“I don’t take orders from you,” Arlo said, jutting his chin forward in an adorably stubborn look.
Dimitri rolled his eyes but couldn’t stop his lips from twitching in a smile. He wanted to press Arlo up against the car door and kiss him. Fuck, he was so keyed up, he wanted to bend him and fuck him right there. There was some kind of divine retribution in that, right? Fucking Arlo on the hood of Holden’s overpriced toy?
Dimitri shook the thought away, pulling the gloves and hairnet free and stuffing them in his jeans pocket.
“Rookie mistake,” a deep voice said from the darkness.
The warehouse lights blazed on, temporarily blinding Dimitri. He shoved Arlo behind him, blinking until the amorphous blobs before him took on the shape of people. Many people. Dimitri was most definitely outnumbered. Had his mom set him up to be ambushed? What the fuck?
There were three men who sat on a sturdy metal table and five more lounging against various sturdy fixtures.
The one with freckles and brown hair said, “Is he trying to hide the little one behind him? That’s so cute.”
“Who are you?” Arlo asked over Dimitri’s shoulder.
One of the men grinned at Arlo. “Us? We’re the A-Team. Who are you?”
Dimitri knew who they were. He knew them by name. It honestly surprised him that Arlo didn’t. These men weren’t exactly the Kardashians, but they made the papers almost as frequently.
Dimitri looked over all of them. The hot dark-haired one with the pale blue eyes was Adam. The baby. The former model. The brown-haired boy beside him was his boyfriend, Noah. The red-head was Atticus. A doctor. The man who stood beside him was his husband, Jericho. The twins were there, too. Asa and Avi. His mother called them the murder twins.
But it was the last man who caught and kept Dimitri’s attention. August. At first glance, he looked like nothing special. The nerdy professor that the outside world thought him to be, but Dimitri knew he was the most dangerous one of all. The one who enjoyed torture, who enjoyed opening people up to see how they worked. Yet, his husband, Lucas, stood beside him, looking up at him with puppy eyes.
“Don’t lie either,” August warned, studying him like he was a slide under a microscope.
“I’m Dimitri.” Dimitri looked at each of them. “And you’re the Mulvaneys.”
“And how did you and your friend come to be standing in our warehouse, Dimitri?” August continued, pacing closer.
Dimitri frowned, unsure of whether he was being tested or not. “I was told to come here by Calliope.”
“And you’re Calliope’s…?” Atticus asked, trailing off, as if expecting Dimitri to finish the sentence.
“Son,” Dimitri supplied carefully.
There was an excited whoop from Noah and Lucas and a groan from the twins.
“I told you she had a kid. Pay up, assholes,” Lucas crowed.
“You said she had a kid, but you were speculating. There’s no way your psychic powers work via telephone,” one twin said, slapping cash into Lucas’s hand.
“There’s an entire network of telephone psychics who say otherwise,” Noah said, tone superior. “You should know by now to never doubt Lucas’s powers.”
Dimitri watched them all with interest. They were all like him—psychopaths—yet, they seemed so normal, like a family. They didn’t look like people who spent their nights hunting, but they did. They were killers, vigilantes, according to his mother.
But, now, so was Arlo.
“Did my mom ask you to be here?” Dimitri asked. “Are you supposed to help us?”
“Calliope specifically asked usnotto be here,” Atticus said, looking around at the others like a disappointed parent.
“Yet, you came, too, Freckles,” Jericho reminded him. “It was just too good an opportunity to waste.”
Dimitri couldn’t imagine anybody calling the stocky ginger man Freckles, but it went practically unnoticed by the others.
Arlo stepped from behind Dimitri, taking two steps past him before Dimitri pulled him back against him, his arm an iron bar across Arlo’s narrow waist. “Stay with me,” he murmured against his ear.
“That’s so cute,” Noah said again.
