“Have been,” I told him honestly. “But only to offer what he came to us asking for a few months back.”
Ranger’s frown deepened. “And what the fuck was that?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
The words came from the face I’d never seen before. Sensing my confusion, Ranger jerked his smoke between us. “Folk, this is McGovern. The Kings’ VP.”
“Nash.” I shook Folk’s hand, the uncommon name ringing a distant bell.
And recognition flared in his keen gaze too, in the same moment the tall Crow at the back lit a cigarette of his own, blowing smoke through his kissable lips.
Whoa. Kissable? Where had that come from? For a protracted second my brain melted. Heart thumping a rhythm as hard as the first time I saw Orla naked. White noise in my ears.
Kissable.
Kissable???
Jesus. I swallowed hard, forcing my attention back to a man who looked no more a biker than he did a Dog Crow, save the helmet hanging from his arm.
ToFolk, and his stare was intense enough to reach me. “What kind of deal did you offer Rocco?”
“We didn’t.” I thought back to the night we’d met Rocco at the warehouse that caved in on him and Saint a few weeks later, nearly killing them both. “He came to us asking for help getting rid of Butch and McGif. He never outright said he wanted to patch over whoever was left afterwards, but that’s what we took from it.”
“And you said no?”
There was no threat in Folk’s tone, but the longer I looked at him, the more I knew there didn’t need to be for him to be dangerous.Like Alexei.I’d known that fucker was lethal the second I laid eyes on him. This dude—Folk—he was different, and yet somehow exactly the fucking same.
Cleverer men than me probably had a word for it, but I couldn’t think of one. My weapon was truth. “We took it to the table. Voted to obliterate your entire organisation and hope that Rocco and whoever followed him were still standing at the end. He gave me some names. Ranger, Bishop.” My gaze flickered to the tall Crow at the back. “And you’re Locke, right?”
As if I didn’t know. And not just because Dave Bishop was dead.
“The big one with fuck me eyes.”
And let me tell you, that wasn’t fucking Ranger and his obsidian glare.
“Rocco said you weren’t a cunt.”
Locke spoke around his cigarette, cutting off the dark path that led to every other fucking thing Rocco had ever told me about him.
“They’ll kill him eventually.”
I licked my dry lips, studying Locke’smouth again with obsessive attention, his scruffy masculine jaw, and the ink on his neck, torn between horror and a fascination that skipped a beat in my heart. “Try not to be. Can’t say it always pans out.”
Ranger snorted.
Locke didn’t blink.
Folk gave me a second to elaborate. Then he drew a line in the sand. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything.” I tucked my spent cigarette butt into my own box and pocketed it, his sharp eyes tracking my every move. “I came to see if we could help.”
“Help who?”
“You.” I jerked my head at Ranger. “And him.”
I took a breath to utter Locke’s name too, but Ranger and Folk blocked him too fast for me to form the words, their stance aggressively defensive—protective—enough that I might’ve stepped back if I’d had anywhere to go.
