“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. Prisonersin 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.
“You know,” she says. “We probably shouldn’t be seen out partying. Not with what’s happening back there. His family,” she adds, her face clouding. “You and I should keep things low.”
The logic’s on target, but I don’t like it. Her hand’s on my side as she talks, and that I do like.
“So your hand on him? That’s on the down low?” Trick asks.
“Shit,” she says, pulling away. “Can’t believe I did that.” She blows strands of hair from her eyes. The club’s humidity and an overheated buzz seem to be weighing it down. Now, in addition to being beautiful, she’s adorable.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
My gaze scans the room, keeping watch. Then I level my stare on her again. I take her hand and put it back on me, pressing it against my ribs, a few inches south of my heart. “Fuck being sorry. You do whatever you want.”
Trick flashes a grin and shrugs his brows at her. “If trouble’s coming, let it come.”
I glance his way. Those words are ones I’ve said to C and Trick more than once when fire was about to rain down on us. But when I said them, my tone was resolute, but grim. With Trick it’s something else, almost like he relishes it, like trouble’s something that’s been missing from his life and he’s welcoming it back. I don’t understand him, not that I really try to. When he wanted to join up with us a long time ago, he talked to C and C made the call.
I remember C saying, “There’s a freshman who takes calculus with the seniors. He wants to hang with us. Let’s let him. I think we can use him. Last name’s Patrick.”
I’d nodded.
Then C had added, “I hear he screwed the quarterback’s girl and that Jones and his boys are looking to get even. Let’s squash that.”
