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“Even if youweremarried, that wouldn’t give you the right to threaten her,” I point out. “So you’re going to leave here and never come back.”
This is the guy who pulled her into the circus, such as they called themselves, when she was only thirteen. Somehow they were more stable than Honeybee’s homelife, to hear her tell it. A group of performers who kept moving around not because they were a traveling troupe, but because they never liked to stay in one place long enough for the law to catch up with them. Honeybee managed to get out just after of her eighteenth birthday and came to LA, where she performed at Venice Beach for loose change and the occasional coffee or meal from one of the café owners along the beachfront.
Until I found her, and she found a new Family.
“That little thief owes me,” the guy insists. “And I’ve come to collect.”
After a glance around the cafe to make sure we’re not being observed, Max pulls out a neat stack of cash from his inside pocket, removes the clip from it, and sets it down on the table. “There you go,” he says. “Debt paid.”
The guy’s eyes go from the cash, to Max, to me.
“You should take the money and run,” I advise. “My associate here has less of a temper than I do. But you pushmeone more time, and you won’t leave here with all your teeth. Get me?”
I let go of his face and step back. The guy’s hand slides over to the money, grabs it, and stuffs it in his pocket. Max moves in front of Honeybee again as he slides out of the booth, standing up in front of me.
“You’re welcome to her,” he says with a fake smile. “But you should remember, I made her what she is today. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be picking pockets in some backwater town.”
“You and your friends will get out of LA within the next four hours. And you won’t be back in California again.”
“Is that a threat?” the man snarls, baring his teeth like an animal.
“Yeah,” I tell him simply, and he takes a small step backward. “Let me be crystal fucking clear, asshole. You come at her again, you’ll find a whole Family ready to put you down. Permanently. Now fuck off.”
He hesitates for a moment, bravado crumbling as he glances between Max and me. Then he sneers and storms out. The rest of the customers in the place don’t even seem to have noticed anything going on—or they’re doing a very good impression of minding their own business, anyway.
Honeybee is trembling, so Max takes her over to the table where we were originally sitting. She grabs my hand, her fingers tight. “Cap, you shouldn’t have—God, neither of you should’ve—Max, I’ll pay back that money you gave him, however much—”
“No, you won’t,” he says at once. “What’s money? Just paper. Easy to make, easy to give away. What we want to know is, are you okay?”
I know more about Honeybee’s background than Max does, but he seems to have picked up on the signals fast.
“I’m okay,” she whispers. “But I put you all in danger. If he comes back—”
“Are you kidding me? He’s not coming back,” I tell her. “I’m gonna make some calls. Make sure he leaves like I told him to.” My first inclination is to bury them all, or at least this asshole ex of hers, but I’ve seen his type before. He took the money, and he knows there will be no more forthcoming.
He’ll stay away, because he knows what will happen if he doesn’t.
“Th-thank you,” Honeybee sniffles.
Max reaches out to take her other hand and gives it a squeeze. “Anytime.”
“We’ve got your back,” I tell her. “Always. What’s Family for, eh?”
She gives a watery smile. “You should…you should throw me out of the crew for keeping secrets. He’s been here for weeks, trying to get money out of me…even the day after the bank job, he made me meet him here—I had to go home and get changed just so he wouldn’t know what was going on, even though all I wanted to do was stay with N-Nico.”
Max and I exchange a glance. So that explains that.
“Throw you out over some asshole from your past? Come on, now, Bee,” I say softly. “You know that’s not how we operate. But you need to be honest with me, tell me straight up—did he have anything to do with the crew jobs going wrong?”
The genuine horror on her face tells me all I need to know, then and there. But I still let her splutter through teary denials. She deserves to be heard, something this troglodyte ex of hers never allowed.
“And as for Evan,” she finishes, her eyes flashing fire, “he likes to say I owe him room and board for when he took care of me at the circus, but it’s bullshit. I know that. I just…I didn’t want my problems to impact the crew, you know? And I didn’t want…” She bites her lip. “Nico always treats me so nice,” she whispers.
I get it then. She was ashamed, and she wanted to hide her past from Nico. “Because Nico’s a good guy,” I tell her. “And he cares about you. But this is your story, Bee. We’ll keep it quiet untilyoufeel like it’s time to tell him. Besides, I don’t want Nico dragging that beat-up body of his out of a hospital bed to try and run your ex out of town.”
It prompts a faint smile from Honeybee. “He would too, the big dummy.”
“And you should trust,” Max adds, “that you always have backup, Honeybee. That’s a promise. That’s Family.”
