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“Why arewe even doing this? It’s fucking ridiculous,” I said, kicking Corvus’ shoes out of his reach to keep him from putting them on.
He glared at me from the one eye he could see out of, the other one was completely swollen shut, and snatched his shoes from the floor.
“Because we said we would,” he groaned, falling heavily onto the small stool in the hallway of The Nest, and I could tell it pained him to reach down to pull the shoes onto his feet. The five stitches in his cheek strained as he grimaced. He had two cracked ribs and some internal bleeding, but even battered as he was, I knew he wouldn’t accept my help no matter how many times I offered.
And I had offered. Many times. After I’d laid into his dumb ass for trying to sacrifice himself Thursday night. What the actual fuck was that? I didn’t know how I felt about it other than angry as fuck.
No one had ever put my life above theirs.
“Besides,” Rook said, coming through the hall to kick his feet into his boots like the bullet hole in his leg didn’t bother him at all. “Corvus won’t be cooking jack shit with his gimp ass, and I’m hungry.”
“Dick,” Corvus hissed and Rook made a face at him, stepping out of the way for Grey to come through to get his shoes on as well.
“Dies doesn’t want us here, anyway,” he added. “It’s too secluded. He knows where we’re going and said it’s a good idea.”
I really wasn’t going to get out of this, was I?
Fuck.
“We should be scouring every inch of Edgewood for those fuckers before they have a chance to regroup,” I argued. “Just because the Aces seem to have gone to ground doesn’t mean they aren’t just biding their time. What if they make a move on Diesel? Is he all alone at his place?”
Corvus lifted a brow at me. “You think he’s an idiot?” he asked. “Of course not. They’re all at Sanctum with their families. Dies is keeping them all under lock and key until Lenny Ace is a fucking corpse.”
I frowned.
I hadn’t known that, but they still didn’t share everything with me. I didn’t think they kept it from me on purpose, they just didn’t think I needed to know.
And maybe I didn’t.
I wasn’t sure I liked the difference in how I was feeling about Diesel St. Crow. The way he’d gone straight to his sons, tended to their wounds. The vicious way he’d forced that Ace to apologize before pumping lead into his skull. And now he was keeping not only his men, but all of their families safe at Sanctum?
He also had that street cleaned up within hours of the battle, the only trace of evidence that it happened at all: the bits of blood lingering between cracks in the pavement. I didn’t have to wonder why the cops never showed up. Before we’d all gone back inside to sew up our wounds, Diesel had passed all his winnings from the match to Pinkie.
“Go pay our friends in blue,” he’d said, expression tight from the loss of winnings.
“I don’t want to go,” I tried instead, switching tactics, rolling my shoulder, feigning injury from the sniper rifle practice session this morning. I forced an overdone wince. “I changed my mind.”
“Too bad,” Corvus said gruffly as he pushed to his feet. “Get your ass in the car.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, and Corvus’ brows drew as he caught sight of the blade strapped to my ankle. “How armed do you have to be to have dinner with your aunt, Sparrow?”
My jaw clenched. “As armed as I need to be to go into battle with a rival gang.”
He caught my meaning. The fact that I had every one of my blades back where they belonged and at the ready had nothing to do with my aunt and everything to do with the fact that there could be an ambush of Aces waiting for us anywhere.
Though I doubted they would strike while it was still daylight.
“They’re gone,” Grey said, speaking aloud what all of us were thinking. “We exterminated over half their crew. They’re hiding, licking their wounds somewhere. They won’t be back for a while, if they ever come back.”
Corvus nodded his agreement. “All our sources say there’s been no gang presence in Edgewood since Thursday night. Lenny’s Hail Mary failed. He won’t risk his own ass to try some shit like that again.”
“Maybe not,” I acceded. “But they could just as easily ally with another gang as we did.”
“Who would ally with them now?” Rook asked, making no effort to disguise how idiotic he thought my statement was.
I rolled my eyes at him.
“You know what, never mind. Just tell me you’re all armed.”
