A weird feeling centered itself in my soul.
Humans were scum.
No dog was born scared of us—it was learned.
I fucking hated people.
“Your spirit animals, tak?”
Finding Amara watching me, her hands shoved into her pockets as she walked toward me, I demanded, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nyx means black.”
“It means darkness,” I corrected.
She smirked. “Big dog dark, you. Little dog nasty, biter, Giulia.”
Despite myself, my lips curled. “If you think all I do is drool and pick up after her—”
“You do,” she said with a laugh. “At home. On the road, I think it is very different, but at home, you’re the one who stops Giulia from being stomped on by the world.”
The words resonated more than I’d like.
“She needs a protector,” I said defensively.
Something blazed in Amara’s eyes. “Tak.”
She drifted away as silently as she’d appeared—fucking creepy—and my cell buzzed one more goddamn time.
Unknown.
Attention well and truly snagged, I growled under my breath, not spotting how the Newfoundlander ambled out of the compound gates, the tiny chihuahua still clamped between its teeth.
Nerve flicking at my temple, and well aware they’d keep on calling until I picked up, I answered the second time as I retreated to the clubhouse, my argument with Quin forgotten, and slid into Rex’s new office.
“What?” I snapped.
A soft chuckle sounded in my ear. “You’re the only man with the balls to talk to me like that.”
I sneered at nothing. “That’s what happens when you ain’t afraid of no one.”
“I think that used to be the case,” came the harsh voice down the line. “But it always changes when you get a woman, when they have a kid. Families make you vulnerable. They’ll be your biggest weakness. You weren’t afraid of anyone before, but that’s changing, isn’t it?”
He was right.
The bastard.
“What do you want?”
Another laugh rang in my ear, but he didn’t ram it home. “I want to meet.”
“Like you said,” I sneered. “I got myself a woman. I don’t date random bastards who call me even though I’ve told them to fuck off a dozen times.”
“And here I was thinking that you were starting to trust me.”
My jaw clenched. “I didn’t ask you to get rid of that body.”
“You didn’t have to ask me. That’s how favors work.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“I never said you did. But I wasn’t about to let you go down for your uncle’s murder. Not when that was a righteous death.”
“What did you do with him?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
“I’m not worried,” I said, and I meant it. “The body was clean.”
“There was a gun found with the corpse. Did you know that?”
I grunted. “No. But I don’t care. I have nothing to worry about.”
“Whatever. I dealt with that problem not because I wanted you to owe me. I did it because I want you to trust me. If I were a pig, would I really have gotten rid of it for you?”
He had a point.
“What do you want?”
“To talk with you.”
“We’re talking now.”
“In person.”
“What’s the difference? You wanna see my pretty face?” I mocked.
“I’m an old-fashioned man, Nyx. I like to do things in a certain way.”
I stared at Rex’s desk. “What do you want from me?” I asked, repeating the same question I’d been asking over and fucking over again.
How the hell Unknown knew about the body that’d washed up on the shore in Edgewater, I didn’t have a goddamn clue.
It was an inconvenience, but I wasn’t worried.
Nothing on that body would implicate me.
Bear would have seen to that.
A heavy sigh whistled in my ear, but I found myself surprised when the stranger answered, “I’m on a crusade of my own. I know what it’s like to have someone in the family who was hurt how your sister was hurt. Sometimes, the good Lord doesn’t act swiftly enough in sending those sick bastards to perdition.”
I straightened up at his words.
They were earnest.
Pained.
No, agonized.
We suffered with the same disease—regret.
Temptation trickled into me. Sweet. Cloying. Desperate. A cure.
I needed a cure.
Like a junkie needing a fix, my hand clenched at my side as I rasped, “Tell me more.”
FORTY-THREE
STONE
It was quite by chance that I saw Rachel in a coffee shop in Manhattan.
It wasn’t like I visited the island all that much anymore, and I was only here this time because I’d wanted to catch up with some friends who were still residents at High Lidren Hospital.
When I saw her picking at a salad, though, I figured it was a great chance to speak with her.
I’d been wanting to ever since the Posse meeting, to be honest.
Plunking my ass down on the bench opposite her, I watched her blink slowly at me. She was either scanning me or trying to remember who I was. I genuinely didn’t know which.
“I’ll call you back later, Parker.”
I frowned then realized she was talking to someone on the phone.
These damn earbuds—in my job, it was more likely that someone was talking to themselves than into their ‘ears.’
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were on a call.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was just work. It’s not like it won’t be there after we stop talking.”
“I used to be like that.”
“Not anymore?”
I shook my head, absentmindedly tapped my side where my brand was, and muttered, “With an Old Man like Steel, he keeps you on your toes.”
“Must be hard seeing as you’re still recuperating.”
“I’m tired of recuperating,” I grumbled as I raised a hand for a server to approach me. When she eyed my raised arm in surprise, I arched a brow at her. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“I can see. What about?”
“Should you be drinking coffee?”
“It’s decaffeinated.”
I hummed. “I wanted to talk about us.”
“What about us?”
“That it’s strange we’re not closer.”
“Why is it strange?”
“We’re family. We’re practically the same age. We should be closer than what we are. You were too busy hiding in the crawl spaces as a kid to let me become friendly with you.”
Her cheeks colored. “I understood the unspoken lines that were drawn around me.”
“What unspoken lines?”
“I knew I wasn’t popular.”
“You spent your time under the clubhouse, Rachel. We thought you were weird. To be fair, I still think it’s weird. What the fuck did you do under there anyway?”