I just want my kid, man.
Wanted her to be happy.
Safe.
Loved.
If she had that with Lauren, it wouldn’t have hurt so much.
I didn’t answer Saint’s question. I watched Rubi drop CDs into the passenger door and stuff more snacks into the glovebox. Took the multipacks of Red Bull and Lucozade and stowed them in the bench seat I still crouched beside. “There’s enough here for a month.”
“Good.” Rubi folded his faithful tote bags. “Makes me feel better about dragging you away from your families if I know you won’t starve. Also, Queen Ivy gave me a list of everything she wanted you to have, and then Riv got involved, so don’t blame me for the eleventy thousand bags of dolly mixture.”
Rubi had once managed to spirit Ivy into the café kitchen to bake me a three-layered birthday cake, complete with thumbprints and sugared unicorns. I never blamed him for anything. “Thanks, man. Really.”
“You deserve it, Deeky. You’re everyone’s daddy, not just hers.”
Wasn’t quite sure how to take that, but I ran out of time to figure it out. We had a schedule to keep and it was time to go.
Rubi hugged me. Saint kind of smiled. Then they both jumped down from the lorry cab and I slid behind the wheel.
Mateo hauled himself into the passenger seat. Tipped me a grim nod. “Stay sharp. This could be a lairy one.”
I knew it. Trouble with the Sambini family always meant trouble on the roads. Inexplicable punctures. Scraps at truck stops. But hey, at least it wasn’t my ex-wife calling the feds on me and having me arrested for card fraud.
Been there, done that.
I started the engine and the HGV began to roll forward. Saint walked in front, escorting us to the gate, while Rubi jogged ahead and waved like a madman at the end of the road. With his wild hair and pink trousers, it was quite the fucking sight.
Saint didn’t seem to notice, but leaving on a ridiculous note softened the wrench in my heart.
The wrench in Mateo’s.
It also distracted me from the undeniable reality that whatever happened on the road, when I came back, my fucked-up world would be a different place.
11
FOLK
Seth drove the HGV like he did everything else—with a quiet, mesmerising competence. From the brow of the low hill, I watched him manoeuvre it out of the hub and turn onto the A-road, his shoulders rolling, his strong arms flexing.
It astounded me that Mateo could slouch in the seat next to him and not incinerate in Decoy’s hotness, but then, perhaps he was distracted by the piece of his own heart he’d left in the yard.
The HGV disappeared into the distance, followed by a couple of others. Then an eerie quiet fell over my infinitesimal slice of the world, punctured only by Alexei’s soft sigh. “He will be okay, Veles.”
“What makes you think I’m worried about Mateo?”
Alexei turned his hawkish gaze on me, unblinking. “I do not think that.”
I gave him nothing and he didn’t ask, but the sense that Alexei could see into my soul was hard to ignore.
Not impossible, though.
I started my bike and wheeled back from the hidden spot we’d rallied in after a night spent scouting the coast for Sambini trawlers. The landscape had changed, but our mission remained. Whatever that meant. Apparently we were men who couldn’t quite decide.
Either way, we were done for the time being.
We rode the final stretch back to the compound.
