A hand rests on my shoulder, and I swing without thinking. “Oh, fuck!” I spin and see Hutch clutching his nose.
“Oh my God, I am so sorry. You startled me.” I have been on edge since we ran into Nick, and now I’m just in fight mode.
“Well, the good news is she knows how to throw a decent punch.” Demitri laughs while handing him a black handkerchief from his pocket.
“Ha, that’s fucking hilarious, asshole.” Graham's voice muffled by holding his nose. “Little Witch, I’m pretty sure you broke my damn nose.”
I grab my bag and start making my way to the ladder. “I’ll just grab my car and head home. See ya around.” There is no way these two will ever want to see me again after breaking his nose.
I feel two warm arms band around me. “No can do, Little Fox. You don’t get to leave just because you decked him. If that was the case, we would have stopped being friends before we left middle school.” Demitri laughs and nuzzles his face into my hair. “God, you smell so good.” He groans.
“I smell like sweat, Dee. It’s a thousand degrees on this roof.” I laugh at him.
“You are my favorite smell.” He continues to nuzzle me.
“Nyx, my Little Witch. Does it suck I have a broken nose? Yes.” He laughs, but he walks over to where Demitri has me wrapped up in his arms. He quickly sets his nose back into place and wipes the blood off on his dark t-shirt, before he stands in front of me and Demitri. “But I would one thousand percent rather know that you can swing a damn good punch than worry about you being able to defend yourself when we aren’t around.” I am officially the meat in the Marine sandwich again, and I can’t say I am mad at it. Dee is pressed up behind me, with Hutch in front.
“Alright, let’s get packed up and head out. Nyx, do you want to come back to our place tonight?” Demitri talks into my ear. “I will order PizzaPaplis and we can swing through and grab it on our way home from your place.” I love me some pizza, plus being in a house with these two.Yes, please!
They walk me to my car, figuring we should get it out of the parking garage. They follow behind me back to the apartment so we can drop off my car, and work pack off. They follow me up to the apartment, and my door is cracked open.
“Go wait in the car, Nyx.” Graham looks at me with a dead serious look on his face.
“No, you can get fucked. I am the police officer in this situation.” I pull my sidearm out of the built-in holster in my leggings waistband. “You guys can cover my six.” I gently push the door open, gun pointed out in front of me. Demitri’s hand slides down the wall to look for the light switch.
My apartment is a disaster. Shit is thrown everywhere. “What the fuck happened?” I say on an exhale. My bookshelf is trashed. Books thrown, spines cracked, and pages bent. “I need to clear the apartment and make sure no one is hiding.” I slipinto police mode quickly. “Please stay here.” I leave the guys standing stone-faced in the entryway of my apartment.
I take a quick look around the open-concept living room and kitchen. While there is shit everywhere, there is no one lingering here. With my sidearm drawn in front of me, I make my way down the short hallway to my bedroom. My room seems to have had the same treatment as the living room and kitchen.
My bed is pulled off the frame, my sheets are shredded. Everything on the shelves has been thrown off and shattered. I open my closet door with my foot, to find much of the same thing. Clothes pulled off their hangers, my shoes thrown, drawers have been gone through. Midnight darts out of the closet, scared. He must have been hiding in the corner while my apartment was ransacked. There are a few older sweaters I never wear that got thrown in the corner that have turned into a comfy bed for him to take a nap on.
This is all so weird. Everything has been destroyed, or at least messed up, but nothing seems to be missing. I have quite a few high-value items I would expect to have been missing if this was just a robbery. I walk over to the small office area I keep in my room. My laptop and iPad have just been thrown on the floor. I hear the boys shuffling around out in the living room.
“I don’t think this was a robbery attempt.” I call down the hall as I head back to them. “All of my valuables are still here, no one would break-in, and not steal my laptop or tablet.”
“So what do you think was the motivation behind this?” Hutch looks at me with confusion written on his face.
“I am not sure, but I think our plans for tonight are going to have to be rescheduled because this is going to need to be cleaned up.” I walk over to the bookshelf to start cleaning some of it up.Damn it, I was really looking forward to spending some more time with these guys.
“If you think we are, one, going to leave you here to clean this shit up on your own, and two, going to leave you by yourself when whoever broke in here could come back. You are dead fucking wrong, beautiful.” Demitri states. There is a determined look on his face that says no matter how much I argue with him, I will not win.
“How about we order some pizza here, and we can get started on cleaning up?” Hutch pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts tapping away on the screen.
“That sounds perfect. Thank you guys!” I continue to pick up things in the living room and we fall into a comfortable silence while we clean.
CHAPTER 21
DEMITRI
The tension in my shoulders makes me feel like my muscles are made of stone. I need to figure out who would have broken into my Little Fox’s apartment. I know that if I mention she comes and stays with us, she will fight me tooth and nail. I also cannot allow her to stay here alone when someone has already broken in and we have no clue who it could have been.
Hutch ordered us all pizza, it seems that we all have similar tastes in toppings, so that made getting food easy. A couple large pizzas, pepperoni, and bacon with an order of cheesy bread and all the ranch that we could get. A two-liter of Dr. Pepper for Nyx and some Mountain Dew for us, we could use the extra energy. It should be here shortly.
In the meantime, we have most of the books picked up and stacked for her to re-shelve. We know better than to mess with a bookish girl’s shelf, so we leave them for her to reorganize while we head toward the kitchen to tackle that. My little sister loved to read, and we would always try to fuck with her, so we would steal her books. On more than one occasion, I thought she was going to remove our balls for it.What I wouldn’t give to have her to fuck with now.
“So, tell me we aren’t going to leave her here alone, right?” Hutch’s voice is so low that I can barely hear him. His eyes glance over in her direction, that love-sick look already showing on his face. He has always been quick to lust but I honestly have never seen him so enamored by someone before.
“If I have anything to do about it. No, we aren’t. But we cannot force her to live with us. She just met us this week. We can invite her to stay with us, or for us to crash here, but I think if I kidnap her again it will not go well.”
