Branded

by Scarlett Finn

  “I want to,” she said. “I want us to be like we were, I want to hang out and have sex and talk. But I need a man who’ll be with me, not a playmate only interested in fun. I’m done with all that crap. I need to know you can handle the shit.”

  They’d spent time worrying about if she could handle seeing what he did and if she would still be able to look him in the eye after he’d hurt the people she’d sent him after. But there was another side to the coin they hadn’t considered.

  “I can handle it,” he said. “I’m here telling you I fucked up. I’m fucking human, sue me. You think your boy Tag is perfect—”

  “This is not about Tag, you’re not in competition with him. Why can’t you see that?”

  “I see that I did something to hurt you and this is the first place you came. I see that every time we fight, every time you leave me, this is where you’re gonna come. So it doesn’t matter about your past with him or ours, or how many times him and me say we’ll give each other a break, every time I fuck up, he’s gonna see it. So he’s gonna hate me and you’re gonna have to live with that. ‘Cept you said, if I was gonna be in your life I had to make peace with the dude. That ain’t ever gonna happen if this is what happens every time we fight.”

  Except they hadn’t fought, she’d been upset, he’d kicked her out, that was the end of the incident, it was over in a heartbeat. But she could see his point. “You might not believe me but I don’t usually lose control like that. I might be driven by emotion, but getting upset like that… it never happens.”

  “You don’t have to make excuses,” he said. “It’s my fucked-up-ness that caused it. I felt something strong and new and positive and I reacted by super-imposing something negative onto it. How fucked up is that?”

  But their emerging honesty was encouraging her and beginning to erase some of last night’s doubt. Yeah, they’d had an issue, but they didn’t let it fester, they got over their egos and were dealing with it. “You remember when we were on your kitchen table right before we first had sex? You told me you were fucked up, said I was fucked up too. I guess we’ll have to get used to the idea that we’re both going to fuck up sometimes.”

  “I guess,” Archer said. “I do feel like shit for kicking you out.”

  “And I feel like an idiot for showing up upset.”

  “If you’re sad or hurt or angry, I want you on my doorstep, I want you in my arms. I won’t ever compare you to her again, I promise.”

  Mommy issues, she wouldn’t have pegged him to be that type. But she had issues of her own, so who was she to judge his? He hadn’t dumped her, sneered at her, or humiliated her by ridiculing her emotions. But he had made her question if he could cope with a real, honest relationship.

  Tag didn’t wait to be told he could come in. Their allotted time for privacy must have expired because the door opened and Tag came back in with Gio not too far behind him.

  “You want us to toss him out?” Tag asked her, looking only at her and disregarding Archer’s presence.

  “No,” she said, turning back to Archer. “No, we’ve figured it out.”

  “Wonderful,” Gio said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “So are you gonna take off?”

  She was about to say yes because she guessed if they wanted privacy to continue this conversation it was only right that they do it in one of their own apartments as opposed to taking up time and space in Tag’s.

  But Archer’s words made it out before hers did. “We have business,” Archer said. “I found out some things you’ll want to know.”

  Hexam. Last night he’d been out talking to Hexam’s associates before the whole apartment upset bullshit happened. Nya didn’t know what he’d found out, there hadn’t been time to talk. He didn’t have to share here in front of Tag, he could’ve filtered it through her and strung them along and kept the specifics to himself until their relationship stuff was sorted out. But here he was, being honest and up front, just like he told her he would be.

  “What did you find out?” Tag asked. “Who did you speak to?”

  “The who doesn’t matter,” Archer said. Like journalists and spies, he probably didn’t give up a source. “We should sit down.”

  twenty

  Much to her chagrin, Gio stayed. All the while she was in the kitchen making the coffee, Nya kept one eye on the table ensuring that the men kept their distance from each other and that nobody said anything out of line. She needn’t have worried because nobody said anything at all.

  Tag, Archer, and Gio spent so much time glaring at each other like lions ready to defend their territory, that no one had the time to make small or trash talk.

  Laying everything on the tray, she carried it to the table and stood near the center to begin pouring their drinks. Tag sat at the head of the table with Archer at the opposite end. There were three place settings at each side and Gio sat at the one on Tag’s left.

  Nya didn’t know where to sit because she was sort of trying to be a neutral party, but she really didn’t want to sit next to Gio. For the sake of symmetry, after she’d handed all of the men their drinks, she took a seat at Archer’s left. She wanted him to be comfortable enough to tell the truth and not to worry that he’d been used for his skills as he felt he had been the last time when her friend demanded Archer’s services without offering compensation.

  “You’re right that Hexam’s pissed,” Archer said. “And he’s making a big deal of it in circles that could do you a lot of harm.”

  His low tone was detached in a professional manner rather than in apathy. Nya was impressed that he managed to be concise without being patronizing, which would be very easy for him given the hostility fizzing in the air.

  “That’s what you hear?” Gio asked and she could tell he was desperate to ridicule Archer, but she guessed that came from being beta all the way.

  Archer ignored him. “What you won’t hear is that three of the four guys who were taken down were guys he wanted rid of anyway, guys he didn’t trust, guys he would’ve picked off if they hadn’t died that day.”

