by Kit Rocha
She rocked up on her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek. “I know. Are you going to shower with me?”
“Next time,” he rumbled. “Gotta check in with Dallas.”
Something new stirred, something a lot darker than vanity. There was nothing civilized about this feeling. Nothing tame. It was like a part of her she’d never realized was there had woken for the first time. It circled the memory of her landlady’s limp, lifeless body and demanded blood.
Dallas O’Kane wouldn’t have his current reputation if he wasn’t willing to paint the walls with anyone who opposed him. That was probably what Ford was about to do—help Dallas track down and destroy the men who’d violated their sector.
The thought brought her savage, vicious pleasure. Maybe she belonged in Sector Four after all.
Chapter Seven
When he was pissed off, Dallas O’Kane moved fast.
“This is the one who held the gun to your girl’s head,” he told Ford as they surveyed the man chained to a chair.
The warehouse where they held their weekly cage fights was always dark around the edges, but Dallas had slapped the man down in the center, under the unforgiving glare of the largest, brightest light. “His friends gave him up fast enough,” Dallas continued, crossing his arms over his chest with a dismissive snort. “They swore up and down that he was the only one who fucked with one of our people.”
“Doesn’t make the old lady any less dead.” But Ford had no doubt Dallas had dealt with the others—quickly and with deadly force.
Which was good, because he had his own matters to attend to.
The punk in the chair squirmed under Ford’s blank stare. He didn’t look long on brains, but he had ears, and a mouth he seemed determined to run. “I didn’t kill the old bitch.”
“Do I look like the kind of man who gives a shit who pulled the trigger or held the blade?” Ford asked, taking one step closer. “You’re judged by the company you keep, son.”
“But I didn’t—”
Dallas scoffed again, the derisive noise cutting enough to silence the protest. “You think he wants to hear excuses? Some of that shit you stole was his, so I’d get real quiet and real agreeable.”
The kid didn’t have a chance in hell of listening, but Ford spoke anyway. “You took some things that didn’t belong to you. Now, I’m a fair bastard, really. Normally, I get it. People steal. Sometimes it’s the only way to survive out here in the sectors. But a lot of things went down here that I don’t fucking like.”
That got him a stubborn, rebellious scowl. “We couldn’t have known the girl was yours. She ain’t got ink.”
His. Instead of squashing the possessive satisfaction that roared up, Ford embraced it. “Someone knew well enough to stop you, someone who’d seen her with one of us. Now, what that says to me is you didn’t do your due diligence. You know what that means, right?”
Angry silence.
Dallas endured it for five seconds before kicking the man’s boot. “Answer his fucking question, or I’m gonna unchain you and let him at you.”
The kid’s gaze flicked from Dallas to Ford before he spit out a sullen, “No.”
“It means doing your homework. Thinking before you act. Making damn sure that what you’re about to do can’t come back on you and your boys.” Ford knelt in front of the chair. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty, still wet behind the ears. “Due diligence, that’s lesson number one. You picking up what I’m laying down?”
He looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck, I get it.”
“Good. Where’s the stuff?”
The kid shot another wary look at Dallas, who was doing his best impression of a bored king. He played it well, in part thanks to his ability to dominate a room from sheer presence alone. He didn’t have to scowl to look intimidating, which made the moments when his lip kicked up in wry amusement all the more terrifying.
“You’re looking for mercy from the wrong man,” he drawled, lifting one hand to scratch his chin. “You think I want to be wasting my time with some sorry-ass wannabe so sad he has to roll great-grandma? Your only chance of walking out of here is making Ford real happy.”
Ford knew Dallas wasn’t likely to kill the kid—not for stealing—but whoever had pulled the trigger on the old lady had undoubtedly ended up good and dead. Judging from the thief’s pallor, he’d seen it go down and believed he might be next.
“It’s already sold,” he said quickly, straining forward in the chains in his sudden rush to play nice. “All except the heater. I only have my share of the cash.”
