We ease around the edge of her skimpy hiding spot. I don’t know how the hell the men one hundred yards from us haven’t noticed us by now, but thank God for the storm hanging over us. If there was an ounce of moonlight, she’d be dead with how exposed she is behind these few wooden palettes.
“Hey, you’re not listening!” A small fist comes down on my shoulder but I shrug it off and narrow my gaze on men moving across the railway station. Veles. The fucker. He’s here and so are the Vultures. I can spot those ugly fuckers a mile away.
I test the freezing air. Yep. I can smell the bastards, too.
Liquor, tobacco and gunpowder. It hangs in the air everywhere they go.
“Hey. Excuse me. I’m the one here to get what I need to take down my father. What the hell are you doing here?”
Everly keeps her voice pitched low.
I turn on my heel and put my nose to hers. She stops short and lets out a huff of frustration.
I cock my head to the side and consider her face in the darkness for a moment. When you live in the shadows like I do, one learns to read the energy around you. This woman has a lot more to say than she’s sharing.
“That’s a good point. How did you know about tonight when I had to kill three people to get the information?” Let that sink in. Behind her Venom lets out a sound of disapproval, but I don’t give a shit right now. I want answers and if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to get them.
She locks her knees, and those beautiful eyes of hers narrow again. “You think you scare me, biker boy?” Those arms of hers cross and I actually see the minute utter defiance enters every muscle in her body.
“You think you can drop bodies and I’m gonna run off screaming? Do you forget who my father is? Or that my family’s fortune is built on bones and graves of others? You need to do better than that if you want me to cower and obey your orders.”
She throws a hand up and slices the icy air between us. “Better yet. I was here first. You go do you and leave me to finish what I need to do.”
Heat burns through me but before I can shut her up with a kiss, Venom clears his throat. The man wears a smirk when I manage to peel my eyes off Everly’s pissed off expression.
“Um, we need to get going, biker boy.”
Everly hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “What he said.”
Not yet. The Vultures are going to take a while to unload three train cars full of dope. I move us deeper into the shadows. I press my nose to hers and lower my voice. “You sound pissed off at me when you were the one who left the night I proposed to you. If you didn’t want to marry me, there was an easier way to say so instead of taking my ring and then ditching me. You can work through that in therapy, but here and now you listen to me if you don’t want to end up dead for Christmas.”
The longer I speak the wider her pretty greens grow. Her sweet tongue pops out of her clenched lips and she dares to run the tip over her bottom lip just like she used to do when she wanted to lay into me for something she didn’t like. Back then it was going too fast on my bike or hogging all the blankets at night.
I spot a silver chain around her neck and wonder if she’s still the sentimental type and has my ring hanging around her neck as a trophy to remind herself of that one time she duped a man into loving her.
“Mind if you two leave this for later?” Reaper comes up behind Everly, causing her to whirl around.
“Reaper,” she breathes out heavily. “Mind pulling your enforcer back so I can do what I need to do?”
My lip pulls into a smirk at the acid dripping from her words. My girl still has fight in her when she’s backed up into a hard spot.
The rest of our crew ease from the shadows like a well-oiled unit of damage and destruction.
That has Everly recalculating her stance. Her eyes roam over every single brother in our crew and as she takes in the weapons, the manpower and the strength we have as a group. I can see the gears in her pretty head turning. “I know you’re here to take down my father. You have to know my brother is among them right now.”
She juts her chin toward the train car being unloaded. “He’s not part of the drug crap my father is pulling off. In fact, he’s how I got the intel to be here tonight.”
Reaper simply nods and I offer a curt, “Noted.” None of us are here to offer an olive branch.
My eyes fall to hers. “Leave, Everly. Bad things are going to go down here tonight and you don’t need to see another one of your brothers take a bullet.”
The second her lips move my mind swims with ways to kiss her and not get another powerful right hook to the face.
“Phantom, no. You don’t–”
Jax comes around the edge of a building, hauling ass and all my ideas of kissing her until we are both breathless drop in the snow at my feet. I shake off the momentary daze of emotions that cloud my brain and pull my ass back on task.
Wide brown eyes lock on mine as Jax dives behind another stack of palettes ahead of the one we are using for cover.
