“Same old, same old, you know? I’ve been working twelve-hour shifts at the ER, and there’s no such thing as a quiet day in the emergency room. I got off work and instead of falling into my bed, I came home to a shit show, starring you and my VP.”
I winced. “I’d say sorry, but it wasn’t a show of my own making.”
He sighed. “I know. Come see me in the infirmary after church, and I can give you a once-over and make sure you’re okay.” Ratched opened the office door, allowing me to step through before he followed and closed it behind him.
Ratched stepped past me and took his seat at the table. All eyes in the room focused on me as I stood there waiting for someone to speak. Dukesat at the head of the table in his usual spot, and the seat to his right where Priest usually sat was empty. Bones sat to Duke’s left, looking just as exhausted as Ratched. Cricket gave me a little wave when my eyes drifted over to him, which I returned. The other Crows at the table, young and old, simply sat and waited for the drama to unfold. Some looked at me with pity, curiosity, or, in the case of Pyro, naked loathing.
He and I firmly disliked each other, and while I tried not to make waves while I was a guest, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t kill him in the future. He’d been an irritating gnat buzzing in my ear the last several weeks, spewing threats when no one else was around. I hadn’t said anything to anyone about the things he’d been saying to me because so far he wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Before Sheila and I left, I needed to tell someone how he’d been behaving, though, just so they knew what kind of man they had in their midst. Assuming they didn’t already know and simply didn’t care.
I snapped my focus back to Duke, whose blue eyes looked so sad and exhausted. Giving him a curtsy, I murmured, “You beckoned, President Duke?”
“We called church and discussed the actions of our VP. We wanted to hear your side of it.”
I peered around the room, noting who met my eyes and who didn’t among the Crows. “You did, huh? Well, I was sitting there minding my own business one minute, and the next, I woke up in the confessional.” I cocked my head to the side as I studied Duke, who gestured for me to elaborate. “Priest”—I put my fingers up in the air next to my head, making quotation marks—“‘tortured’ me. Sidenote: I don’t mean to sound bitchy, but if his job is to engage in active interrogation techniques, he may need to attend a refresher seminar or something.” Duke’s eyes flashed in anger, so I tried to explain myself. “Look, I’m not saying he’s bad or anything, I just think maybe he needs a few more arrows in his quiver if you know what I mean? Tasers definitely give you an ouchie, but there’s way more to torture than asking questions and electrocuting people. He seemed to lack a passion for the job, and we all know that job satisfaction is important in retaining gang members.”
Surprisingly, Bones agreed with me. “I noticed that as well.”
Duke spun to look at his sergeant at arms so quickly I’m surprised he didn’t hurt his neck. He was practically a senior citizen, after all. “Are you seriously agreeing with her, that she wasn’t torturedenough? I specifically fucking told him not to take her confession, and you’re gonna say he didn’t do enough damage to her while he wasdisobeying me?” Oh snap, Duke waspissed. Bones didn’t even flinch as Duke’s icy right eye started to tic.
His anger didn’t ruffle Bones’s feathers in the slightest. “Not at all. I don’t want chica loca harmed. I simply meant that we’veallseen Priest’s savage side when he’s interrogating prisoners.” Bones looked around the table as various Los Cuervos nodded in agreement. “Did his interview with Indigo last night go the way his sessions usually go?”
Duke sat back in his seat, warily eyeing Bones. “You sayin’ he was holding back on purpose?”
Bones nodded. “I’m saying we’ve all seen how he extracts confessions from people, and last night was tame compared to the way we’ve seen him work in the past.”
Ace shook his head slightly before he rasped out, “Almost like he didn’t really want to hurt her.” His voice was scratchy like he hadn’t used it in a while. From what I’d learned over the past few weeks, I knew that old Ace was a man of few words, so the fact that he used them now held weight with the rest of the Crows. All except Pyro, of course.
Sniggering, Pyro flipped the lid off and on his silver lighter over and over. “So Priest turned pussy and lost his edge. As hilarious as that is, I fail to see why this is a club problem. The bitch’s van is done—let her leave and good riddance. Problem solved.” Bones, Cricket, and Duke glared at Pyro, who finally looked up from his lighter and blanched when he saw the livid look on their faces.
“The big deal,” Duke growled, “is that my VP deliberately disobeyed me and broke my word that no harm would come to Indigo while she was a club guest. Are you sayin’ my word means shit?” My eyes volleyed from Duke to Pyro with unrepressed glee. I wish I had popcorn. Watching Pyro put his foot in his mouth like this was the best thing I’d seen in a long time.