Ford snorted. “Of course it is. Where’d you unload the jewelry?”
“That wheezy fucker who just built the new place on the edge of town.”
“Walt, huh?”
“Yes!” He twisted, lifting one hip. “The cash is in my pocket. Take it, give it to the girl. I swear I won’t get near her again.”
“Well, I don’t want the cash.” Ford caught the kid by the chin in a hard grip. “I want the locket, and you and me are gonna go get it.”
For a second, he looked well and truly baffled. “That piece of shit? Old man hardly gave us squat for it.”
Oh, Ford deserved some kind of fucking medal for maintaining his composure. “Just because you couldn’t fence it for a week’s worth of booze and tits doesn’t make it shit. It means something to my girl.”
Brown eyes bulged in a pale face. The boy tried to nod, but Ford tightened his grip until he yelped. “Okay, okay! We’ll get the piece. And then we’re square?”
“Not even close, son. I’m also gonna beat your ass—then we’ll be square.”
“What?” He twisted harder, managing to yank his face away to shoot an entreating look at Dallas. “I told him what he wanted to know.”
“So you did,” Dallas agreed easily. “And after he kicks your ass, you’ll be walking out of here. But if you don’t like O’Kane justice, I’m happy to put you in the river with your friend. Why don’t you think it over while Ford and I have a chat?”
The kid blustered, but Ford ignored him as he and Dallas climbed out of the cage. “You think he can learn from his mistakes, O’Kane?”
Dallas didn’t reply until they hit the edge of the room and pushed through to one of the old storage rooms. It was littered with random shit—every room in the complex was, because Dallas never threw away a damn thing—including a collection of extra booths they’d hauled out of the Broken Circle when they extended the stage.
“Fuck if I know,” Dallas said, dropping to one. He sprawled his legs out in front of him and raised one eyebrow. “I’d say ten minutes of thinking about ending up as fish food should put him in a learning mood.”
“If anything will,” Ford agreed, dragging a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “At least they went to Walt. He’ll give us the locket, no questions asked.”
Dallas huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, he will. Old bastard’s got a soft spot for Lex.”
“Of course, I’m still gonna drag this bastard out there and make him explain the situation.”
“Good. If he’s stupid enough to try to sell stolen goods to Walt again, we’ll hear about it.” Dallas tugged his own cigarette case free and studied Ford for a moment. “So. Your girl, huh?”
A look that piercing could make a man fidget, if he let it. “It scared the piss out of him, right?”
“Sure. That’s why I used it.” Dallas flicked open his lighter and raised an eyebrow. “Lot of fuss for a locket, though.”
Maybe so, but there wasn’t a single person in the sectors who hadn’t lost something irreplaceable, something precious. Ford was tired of seeing it—or of looking the other way and telling himself it wasn’t his problem.
And this was Mia.
“She might have wound up dead,” he reminded Dallas. “Would have, if she hadn’t gone shopping and been seen with Trix. Only random fucking chance kept her alive.”
“Yeah.” Dallas lit his smoke before snapping the lighter shut wit
h a heavy sigh. “A lot has changed since you joined up, Ford, and you haven’t been around much to see it. I’ve let you roam wild because you do good work and I trust you, but I need to know you, too. And you need to know me.”
“That’s fair.” Dallas had given him plenty of freedom to make his own way, but the O’Kanes were only strong if they could stand together.
Dallas shook his head. “It’s necessity. It was one thing when it was just Sector Four, and our biggest threat came from stomping out upstarts. But now we’re spread thin trying to clean up Three, and shit’s falling through the cracks. I don’t care if she’s barely been here a week—Mia’s ours, and that’s always meant something. Add that to the bootleggers...”
The little pissants who thought they could trade on Dallas O’Kane’s legend and reputation to market their own liquor were as good as dead, but no matter. The fact that they’d managed to sell their cheap swill, packaged in fake O’Kane labels, at all was a blow to the gang.
Dallas’s next steps were fraught, vital. He may as well have been tap-dancing on landmines. One wrong move could compromise his gang, his sector. His way of life.
