Page 83 of Obey

“You don’t need protection from us,” I say.

Maybe Hawaii would’ve been better than coming back to New Bristol.

Knives crosses his arms. “I’m not making promises. If there’s going to be more backstabbing involved, I’m not baring my back for the knife.”

Silvano looks at him, then bursts out laughing. “I can’t believe it. My entire organization consists of comedians.”

Kyran’s expression stays dark despite Silvano’s amusement. “You can go, Evan,” he says. “In fact, please fucking go.”

Evan cracks up laughing, but a nod from Silvano has him heading for the door. He closes the door behind him, cutting off the sound of his laughter.

Silvano is still chuckling, though, and I stare at him like he’s the one who’s gone insane. “What’s so funny?”

“You two,” Silvano answers. He nods thoughtfully at us. “I did wonder if I needed to mount a rescue operation. Fox was not pleased by the suggestion. I think his exact quote was ‘if they got themselves captured or killed, who fucking cares?’”

I glare at Silvano, which feels awkward because I’m usually too overwhelmed by his charisma to even give him a negative thought. “Not you, obviously,” I bite out.

Kyran tenses, sitting up straighter. “Watch your tone, Gray,” he warns.

“What? No. You watch your tone. I—” I begin, but since I don’t particularly want Kyran’s fist in my face, I cut myself off like the coward I apparently am around Silvano.

Knives steps forward and subtly puts himself between me and Kyran. “Just cut the crap, both of you. We got your fucking weapons for you. Now I just want to know if you set us up for failure. Was this one of your little games, Silvano, where you manipulate a bunch of people to take each other out?”

There’s a split second where Silvano appears shocked, but he recovers quickly. “It hadn’t been my intention, no. But I’m still fuzzy on the details. What did happen? You found the weapons, and had to lay low for two weeks?”

I laugh, but I’m not amused. “Yeah. That’s exactly what happened.”

Silvano meets my gaze, and I’m suddenly hyper aware of myself. He’s seeing right through me, reading my weaknesses and finding what buttons to push and how to take me and Knives apart with just a few words.

“If you expect me to intuit what happened, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a long time. I trusted both of you to be competent in the task I assigned to you—and apparently I was right.” Silvano sounds much less amused now. “A little worse for wear, but excuse me if I don’t have the time to worry about every single wound one of the valued members of my family suffers.”

“Valued members of your family,” I repeat. I could snap at him that I was shot, but really, is there any point in just being a little bitch about the situation? Acting like that has been my downfall more than once, and it just seems tired and old now. I sigh, my shoulders slumping. “There were more of the motorcycle gang than there were of us. They tried to string us up and leave us for dead. We got lost in the swamp. We got free. We took the gang out. We recovered the weapons,” I list off flatly, giving a very inadequate assessment of what had happened.

“We had to kill something like ten bikers on our own, guerilla style,” Knives amends. “Did clean up on our own too.”

Silvano frowns. “On your own? A swamp? Weren’t the goods just in a warehouse in New Valence?”

His confusion doesn’t feel feigned, and I start to feel sick. “No,” I say slowly. “They were in some middle-of-nowhere shack, guarded by bikers.”

“A shack in the fucking swamp,” Knives adds, his fists clenched. “Have you ever been in a swamp, Silvano?”

“Absolutely not,” Silvano answers immediately. “My leather loafers are not going near anything even adjacent to mud.” Then he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I’m still confused here. You discovered the goods were in a swamp, guarded by this motorcycle gang, and you decided to retrieve it on your own? Didn’t you have contacts in NewVa?”

My cheeks flush, and I glance helplessly at Knives. “Those contacts only gave us GPS coordinates. We went to check it out.”

Before we’d learned to work together. Before we’d trusted each other.

Silvano looks over to Kyran. “All right, I’m sorry. You were right. I did overestimate them.”

I glare fiercely at Kyran. “Obviously fucking not,” I snap. “Seeing as how we got the goods and got here in one piece.”

Well. Mostly one piece.

Kyran snorts. “Yeah. Which is why you’re so fucking upset that you think Silvano set you up.”

“And during all of this, you didn’t contact anyone here because…?” Silvano prompts.

“You fucking told us you didn’t want to hear from us!” Knives growls. “You said you didn’t give a fuck what happened to us, so we’d better figure it out on our own!”

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