Better When He's Bold

by Jay Crownover

  “Everyone is a threat when you have what they want or when they owe you something they don’t want to give. You need to take each and every situation you go into seriously. Kids have killed for less, Race.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “You still have a hard-on for the icy blonde?”

  I barked out a laugh and lifted an eyebrow at him. He wasn’t a huge fan of Brysen, but I think it had more to do with the fact she lived closer to the Hill than the Point and Bax just didn’t trust anyone who didn’t know what life down here in the gutter was like. I was an exception to that rule, but I had had to earn my stripes through blood, sweat, and tears. I was still working my way back into the inner sanctum because I had made some hard choices a few years ago that resulted in Bax going to jail. We were tight, ran a business together, he was in love with my sister, but I don’t think all the open wounds I had left with my betrayal had fully healed over yet.

  “Big-time. There is just something about her that gets to me. I want to do dirty, nasty things to her.”

  He grunted and reached up to pull the hood of his black sweatshirt up over his shaved head. Like he needed anything to make him look any more menacing.

  “She doesn’t look like the type. She almost cries whenever I walk into the room. I bet a broken fingernail would result in hysterics.”

  I might have agreed with him if I hadn’t kissed her. There was more to her than the perfect, flawless exterior she presented to the world. There was desperation on the tip of her tongue, there was passion in her breath, and there was want in the way her hands had pulled at me. At least there had been until I had bailed on her, because while we might have once been on the same playing field, we were now from two totally different worlds. I couldn’t stay with her, couldn’t wait around until she found her friend, and a girl like Brysen wouldn’t stand for a guy who had his priorities all fucked up like that.

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s hot and I like the way she looks at me like I’m something she scraped off her shoe. It makes chasing after her so much more fun.”

  He laughed and pulled the keys to his Hemi ’Cuda that he had just finished the restoration on out of his pocket.

  “You are so screwed up.”

  After everything that had happened to us in the last five years, I don’t know how we could be anything but screwed up.

  “Tell Dovie I said ‘hey.’ ”

  He nodded and made his way to his car. When he pulled out of the garage it was with a roar that shook all the metal that filled the place against the concrete. That motor was something else. The car wasn’t street legal; it could outrun anything else on the road and was big, loud, and nasty, and was a perfect chrome and steel representation of the man who drove it.

  I made sure to reset all the security alarms, walked up the metal stairs to the loft, and took a minute to shove the frat dude’s money into the safe I’d built into the wall. The safe was nicer than all the furniture in the entire loft. It was also full of ill-gotten gains that I was waiting on Nassir to filter through his clubs and turn into usable money.

  I didn’t love being in business with Nassir Gates. I didn’t trust him, hated the way he manipulated and used people to his own ends, but he was the only person who could take the money I was earning from running numbers and make it clean. Nassir ran every club, every bed of sin and debauchery, that existed in the Point. He set up illegal fights, had a legion of girls he ran out the back door of his businesses, and as much as I didn’t like him, I needed him. I wouldn’t mess with girls—with selling sex—but someone had to, and Nassir had no morals and zero qualms about getting his hands dirty. We had an uneasy alliance going, and so far, it was working. Dealing with Nassir was like walking through a minefield every day—dangerous, deadly, and filled with hidden threats I would never see coming. I was always waiting for him to turn on me.

  I went to the freezer, took out a bottle of Oban I had stashed in there, poured a healthy amount into the bottom of a rocks glass, and threw myself onto the couch that doubled as my bed. Sure, I could move, find a place that was cleaner, farther out of the heart of the city, but I liked it here. I felt safe here. No one was coming into the garage, breaching the compound without me knowing about it, and after the beating, the way my body had broken when Novak and his goons had found me, I needed that sense of security to sleep at night.

  This was so far from the life I was born into, so different from where most people who knew my parents and knew my past ever thought I would be. I hadn’t been born with a silver spoon shoved in my face, but an entire goddamn platinum service set choking me from the get-go. My parents were rich. Disgustingly, filthy, unholy rich. They lived a life a luxury, untouched by need and struggle, uncaring of what was happening to those not so well-to-do.

  Until I was sixteen, I was numb. Entitled, spoiled rotten, stuffed full of self-importance and overindulgence. I didn’t feel anything. I existed in a bubble where anything I wanted, anything I needed, was handed directly to me and I never questioned the greater world, things beyond my mommy and daddy’s fat wallet.

  One night I had been on a date. The girl I chose not to remember, but everything else was crystal clear. My dad had given me a Roush Mustang for my birthday. I was showing off, thought I was the shit, untouchable and unbeatable, until I took a wrong turn and somehow ended up lost on a road that trailed between the Hill and the Point. I was at a stoplight, trying to find directions on my phone, when the window on the driver’s side shattered and hard hands had reached in to pull me out of the car. I remembered the girl screaming, remembered smelling my own blood as I scrambled against flying fists, but more than anything, I remembered feeling alive.

  I was nervous, I was scared, but I wasn’t going to give up the Mustang without a fight. It was the most “real” my life had ever been. All the numbness melted away. I got a lucky punch, saw the big, dark guy go down at a weird angle with all of his weight falling onto his hands. Bone crunched in an ugly way, and I collapsed in the middle of the street across from a kid who was no older than me, but looked like he had lived a hundred more lifetimes.

  Bax was holding his wrist, blood oozing across his face and out of his nose, and he was just staring at me. The girl got out of the car and screamed she was calling the police and all I could do was marvel at how fast my heart was beating, thrill at the adrenaline that was coursing through my body.

  “I never thought a pretty boy like you could throw a punch like that. Even if it was just lucky.”

