She leans forward slightly, one red-lacquered fingernail pricking at a button on my open dress shirt. Her perfume is overpowering, stifling the air around me. Or perhaps it’s just her. Rita is like a succubus in human form. But unlike in mythology, I’d chop off my dick before I let her anywhere near it.
“That’s not all,” she seductively coos.
Already bored, I flick her finger away and stand up, knocking her foot off the chair. “You know the way out.”
She circles a hand around my bicep, and her touch repulses me. “You need me.”
I laugh at that. “I don’t need you, sweetheart.”
I lean over her, forcing her backward onto the desk, then I roughly grab her tit through her flimsy silk top. She moans like it’s the best fucking thing in the world, licking her blood-red lips in anticipation of more.
The hand that was gripping her breast, moves to her throat. “More importantly, I don’twantyou.”
The sex kitten act instantaneously drops away. “Because you wanther?” she spits, her face mottled with anger.
“Get out. You’re no longer welcome in this house.”
As soon as I release my hold around her neck, Rita scrambles off the desk, clutching the bruised area. “You can’t do that!”
“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I reply.
“Rafe is with her, isn’t he?”
Rita’s hatred and jealousy toward Andie is apparent, even when we were younger. I saw how Rita taunted her engagement to Rafe at dinner, throwing it in Andie’s face. Rita never expected Andie to fight back. It was funny as hell listening to Andie hurl digs at her cousin across the dinner table.
I send Rita a stony stare. Our conversation is over.
“I’m not stupid, Keane. The men talk. I’ve heard the rumors about what happened.”
My hands shove deep into my front pockets. I neither confirm nor deny her suspicion. “You need to go back to the safehouse and stay there.”
We’re both taken by surprise when the door suddenly opens, and a distraught Dante rushes in without knocking.
“You need to come with me, right now,” he tells me.
Rita rounds on him. “Is it about Rafe?”
Dante doesn’t pay her any attention. “Ortiz’s men attacked Jax and Enzo when they were leaving the strip club. They were both shot. Jax is okay, but Enzo...”
I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding when he says it’s Enzo, not Jax, who was injured. I guess Julio decided he had waited long enough for me to bring Andie to him and is making his move. Game on, motherfucker.
Chapter 19
The west side of the city at night is creepy as hell. I look around at the decay and dereliction, the groupings of tents and trashcan fires underneath overpasses where the homeless gather. The scantily dressed women in thigh-high stilettoed boots who stand at the street corners, smoking cigarettes to pass the time while waiting for their next customer. Drug deals are being made right out in the open without a care in the world of being arrested by the police, whose presence is nonexistent here.
The stench of rot and hopelessness is everywhere, and it breaks my fucking heart. Human beings shouldn’t have to live like this.
“This place is disgusting. You could’ve picked somewhere else to meet that didn’t smell like a flaming bag of shit,” Rafe complains.
Tessa had scoped out the area earlier via satellite images and selected a spot in the city that would be quiet, deserted, and away from the main thoroughfares. The scattering of buildings around us are abandoned and boarded up. The grass hasn’t been cut in a long time and weeds have taken over.
“Deadman’s zone,” I explain. “No cameras. No police presence.”
“I don’t like it. Nothing that involves my father or brother is ever good.”
Rafe and I are leaning against Declan’s Range Rover that is more tank than anything else with its armored-steel plating and ballistic glass. Liam and a few of Declan’s men are situated in a perimeter around us, the scopes on their sniper rifles keeping a vigilant survey of the area. Tessa has a drone up directly above us. No one is getting within a block of here without us knowing, which is why I felt comfortable enough to stand outside the vehicle while we waited.
I check my phone for any messages from Tessa. She wanted me to wear an earpiece, but I declined. It was a knee-jerk reaction from having found out Max had implanted a tracker in my arm. Logically, I understood the difference between that and a tiny wireless speaker inserted into my ear, but how I felt about it mentally was a completely different story.
