Page 26 of Nest of Thieves
“Yes.” The line disconnects and I hold in a sigh. Slim is a friend, but his loyalty is with Damien. It doesn’t matter that the loyalty was gained through coercion. Slim knows who keeps him fed and alive. Mac avoids the look I send his direction. Vette notices and lifts his scarred eyebrow.
“He wants you to keep the ring,” I tell Slim, turning back toward the man. “I don’t need to tell you what will happen if it suddenly disappears, do I?”
Slim’s face hardens.
I nod, pocketing my phone. “Good.”
Slim’s wife and kids would pay for any disobedience, so he makes for a loyal pet. Slim used to profit by swapping out the diamonds in rings people brought in for cleanings with cheaper gems. Had he not screwed Damien over once upon a time, he could have saved himself and his family a lot of trouble.
The guys and I get in the car. Vette pulls away from the shop, and I turn in my seat, pinning Mac with a stare. One of his arms is stretched across the back seat, and his fingers drum a steady beat on the fabric.
“Yes, dear?”
“What did you do?”
He blinks twice. “What makes you think I did anything?”
“Because I know you. How much shit are we in?”
“Maybe a little, maybe none at all.” He glances out the window, watching the city whiz by while Vette drives us toward our home. We’re all in need of a shower and a fresh set of clothes.
“Explain.”
Releasing a dramatized breath, he reluctantly pulls his attention from the window and focuses on me. “I may have told our little thief to come find us.”
“¿Por qué harías eso?” Vette hisses.
“Yeah, why would you do that? That’s dumb.”
“Perhaps,” he muses. “But a little hide-and-seek never hurt anyone.”
I shake my head. “She won’t come to play with you, Mac. She’ll come for blood.”
“I’m counting on it,” he says, eyes growing hazy with a dream. Some fucked-up version of Bonnie and Clyde that’s likely to get us all killed.
“You don’t know anything about her.” Vette glances at me. We’re used to this with him, making horrible decisions that leave us all fucked. If we didn’t love him like a brother, we’d hand him over to Damien.
“I know she’s an omega pretending to be a beta. I know she’s smart enough to dupe us out of our money. She’s cunning enough to rob that creepy asshole. Do I really need to know anything else?”
Vette turns down the main road that leads to our neighborhood. “Yeah, like who she works for.”
“Why she was stealing in the first place? She could bring a hailstorm of trouble with her.”
Mac shrugs. “You don’t think we can handle it?”
“That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying maybe telling her where we live was a bad decision, one you should have run by us first.” I pull out my phone and open the app for our security system. There’s no way the woman has found us yet, but I still check over everything.
“I get it, okay?”
“Do you, cabrón? Do you?” Vette white-knuckles the steering wheel. The black skull ring he’s wearing is identical to the one Mac and I wear, marking us as part of Atlantic City Knights. A premier criminal organization. It’s hard to come to terms with Mac being the best of the best when it comes to what we do and the reckless decisions he makes.
It’s part of who he is, though. Mac makes a choice that puts his life on the line and we save him from himself. Like I said, if he weren’t family, I would have let him drown long ago. Knowing his past and how fucked-up he is, well, I can’t abandon him. For the most part, he means well.
This, though? This isn’t reckless for the sake of chaos; it’s reckless for the sake of seeing the omega again. I get it, I really do, but there’s too much going on to even think about taking a mate. Not to mention the dangers that would come for any woman we call ours.
“I’m sorry,” Mac says when we get to the gate at the end of our driveway. “It was a bad decision.”
“It was,” I agree, not trying to make him feel better about it. We don’t sugarcoat shit. “But if she comes at all, she’ll have a hard time finding us.”
