Alexei was staring at the sky. He didn’t look at me. Just shrugged. “I do not know.”
His honesty washed over me like a balm. It seeped into my skin and healed the abrasion that digging up that nightmare had left on my brain.
I walked away, through the apartment, and to the front door, taking nothing but my phone, the clothes on my back, and the key to Alexei’s Ninja.
“Em.”
Rubi’s low call stopped me in my tracks.
He caught up with me at the door. “You trust me, brother?”
“What does that mean?”
“This.” Rubi pressed another key into my hand. “Ride hard without getting nicked and go to my house. I’ll fix everything else, just go straight there, okay? Don’t be on the road longer than you have to.”
In another time, another world, I’d have asked him what the hell he thought he could fix for me. But Alexei was right. We were running out of time, and I did trust Rubi, more than anything.
I took the key and hugged my brother. Then I left him with the others and ran for the garage.
Alexei’s bike waited in the shadows, matte black and menacing.
Fast.
I swung a leg over it and gunned the engine, jamming the helmet onto my head.
The Ninja rumbled to life. I roared out of the car park and hit the road, setting a blistering pace that the feds would struggle to match even if they caught me.
An hour later, I reached Rubi’s place, a three-bed detached Victorian house with big bay windows and a garden landscaped into a steep hill.
I pulled up a few doors down the road and shut off Alexei’s bike, helmet off, senses alert. No one came here enough for it to be on anyone’s radar, not even Rubi, and I hadn’t been here since one horrible night after Saint had been hurt and I couldn’tstopfucking puking. But these were mad times, and stranger things had happened than an ambush in a brother’s house.
I’d left too fast and too distracted to grab a weapon, but they were hidden all over Alexei’s bike. I found a switchblade and tucked it into my palm.
Then I approached the house, leaving the front door open as I slipped inside.
The hallway was dark. I felt my way along, navigating a bunched-up rug and scrutinising every flash of my reflection in the glass of the artwork on Rubi’s walls. The kitchen door was open, revealing the chipped wooden counters limned by the solar lights in the back garden.
And where there was light, there was shadow.
Clutching the knife, I faced it head-on, stepping into the kitchen, skin pricking, hair at the nape of my neck rising with every step. I was hardwired to fight, but this was something different, and I felt no fear when the tall, rangy figure hunched over the sink loomed into my peripheral.
I lowered the blade.
Dropped it, actually, the sound of metal on tile clattering and loud.
Fists clenched, the figure turned and pushed back his hood, amber eyes glowing like burnt embers, his scarred face twisted and macabre in the dark.
“I’ll fix everything else.”
For better or worse, Mateo was already here.
24
MATEO
Embry’s stormy gaze speared my heart, shock ricocheting through me, but not surprise. Rubi was a wily fucker and his persuasive phone call, coupled with a gentle shove from Saint, now made sense.
“Go to my place, get away from it all. Key’s under the pot. Food in the freezer and three beds to choose from. Self-care, bro.”