  “But he’s making a big deal of those four?” Gio asked.

  Archer nodded. “Sure he is, ‘cause he got ripped off and it sounds better if that happened after four of his best guys were taken down, guns blazing, than that his operation was weak and easily infiltrated.”

  “Does he plan to hurt Tag?” she asked.

  While answering her question, Archer focused on Tag. “All I can tell you is that this isn’t over. He doesn’t have a concrete plan, but he’s talking the big talk, which means if you saunter onto his radar, he’ll smack you down hard. He’ll probably try to do it in public to embarrass and humiliate you; I’d guess that’s his plan.”

  “You’d guess?” Tag said, infected by Gio’s cynicism. “Nobody’s paying you to guess.”

  Nobody was paying him at all, not in monetary terms. Somehow Archer kept his cool and she hoped she was part of the reason he did. Nya wanted her opinion of him to matter. “I can tell you there’s a way in. He’s setting up some big deal with a guy in Mexico, a guy I know, actually,” Archer said. “A good guy. I dated his sister.” Leaning back, he scratched his ear, relaxed and comfortable. “That’s not important. So Hexam’s leaving the country soon, for probably quite a while, which means if you don’t settle this debt now, soon, it’s gonna hang around your neck for a long time. The only way you will settle it is with Hexam direct. If Hexam’s out of the country and one of his guys finds you, you won’t be able to reason with them ‘cause their orders are pretty damn clear.”

  “To kill him?” Gio asked.

  Archer shook his head once before taking Nya’s hand from the table to his mouth, although he was talking to the men at the opposite end of the table and still hadn’t looked at her at all. Lifting her hand seemed like an absent gesture, like his subconscious had reached for her because his mouth couldn’t resist the instinctive urge to taste her.

  “Death on the spot would be a gift,” Archer said. “
Hexam doesn’t order assassinations.” Continuing to kiss her hand, he tasted her knuckles and her palm while he pondered something. Pressing her palm to his chest, he held it in place with both of his flat on top of it. “I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever heard of Hexam ordering a clean hit. I don’t think there’s even been a hint of it.”

  Watching him access this information in his memory banks was fascinating; he was always casual and cool, even while he was searching through his internal directory of fathomless facts and squadrons of secrets trying to locate what he’d heard about the man who wanted to hurt Tag. He had to have some sort of internal index system given the amount of data he had to have stored, because he thought about it for another minute.

  “No, even the dealers, the couriers, anyone who’s screwed him over or fucked up and made a mistake, he doesn’t order quick deaths for them.”

  Listening to him talk was fascinating. “You know everything,” she murmured, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “The last time Hexam formed a partnership with a guy in Columbia… well he thought he’d formed a partnership, it turned into one big fucked up mess. He left the country for that too and there was a guy, I can’t think of his name…” Archer said, narrowing his gaze at nothing.

  She smiled. His heart pumped against her flat hand at a low resting rate. Her guy wasn’t worried, and was in no rush. Even sitting in what could be classed as enemy territory, he wasn’t breaking a sweat. “It was something…” Archer was still thinking. “Ruiz, that was it…Hexam had left this loose end at home, his men weren’t ordered to kill the traitor, they kept him hostage in this beautiful house up north, though I guess the captive didn’t see much of it. They kept the poor schmuck for months until Hexam got back.”

  “How do you know so much?” Gio asked.

  “And why are you sharing it?” Tag asked. “I’ve never heard you talk this much.”

  This was the time Archer chose to look at her. “Because it’s what my lady wants, and I’m in the doghouse,” he said. “This is what you want, isn’t it, Squirm?”

  Whether he meant complete honesty, transparency, or just showing respect for Tag, she wanted all of it and he was doing this for her. Damn, she was glad she hadn’t put makeup on that morning.

  “This is what I want,” she said. “Thank you, Fella, you’re amazing.”

  “I’m not done,” he said. “I have a couple more guys I’ll check in with to find out exactly when he’s going away and how long he plans to be gone. I’ll let you know the best way to get in touch with him ‘cause showing up at his place without an invitation isn’t a great idea.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Gio asked and the thread of his suspicion took Archer’s concentration away from her. “How can we trust you? How do we know this isn’t another trap?”

  “Why would I want to hurt either of you? I don’t give a fuck.”

  Vindicated, Gio straightened. “Exactly, so why are you doing this?”

  “I’ve already told you. It’s important to Nya. She told me to do it, so I’m doing it.”

  Gio had some nerve to still be treating Archer like shit. “Does it matter why?” Nya asked. Archer had given them so much and her defensive hackles rose. Neither Tag nor Gio had offered as much as a thank you. “Look at how much more you know now, that you didn’t know this morning. You guys have been holed up here for months, doing nothing. Sitting, waiting like pussies to be taken down. Now we know he’s leaving the country, now we know what he’s capable of. We know we have to reach out to him.”

  She didn’t have Tag’s full attention because that was trained on Archer. “You said there was a way,” Tag said, linking his hands and leaning on the table. “You said there was a way to fix this.”

