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He shook his head slowly and pulled out a piece of paper from his back pocket before he sat down hard on the edge of the bed. He looked at the paper, then held it out to me.
Reining in my claws, I crossed the room and took the paper, staring down at the same symbols I’d seen on Valeria’s arm.
“It was at the bottom of the box of photos I gave you,” he said, nodding to the paper.
“You kept that from us? Why the hell didn’t you show me this?”
“You’ve always been honest? Never kept anything from anyone?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at me because he knew he had me caught.
I’d lied to my best friend, Raven, for a decade. She’d grown up believing her family had died in a fire, and I’d let her believe that, all the while knowing it was a lie. But there was one very striking difference here.
“I lied to keep Raven safe. You let us walk into a deal with the fucking cartel, playing on what we do for your own goddamned purposes.”
He stood up, and his pale blue eyes sparked. “From what I’ve seen, this shit is right up your alley, darling. What do you care what stake I have in it?”
“This ‘shit’ is no joke,” I snapped, waving my hands in an all-encompassing motion. “And one day, this ‘shit’ is going to get me killed. I have no illusions about how this ends, Brute, and I can accept that. But when you send me into this ‘shit’ without all the information, that end gets a whole lot closer. So, who the hell is she?”
He sighed. “My sister, but that ain’t fucking possible,” he said, scrubbing his hands through his hair. His fingers kept going like he was used to having more there to work with. “She disappeared more than fifteen years ago. I thought she was dead.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, well, Raven came back from the dead, and so did Cait. It seems to be a new trend.”
“You saw her today…? Tell me she’s not one of the girls being taken for ransom.”
I shook my head. “No, she’s not a victim. To the best of my knowledge, no one’s hurt her. She’s the fuckingcapo’sgirlfriend.”
Brute said nothing. He didn’t have to.
“You never wanted ‘in’; you wanted to find your sister—and I get that. But what we do, it’s nothing but hard calls. You have no idea the calls I’ve had to make or how much they haunt me.”
I glanced away when he looked at me, not willing to let him see the ghosts that lurked behind my eyes.
“So, what happens when it comes to making the hard call, Brute? Because I guarantee you the time will come when you have to make one—it always does. No one’s beating or raping your sister. No one’s cutting her up into pieces and dissolving her body in acid. It’sthosepeople who need our help, not one who’s here of her own volition.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I wasn’t finished.
“You wanted in, so now you’re all the way in,” I said, shrugging. “And your sister is not the primary objective here. If we can, we’ll get her out. But if you do anything to jeopardize our objective here, I’ll kill you myself. It won’t be the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Not the worst thing by far.
I turned to leave but paused at the door.
“Domínguez needs someone to run his guns up the coast. How do you feel about adding a few guns to the runs you and your club have been making?” It came out like a question, but it really wasn’t. He was damn well going to pull his weight.
Brute cocked an eyebrow. “I’d feel like maybe I’d want to know how you know about that.”
I shrugged. “The minute you got within a hundred yards of Raven, I knew everything about you, Brute.”
“Everything, huh?”
“Well,” I said, looking him over, not sure if I wanted to fuck him or claw every inch of his sculpted body, “there are a few things still left to my imagination.”
Chapter Seven
Greta
More guns. More business. At least we were back home this time. Domínguez’s guns had arrived, here on the docks of New York Harbor. Luciano men were moving the crates now, loading them up into two unmarked, black vans.
It was broad daylight, but the Lucianos had the port authority in their pocket. So, no worries.
“Are you sure you’re okay overseeing this run?” Vito stood next to the van with his arms crossed over his chest, generally looking like a scary-ass bald guy. “It looked like things were tense between you and Brute Hastings in Mexico.”
