“And Folk? No fucker thought to keep tabs on him either?”
“How?” Nash’s tone was mild, but his big shoulders were set in stone. “That dude’s as sharp as Alexei. You think I could follow him around and he wouldn’t know about it before I did?”
“So you had no fucking clue they were going somewhere? Either of them?”
“I knew they were hitting the road for a bit. But you told me to trust Alexei, and I did—Ido—so I didn’t ask him a thousand questions he wouldn’t have answered anyway.”
Cam kept his glower on Nash a moment longer before it was my turn. But he already knew I had jack shit for him. I wasn’t the dude who ever knew the kind of details he needed. All I could tell him was what Nash already had: they were gone, and no one knew where.
Only Saint seemed to know something different, and it brought Cam’s temper back to him. “When were they supposed to be back?”
Silence. Saint tapped his fingers on the back of a chair, and Cam’s frustration boiled over.
“Use your damn words.”
“Oi.” Rubi spoke up from the doorway. “None of that. We all want to go home, watchSexy Beast, and eat our feelings. No point taking it out on each other.”
“If you’re gonna be a clown about this, fuck off.”
Rubi shrugged and walked away, but he took Saint with him, and the brothers left in the room—me, Nash, Mateo, and Embry—let out a collective breath.
“Fuck.” Cam rubbed his face, guilt and regret warring for airtime on his tired face. “I don’t understand this. Any of it. You need to tell me everything I’ve missed so I can get a handle on this clusterfuck right now.”
That was my cue. I already knew too much. I didn’t need to hear Nash reiterate all the things I should’ve made myself forget by now.
Orla’s flat was big and gothic, the kitchen feeding into a living room with an enormous velvet corner couch.
There was no one on it, though, so I followed the sound of giggly voices to the bedrooms at the back and peeked into the one where Ivy and Liliana were having the sleepover they’d been so desperate for. They were tucked up in a big bed with blood-red satin sheets, watching something on the flatscreen TV attached to the wall.
Orla and Juana were in the adjoining room, Orla rocking the baby while Juana napped.
She caught my eye. “We’re all good, sweetheart. Do what you need to do.”
Conflict raged in my soul. I needed to be Ivy’s dad. For so long, I’d convinced myself that was all I could be. ButFolk, man. I couldn’t be fucking anything until I knew he was okay. That he was safe, even if I had to wait a lifetime for him to come home.
I left the girls and found Saint and Rubi in the hallway. Saint was in the corner, crouching, face marred by shadows.
Rubi was on the floor too, blocking the front door, and it wasn’t hard to conclude that he was doing everything he physically could to keep Saint from bolting.
I backed him up, sliding down to sit beside him. “Brother, you need to stay.”
Saint twitched. Other than that, he said nothing, and Rubi sighed. “Mother of dragons, I was on my way home to get laid.”
“Where is River?”
“On route with Locke. Whatever happens, if we need to go out, you and Em need some backup to guard the girls.”
It was me that twitched this time. My role had always been to stay home and lead the literal dad’s army of brothers who stayed behind. But knowing it was Folk out there somewhere. That he needed us—that maybe he neededme. Fuck. I couldn’t smother the feeling that rose up inside me.
Rubi elbowed my ribs. “Hey. It’s going to be all right. Even if Sambini went after them for that ding-dong on the road a few weeks ago, those two nutters would’ve planned for that. I mean, hell, look what happened when they didn’t. Fucking carnage, and it weren’t ours.”
Because, like Alexei andSaintbefore them, Folk and Alexei had killed every man that had come for them—a cold hard fact that should’ve bothered me when it had happened, but that I found comfort in now.He was a marine. An SBS commando.Two of the toughest regiments in the world, and Folk had found a home in both.
But he’d found a home in my heart too, and I knew him. Ilovedhim. And Folk Whitlock was as human as anyone.
“You think that’s what this is?” I heard myself ask distantly. “Trouble with the Sambinis?”
Rubi grumbled beside me. “It’s always trouble with those cunts. Every fucking time.”
