“Simmer down, Jace,” I told him in a warning tone.
His eye twitched in fury as he looked up at me. I only had a couple of inches on him, but it was enough.
“The scene is already scrubbed,” Tom interrupted, his eyes wide in shock as he read something on his phone. “Like it never fucking happened. Holy shit, these dudes don’t fuck around.”
Florence came out of the bathroom then, wiping her tearstained face. Billie gasped, peeling herself free of Rhett and running to hug our punk-girl bassist. She’d been genuinely concerned for Flo, even though she barely knew her.
Both girls were sobbing now, and Tom cringed in disgust before looking back down at his phone. Rhett and Jace just stood there like they’d never seen a girl cry before, so I heaved a sigh and raked my fingers through my hair.
“Prickles, why don’t you and Flo go hang out in her room. We need to sort shit out with security.” Fuckingeveryoneshot me weird looks at that, but Flo gave me an appreciative nod. Taking Billie’s hand in hers, she led the way to the bedroom she was sharing with Tom.
Once the door closed, I leveled a hard look at Rhett and Jace—but ignored Tom. “I need to run back down to the car to… get something. We can sort this out when I get back.”
“Yes, Daddy,” Tom smirked from the couch, and my fist tightened with the need to punch his smug face in.
I only made it two steps before Rhett stopped me dead with one question. “Did she see you do it?” he demanded, his voice tight with anger. “Did she see you kill those guys?”
I didn’t turn around. He wanted a fight, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. Not now. Billie was already struggling with her attraction toward us both; she didn’t need to hear us scrapping over her like she was a piece of meat in a dog fight.
“No,” I replied. Then I continued out of the penthouse. I wasn’tsureBillie had missed it, but she would have said something if she had. Wouldn’t she? She surely wouldn’t have tried to fuck me in an alleyway if she’d just witnessed me kill three of the Ricci muscle. She was surprisingly good at compartmentalizing the darker side of life that had been stealing pieces of her later.
For now, I needed to get back to the car and retrieve my gun. I’d tossed it into the footwell when I’d thrown Billie in, and she hadn’t noticed it there. But I wasn’t an idiot and it wasn’t fucking safe to leave loaded weapons lying around, so I’d secure it,thendeal with my bandmates.
As I headed out, I took the usual path, keeping an eye on my surroundings. There was no way that the Ricci family hadn’t noticed someone was taking out their men anytime they got close to Billie, and while they might assume it was Bellerose security, I wasn’t going to just rest on that. Someone could have seen me. It only took one of those assholes to report back, and then I’d have a target on my back.
A fact that didn’t worry me outside of the issue of putting my bandmates in danger. I might be very good at what I did, but I was still only one person against the Ricci army. The math didn’t add up for a happy ending, and fuck if anyone stole that from me. I’d sacrificed too damn much to give up now and allow those assholes to steal the girl and my life.
The car was where I’d left it, security standing nearby to keep an eye on it, but they knew better than to touch the vehicle. Their eyes all averted when I walked closer, I opened the door and found my piece exactly where I’d left it. Slipping it into the waistband of my jeans, I slid my shirt over the top to hide it, and then I headed back into the hotel.
“You can return the car now,” I told the closest guard. “We’ll be heading out in the bus soon.”
I got a solid nod and no comment. Not that I needed one.
Back in my room, I secured the gun in my portable safe and handed it off to some of the staff who were packing up our rooms and getting us ready to head out. We had to be in New York today so that we could get to our soundcheck tomorrow.
It wouldn’t be the tightest schedule we’d been on, but we did need to get moving.
When I emerged from the room, I found Jace and Rhett standing in the hall waiting for me.
“We need to leave,” Rhett said, his voice low and without much expression. If I had to guess, he was still half in shock and half pissed to the point he wasn’t sure how to manage his emotions. I’d been there and done that many times over the years. My first girlfriend had her head blown off in front of me when I was sixteen. It was the life I was born into, and at some point, it had gotten easier to deal, but Rhett didn’t have the same upbringing.
Billie was opening his eyes to all the depravity in the world, and it was going to knock him around until he grew numb to the fear and violence. I hated that for him, but there was no way to avoid it forever.
“Focus on Billie,” I said to him. There was no need for me to expand on that. No one could miss the meaning. I found myself adding to it anyway. “It’ll help you deal.”
Rhett’s fists were clenched, and I noticed the dried blood littering his knuckles. “No competition until this is dealt with,” he spat out. “Someone is with Billie at all times. I don’t even fucking care if you’re fucking her while I’m in the room. She isn’t alone, and we don’t play games to try and get one up on each other. Not while she’s in danger and these cunts are actively shooting at her.”
Jace looked a lot like he wanted to throw up, his face pale even as his anger rose. “No one is fucking Billie while I’m in the room. If you two even think about throwing this shit around near me, we’re going to have more murders to worry about.”
Bastard might want to pretend it was disgust that stopped him from pursuing Billie. Disgust and hatred. But I knew the truth… I recognized the truth. It was pain and fear.
Two emotions he would have to learn to deal with because running from the truth had done him no favors.
“We need to get back to Billie, then,” I said shortly. “You don’t want her left alone, but who the fuck is watching her now?”
“Florence, Tom, and about sixteen security guards,” Rhett replied, his tone just as clipped. “I might be more relaxed about this shit than you, but I’m not a fucking idiot. Billie needed a minute away from us to pull herself together, but her minute is up. Now… now she’s going to have one of us attached to her hip at all times.”
Memories of her soft moans in that alley briefly filled my mind, and I wanted to tell Rhett it wouldn’t be her hip I was attached to, but in the spirit of this brief truce, I didn’t mention anything.