“Why don’t you do us all a favor and shut the hell up unless you’re spoken to,” Ace grumbled to Pyro, and I saw that there was no love lostbetween the two. They glared at each other for a moment before Pyro realized that no one was coming to his defense. He lowered his eyes back to his lighter, but not before shooting me a venom-laced look. Duke wasn’t done with Pyro, though.
“Who’s the prez of this club, Pyro?” Duke’s tone was lethal, and his voice had lowered an octave. I knew a murder purr when I heard it; hell, I had my own vicious voice when I was enraged and feeling particularly violent. Duke’s voice had that quality now, and I could tell that it was apparent to everyone else in the room from the way they all subtly leaned away from Pyro, trying to distance themselves from the splash zone.
“I said…who is the president of this fucking club?” I was entranced by the throbbing vein on the side of Duke’s temple, so I missed whatever drivel Pyro uttered in an attempt to un-fuck himself. Duke was standing now, glaring down the table at Pyro’s position.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you or any other motherfucker here doesn’t like what I have to say. When I give an order, it’s to be obeyed. When I give my word, it’s as good as goddamn gold, and I swear to the Lord, the next time one of you steps out of line and forces me to go back on my word, I’ll make the Salt Lake City incident look like a trip to Disneyland.” A collective intake of breath by the men at the table punctuated Duke’s threat, and I made a mental note to ask what happened in Salt Lake City some other time. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that even Bones looked a little green at the mention of it. Sounded like my kind of story.
Silence blanketed the room as Duke resumed his seat, and surprisingly, it was Thor who broke it. “Are we going to discuss what happened with Petrov last night? Because I feel like that was a catalyst for whatever pushed Priest off the edge.”
I glared at Thor. “That had fuck all to do with me. I’ve never been to Allure or The Goldfinch before last night, and I’ve never met Spike or Riordan. They pulled us up to talk because they recognized you and Cricket as Los Cuervos.”
Thor at least had the grace to look apologetic as he disagreed with me. “That’s not what it seemed like to Cricket and me. Even Lennon said he seemed weirdly interested in you, calling you pet names and speaking toyou in Russian like you understood what he was saying.” I shot hurt eyes Cricket’s way. He and Lennon had been talking about me behind my back? That kind of hurt my feelings. If they thought something was weird, why didn’t they just ask me?
Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I counted to ten as I held air trapped in my lungs. I was trying not to be angry, but the past twenty-four-plus hours had tested my patience. I shoved my hurt feelings into a box, and put that box inside another box, and then putthatbox in the back of my mind for later. When you were abused and tortured through your childhood, you didn’t develop healthy ornormalmethods of processing complex emotions. I learned after my escape that if I didn’t compartmentalize and process things on my own time, I was much more likely to black out and wake up bloody and bruised. You might think it’d be fun or cathartic or something, but since I never remembered anything during my blackouts, I never got closure or whatever I needed from the incident. The safest, and definitely less violent route, was for me to pack everything up until I could be alone, go through my thoughts and feelings, and decide how I wanted to react privately.
Exhaling, I turned my steely gaze to Thor. “You’re being a derpy duck again, Thor. I said I’ve never met Spike or Riordan, never been to Allure or The Goldfinch before you took me.Are you calling me a liar?”
Holding his hands up in a show of surrender, Thor rushed to explain. “I’m not saying you’re a liar. I’m saying they seemed weirdly interested in you. In a personal sense. That’s all.”
“Chica loca.” Bones’s deep bass rumble called my attention back to his position at Duke’s side. “Are you involved with the Russian bratva in any way?”
I snorted a laugh; the Callahan familyhatedthe bratva, and in my time as a Callahanasset,I had never faced off with a Russian. All sorts of people were involved in Uncle Roark’s sick games, sure… but never Russians. I didn’t question it then, because it’s not like I actually got any input or agency over my “work,” or you know…anything else in my entire existence. Now, though, I wondered if I had been kept away from dealings with the bratva for a purpose? If that was the case…what was the purpose?
“No,” I answered Bones. His eyes searched mine while his fingers worried over a stone or something in his right hand. Duke watched Bones study me, silent and patient.
Bones turned to look at Duke as he nodded. “She’s telling the truth.” Pyro rolled his eyes and began to play with his silver lighter again— flipping open the top, igniting the flame, then flicking the lid closed again.Flick, snick, flip. Flick, snick, flip.
