“Doing what?”
“Softening her up. It’d be borderline manipulative if you weren’t coming from a good place.”
“Gee, thanks for the character assassination.”
“You’re welcome,” she told me tongue-in-cheek, eyes gleaming. “I’d like her to be happy.”
“Not me?” I asked, cocking a brow at her.
“I think it’d take very little for you to be happy, and most of that revolves around her not just being your lawyer and being your actual girlfriend where you can eat dinner together and maybe go to sleep at night together.” Her cheeks flushed as she said that, and I appreciated that thinking about her bio parents maybe ‘doing it’ wasn’t something she wanted on her mind.
“You’d be right,” I admitted, surprised and oddly impressed by her insight.
She just hummed. “So, makeover. Let’s see if that’s a step forward, hmm?”
Wynter sounded so oddly adult that I’d have laughed if I didn’t think it’d have hurt her feelings.
“Agreed.”
“You promise you’ll come back to see me?”
I dragged my cut from the bag I’d been carrying, handed it to her and asked, “Know what this means?”
“Of course.”
“Sons of Anarchy really isn’t your Wikipedia for all the things I do…” I pointed out.
She just smirked but continued staring down at the worn leather.
“Keep that safe for me until I come back?”
Wynter’s mouth rounded. “You really mean that?”
Teasing aside, she knew what I was leaving behind.
“I do. I ain’t coming back for the cut, but for you, but that’s your insurance.” I winked at her. “It’s worth a lot of ransom money.”
She grinned and held it to her chest for the rest of the walk.
I was gonna miss her, and the best part? From a relationship that had been non-existent at the start, I knew she’d miss me too.
Unknown Sender: I’ll meet you on W 125th St and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd at 9pm.
Nyx: See you there.
Unknown Sender: Don’t be late.
FORTY-FIVE
HAWK
THE FOLLOWING EVENING
“I like your sister.”
It was an innocent enough statement, but I knew my little bird too well to fall for that.
Studying her warily, I asked, “Who’d she hurt?”
Amara’s eyes twinkled as she pranced over to me. When she did a complete pirouette, I cocked an ear and listened out for a fucking ambulance.
My woman was a melancholic. Understandable considering her past, but happiness came in different guises. When she was with me, for example, Quin, both of us, eating, watching The Mentalist, or when someone she didn’t like was being hurt.
If that made her sound sadistic, well, she was.
Being kidnapped and sold into the sex trade did that to a person.
I thought we were fucking blessed that she was as high functioning as she was.
Finally plunking herself beside me on the sofa, she pressed her hand to my chest then shifted her leg so that she was straddling me. Her slight behind, getting curvier now that we’d discovered she adored Mexican food—she was costing us a fortune in avocados—settled on my thighs as she peeped a smile up at me.
“Kendra told Giulia that Nyx was fucking her.” She snorted. “Giulia was not very smart to believe her—”
“Not like Giulia to be anxious about these things,” I pointed out with a frown as I placed my hands on her hips, sliding my thumbs into the loops of her denim skirt. “Kendra’s a cunt—”
“Tak, that she is. She says Giulia is too fat. That Nyx likes them thin.” Amara sniffed. “Kendra does not have eyes.”
“She does.” I smirked. “Two of them to be precise.”
She clicked her fingers. “You know what I mean. She does not use them. If she did, she would see Nyx is…” A hum sounded from her lips. “What is the word?”
“Whipped?” I drawled with a grin.
She tutted. “Nii, Hawk. She is all he sees. Much like with me you,” she mangled.
“‘Much like I am with you,’” I corrected.
People didn’t get our relationship, and I was okay with that. They thought that I was shoved in a corner of Quin and Amara’s, served sloppy seconds… Even with mangled English, Amara disproved that.
“Much like I am with you,” she confirmed. “I see you—”
“And I see you.”
“Tak.” She clicked her fingers again. “Soul friends.”
I grinned. “You’ve been watching TV in Ukrainian again when we’re out.”
Her nose crinkled. “Is much easier than English.”
“And how will you learn if you keep on watching in Ukrainian?”
“Maybe you should learn Ukrainian,” she grumbled.
“I will if you teach me.”
She squinted at me. “This bullshit?”
“No. God’s honest truth.”
“What does God have to do with it?”
I snickered. “Nothing. Or a lot. Depending on your religion.”
She pondered my expression. “You mean this?”
“I do.” And because I wasn’t above throwing Quin under a bus too, I told her, “I bet Quin will want to learn as well.”
Amara tapped her finger against her chin. “I would make good incentives for you learning.”
“You would?” I arched a brow. “What kind of incentives?”
“I don’t know yet. But they would be good.”
Snorting, I told her, “I’m sure.”
She patted my chest. “Is wise you know this.”
“I’m a wise man,” I drawled. “Anyway, what did Giulia do?”
“She held a knife to Kendra’s throat and told her she’d cut off a tit if she went near her man.” She gave a stout nod. “Your sister is wise too.”
My lips twitched. “Can you cut off a breast?”
“Why not?” She hitched a shoulder. “I think I will do this to Liliana when Lodestar tells me where she hides—”
I rolled my eyes. “Note to self, we need a Dexter chop-shop room.”
“Dexter—I like him too.”
“I know.”
“I watch him in Ukrainian. Much darker.” She smacked her lips. “Better.”
“Little whack job,” I told her fondly, reaching up to give those lips of hers a kiss.
Before I could, she shimmied back and said, “I did not tell you best part yet.”
“Better than an artisanal mastectomy?” I didn’t think there was a technical term for what my sister had threatened. But who the fuck knew?
“Artisanile what?”
I cleared my throat. “Artisanal means ‘homemade.’ A mastectomy is breast tissue removal.”
“Oh! Tak.” She beamed. “She—how you say—vomeeteed.”
“Vomited,” I corrected automatically, blinking at her as I translated. “She vomited on her?”