“Tell Wing I said hi!” I snap the door shut before he can come back. When I turn around, I note the new additions to his room. There’s a sofa stationed in the large sitting area, and a television mounted on the wall with a low coffee table between them. The bed has new bedding, and there are nightstands on either side. The room looks like it could be featured on HGTV. Nothing about it feels like Rafe anymore. I can’t say I like it very much.
Being here and knowing he’s okay lifts a weight off my shoulders, but it doesn’t really take away any of my other worries. I want to ask how he’s so confident about not getting caught, but I also don’t want to know any more than I already do.
I’m going to have to decide very soon if I can let all my questions go because being with Rafe is more important to me, or if I really want to know everything he’s involved in.
Chapter 31
The living room and kitchen are still empty when I return. I know I’m scowling. There is another place I would much rather be. “I said you could come back!” I shout.
“Yeah, then two seconds later you told us to wait. What the fuck?” Iron stomps down the stairs.
I don’t bother answering him, it wasn’t a real question. I think about telling them to just get their shit together and go, but I don’t, and I know it’s only because she asked me not to. “Who you got back there?” Iron’s too damn nosy for his own good, but that makes him decent at gathering information, not to mention everyone who sees him just thinks he’s a meathead. No one would guess he went to MIT for a year before he dropped out. Everything about him screams enforcer. He’s also a pain in my ass.
I debate whether or not to answer him, but it’s only a matter of time before her involvement in my life gets out anyway. If I’m the one telling the story, I can control the narrative.
“Don’t tell me you abducted some chick and are holding her hostage?” Iron groans. “You’re not that bad-looking of a dude. If you would lose the serial killer face, some of them might even like you.”
“Fuck off. You pay for it.” I’m feeling defensive. Abduction was a possibility at one point, but we’re past that. Lucy wants to be here.
“Yeah, I pay for it so they know it’s just a transaction. No attachments.” He snorts.
“Take one guess who’s back there.” Winger lifts his bottle to his lips after pointing it toward the hallway, enjoying the fact he knows something Iron doesn’t.
“I know who’s back there,” Saddle pipes up.
Iron squints his dark eyes and looks at me really hard for a second. “I know who he wants to be down there, but that shit hasn’t happened yet. I bet it never will. Even though I would have tapped that two years ago.”
Winger glances down with a grin and shakes his head. “Then you’re in for a surprise.”
“Bullshit,” Iron spits and looks at the three of us. I don’t change my facial expression, but Saddle and Winger each show various signs that he’s come to the right conclusion. “I’ve got to see this for myself.” He starts down the hall, but I grab his arm and stop him.
“You don’t want to do that. If I kill someone else today, she might get mad at me.”
“You’re not joking?” Iron is smiling. I’ve always been envious of how easy they seem to come to him.
I shake my head.
“I still don’t believe it, but you can drop the death grip. I’m not going to disrupt your illusion.”
I let his arm go, and he takes a few steps back, proving he’s not going to try to go to my room.
“It’s true. I saw her earlier at Jayson’s,” Saddle confirms.
“What the fuck was she doing there?” Iron jerks his head back and eyes me like he might not trust her now and he thinks I’m nuts for allowing her here.
“It’s a long, fucked-up story, but in short, she wasn’t there by choice,” I inform him.
“That nasty fucker. Are you sure him dying was enough?” Iron is scowling. Considering I beat Jayson half to death with his own bat, then put a bullet in his gut so he would die nice and slow, I think I did all right, especially with short notice. I went over there to kill him, but I had no idea he had sent his boys to grab Lucy before he knew I was going to show up at his place.
The fucker who made Lucy bleed took some swings to the face too. I think his eyeball popped out with the first blow, but I wasn’t really counting.
“He didn’t die easy,” Winger answers for me.
I left the house and the bodies to Link and his crew. Even now, I bet an entire forensics team could go through the place and not find a drop of evidence. No bodies, no case, and there isn’t anyone dumb enough to report him missing. They can’t risk all of his criminal activities being exposed, not when it would implicate them also. Problem solved.
“That’s crazy. So she thinks you’re like her savior now and shit?” Iron waggles his eyebrows. “That’s good for some gagging.”
Saddle looks between the two of us like he knows I’m about to lose my shit.
