Moses reaches out and pulls me against his side. “I fucking hate it.”
“I’ll be okay. I can handle it,” I tell him, looking up into his face, but he’s still seething at Mount.
When Moses finally glances down at me, I notice something I’ve never seen in his eyes before.
Fear.
Twenty-Two
Moses
I want to strangle Mount for agreeing with Magnolia, but I’m being overprotective as fuck, and it could be marring my judgment.
Who can blame me? She’s my woman.
I spent fifteen goddamned years without her, and now that I have a second chance, I won’t allow anyone to take it from me. Especially not some NOPD detective who can’t be bought.
But because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch, I also refuse to let Magnolia out of my sight. Which is why Jules and I are both sitting in the SUV across the street from the police station, watching as V opens Magnolia’s door. The lawyer climbs out of Mount’s Maybach after her, and V walks them right up to the entrance of the building.
They disappear inside, and I’m not fucking happy about this.
“It’s going to be okay, boss. That fucker isn’t taking her out at a police station. And if our buddy Antonio Reyes so much as cruises past, we’ll be on him, and then he’ll be done.”
I rip my attention from the precinct and start scanning the street for that exact purpose, even though I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we’ll see him. I don’t feel that lucky.
He’s smart, which makes him doubly dangerous because he’s definitely vicious as fuck.
My right-hand man attempts small talk. “It may not be the best time to bring this shit up, but how is everything going with Magnolia?”
I glance over at Jules, a guy I trust with my life. “It’s going good. Better than good. You know, despite all this shit.”
His eyes crease at the corners as he smiles. “That’s what I like to hear. You deserve a woman who gets you after all the shit we’ve been through.”
I recall the conversation Magnolia and I had last night. “She wants a baby,” I tell Jules, my voice rough and low. It’s unfamiliar to discuss this kind of thing, mainly because it’s never happened to me before, and because guys just don’t sit around daydreaming together about bassinets and rattles. Yet, here we are.
Jules’s eyebrows damn near shoot up to his hairline. “Holy fuck. That’s fucking huge, Moses.” He slaps my shoulder. “Damn, man. Good for you.”
“I know.” And I’d feel a hell of a lot better about it if it weren’t for this thick, dark cloud blanketing my world right now with Reyes on the loose.
“You ready for that shit? So soon?”
I don’t second-guess or hesitate. “Fuck yes. With her, it’s all different. It’s gonna work. She gets it. Gets me. Mags is it for me. And if she wants a family the way I do, I’m gonna give it to her as soon as I possibly can. I’m marrying that beautiful warrior of a woman.”
Jules grips my shoulder. “Fuck yeah, you are.” He pauses, shaking his head with a smile on his face. “When you first told me what your plan was and why we were coming back, I thought you were even fucking crazier than normal.”
I choke out a laugh. “Yeah, I figured.”
“But, man,” Jules says, his grin growing bigger with each passing second, “I didn’t doubt you even then. You say something, and you do it, because that’s the man you are. And whatever your plan is after you get the family started, know I still want to be part of it.”
The topic hasn’t come up before, but while we’re here, I ask, “You don’t want to retire?”
“I’m too young for that shit. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with my free time. Probably get into trouble. Why? You thinking about retiring for good this time?”
My shoulders rise and fall. “None of us ever needs to work another day in our lives.”
Totally replacing the darkness in my life with light would ensure I wouldn’t muddy up our future. It’s hard to have one foot in the door and the other deep inside a dangerous game. I’d never want my future with Magnolia—or our children—to be compromised. Suddenly, risks just don’t seem all that worth it anymore.
Then again, it’s all I know.
Jules reads my silence. “Don’t get me wrong, man. I understand if you want to bow out. But I fucking get off on what we do. Don’t know that I’m ready to give it up yet. Wouldn’t you be bored? You get a charge out of this shit just like I do. It’s not all about the money. Not anymore.”
I think of the people we’ve helped disappear—rescued, actually, in a lot of ways. People who, like the sons of bitches Reyes and Ortiz, would have otherwise been killed by the cartel or someone else who wanted them dead. As our skills got more in demand, we were able to pick and choose who we helped, and not all of them have been terrible people. Some were damn decent, just desperate.
“I don’t know what I want to do yet,” I tell Jules honestly. “But whatever we decide, it’ll be a group decision. You, me, Trey, and Mags. She’s part of the team now.”
“We’re all right with that. Besides, if you stay in the business, I bet she could help us take it up a notch. She’s something else.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she is,” I say, looking back to the entrance of the station, wishing like hell I could hear and see what’s going on inside.
Twenty-Three
Magnolia
I hate everything about cop shops. From their ugly paint to the industrial flooring to the smell of burned coffee, judgmental stares, and injustice. However, cops are only part of a broken fucking system not doing a good enough job protecting the people who need it most.
I’m perched on an uncomfortable plastic chair inside an interrogation room with Barton Fields from Mount’s legal team beside me. He was in the car waiting when I climbed in the Maybach outside of the family entrance to Mount’s hidden kingdom. He introduced himself with a no-nonsense handshake and proceeded to tell me exactly how this appointment would go.
Except, the meeting hasn’t even started.
I check the time on my phone again. “It’s quarter after twelve. Is he fucking with me?”
Fields looks at the mirror on the wall opposite from where we’re sitting. “No. He’s making sure to waste your time because you didn’t ask how high when he said jump.” From the way Fields says it, I can tell he assumes someone is watching from the other side of the one-way glass. “But if they keep us waiting five minutes longer, we’re leaving.”
Fields’s assumption must be right, because at 12:19, the door to the interview room opens and Cavender struts in.
“So sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Maison.” He comes toward the table and holds out his hand to Fields first, which pisses me off. “Detective John Cavender. Who are you?”
“Ms. Maison’s counsel, Barton Fields. We’ll be keeping this meeting brief, as Ms. Maison doesn’t have any information regarding the homicide you told her about on the telephone this morning.”