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But my words broke them out of their terse silence, making Alex sit up a little straighter, and I knew he had good news. “We got a lead.”
He pressed a few buttons, projecting a street photo onto the large screen mounted on his office wall. The man looked to be in his late thirties, dark hair slicked away from a pale face. His blue eyes were icy, cold, with a lack of humanity I’d become familiar with and learned to avoid over the years. The slight tilt to his lips made him look even more unsettling, too creepy to ever be considered handsome. He was the kind of man that made a woman cross the street, made her call a car rather than walk home alone.
“Alfie Schratz. He’d been a mid-level informant for some black market arms dealers a few cities over, never really on our radar. But he recently struck out on his own, trying to sell his services in a similar facet to ours with little success. We can’t be sure he’s working on his own, but so far the evidence points to a publicity stunt. I guess our ties with Cillian and a few of the other big names in the area made us a target. Make us look like fools, and it makes him look more impressive. But that’s not my biggest concern.”
“He might not be the only one,” I bit out, understanding his implication. If this nobody felt comfortable enough to try and mess with our business, it didn’t just make us look weak, it made us a target.
Even with me joining the team a couple months ago, our operation was miniscule. There was a reason most of the individuals we worked with had levels to their operations. Security, informants, dealers, accountants, soldiers. Most meetings we took involved some kind of higher up along with multiple security guards. Our side was run by Alex, with Dev serving as a show of muscle. I had started tagging along before theIn Bloombreak-in, but the three of us didn’t represent a larger operation; we were the entire business.
“Exactly,” Alex frowned at the thought, anger entering his eyes, likely as he imagined a faceless enemy coming after us again, but this time with a target on Ames’s back. It had happened once before, but that had been a piece-of-shit ex-boyfriend, not a trained mobster. And despite doing no permanent damage to Ames when he kidnapped her, Alex had ruined Peter’s life.
His firm had dropped him, his dad had denounced him in an attempt to keep his position as Senator, and Peter was expected to appear in court in the next couple of months for multiple accusations of assault. Mysteriously, no high-powered lawyers had offered to represent him, and I knew Alex had something to do with it. Peter’s suddenly empty savings account, on the other hand? That was all me.
He was lucky that was all we did. I knew Ames still occasionally had nightmares about Peter, both his initial assault attempt and the kidnapping that came later. The only thing that had helped afterwards was the necklace Alex had bought her, complete with a tracking chip.I’ll always find you. Ames had shown me the words engraved onto the back of the pendant after Alex gave it to her, and I still caught her occasionally touching it, as if reassuring herself it was there. It was the only thing that had allowed the shadows under her eyes to fade, and I knew if they hadn’t, Peter wouldn’t have just been destitute, he would’ve been dead.
“We need an alliance,” Dev spoke up, my attention pulled back to the situation at hand as Dev pulled himself from the depths of his chair and ran his palms on his pants. “When we started, Xan, the goal was to stay an island, selling our services to whomever wanted them. I don’t think either of us expected things to get quite so big, but now with the girls, we can’t work with the people we work with and keep them out of harm's way with just the three of us. We need to make an alliance with someone who will promise us protection while also allowing some leniency with our business.”
“I agree with Dev,” I nudged his foot with my own in support, and he dipped his chin toward me before turning toward Alex for his response.
“I like the idea. We’ll do whatever it takes to protect not only Wren and Ames, but all of us. But who do we trust enough to form an alliance with? And what do we have to trade for an alliance other than the services they already pay for?”
“I’ve got an idea,” Dev hedged, waiting for the go ahead before he laid out the foundation of his plan. His eyes flickered between Alex and me as he spoke, face serious as he set up the dominoes that would have to fall perfectly for his plan to work. After a solid half hour of planning, answering questions posed by myself and Alex, and thinking, the three of us finally sat back in our chairs.
“If you think this is the way, I trust you.”
“I think this’ll work. There might be some complications, but I feel confident I can figure something out.”
“Alright. Dev, you’ll keep pursuing that. But if you need either of us,” he jerked his chin in my direction to indicate the other half ofusbefore continuing, “you ask for it.” It wasn’t a question, but he waited for Dev’s nod of acknowledgement before turning back to me, “Bex, you and I will make sure Alfie’s not working with anyone.”
“And if he’s not?”
I watched as Alex’s lips curved in the closest approximation he ever got to a smile without my sister present before he answered, “We fucking destroy him. We tear apart his business, his credibility, his safety. We make him regret the minute he even thought of breathing in Wren’s direction.”
Chapter13
Wren
“I thinkI’m going to fuck your sister.” The words slipped out of my mouth much quicker than I had planned on the car ride over. Sure, the thought had been pinging through my brain for months, since Bex first strode into this very kitchen and set my heart racing. It had evolved from Iwantto fuck your sister (circa July) to I’mgoingto fuck your sister (circa now).
My certainty of the thought had ebbed and flowed depending on the day. Bex would ignore me, refusing to look in my direction no matter how loud my stories got or how ridiculous my flirting, and the thought would dim to a slight whisper in the back of my mind. Then there’d be a moment, like her flinch when I flirted with her in Alex’s car, and the hope would swell the thought until it sat in the front of my mind. And lately, with the heated looks and longing touches, the thought had turned to a constant litany I couldn’t ignore.
But despite having the thought grow in intensity for weeks and months until I could barely tamp it down, I had planned to at least get halfway through the mimosas Ames had promised over text this morning before spilling my guts. Instead, it just took the quiet snick of Alex’s office door for me to blurt out the words.
Ames, to her credit, didn’t choke on her drink, but instead just raised an eyebrow, waiting the half second it took for me to start spilling the entire story. Beginning when Bex kicked me out of the car, through the tears and the Apple Incident and the licking my blood as she bandaged me up to last night, when she watched me come and ordered me to say her name.
I didn’t feel guilty describing our exploits since Ames described her sex life with Alex with such explicit detail it was basically audio porn. This was the first time I’d been able to reciprocate, and Ames didn’t flinch as I ran through everything that had happened.
By the end of it I was breathless, eyes flicking to the hallway as if I might catch Bex listening in to the way I described our relationship. I knew it was full of longing and desperation and embarrassment on my part, with me craving any crumb of attention she sent in my direction.
After getting everything out, I summarized, “So, yeah. I think I’m going to fuck your sister.” I took a large gulp of my mimosa, wishing it wasn’t nine in the morning and the drink was stronger.
“Okay,” Ames nodded, a thoughtful look on her face as she asked, “And then what?”
“I don’t know, maybe take a nap and fuck her a second time once we catch our breath?” I said, confused, wondering when Ames became so interested in my post-sex routine. I mean, I hadn’t had a post-sex routine to talk about since I met Ames, considering it had been over a year since the last time I’d dated anyone, but still.
“No, Wren. I meant, after you ‘fuck my sister,’” she laughed as she put air quotes around the phrase, “what do you want to happen? Do you like her?”
“I…” I considered lying, protecting myself by pretending that everything I felt was due to sexual tension with nothing underlying it. But I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to share the tumultuous emotions with my only female friend. Or, the only female friend I wasn’t trying to sleep with. “I like her. I like the way she looks at me and touches me. I like that she doesn’t treat me like this precious object, like I’m some little girl that needs to be protected. It’s exciting, when we’re playing our games and pushing each other. And sometimes, when we’re alone, it’s just as exciting making dinner together or watching tv.”
