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“She what?” A surge of anger hits me. I shouldn’t care. This isn’t my fight. But I do. “Bitch,” I mutter viciously.
Dante grins and hands me a cup of coffee, doctored exactly the way I like it, then pours himself one and clinks his mug against mine. “Damn right.”
Maddoc snorts, looking back down at his tablet, but not before I notice the corners of his lips twitching.
I almost smile myself, but then Logan walks in and my body immediately flushes with heat as I’m swamped with vivid flashbacks of exactly how good it felt to have him stare at me so intensely while he fucked me through the mattress—
“Good morning,” Logan says calmly, because of course that didn’t actually happen.
I mumble something back and gulp my coffee, grimacing when it burns my throat and then yelping with pain when I jerk it away and the hot liquid sloshes over onto my hand. “Dammit.”
I shake the coffee off my hand, then look up to find all three of them staring at me.
“You okay, princess?” Dante asks, his eyebrows drawn together.
Maddoc is frowning too, half off his stool and reaching for me, but Logan must have moved faster because he’s already by my side, handing me a cool, damp dish towel as he takes my coffee and sets it on the counter.
“Wrap it in this.”
“Bossy,” I mutter.
“You’re just now noticing that?” Dante teases as he quickly cleans up the mess and wipes down my cup, then adds a little more cream to cool it down before handing it back to me. “We wouldn’t have passed Madd’s vetting process if we weren’t.”
“It’s a Reaper requirement,” Maddoc agrees dryly, playing along as he settles back onto his stool.
Even Logan’s lips twitch for a moment, and then my cheeks heat up even more as he takes matters into his own hands and wraps the towel around my burn with quick, efficient movements that, thanks to my dream-addled brain, feel oddly erotic in their clinical precision.
It does help soothe the burn, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to quench the warm glow growing in my chest as the three of them banter like actual brothers, Dante keeping all of our coffees topped up while Logan starts methodically putting together the kind of breakfast that convinces me an apple isn’t going to cut it after all.
They move around each other in the kitchen with a casual ease that speaks of true family, the kind I can completely understand Dante defecting from his former gang for, and with nobody mentioning all the shit we’re dealing with—Chloe still missing, the war with West Point, Troy’s torture and murder—it feels surreal to have all of us co-existing so peacefully in a room I tried to kill one of them in.
Surreal, but nice.
At least, it’s nice until Maddoc’s phone rings.
He glances down, the number on the screen making his brow furrow, and the laid-back energy in the room instantly changes as all of us go on high alert.
The callcouldbe about anything, but I don’t think any one of us expects that “anything” to be good at this point.
And we’re right.
The moment Maddoc answers, the sound of shouting comes across the line. Shouting, traffic, and gunshots.
“Report,” Maddoc snaps, already on his feet.
And then, I think it’s Payton’s voice, loud enough that I can hear every word clearly—
“Maddoc? Maddoc! I need backup!”
19
MADDOC
“Where?”I demand, my whole body tense with the need to act as I wait for Payton to spit out the intel.
“We’re… near Cliffton.” Her harsh, panting breath is punctuated by the rapid-fire sound of footsteps. “Heading north on… on Masters.”
I make eye contact with my seconds and they both nod. They heard her too, and Dante is already calling for backup while Logan’s fingers fly over the screen of the tablet I was using earlier, no doubt pulling up details that I’m not even thinking to ask.
