“Well, good thing I’m not here for you.” I took a step forward, but the don reached to grab my hair.
Pain exploded across my scalp.
I rolled and twisted in his hold. He made the mistake of focusing on catching me, which left his weapon unguarded. I snatched that wrist, gave his hand a vicious flick, and stepped into him. I forced the barrel into his neck.
“She can tell me to get lost, and I’ll go,” I snarled and pressed the gun—the suppressor—against the don’s pulse. “But I don’t answer to you.”
“Poppy isn’t available.” To his credit, there was only hatred in the don’s dark eyes. Not a drop of fear.
I so badly wanted to pull the trigger to prove that I was capable of it.
“This isn’t her world, and she doesn’t belong in it,” the don hissed.
But he dropped his hold and held up his hands. It wasn’t a surrender. Simply a change in stance.
Cocking my head, I gave him a feral, tooth-filled grin. “Yet she’s at your house. It makes me wonder if it’s not the world, but me that you’re taking an issue with.”
“You.” The don swallowed, his throat scraping against the gun. “Because you don’t understand what it cost her to escape.”
Well, if that wasn’t intriguing….
I stepped back, dropped the clip and jacked the shell free. Catching the bullet in the air, I pocked the rounds and handed the empty weapon back to the don.
“The moment she tells me to get lost, I will.” What I was willing to bet good money on was that she didn’t have the balls to do it.
And from the look in her eye and the casual contact, she didn’t want to, either.
“I’m watching you.” Mancini’s growl followed me as I walked away.
“I know.” I passed the vendor, who averted his gaze and scooted out of my reach.
Nothing new.
I was off-putting, an unpleasant bastard to be around for most. The fact that I found a pretty little flower who didn’t shrink away was enough to catch my senses. And the little boy? There was something achingly precious about him that soothed old scars.
The heard of bikes loitered at the red light.
Boris fidgeted with the AC unit in the shrubbery. I leaned against the wall of the motel and stared across the street.
“That’s the fifth time this week Nowak has driven by,” my soldier commented. “Hand me the nine-millimeter?”
I reached into the sack of tools, debating handing him a Glock instead of the wrench. It was an inside joke to hand weapons when we did shit like this.
But I wasn’t in a joking mood. Not with the roar of hogs ripping down the highway.
“They still haven’t crossed the road?” I questioned, placing the wrench in Boris’s outstretched hand.
He looked at the tool and frowned. He was clearly expecting the gun—the inside joke.
“No, they haven’t ridden bikes. If they drive by in cars, it’s hard to say.”
The urge to drive a caravan through the red lights, to engage with the too-bold biker gang was strong. They needed to feel our presence. A warning to back the fuck off.
But Mancini said he would only help us navigate the hurtles of the business deal if we didn’t engage with our rivals. It went against every fiber of my being to resist the show of force. To make the gang retreat.
Once word got out that the Redwood Plaza was being torn down and rebuilt, whispers would spread that there was an alliance between the Italians and Bulgarians. It would be astronger message, and the bikers—who were rough sons of bitches of Polish descent—would slink back to their streets.
I forced my body to relax. I fought the urge to act.
