I pointed at the window. “With Ranger and Finch.”
“Finch?” It was Nash’s turn to peer out of the window at Folk’s beautiful sister. “Damn. So that’s what he’d look like with great—” Orla thumped him. “Hair, babe. You think I’d say pervy things about Folk’s sister?”
“You wouldn’t say pervy things about anyone, but speaking as someone with tits on the floor right now, I don’t need to hear how hot Folk’s sister is when I can see for myself.”
“Orla is now a lesbian,” Alexei supplied. “And she has not seen her own vagina in weeks.”
Nash grinned, as if conversations like this with the most feared assassin of a generation were routine. And I supposed, for them, it was.
The sweet normality of it all made me miss Katya, though I had only seen her yesterday. Most of all, it made me miss Jake, but not enough to want to be anywhere but here.
“I’ll be done with the black Ducati in a few days.” Nash broke into my thoughts. “Not the red one, though. Tyres are bald as fuck and the pistons could do with some TLC.”
“You don’t have to work on my bikes.” I knew he was busy, like every man around here. “I have no plans to ride them anytime soon.”
Honestly, I did not know why Jake had sent the red Ducati with Ranger’s Harley. Or why Nash was already shaking his head. “It’s my job to keep our family safe on the road. As long as you’re here, that includes you.”
“Then you must start calling on me for things you need, friend. It is only fair.”
Truly, I did not think the Kings would ever put me to work however long Ranger and I remained in Devon. I was a soldier. A veteran of wars they no longer wanted to fight, and I had little interest in construction work. I also did not need the money; it was not about that for any of us. It never had been. Still, unless Cam O’Brian wanted to found an orange grove in his back garden, for now, I remained committed to nothing but Ranger.
Like he had heard my thoughts, my brother called.
I excused myself and went outside. “I am with company.”
“I know where you are.”
Of course he did. I did not care how. “Are you well?”
“Well fed. I am home.”
Home. The island. We had just missed each other. “You have news?”
Jake tapped a keyboard. Always busy, never still. “It is done,” he said simply. “We have less than we asked for but everything we wanted.”
I found myself by a hammock hung between a fence post and a sycamore tree. “It is done?”
My voice was faint, even to my own ears.
Jake laughed, soft and free. “You doubted me, brother?”
“I thought they would kill you.”
The rival family Jake had been negotiating with for months to hand over his entire enterprise. To walk away from everything his father had built for the sake of the same thing Cam O’Brian had craved all these years: freedom.
It was almost too good to be true. “The island?”
“It is ours.”
“The Kings?”
“Safe, as long as they behave. No man in that room had the appetite to fight Ivanov.”
“Perhaps they are not as stupid as they look.”
Jake laughed again. “They did not want to fight you either. I think sometimes you forget what you are.”
“And what is that?”
