Deacon's Law

by RJ Scott

  “Then he shouldn’t be in Dad’s office.”

  “He was looking for a stapler.”

  “And you fell for that?”

  “I don’t give a shit what he was doing. I have my orders, and if he steps out of line, then it will be me who does the beating.”

  “You work for me—”

  “No, sir, I don’t. I work for your dad.”

  There was an epic staredown. At least it would have been epic had Felix not started muttering to himself and walked away after the first few seconds. There was something seriously wrong with this man that wanted to rail on Rafe at a moment’s notice. Something evil in Felix’s eyes that screamed of insanity. It wouldn’t be the first time Deacon had seen that level of craziness in the kind of people he got involved with, and it likely wouldn’t be the last.

  All he could do now was hope that, at least for the rest of the day, Rafe stayed in his room where he would be safe, and Deacon had successfully neutralized Felix.

  He’d known this gig wasn’t going to be easy, but he’d never expected to feel affection for one of the people he’d been sent to watch.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” he muttered to the empty corridor.

  A really bad feeling.

  Chapter 3

  Rafe was mortified on so many levels. He’d tried to flirt with Deacon, and after last night’s kiss he’d wanted more.

  But he was fucking it all up. He needed to take a step back and be clever about this.

  What if Felix had found Rafe moments earlier? What if Felix had found the photos that Rafe had taken, or beaten him unconscious for whatever reason his asshole cousin chose?

  Fucking stupid. Rafe berated himself for that until he’d finally processed the fact that he’d nearly fucked everything up, then moved swiftly on to the shame and embarrassment of what had happened next. Deacon had found him, which was bad enough, but then he’d nearly kissed the man again. The thug his uncle had hired to keep the peace, and do whatever else it was discreet security did for an outwardly respectable company. Deacon probably killed people, or at least beat them worse than Felix ever could.

  But god, how Rafe wanted to kiss him again. Deacon was danger and fire and so fucking sexy it made Rafe mad with the need of it.

  On top of that, Rafe had to pretend he understood and noticed nothing, had to act as if he was thick as shit and twice as stupid. He had to look Uncle Arlo in the eyes and say that security was clearly an okay thing, and wasn’t it good that he had someone to keep the family safe.

  Safe from voters, or the guy on the corner who used to stand and shout up at the open office window. The same guy who had conveniently vanished just under three weeks ago. Had Deacon been tasked with killing the short, skinny man who’d shouted that the Martinez bastard would pay

  Pay for what?

  Rafe had actually stood waiting to talk to the guy, but had never got the chance. Because the unnamed man had vanished. No one knew where he’d gone, or even who he was, despite Rafe’s discreet inquiries. Another chance lost.

  But seriously, what kind of alderman needs personal security?

  Locking his door, he pulled out his phone and scrolled to the last four photos. Maps on his Uncle’s wall, real estate parcels of land along with zoning details and a list of numbers to one side. Before anyone tried to get in by breaking down his door, which he wouldn’t put past his psycho cousin, he uploaded the photos to his remote file service and watched the bar as it crept to one hundred percent. When they were gone, he deleted the pictures on his phone and took random photos of his textbooks instead. He had no idea if the deleted images were still up in the cloud connected to his name. He hoped to hell not – he thought he’d turned off all the options he needed to, but he wasn’t a technical expert, and had just followed security advice on websites he’d searched for on Google.

  Fuck it; he would prove that Arlo had been the one who’d killed his father, or at least ordered the hit-and-run that had left Héctor Ramirez dead at sixty-four. Grief curled inside him again, and all the energy left his body.

  He pressed fingers to his split lip and winced at the pain, which at least grounded him and let him think about why he was even there. The ache from the two punches to the gut was a dull pain, and he pulled up his knees, which eased the tightness in his belly.

  Rafe was frustrated; he had photos of maps, but what did any of it mean? According to his dad, the construction business was a front for much more sinister things. That that was where the bodies were buried. But had his dad meant that literally or figuratively?

  Rafe wanted action. He wanted Arlo to admit the accident that had taken his father had in fact been no accident at all.

