brains out after to remind her of one of the reasons she wanted to keep being with me. I would be healed by then. Shit could get real fun real fast.
Not that they weren’t amazing now. Especially when she let me come inside of her. I’d never fucked raw before, never wanted to be with someone for any length of time, so I didn’t want to risk disease or babies.
But if Maeve told me a few weeks from now that the Pill somehow wasn’t enough, that there were two pink lines, and baby bottles and strollers in our future… I’d be okay with that.
That was what my mind was on as we made our way out of the restaurant and into the car.
It wasn’t until we all reached for our phones that we’d been instructed to leave in the car that we realized something was wrong.
Everyone had multiple missed calls.
From Alaric.
From Levee.
From Booker.
From Triss.
I knew.
I knew even before Huck was calling Alaric back.
Something had happened to Maeve.
My gut was twisted in a vice as Huck put the phone on speaker.
“What is going on?” he asked.
“Maeve. Someone took Maeve,” Alaric said, sounding winded. Or was that pain?
“Are you hurt?” Huck asked, hearing it too.
“Shot,” Alaric confirmed. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted, hissing hard as, I imagined, someone cleaned his wound or pressed gauze to it.
“Fuck. What happened?”
“Remy brought the dog over. But he forgot the food. Maeve wanted us to go and get it,” he said.
“Was someone watching the house?” Huck asked.
“No.” That was Booker talking. “No, we would have seen that. It seems that someone had a tracker on Maeve’s car. There was one on Triss’s as well. They must have figured the girls would come back eventually. And that, through them, they could get to Donovan.”
“Fuck,” I hissed, my blood rushing through my veins, making me feel antsy as my gaze found Che’s in the rearview. “Drive,” I demanded.
But I wasn’t his boss. And he looked to Huck for permission before he floored it.
I mean, it was no sports car. And the SUV wasn’t designed to work that way, so it felt like we were fucking crawling as we made our way out of the area.
“I need more details,” Huck demanded, chancing a look back at me.
“Maeve thought we were being followed, so we confirmed it. But by taking the turns, we ended up in the middle of nowhere. The car rammed us. We spun out. I cracked my head against the central pillar and blacked out. Not for long, but…”
“But long enough,” Huck supplied.
“When I came to, Maeve was getting pushed into a trunk. Then I was shot, and the car was gone. I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, sounding agonized, and not from the gunshot wound.
“Not your fault,” Huck said, slamming his hand into the dash when Che took a corner a little too fast. “But we need details. What did the car look like? What did the guy look like.”
“It was the same car,” Alaric said. “Black, tinted, nothing distinguishable.”
“And the guy?” Huck asked again.
“That’s just the thing,” Alaric said, tone a little tighter.
“What is the thing? Do we know him?”
“No. It wasn’t a him. This was a woman.”
Huck’s gaze flew to me just as I slammed my only remaining good hand into the door.
“Fuck.”
“You know who it is?” Huck asked.
“Maeve.”
“No, we meant who the abductor was,” Huck said, brows drawing low.
“It’s Maeve,” I said. “Or, at least, that was what she told me her name was.”
