He sighed. “You know they don’t let doctors confer on patients who are close to them.”
I just gritted my teeth before I asked tiredly, “What’s up, Mav?”
“Came for an appointment but wanted to check in, see if you were around.”
“Why?” It wasn’t like Maverick to beat around the bush. On edge, I asked, “Sparrows?”
Those goddamn motherfucking secret society pussies who’d infested everything from law enforcement to the political stomping ground of this great nation.
His nose crinkled. “Nah. That’s Lodestar’s territory right now. She doesn’t trust me.” He tapped his temple. “Says that she’ll have to shoot me in the head if I fuck this shit up with them, and I don’t feel like adding to the brain damage.”
“Never let it be said that you’re not a smart man.”
He shot me a dopey grin, and as he did, I saw something flicker in his eyes. Something I wasn’t used to seeing.
Contentment.
He’d just found his Old Lady.
And no, that wasn’t because she’d been in fucking hiding.
That was because Maverick lived with brain damage from his time served overseas. His awareness drifted in and out, with heavy duty shocks packing such a punch that he could be transported back in space and time to Afghanistan.
The blast at the compound my father had been caught in had destabilized the structure, and when dipshit here had gone onto the property to retrieve some files from our safes, the roof had caved in on him.
That, for his brain, was the final straw.
I scratched my chin where my beard was growing in. “Okay, so not Sparrows.” A thought drifted into being. “It ain’t the fucking Posse, is it? I told Nyx that if Giulia caused any more shit that was something he had to handle.”
“No, for fuck’s sake. It’s nothing to do with the MC.”
“Well? What is it? Jesus, man, spit it out.”
He huffed and said, “Need to talk to you outside of the range of cameras.”
I blinked but nodded and started walking with him down the corridor. We took it slow because he was still shaky, and as we made it into the foyer, I asked, “Where’s Alessa?”
His Old Lady.
“She usually comes with me, but I needed to talk to you.”
I cast him a look. “Bullshit.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, so there was a meeting with the Posse.”
“Fuck me, that’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Only trouble was, I didn’t have it in me to really be that upset.
The Posse were a bunch of Old Ladies who’d gotten together to give me migraines. For all that, maybe it was a sign I was getting fucking old, because I was tired of the clubwhores gushing pussy juice everywhere and missed having wives and kids running around the place—
The thought had me braking to a halt.
Jesus.
I really was getting fucking old.
Or, maybe, at this moment, I just missed the shit out of my mom.
Mom had been like Giulia. Not as fiery, but lethal in her own right.
“Rex? What is it?”
Shaking the melancholy off, I started walking again and muttered, “Nothing.”
It was frigid outside as was the way in Jersey in late December, and as my breath frosted in front of me, I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared around the badly lit parking lot.
Maverick seemed to see what had me scowling too, because he told me, “I’ll get Sin on improving the lighting around here.”
“Nah. Get Steel in on that. His Old Lady’s the one who works here. It’ll make him feel like he has some control over her safety.”
After Stone had been kidnapped by a serial killer in Manhattan, my brother was definitely struggling with the need to keep his woman safe.
“Pretty sure your job is nothing more than juggling egos,” Maverick said, shaking his head at me.
“Eighty percent that, and twenty percent trying to make sure that my brothers don’t end up in jail or dead.” I grunted. “This far away enough from the doors?”
He peered around and said, “Yeah.” Sucking in a breath, he rasped, “Been working on something for Nyx. You know, to deal with his little problem?”
My vice president’s ‘little problem’ was the compelling need to torture and murder pedophiles.
It was a problem I backed fully, but one his family didn’t. Nyx had made promises to the women in his life, promises that were jeopardizing his sanity.
“I still can’t believe the fucker’s gonna be a dad.”
“You and me both,” Maverick retorted. “Anyway, in between migraines, I’ve been working on a couple projects.”
“Like what?” I asked, curious, because I knew those migraines were fucking killer and screen time exacerbated that shit.
Which meant he was sneaking around doing this work because his Old Lady was a mother hen, and she wouldn’t have let him unless it was urgent.
“One’s an app. I’m trying to make it open source.”
Even more curious, I asked, “What kind of app?”
“Controlling kids’ Internet use. They try to sext, it’ll ping on their parents’ phones. Gives the location of the device, so they always know where the child is. Porn-blocking. Shit like that.” He shrugged. “It’s easy coding for me, and I was looking out for parents who are below the poverty line. They can’t afford the subscriptions for apps like that. I don’t think you should have to pay to make your kids secure online—”
Seeing he was working himself up, I raised a hand. “I ain’t arguing with you, Mav. Whatever you need, we’ll get for you, okay? We’ll make sure that it can stay open source because you’re right. Shit like that should be free.”
He blew out a breath. “It’ll cost.”
“What are we earning all this fucking money for if we can’t put some of it to good use?”
“St. Rex,” he half-teased.
“Doubt I’m getting canonized any time soon. Okay, was that the problem? You need cash flow?”
“No. That was… To build the app, I had to trawl the web. You know, to figure out the extent of what needed blocking? Came across some shit that made me want to bleach my eyes, but there’s nothing new there.” He shook his head. “We need more Nyxes, man. We don’t need him taken out of action.”
I grimaced because I knew where he was coming from.
“Doxxing those sick pieces of shit doesn’t feel like it’s enough, torturing them long distance ain’t gonna pack the same punch, but—” His cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. “—I get it. Kid on the way, his priorities gotta change.
“Anyway, as I’m trawling, I came across this site. Like a private website. I shouldn’t have been able to access it, but the kid had uploaded some porn on there.”
“Child porn?”
“No. Regular spank bank shit. Kid’s only sixteen. You don’t need to know how my code slipped into his server, but what I found was… disturbing.”
Maverick, with what he’d seen and done over the years, took a lot to disturb.
That wasn’t to say shit didn’t freak him out. Like he’d said, he wanted to bleach his eyes a lot of the time, but his tone had unease slithering through my system.