  He wanted Arlo to confess.

  Tears pricked his eyes and, unbidden, his thought process worked from his dad and the pain in his heart, onto the ache in his gut and the injustice of what had happened with Felix, and then right on through to Deacon.

  Hazel-eyed, blond-haired Deacon, who stood inches taller than him, broader than him, who carried a gun and scars on those parts of his body that Rafe had seen.

  Deacon was everything his dad had warned him against; rough, nasty, a man who thought and dealt with ingrained violence, a man with a gun. A bad guy.

  But there was something in his eyes – concern, a moment before the mask dropped when Deacon looked at him differently. Or was Rafe just looking for things that weren’t there?

  “I don’t know why he would,” Rafe muttered to no one. He was trapped here, he wanted to be here, he couldn’t escape from this family, but he didn’t want to. This whole thing was a mess.

  A shower helped with the general aches, and he downed some Tylenol with a bottle of water before gathering up his last project before finals. The irony of the question from his philosophy class didn’t escape him: “Is it objectionably paradoxical to claim it is wrong to kill someone to prevent two other people from being killed?”

  Would it have been wrong to take a gun and shoot Arlo to prevent him from hurting Rafe’s father? Would it be wrong to shoot Felix before he went out and killed someone?

  Rafe knew he had to look at this objectively, but he was tired. Coffee was the answer, and he glanced at his watch. Three twenty-four p.m. The restaurant the family owned wouldn’t be alive and kicking for another two hours – plenty of time to set up at one of the back tables, work on this question with books out around him, and help himself to coffee from the main machine down there. He gathered up what he needed and cautiously unlocked and opened his door. No sign of Felix, but he knew he’d have Deacon on his tail as soon as he left the room.

  He wasn’t wrong. Deacon fell into step with him as soon he reached the top of the stairs.

  “I don’t get it,” he said, shifting the weight of the bag on his shoulder and wincing at the twinge of pain in his back. Felix had gotten in a good kick.

  “What?” Deacon asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned left for the restaurant.

  He had so many questions, about the kiss in the dark, about the vulnerability he sometimes thought he saw in Deacon. But at this point in time only one thing worried him.

  “Why do you have to guard me?”

  But Deacon didn’t answer. He just went with the normal routine; Rafe at the table studying, and him sitting by the door.

  Watching.

  Chapter 4

  Deacon was slowly losing his mind.

  “And?”

  The question from his partner, out there watching the house, hung waiting to be answered. Deacon wished to hell he had an answer for Evie that would get him out of this city and back home to New York. Six months was long enough, and he’d started to forget what his own place looked like. What did Evie want him to say? That Arlo had made a deal with some shady nebulous bad guys and he had evidence of it? Or that he’d seen one of Arlo’s sons do something bad enough they deserved to be arrested? Because fuck if either of those things had happened. Apart from baiting Rafe, there was not
hing he could find that would lead to any kind of conviction. Beating Rafe wasn’t going to get the charge he wanted. Of course, when he’d arrived here, he’d expected to be pulled into the fold, but then he realized he’d been called in to babysit Arlo’s nephew.

  Arlo’s sexy, confusing, brilliant young nephew.

  “Need more time,” he typed into the encrypted software, and pressed send. The word sent and vanished like it had never been there.

  “Shit,” came the flashing reply, which disappeared instantly.

  Shit was exactly right. There was a damn good reason why he had nothing to report, and that reason was sitting at another table in the restaurant, papers spread around him in careful piles. Rafe Ramirez, with his clear green eyes and his open smile, was the one thing that Deacon was not losing sight of.

  For the wrong reasons altogether.

  So he lied. Right there and then, he told Evie the biggest pile of shit. Bryan had wanted to talk to him – maybe that would be something new to follow up on.

  “New lead,” he typed, keeping the message short. Not that anyone would see him typing, or be able to read it. Certainly not Rafe, with his head in his books and with the whole length of the restaurant between them. Deacon was by the door, between him and the exit, watching carefully, and he’d been treated to Rafe turning and looking at him with a confused expression on his face at least three times. The last time had morphed into a hesitant smile, and Deacon had had to lower his gaze. That damn kiss was like a landmine between them, waiting to explode.