Ford crushed out his cigarette. “So what do we do?”
“We recruit. We circle the wagons.” Dallas exhaled smoke toward the ceiling before pinning Ford with a look. “No more loners, Derek. You’re part of this. An O’Kane. And it kills me to know you hurt yourself worse crawling back here because you didn’t think we’d come for you.”
That made it sound so awful, as if he had no confidence in his brothers. “I didn’t, okay? That’s not why I started back after my accident. It was about doing something instead of just lying there, waiting.”
“And I get that. But I need you to know, man. We would have found you. You don’t have to spend your spare nights rolling through the latest orgy for that to be true.”
Ford snorted. The sex was an undeniable perk—for some—but it was far from the only thing that bound the O’Kanes together. “Yes, sir.”
Dallas rolled to his feet. “Good. And watch yourself with that girl. Lex wouldn’t have thrown her at you if she couldn’t handle your foul-ass mouth and pissy attitude, but women from Two will fool you. Especially Cerys’s girls.”
“Fool you how?”
His leader hesitated, staring at the ash on the end of his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and slamming his boot onto it. “When they’re pissed, you’ll know. Fucking hell, you’ll know. But when they’re hurt, or scared—” He shook his head. “By the time they let you see, sometimes it’s too late.”
His personal experience with Lex, no doubt, and Ford softened his next words by clapping his hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “I’m not you, buddy. And she’s not Lex. But I appreciate the advice, all the same.”
“No, you don’t. No one ever does.” Dallas grinned and jerked his head toward the door. “Go rub the puppy’s face in his own piss and see if he can learn. I’ve got to go play barbarian king.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ford pushed out into the main room. The kid had managed to scoot his chair nearly out of the harsh circle of light in the center of the ring, but it didn’t matter. He’d be out of it soon enough.
The cage door clanged loudly as Ford hauled it open. “Moment of truth, son. You ready to go?”
His eyes rolled briefly toward the distant exit, as if he was trying to tell himself go meant leave, but snapped back to Ford as he climbed into the cage, hiding a wince as one awkward moment put too much weight on his bad leg.
He didn’t hide it well enough. Shrewdness entered the boy’s gaze as it dropped to Ford’s healing leg. “I’m supposed to fight you?”
“You are.” He loosened the chains and dragged them free with a clatter. “Don’t get too cocky, kid. I was grinding punks like you into the dirt when you were still shitting your pants.”
His opponent was on his feet in an instant, shaking blood into his arms as he circled to the side. “Yeah, when was that? Fifty years ago?”
“Close, smartass.” Ford watched him. “Go on, get the feeling back in your arms. You’ll need it.”
The kid kept moving, even more confident now—which meant he was dumb as a goddamn rock, after all. Even if he’d had a chance of smacking Ford down, he didn’t have a chance in hell of making it off the compound, much less beyond Dallas’s reach. Any cunning he had was immediate, animal instinct without a thought to what came next.
His attack wasn’t subtle. Hell, it was downright predictable. He darted in from too far away, not even bothering to feint. He drove his foot straight toward Ford’s injured leg like it was the brightest idea anyone had ever come up with, and it was almost a shame to take him down.
Almost. Anyone who would go for a weak spot that quickly, that easily, was a bully, plain and simple. Ford caught him by the foot and hauled him off his feet, letting him fall to the concrete flat on his back.
The kid wheezed, rolling back and forth as he tried to catch the breath the fall had driven from his lungs. Ford knelt over him and grabbed him by the hair. “I’ve been nice so far. That can change real easy.”
“Fuck—fuck you—” Thin and breathless, but he spat at Ford and swung wildly, crashing both fists into the arm holding him.
“This? This is nothing.” Ford pulled his semiautomatic pistol from the small of his back and pressed the end of the barrel hard against the kid’s forehead. “Is this what you did? You like how it feels?”
