Saint stepped closer, his breath whispering my skin with a soft murmur. “Have you heard from him?”
“Who?”
“The accountant.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You miss him.”
I closed my eyes, unable to deny it.
Saint wrenched his arm free and grasped my shoulders, backing me further into the shadows. “Go to him.”
I let the intensity of his gaze sink into me and churn me up inside. Alexei had claimed a piece of me I’d never given to anyone else. He’d seen me hungry, tired, and in pain. He’d seen my grief when I talked about my dad and my lost relationship with River. Christ, he’d seen me come so hard I’d fucking cried. But no one had ever looked at me the way Saint did. “I don’t want to leave you,” I said, because it was the truth. “Come with me.”
Saint’s brow twitched with the words he couldn’t quite say.And what? Wait outside while you fuck him?
No. That wasn’t what I wanted. I took his hands from my shoulders and crushed his fingers in mine. “Come.”
“I can’t. I have fires to put out.”
“I’ll wait. We have church anyway.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Go to him. I’ll find you later if I can.”
It was a shitty compromise, but we’d run out of time to play chicken in the dark. Voices came up on us. We broke apart and the spell shattered, jolting us back to reality.
I called church. One by one, my brothers filed in, even Mateo, who was spitting feathers that he’d had an uneventful night while the rest of us had spilled blood.
Despite being a heartbeat behind me, Saint was somehow last, drifting in, transfixed by his phone screen, which was a strange enough sight that Embry did a double take.
He pulled Saint’s chair out for him. “Sit, brother.”
Saint didn’t look up.
Frowning, I pounded the gavel and thanked my brothers for their service. “It was a fucked-up night that I gave you no warning for. So thank you. It ain’t over, but we got shit done, and I’m proud of that.”
A murmur of agreement went round the table.
Cracker was silent. The fucker didn’t have a scratch on him and I eyed him with barely concealed malevolence and made plans to talk to Embry. I needed eyes on this mofo and Saint was already stretched thin.
We debriefed the clusterfuck the night had become. Logged injuries and weapons we’d lost.
“How did we know to hit them tonight?” Cracker spoke through a haze of cheap tobacco smoke. “Sambinis bring blow into that cove every month and you don’t give a shit. Why tonight?”
“Crows have loose lips,” I stated flatly. “And you can hear anything if you listen hard enough.”
I left it at that, because, actually, it was all I knew. Saint hadn’t disclosed where he’d got his intel and I hadn’t asked. When I trusted a brother, I didn’t need to know everything to make decisions.
“Just seems convenient,” Cracker pressed. “That we find a lorry load of skin while you’re fighting your campaign to make us fucking bankrupt—”
Cracker’s chair tipped back and he hit the deck like a sack of rotten spuds. Saint loomed over him, silent and deadly, and I snorted out a laugh.
Couldn’t fucking help it. “Anyway, the intel was good and we did what we needed to do. Those girls—those fuckingchildren—are safe and sound with the coppers as we speak.”
“What if they talk?” Embry said. “We wore no colours, but it wouldn’t be hard to figure it was an MC hit if they described us enough.”
“If they talk, they talk.” I spread my hands. “We didn’t kill anyone. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think they will. They don’t know who we were or that our only intention was to help them. They’ll be too scared to say much.”