  He was clearly losing his mind here if a smile and the memory of a kiss could pull his focus from this case. Rafe’s uncle was the target, and Deacon had to focus on that. Of course, it didn’t help that being hired by Arlo had been the easy part; following him was impossible when he’d been handed babysitting duty instead.

  “More?” The message appeared, and Deacon had to think before he remembered the question was about a missing person. The disappearance was exactly why his section had been called in to handle this case. When a body had turned up a year ago, it had become Deacon’s case. Now he was so mired in the family to get an in with them that he was clearly losing all perspective.

  The only thing that worried him was the case of a missing person. Bryan, one of the younger guys here, had been at the house yesterday. Deacon had found him, looking fucking terrified, in the wine cellar and nearly broken cover to talk to Bryan. Instead he’d added Bryan to the list of people he was looking out for. He was some distant cousin, but this morning he’d been gone. Deacon wanted to think he’d run, but Felix had been strutting this morning, like the cat who’d drunk the cream, and that didn’t bode well. So that was a case. Right?

  “Soon,” he typed and sent, then shut down the secure connection when he saw Rafe stand up and stretch tall, his T-shirt riding up. He was shorter than Deacon, slim, a little gangly, as if he hadn’t grown into his body yet, even at twenty-three. He kept fit running on the elliptical in the small gym in the basement, never did weights. He was young, fit and toned, and Deacon couldn’t help but stare.

  Because Deacon was a fucking idiot who, instead of keeping his head in the case, was focusing on the wrong thing.

  Only they’d kissed; they’d moved closer and Deacon had been this close to kissing Rafe again. And he was confused.

  He pocketed his cell and caught Rafe miming drinking from a cup looking right at him. He nodded, and a few minutes later, after Rafe had played with the dials on the huge espresso machine that was front and center of Milo’s, he placed a coffee in front of Deacon.

  “I’m nearly done,” he said, but there was no hint of a smile now. “I’m really sorry my uncle thinks you need to babysit me.”

  “Don’t be,” Deacon said.

  “I still don’t get why I need it.”

  Deacon kept his expression neutral, hearing the slight lift at the end of that statement, which made it sound like a question. No way was he opening that can of worms by entering into a discussion of what Rafe’s uncle was or wasn’t.

  So instead he focused on the pretty in front of him. He actually had shower fantasies featuring Rafe in all kinds of positions, but he would never act on them, even if he wanted to. God knew what it was about Rafe that had him salivating at the thought of a taste. Was it the absolute innocence in a man so entwined in the mess that was Arlo and his sons? Or was it just the way he smiled? Rafe was trying for a small smile now, but clearly his split lip hurt, as he winced and pressed a finger there, looking down at it to check for blood.

  Temper spiked inside Deacon, but he couldn’t blow his cover by getting all serious over one cousin teasing another. Because teasing was what Arlo had called it when Deacon had reported what had happened. Asshole.

  Fuck, he felt so protective of Rafe.

  In another world, Deacon would have made his move, but this was not that world; this was drugs and despair and a hundred other sick things that made his stomach churn and that Rafe knew nothing about. Or at least Deacon hoped he didn’t. He was having to trust his gut that Rafe was entirely innocent.

  Except how could Rafe not know the man his uncle was? He had to know.

  “Deacon?”

  Deacon looked up from contemplating the world in his coffee, and realized that Rafe hadn’t moved.

  “Yes kid?”

  Rafe frowned. “Stop calling me that,” he said without heat. “I’m twenty-three, for fuck’s sake,” he tagged on to the end, as though Deacon might not know that. “I’m a fucking adult, and I hate the way people think that just because I look young, I can’t be anything other than a kid. You fucking kissed me, so fuck you for calling me a kid.”

  Deacon looked back down at his coffee. “I won’t call you that again,” he murmured.

  “Shit. Sorry,” Rafe said, defeated, and sat in the chair opposite him. “I guess you’re not wrong.”

