My head shook, but I kept my eyes on Lore’s back. “No. I want to stay… with her.”
“No.”
Taylor and I both stared at her back with varying degrees of shock. Just that one word was like getting shot right in the middle of my chest. “Get him out of here,” she muttered, her words almost indecipherable with how low she spoke with the voice modulator.
“Lore,” I began hesitantly. My feet carried me a couple of steps before I even realized I was moving. But I stopped when she whipped around, gun drawn again and aimed right at my face.
“This was Elio’s work,” she growled from behind the mask. “And there’s only one person who knows enough about me for him to be able to hunt me down to this extent.” Lore whipped around and stormed right up to me, jabbing a finger into the center of my chest. Surely that hurt with the stiff, bulletproof vest covering it, but she didn’t even flinch. “You.”
My head was already shaking back and forth before she even finished. “Lore, I swear I wouldn’t tell your abuser where you were. Please, you—”
“You wouldn’t have had to tell him!” she roared. “You’re in Andrea’s pocket! When you didn’t get the results he wanted, Andrea told Elio where I was! And I was too stupid to not just shoot you in the feckin’ head when you first walked into the club!”
“Look, I can call Andrea and clear the air. I doubt he’d really go through with something like—” Even as I spoke the weak excuse, I kicked myself. Why was I still trying to cover the ass of someone who’d sooner toss me to the wolves than do the same? It was apparent from his last call that Andrea was out for blood.And I wanted no part in Lore’s death, even though he held my foster family in the palm of his hand.
My brain stuttered and turned over again and again.What should I do?
“Pack your shit and get out of my city. You have twenty-four hours. The next time I see you, I’m shootin’ from a hundred yards!” With that, Lore slammed her gun back in its thigh holster and stormed off in the direction of the car. “Kent, call code black for all Riot members. Check records for public and private flights within the last month for anyone coming in directly or had connecting flights from Italy. And get this place cleaned out.”
Both Kent and the man beside him jumped into action, one rushing to follow her while Kent stepped outside the rolling garage door and pulled a phone from a pouch on his tactical vest. Sighing, Taylor shoved his hands deep in his pockets and let his head hang low. I had never seen Lore that emotional.
“Just… lie low for a while, okay?” Taylor tried to assure me. “I’ll talk to her. Lore is… She’s very protective of people who are loyal to her. And Patty was more of a mother figure than either of us ever had. Go find Jerel and catch a ride home with him, I’ll be in touch.”
That didn’t sound particularly comforting. But I didn’t have many choices, if Lore refused to talk to me. There was no more slack in my chain, it seemed. I sighed, feeling the weariness all the way in my bones. “Yeah. Thanks, Taylor. I wish… it didn’t go this way.”
“Me either.” Finally, Taylor raised his head to look at me again. His eyes held the same bone-deep exhaustion I felt. Then his eyes shifted to look over my shoulder, and he gestured to me with a slight jerk of his head. “Just… take care of yourself, yeah? Shit’s about to go down. She may be pissed off at you now, butsomewhere deep down, Lore would be upset if you got caught in the crossfire.”
My head nodded woodenly. Taylor clapped a hand on my shoulder as he passed by to follow his sister. I felt like I was going to puke. At first, I thought it was from the grotesque remains of Patty’s broken body, but that squirming nausea in my stomach only got worse as I watched the Red Riot start cleaning the drying blood off the concrete. Like a well-oiled machine, they worked together in silence, dumping buckets of chlorine that burned my sensitive nose with the smell, and another group came behind with wide brooms to scrub at the mess. I wanted to be the one following her out. I needed to be the one to comfort her while all this bad shit fell in an avalanche to crush her.
“Give me her apartment key.” The demand left my mouth before my brain caught up with some sensibility. At first, I wasn’t sure I had spoken loudly enough for Taylor to hear until I turned to see his incredulous face. My glare deepened when he didn’t answer quickly enough. “I said, give me the fucking key!”
His laugh was cold and bitter. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets again and took a wide stance, like he was a guard standing between me and his sister. “What, you have a death wish? Trust me when I say, Lore meant it that she’d kill you.” Taylor’s head turned to where she had stormed out. His eyes narrowed and a scowl darkened his expression, and one of the hands in his pocket flashed to an earpiece like he was listening intently to someone.
“What is it?” I hated the desperation that tainted my voice. A low whine broke through at the end of the question.
“None of your business now, Grant. Someone is booking your flight and will send it to you by email, your ass better be on that plane tomorrow morning if you want to keep breathing.”
Bait
Grant
It wasn’t uncommon for me to not know Andrea’s whereabouts at any given time. It’s not like it was my job to track him down. Typically, I was trackingotherpeople down. I was,however, pretty shocked to see a message from him this early in the morning demanding a meeting. An in-person meeting. As in, here in Vegas. After a night of tossing and turning, worrying about what Lore was planning, and whether she was safe, I was admittedly not in peak condition to deal with his runny brand of bullshit. I was supposed to be getting on a plane back to Chicago in two hours. Not that I had any plans to follow through with that order, but Lore didn't have to know.
As soon as I read through the message twice, I chanced calling him. “What’s going on, Andrea?”
Light clinking of silverware on a plate indicated he was eating breakfast. I waited with as much patience as I could muster for him to finish chewing. He seemed to be taking his sweet time. “I’m tired of waiting around. You said you were on speaking terms with Lore, right? So get us a meeting. I have business to talk to her about that, apparently, you cannot handle.”
I broke out into a cold sweat. If Andrea really was involved in Patty’s death and Elio possibly coming to Vegas, now was the absolute worst time to be dealing with him in the flesh. Keeping my cool over the phone or a video chat was one thing, but face to face… he didn’t survive as long as he did without sharp instincts. Andrea would be able to see the cracks in my loyalty in the first five minutes of a meeting. He would be able to sniff out in an instant where my support lay now.
“This… may not be the best time,” I hedged. “Would it suffice to see if she can call you sometime tomorrow? Name a time and—”
Andrea’s voice was low, but commanding. “No. Today, six o’clock sharp at Tio’s Eatery. I’ll send the address. You better fucking be there with Lore Brennan.”
The hollow silence of the phone disconnecting left me panicking, still holding the phone to my ear like an idiot. “Shit, shit, shit!” I almost flung it across the room, but at the lastminute clutched the phone in my palm until my knuckles turned white.
My instincts told me this was not going to end well for me. I was on the outs with Andrea, that much was apparent. The question was, how far was he willing to go to kill me in Red Riot territory? Because there was no fucking way I was leaving Vegas on my own terms. My alliance with Lore was precarious at best, but there was still a seed of hope in my bitter heart that I could convince her of my innocence with Patty’s death. The moment I left the Las Vegas city limits, I was as good as dead. But staying in Vegas while Lore is on a rampage was equally detrimental to my survival. I knew she loved me. But I doubted her restraint.
I couldn’t see another option besides setting up this meeting and hoping I could smooth things over in person. Begrudgingly, I set about looking up the restaurant’s contact info and setting a reservation for a private room in my name for tonight. My body was just going through the motions of getting dressed, getting coffee, and sitting at my computer. There was only space in my head for Lore. I couldn’t leave her to think I’d betrayed her trust to a bastard like Andrea.
