Page 32 of Graveyards & Greed

“Your family has a compound? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“It’s just a nickname. Fenn and Ezra own adjacent houses next door to each other, and they knocked down the wall between them and built a pool and a few cottages.”

He smirked. “That’s a compound. Does this kind of thing happen often?”

“Often enough,” Diego cut in from under the vehicle.

I couldn’t argue with that. “They shot him in the calf before he shot back and sicced Daisy and Poppy on them.”

“Are Daisy and Poppy cousins I haven’t heard about?”

I took a swig of coffee. “No, they’re Fenn’s German Shepards.”

Drakos shook his head and turned back to the Corvette. “Jesus. Never a dull moment with you. I can work from the mortuary today if you need to go in.”

He wore blue overalls smeared with grease and mechanics gloves, a stark contrast to his usual custom-made suits and dress shirts. He still made my mouth water.

“Kilian knows about you, but the rest of my cousins don’t… yet. I’ll text Ezra and tell him I’ll be in this afternoon.”

He studied me quietly, then nodded and went back to working on his car. The corpse in the fridge would keep until later.

I stared at Drakos’s ass as he bent over the engine.

“Are you enjoying the view?” he eventually drawled without looking up, his hands buried deep in the engine.

“Yep.” I took another sip of coffee and gave up pretending to work on my phone.

Diego slid out from under the car, then sat up and winked at me. “Despite him dressing like Wallstreet most days, he actually knows what he’s doing under the hood. You’re watching a master at work.”

“Master of what?” I teased, raising an eyebrow.

Drakos straightened and leaned against the car. "Everything, obviously. You thought so when you were screaming my name–”

“Okay, you’re the master of everything,” I interrupted loudly. He grinned at me.

Diego took off, and Drakos peeled off his nitrile gloves and went upstairs to shower. Twenty minutes later when we climbed into his Range Rover, he wore a perfectly tailored charcoal suit with a dark gray dress shirt. I couldn’t decide if he looked hotter in a suit or his grease-stained, blue coveralls.

He glanced over at me. “I want to tell Ivan about what happened at Titties. He’s an expert hacker, and I’d like him to monitor Terrance and the club to see what they know.”

I rubbed my palms against my thighs and thought about his request. We’d promised we wouldn’t tell anyone about that night, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone figured it out. And I did want to know what that scary psychopath Terrance LeBaron was up to.

“Okay, if I can tell Kilian. But please swear him to secrecy. My family is my whole world, and I don’t want to start a war if I can prevent it.”

The SUV purred to a stop in front of the mortuary, and as I reached for the door handle, he took my other hand. His touch sent an electric jolt up my arm.

“I promise. You’re safe with me, love. I’ll pick you up around six. Does that work?” His voice was low and warm.

“That’s fine.”

He tugged my hand until I leaned over the console between us, then he bent and gave me a long, drugging kiss. “Have a good day.”

His warmth and scent wrapped lazily around me as I kissed and nibbled back. When I got out and shut the door, my mind felt a little drugged. He waited until I walked inside before taking off.

A few hours later, I wore a respirator along with the rest of my protective gear as I stared down at the decomposing corpse of a woman who’d just been brought in to be cremated.

Donald Erndt, the medical examiner, called me to explain her situation. Don was unflappable, curious, and didn’t have an ego. He also had a deep, chain-smoker voice. “The lady choked to death on a chicken nugget at her desk last Friday afternoon. It took almost four days for her coworkers to notice. The smell finally tipped them off.”

“Yeah, after four days that would have been a problem,” I agreed.

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