  That wasn’t what Deacon needed at this point in time. He needed Rafe to go back to his studying and stop getting all up in Deacon’s space.

  “Because you’re, what, thirty? You still see me as a kid,” Rafe said, resting his chin on his hands and staring Deacon down.

  Deacon shifted on his chair a little. No, what he saw was a man who had pinned his sights on getting Deacon to chat as if they were close or something. And hell, to kiss him.

  Why, Deacon didn’t know. He was twelve years older than Rafe, and he had a lifetime of mess in his fucked-up head.

  “Thirty-five. And yeah, you are still a kid in my eyes,” Deacon said simply, and sipped the caffeine that would keep him alert for the rest of Rafe’s study session.

  Unfortunately, Rafe wasn’t letting things go.

  “I’m twenty-three. I drink, I have sex…” He trailed off and did this thing with his mouth that was half irritated and half the sexiest thing Deacon had ever seen. And he was leaning forward again, and the scent of him – a combination of shower gel and Rafe – was getting to him. Deliberately, he sat way back in his chair. Seemed like Rafe had forgotten to be angry with Deacon for pulling away.

  So he decided to shut this down. He leaned forward as if he wanted to say something quiet, and Rafe moved closer, his eyes widening.

  “Go back and study,” Deacon half whispered, then quirked an eyebrow.

  Rafe sat back with a huff and began to say something, but was interrupted when the door slammed open.

  “Fairy taking up your time?” Felix’s harsh, nasal voice resonated in the quiet restaurant.

  Rafe, with his back to Felix, closed his eyes briefly, and Deacon wished at that moment that he could reach over and reassure Rafe that Felix was a complete asshole who was really close to spending time in jail.

  But he couldn’t.

  His cover wasn’t a caring-is-sharing kind of guy – his role was the enforcer, and it was one that was selling tickets in this family, with everyone buying in. Well, all except for Rafe, who looked at him with confusion rather than fear or respect.

  “Fuck,” Rafe bit out unde
r his breath. He rose from his seat and went back to his table.

  Felix walked past him, flicking at the Dodgers cap that covered his unruly brown hair. Its layers had a tendency to curl in the damp, stormy heat of a Californian summer afternoon, something that Deacon should not be noticing.

  Rafe gave Felix the finger, and Felix tapped the back of his head a little harder than necessary. Why the hell was Rafe provoking him?

  God, it would be so good when Deacon had enough to get Felix behind bars.

  And Chumo, who came in after his brother, forever his twin’s shadow. He was dressed to the nines in a sharp suit, his hands in fists at his sides. He looked pissed, and Deacon tensed. He’d never seen Chumo angry before – quietly, coldly focused, but never cross over anything.

  “You’re an asshole, Felix.” He shoved his brother. “You left me standing with her.”

  Felix shoved back, only he shoved harder, sending Chumo right into Rafe’s table.

  Deacon stood up. There was no way he was letting Rafe get in the middle of some sibling squabble. But it ended as soon as it began, with Felix – bigger, stronger – pinning his twin and putting his weight behind the move.

  “Get off me,” Chumo snapped. He shoved back, and Felix let him go, holding his hands up and grinning.

  “She was hot for some prime Martinez cock,” Felix said, and held out a fist, which Chumo bumped.

  “Well, she’s getting it,” Chumo said, shaking off his brother and suddenly grinning. “We’re hooking up after dinner.”

  They bumped fists again. “Way to go, bro,” Felix said.

  Then they moved away, up the stairs to the offices that ran the full length of the building. Deacon considered going over to see if Rafe was okay, but that wasn’t part of his job. Rafe did look over at him, but Deacon pretended to have a need to stare at the candle in the middle of the table. Not so much a coward, but a man absolutely focused on his job.

  He sat back in his chair after a while, looking at Rafe’s back, at the curls under his cap, and hoped to hell that Rafe got out of this venomous mess before he became like his cousins. Deacon had actually raised this with his handler, but all he’d got in response was an instruction to wait things out. Rafe had only been there a few weeks, but the contagion in the place would get into his blood, and he could change.