He froze. The blackness of his pupils seemed to swallow his irises, but staring death in the face didn’t make him humble. It made him defiant. “If you were a real man, you wouldn’t have stashed your piece of ass in a dump on the edge of the sector. You’re the one who put her in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“There you go again, with your shitty assumptions.” Mouthing off, because he already thought he was dead. Even with his rage leashed, Ford had no desire to correct the kid’s mistaken fatalism.
He bit out another curse, another insult, probably, something slurred and incomprehensible as he struggled so hard to twist away that he almost left a clump of his hair in Ford’s fist. When he couldn’t get away, he spat again. “Just fucking shoot me already. I knew you couldn’t fucking fight fair.”
“Hosing your brains out of the cage before the next fight night? Nothing would make me happier.” Ford put the pistol away and leaned back. “But O’Kane doesn’t operate that way. Make sure you thank him for my restraint, because he’s the only goddamn reason you’re walking out of here instead of hitching a ride in a garbage bag.”
The boy almost pissed himself as he rolled away, shaking from adrenaline and relief. After a moment on his hands and knees, panting, he lifted his head to stare at Ford. “Does that mean I can go?”
He snorted. “Hell, no. But you can accompany me out to Walt’s place, show me Dallas made the right call.”
Obviously not what he’d wanted to hear, but Ford had to admit the kid faked it as he staggered to his feet and tried to pull his tough-guy demeanor back around him. “Sure, whatever.”
“Uh-huh, whatever.” Maybe the kid could learn. Maybe, eventually, he’d even figure out that Dallas had saved him from more than death.
Dallas had saved him from becoming part of the problem.
Mia couldn’t imagine meeting Lex and not feeling awed, but it was a hundred times more intimidating to face her like this.
Presentation was everything, and the woman who ruled Sector Four at Dallas O’Kane’s side knew that. She was flawless. Not in the ways an outsider might notice, but in all the ways that mattered, the ones that sent a silent message about who she was.
What she was.
It started and ended with the tattoos. Ink wrapped her wrists, the O’Kane emblem framed by a pattern of delicate, beautiful lace. Except when you got close enough, the lace was made from delicate strands of barbed wire, sharp and deadly, as if someone had distilled what an Orchid should be into a single, compelling image.
&nbs
p; There were more. Dallas’s name swooping just below her belly button, so casually visible Mia knew the corset and jeans had been designed to frame it. The mark around her throat was the same, a crowned skull in colors so vivid, no one would ever forget who they were dealing with.
No, Lex was perfect from the top of her upswept hair to the chunky heels of her expensive leather boots, and Mia was painfully aware of the messages her own appearance sent. Tangled hair that hadn’t seen a stylist or a bottle of conditioner in a month, chipped nails and unmoisturized skin—
And Ford’s clothes. His shirt, hanging to her knees, and she could protest all day long that she’d pulled it on out of necessity. It wouldn’t change the possessive message, and Lex wouldn’t miss it, even if she chose to ignore it.
“Primped, polished, and waxed, and all without lifting a finger,” Lex murmured, raising one eyebrow. “That’s damn near the only thing I ever missed about Sector Two.”
Mia managed a shaky smile. “I wouldn’t mind a visit to the spa. The hot pools, especially.”
“I bet, honey.” She held up the folded stack of clothing in her hands. “Ford said you needed a change of clothes. One. Because he’s a man, I guess, and they’d all live in the same T-shirt and jeans forever if they could get away with it.”
From what she’d seen of his wardrobe, Ford practically did. Oh, he might change the actual item, but the T-shirt she was wearing had a twin tossed over a chair and another couple folded up amidst his clean laundry. She reached for the clothes with a relieved smile. “I appreciate it. I feel like I’m forever saying thank you to O’Kanes, and it’s not enough. But thank you.”
“We’ll get you more stuff, first thing.” She tilted her head. “Well, almost first thing. We need to do your hair.”
“The trainers would be horrified,” Mia agreed, lifting a hand to the rough strands. “Blow-drying it straight hasn’t exactly been my top priority.” Or possible.
