“He fought that hard because it’s as personal for them as it always has been for us.”
Not the ports. The trafficking operations that flowed through them when they fell into the wrong hands.
I knew that too, but as fight-fuelled adrenaline seeped out of me, it took with it my ability to think clearly, leaving me with Viktor’s face every time we’d stumbled across undeniable evidence of monsters trading in flesh and bone.
Fuck.
Maybe I was going to puke. Was this how that felt?
Cam dropped a hand on my arm. Warm and parental, like Locke’s. But he wasn’t Locke. He was a gangster boss, and this conversation had a purpose beyond speculation.
Too tired to fuck around, I asked him straight out. “Are you trying to tell me something I haven’t figured out yet?”
Cam jammed his smoke in his mouth and shifted in his seat, leaning back like a motherfucking don, all the while studying me with school nurse vibes for days. “I don’t know much about Viktor, which is goddamn weird for a bloke who’s saved us more times than I can count.”
“If you’re asking me to fill in the blanks, you’re shit out of luck. I don’t know anything about him either.”
Lies. I knew he liked to steal all my stuff on stake-outs. That he repaid me in chocolate and shadowy grins that somehow shone brighter in the dark.
I knew he had epic music taste.
I knew his lips felt like sweet sin against my skin.
“I’m not asking you about Viktor.” Cam’s deep voice startled me. “I’m trying to warn you that the Russians are heading for the fight of their lives with those Albanian cunts, and the closer you are to them when that happens, the bigger the chance you won’t make it home.”
“You didn’t give much of a fuck about that when you sent me up north in the first place.”
The barest hint of a flinch marred Cam’s face, reminding me that despite the words I’d just flung at him, he wasn’t like the MC presidents I’d known before him. “I didn’t send you. I gave you a choice, and I’m still giving you that. All I’m saying is that, quiet or not, this calm... it’s deceptive—it’s fucking dangerous, and the risk is bigger now than it’s ever been.”
I believed him. But he was wrong about something, and it took me a couple of seconds to figure it out. “It’s not justAlbanians.” I frowned, sifting through the few Viktor-themed memories that didn’t involve his warm skin and soft lips. “They... merged—an alliance, whatever. With that Romanian bunch that used to fuck around down here before...”
The name escaped me, slipping through my fingers, and I couldn’t tell if I’d forgotten, or I’d never cared enough to remember it.
But it felt important. To me, and to Cam as he leaned closer and gripped my chin. “Which Romanians? Aldea?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
“Think. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“If that’s where it ends, it’s where it started.”
Cam’s snap did nothing to shift the intense fog in my brain. I chewed on it. Smoking. Drinking water while Cam stayed quiet, letting me stew, growling at anyone who poked their head around the door.
After a while, no one else came. But I still couldn’t catch a thought, and I came out of my daze no different from when I’d fallen into it.
Cam was glaring at his phone, and his expression had returned to one of a man who knew Old Man Doherty had nearly clocked Ivy. One who waswatchingit happen on the screen of his phone.
He showed me. “In case you were wondering if you overreacted.”
“I wasn’t.”
A hum rumbled from his chest. He deleted the video and dropped the phone on the table. “I can’t think of anyone at my table, including me, who would’ve got through tonight without murder, so I’m grateful for what you did, but not because you’re expendable. I need you to understand that.”
“Why?”
Cam opened another water for me. Gestured for me to take a drink. Eyeing me like a conflicted big brother as it stuck in my throat. “You’re one of us. That you choose not to be here doesn’t change that. But I have to ask, the enforcer’s patch Nash gave you tonight, is it getting chucked in a fire pit the second you leave this room?”
