I say nothing.
“She’s a tougher cookie than Zoe by a hundredfold,” he says. “How you gonna train that out of her?”
My eyes are on Rachel who’s wearing a black dress with cut-outs above the hips that were replaced by emerald lace. She has a lace choker too with satin cords tying it in the back. If we were in a different kind of club I’d fuck her against the wall, not caring who was watching.
She stands on the edge of the dance floor, moving to the beat.
“Maybe you could send her to a pet-training class with Mistress B in New York,” Trick says. “I can make a call.”
“No.”
“Right. Hands off,” he says with a grin. “I’ll text you the number, and you can do it.”
I roll my eyes. “Am I gonna stalk a girl for three years,relentlessly, if she’s not already exactly what I want?”
His gaze moves to her and then back, curious. “Perfect, as in our kind of perfect?”
I sigh. “As in I’ll be the one to show her new things, and whether she takes to them or not is irrelevant.”
“You say that...” he says skeptically.
“I say it, and I mean it.” After a beat, I add, “I’m not you.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you’ll always be looking around the corner for the next thrill, the next beautiful girl to tie down, the next business for us to take over. You’re never satisfied. It’s not in your nature.”
“Lucky for you,” he says, pouring his drink down his throat. “Or we’d still be taking orders from Frank and watching him break kids down to bone chips. We’d also be a billion dollars short of our billion point two five.”
I smirk.
“And you wouldn’t be here with her. Because Frank would never have let you get this close.”
I don’t argue with him. He’s both right and wrong. He did cause us to exit Frank’s organization like bats out of hell. But he’s wrong that our exodus was necessary for me to get my hands on my raven. This thing was inevitable either way because if I’d been at Frank’s house when Leone was around, he’d have given himself away as poison for her, and I’d have dealt with that.
“Leone woke up, by the way.”
“Good,” I say because I didn’t want her carrying that weight. She’s already carried too much for too long. I’m going to put an end to that shit.
“If we turn on our phones and you carry mine to alibi me here, I can go back and take care of things in Coynston.”
“Nah.” I turn my head to look at him. “But I know you would. From the jump, you brought us more than luck.”
He looks surprised for a second, then covers it. “Your girl, four feet and closing,” he says.
I turn my head to watch Rachel approach. She’s breathtaking.
“Hey, Trick. You made it. Can I buy you a drink?” After a moment, she adds with a rueful smirk, “With money I’ll borrow from Sasha?”
Trick’s game face is back, which for him includes a smile.
“I’ve never known Anvil to loan people money from his personal stash. I thought it was all in an underground bunker. You’ve seen that he lives in a cement box. Prisoners in Sing Sing have posher digs, so I know he’s gotta be hoarding it for something big.”
She smiles and looks at me. “Why do you live like that, Sasha? Where does your money go? Are you single-handedly financing a coup somewhere?”
“Yeah. I care about international politics. I sit on my metal staircase and dream of dead dictatorships to resurrect.”
They both laugh, and it’s good. The tighter she is with my crue, the more likely it is that she’ll stay mine. Because that’s the way I think of her now. As mine.
