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“Heard you get up.” He brought it over, his own in hand.
I took it. “Thank you.” I looked around, but no Jess. “She’s sleeping?”
He snorted. “Are you kidding? She was already riled up when she got the call from Pialto, and you called, showing up with Molly covered in blood? She’s in the gym, trying to kick ass in there so she doesn’t kick your ass here.”
I almost grinned. “I might enjoy that.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You and the love of my life. I don’t know what I’m to do with both of you. You make her want to rip out your throat, and I swear that you enjoy it.”
I smiled now. “I do.”
“Well, get ready, because any thawing that she’s done toward you, that shit is up in smoke. She wants to put a bullet in you.”
Fuck. But I almost laughed at that too.
He motioned upstairs. “How is she?”
Molly.
All my amusement vanished. An image of her looking at me when she felt the gun against her head flashed in my mind again.
“She’s been through a lot.”
“What’s going on with you both?”
Trace had been asking me this same question since Molly Easter came into our lives. I never answered before, not really, because I hadn’t wanted to get into anything about our mothers, but now . . . it was different. I was different. She affected me, and I shook my head. “I was planning to use her. I was going to take her away, stash her in some house, and leak her location. Then I would sit back and wait and see who showed up to kill her. Course, I’d kill him first, and voilà, we’d follow the lead back to whoever killed Justin and Kelly. Jess would be better. You would feel better if she was better, and you and me, we could handle things and end this war we’re in.” That same image. A gun against Molly’s head. How she looked at me. How I felt it. How I knew what she was going to do. “All that’s gone. Everything is different now.”
Using her as bait that way was something I would’ve done before, without blinking an eye or giving it a second thought. Another person, another situation, it’d already be a done deal. I knew who I was. I knew the darkness in me, and I welcomed it. I wrapped myself with it, savoring it, but her. She’d broken through, giving me different thoughts. Different feelings.
A different outlook.
If that gun had gone off against her head . . .
I greatly and intensely wanted to rip someone’s head off their shoulders. I wished I hadn’t killed the man. I wished that I’d kept him alive and he was strapped to a chair in one of my warehouses and I could be feeling his blood all over me.
I wished for that with every fiber of my being right now.
Trace had been observing me. He always did. It’s how we were. Him and me. We watched each other, but we watched out for each other. So because of that, he murmured, “You’re in too deep.”
“Yeah.” Fuck. “Yeah.”
Trace let out a sigh and came over, clinking his glass to mine. “Shit’s different when you care about someone.”
Goddamn. Care.
I hated it, but yes. I cared. I cared about Molly.
Shit was so very different now.
“It was Worthing’s men.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “I recognized them. Molly had to go to the bathroom. They’d been tailing us. I think they saw a chance and took it.”
“Were they there for you or Molly?”
“Me. They didn’t know she was there. She went inside first, so I don’t think they even saw her until she came out of the bathroom. They had a guy positioned at the back door. He came up behind her. My source said that on the camera, he saw her on her phone. That’s when he approached her.”
My mouth was so very fucking dry, just talking about it.
The whole thing played out in my head. Slow motion. It was on a continuous loop.
I shot him first, right in the forehead. He was dead before his body hit the ground. My guy Cal was shooting next to me, and I’d turned, taking out the last guy standing. He had wavered between shooting me or Cal. That’d been his mistake.
“Jess talked to some people she knows. She said the shooting was clean. You guys took down all three. Boom, boom, boom. That’s how she made it sound.”
“They got off a couple of shots. Cal got hit in the leg and arm.”
“She said it was still pretty clean.”
“I don’t think they thought we’d shoot, or maybe they didn’t think I would shoot. They were surprised. I remember that at the end, the last guy was stunned we were shooting back.” My gut was twisting and churning. Worthing. He’d sent those men. Those same men who put Molly in danger . . . and I’d been about to do the same thing myself.