  “There might be,” Archer said, kissing the back of her fingers, then locking her hand between both of his. “I’m working on it.”

  “And what’s this solution gonna cost me?” Tag asked. “You give us all this information and withhold the most important detail.”

  “Listen, I can tell you the way. I can ask the questions. I can find out what you want to know. What you choose to do with the information is your responsibility.” She could hear that Archer was losing his patience, but she could understand why when he was faced with such a lack of gratitude after taking risks to dig these guys out of a hole.

  Tag and Gio looked at each other. “He’s going out of town,” Gio said. But something went unsaid between the two men at the other end of the table.

  That tone of his made her uneasy. “Don’t even think about doing anything stupid,” she said, sure she could hear the cranks and levers in their minds manufacturing a plan. “He might be going out of town, but his men aren’t, so you’ll still be at risk if you don’t fix this. Archer just said that.”

  “But how well will he be guarding his patch?” Gio asked.

  All these years she’d thought he was a fun-loving guy, laid back and easy to get along with, now it seemed that all the tension was taking its toll because he was talking crazy. The question was one of the stupidest she’d ever heard.

  Exasperation warred with disbelief. “This guy wants your blood, he wants to stop your breathing, and you’re thinking about ripping him off again?”

  Archer stood up in a move she hadn’t anticipated. “This is why I don’t get involved with guys like you. Why I don’t offer all the information up front,” Archer said. “Because even when good sense smacks you between the eyes, greed gives you a hard-on. You get a whiff of power and nothing else matters anymore. I don’t give two fucks if you two get yourselves killed, but what you forgot”—he dropped his knuckles onto the table to glare ire into Tag—“is that when this guy was trying to find you, Nya and her friend paid the price. If you’re too much of a chickenshit to face Hexam then you’ve got no right to poach his patch when he’s not in town. You are a pussy. Face him like a man or get the hell out of Dodge. I won’t let Nya get hurt ‘cause you can’t take care of business. You take care of this before Hexam leaves, or I’ll take care of it myself.”

  Archer backed away from the table, but both Tag and Gio were on their feet. “What does that mean?” Gio asked, frantic, and it served him right to be given this reality check. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means that if I have to hand you to Hexam on a plate to protect Nya, that’s what I’ll do.”

  These men couldn’t get along with each other for more than five minutes at a time, she felt like she was dealing with quarrelsome children. “You’re not gonna do that,” she said, getting up to take his hand before she turned to Tag. “He’s not gonna do that because you’re going to deal with this. We’re going to find out what Hexam wants and we’re going to find a way for you to give it to him. No more games. No more going after men who might hurt you.”

  “We do what’s right for the business,” Gio said.

  Tag didn’t look convinced and she didn’t trust Gio not to get into his head, so she left Archer and went to the top of the table to link both her hands in Tag’s, palm-to-palm. “I need you to fix this,” she said. “Just fix it so we can all move on and forget this guy exists. Will you please do that for me? Let’s just get this guy out of our lives.”

  Tag let go of one of her hands to stroke her face. It connected them and calmed him, so she smiled, though she knew Archer wouldn’t like watching this. “I’ll hear what Archer has to say when he figures it out,” Tag said. “If I have something that Hexam wants that I can give him to make this go away, I’ll do it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gio butted in.

  Tag was still fixated on her so she took the opportunity. “That’s a promise,” she said. “You promise you’ll do this for me? You know how I feel about a person’s word.”

  If he’d learned nothing else about her in all their years as friends, he knew how she valued integrity. If he gave her his word, she would believe it.

  “I promise,” he said. “If it’s in my power to give it, I’ll do
it. I’ll make this go away, if it will make you happy.”

  “You being safe,” she said. “That makes me happy. I want this over so we can move on. Give us some time and we’ll be in touch when we know what we have to do.”

  twenty-one

  Closing her eyes, she let her head drop back onto the headrest of the passenger seat of Archer’s car. “You look tired,” he said and although he was driving, his hand curled around her knee.

  She didn’t bother to open her eyes. “I am,” she said. Her night had been emotional and she hadn’t slept. So it was no surprise that she was beginning to feel fatigued. “I think I’ll take a nap when I get back to my place. Do you mind dropping me off there?”

  “We’re not going to your apartment.”

  Relaxing her hand over his, she lifted her head. “I know we have things to fix between us. But I can’t come back to yours and fall into bed with you, Archer. For one thing, I’m too tired to think about sex.”

  “We’re not going back to my place either.”

  Now she was really confused. If they weren’t going to his or hers, and he’d insisted on taking her away from Tag’s, she couldn’t think where else they could be headed. “I’m not hungry,” she said, despite not eating a thing all day, she was too tired to consider a meal. She’d probably rather have sex than sit upright in a restaurant for the next few hours being social. “I just need to lie down and close my eyes. Can we do dinner another night?”

  “I’m not taking you to dinner either.”

  Eliminating destinations didn’t help her figure out what was going on. For the first time since they’d got in the car, she took a long look outside. Familiar buildings zipped by, the roads were clear, so he’d managed to make good progress in getting away from Tag’s.