Page 15 of Love Thy Brother
Saint didn’t repeat himself. He stared at me instead, waiting for the words to sink in better, but it didn’t matter which way I looked at it, it made no fucking sense.
“Unless he’s been hiding her under his bed all this time, how is that possible? I was with you when we scoped him out. He only had his mum and a cousin in Bethnal Green.”
Saint shrugged, giving me nothing.
From behind me, Cam sighed. “It’s a long story. If you were around more, you’d know it.”
“Fuck you. I speak to Orla all the time and she never mentioned it.”
“No? She never told you him and Embry are together then?”
I turned around, finding Cam’s gaze in the mess of the room. Ignoring Rubi’s burning a hole in the side of my head. “Why would she tell me that? Where your soldiers put their dicks is nothing to do with me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”Yes.It wasn’t lost on me that Embry playing happy families with Mateo demolished the narrative that he was using Rubi as a regular cuddle bear. But I couldn’t think about it. If I did, I pictured Rubi with a thousand other people instead and I was too scrappy to deal with that.
He doesn’t like sleeping alone.
How many times had he told me that?
Too many to count.
“You have Crows out there too.” I leaned against the window behind me, anchoring myself to the cold glass as if it could calm my red-hot temper. “What’s that about? A fucking prisoner exchange or something?”
Alexei answered me. “There are no Crows out there, little brother.”
“Sure about that? Because I count at least two, and one of them used to collect Frank Crow’s protection money in Porth Ewan.”
“Which one?”
“The big one. He wasn’t that good at it, though. Too much heart. Pretty sure he used to front the money himself half the time rather than fuck over anyone’s business.”
“That is consistent with what we know about Locke Halliwell.” Alexei showed me his teeth. “But my statement stands. There are no Crows out there.”
“You patched them in?”
Cam nodded and my eyebrows shot up so fast I gave myself a facelift. Man, I really was out of touch, and I resented that it bothered me so fucking much.
I need out of here.
Rubi still barred the door.
Istillcouldn’t look at him without catching fire, but fuck, I needed a friend in this room.
Nash had always been reasonable. The chill grin to Cam’s ferocious scowl. The easy acceptance of Rubi’s instinct to question and banter every damn thing. Christ, he’d given me half his tools when I’d walked out on the club and taken his legitimate business with me.
I turned to him now, tuning the others out. “You need to leave this property shit alone. I’m dealing with it. No one’s running me out of my business, and I don’t want club bullshit scaring the locals away.”
Nash had a half-smoked cigarette jammed in his mouth. He sucked down a deep drag and his gaze flicked beyond me.
To the door.
“No,” I snapped. “Don’t do that. Don’t look at him as if he has any fucking say over my life. None of you do.”
“It’s not that simple.” Nash spoke calmly. “You can’t expect us to sit on our hands while you get hurt.”
“No one’s hurting me.”
