I like Freya.She was once one of us, but now she’s sleeping with the enemy, and we can’t afford to let her be our downfall.
“We need more people on our side,” I say.“And we need weapons.”
There’s a light thump against the door we came through, but Bear and Kai don’t notice it.I watch the red curtains closely for several seconds, but nothing happens.Maybe it was the wind.
“We need a nuke, so I can just blow them all up.”Bear grins even wider, and I shake my head.
“What?”I scoff.“Then we die anyway from radiation?”
His mouth falls open and he curses.“I can get us more money to get weapons from someone else.”
“How?”
The corner of Bear’s mouth raises.“The usual—people pay for these guns of steel.”He flexes his muscles, and I roll my eyes.
“We need more than funds and men to take down The Brotherhood,” I say.“We need to play this smart.We need to figure out how many of their men are left after the blowup with Dominic, and where their weapons are.Find out more about the docks, their shipments—if we can take over that, we can control the whole district.”
“What about using women for intel?”Bear suggests.“I mean, we’ve got the perfect starting point with Amirah at our disposal.”
I open my mouth to tell him to shut up, but maybe he has a point.
“Why women?Everyone knows The Brotherhood is a male-run organization,” Kai says.
“No, Bear’s onto something.Those boys are pussy-whipped by Freya; she’s basically got a seat at the table.Could be that this is a new age of The Brotherhood, where the women have more voice, and there’s nothing a woman loves more than a bleeding-heart sob story.”
All the men in the ville are loyal to The Brotherhood, but perhaps the women could be persuaded to join us.
Kai throws his phone at Bear, and he catches it.
“Get one of your friends at the club to run interference for us.Tell them that you heard Amirah was taken by some college guys in Berkeley.It’ll give us time to figure this shit out,” Kai says, and Bear breathes out heavily through his nose.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I feel eyes on me.I sit up straight, glancing over my shoulder toward the curtains.They’re open, just a crack.I hit Bear on his leg, pointing toward the doorway, and all hell breaks loose.
Chapter Ten
Before
Amirah
I watch Gage from across the dinner table as he takes one, then two bites of his pasta.The corner of his mouth lifts.
“This is good, Amirah.When you insisted on helping the chef, I thought you’d ruin it, but you’ve surprised me,” he says with a laugh.
Jerk.A simple thanks would have been nice.
I ignore him, rolling the pasta around with my fork, and stare off into space.Jewel is all I’ve been able to think about since Lily came over this morning.
I’ve called around to a few of our neighbors to see if any of them have young girls working for them as maids, but they don’t.I went downtown, showing people her photo, and even went down to the tracks, but it led to no answers.I searched the internet for any information about her and the letters from the photo, but again, nothing came up.
Is she okay?Where is she?It doesn’t matter that I haven’t heard from or seen her in years.I’d hate it if something happened to her.
“Spit it out,” Gage says from across the kitchen table.
“That obvious something’s up, hey?”
“Sis, you have zero poker face.”He grins, and I sigh.