  It was the best compliment I had ever received. I flicked blood and hair out of my eyes and asked him if he needed a ride to the hospital. It was strange, he had just tried to carjack me, had beat the crap out of me, but it was a defining moment in my life. Bax, his life, his world, woke me up and I couldn’t go back to my fluffy dreamland.

  I wasn’t as immersed in the underground as he was. I didn’t have the street cred, the attitude to pull it off. But I was smart and I was an asset, and before too long, we were a team. I didn’t steal cars, didn’t break the law, but when he needed help, I had his back, and I liked to think that long before he fell in love with my sister, I was his voice of reason. It was exciting; living hard like that opened up a whole new world to me. There were girls, women really, who showed me things no teenage boy should know. There were drugs, there was excitement and challenge around every corner, and it was a blast until things got too deep.

  Bax was taking more risks, Novak was using him more and more. We were getting lost in the mire and poison that was the lifeblood of the Point, and I wanted out, wanted to save us both before we went under. Only Novak was far smarter than I ever gave him credit for and far more twisted. He wanted Bax and had no qualms about using me to get to him.

  My father, like most rich men, couldn’t keep his junk in his very expensively tailored pants. Dovie was my half sister, born to a junkie who got paid off after agreeing to abort her. No one should trust a junkie; the next fix matters more than anything else. Dovie was lost i
n the system until she wasn’t.

  Novak used her, used my dad’s need to keep his secrets, to play me. My dad paid Novak to have her killed, only Novak double-crossed him, recorded the entire conversation, and pulled me into his dark and twisted game. There was no way I was going to let anything happen to my blood, my sister, even if I didn’t know her, so I blackmailed my dad, pulled Dovie out of the system, and agreed to Novak’s twisted scheme that had been designed to tie Bax to him forever.

  The mobster was smart, but I was smarter. I set Bax up. No two ways about it. I betrayed my only friend, sold him up the river so I could save Dovie, so my dad would be forced to be Novak’s puppet. I led Bax into a trap, knew it was going to end badly, but because Bax was Bax, he had made everything ten times worse by running from the cops. An arrest that should’ve resulted in six months at the most turned into a total shit show that had him getting locked up for a solid five years and had me taking Dovie and disappearing until he got out and I could exact my revenge. I lived with the guilt and the threat of Novak hanging over me for five fucking endless years.

  As soon as Bax got out of jail, I set things in motion, took over the chessboard, and started moving pieces around that would free all of us from Novak’s hold. Only once again, Bax had thrown a wrench in the plan by falling in love with my sister and giving a really bad man a vulnerable place to attack him from. Bax was ready to sacrifice himself, to burn the entire Point to the ground if it meant Dovie made it out alive. Luckily, things hadn’t had to come to that, and everyone made it out, beaten, broken, and slightly worse off than before. But Novak was no more, and now we were rebuilding the underground, the foundation of this horrible place, brick by oily, soiled brick, because if we didn’t then somebody else would.

  My dad had cast me out, watched me with wide, panicked eyes, waiting to see if I was going to sell him out. He cut me off financially, disowned me, pretended like he never even knew me, all while knowing I could bring his lux and ostentatious world down around him at any minute. I steered clear, wanting to make sure Dovie was insulated from him and his desperate machinations. My father knew that Bax was in Dovie’s life, knew that no one was getting to her unless they went through him first, and for now that was enough. Keeping her safe was top priority, always. It was one of the main reasons, besides not having any other legitimate way to make money, why I was doing what I was doing.

  In all honesty, I was born to run numbers. I had a mind custom made to be a bookie and a loan shark. I had a photographic memory. I remembered every name, every face, and every dollar amount owed and borrowed of the people I dealt with. I didn’t need a spreadsheet, didn’t need to write anything down. The feds would never find a little black book, never find incriminating evidence on my computer. It was all up in my noggin, safe and sound. It made figuring the lines and the spreads easier as well. I had endless scores, miles of stats, all the schedules of every game, team rosters for days all lost up there, just waiting to be recalled when needed. It was pretty sweet for me, but not so much for those that were risking what they didn’t have to lose. I didn’t forget, so there was absolutely no wiggling out of a debt, no tying to argue what was owed, which is why the garage was full of boosted cars waiting on their owners to be accountable.

  I poured another Scotch and was stripping down to hop in a shower before bed when my phone rang. It always went off. People wanted to place bets, wanted to ask for money at all hours of the day and night, but the ring tone trilling throughout the loft belonged to Dovie, so I dropped my jeans and tucked the phone to my ear while messing with the shower. There was no middle temperature in the loft, it was either burning hot or freezing cold.

  “Bax just left. He should be there shortly.” It was a twenty-minute drive from the heart of the city to the burbs where Bax and Dovie lived, which meant he could make it in ten.

  She laughed a little. It always made my heart swell to hear the unfiltered joy she had inside of her now.

  “He’s home already. I just wanted to check on you. Brysen mentioned there was a shootout at the party, and Bax told me you went to collect money unarmed . . . again.”

  There was censure there. I never would’ve thought I would be in a place where my little sister was encouraging me to carry a gun.

  “They were just kids. It was fine.”

  “Whenever someone is shooting at you, it isn’t fine. Someone could have gotten hurt.”

  By “someone,” I assumed she meant Brysen. They were close and Dovie didn’t have many friends, so I understood her subtle warning. I needed to be more careful when and where I conducted the nitty-gritty tied to my business dealings.

  “I made sure she got out safe.”

  Dovie sighed. “Thank you, but I was talking about you too, Race. I can’t have anything happen to you.”

  We all had wounds that were still trying to mend back together in the aftermath of Novak’s fall.

  “I know, girly. I know.”

  She made a noise and called something to Bax in the background.

  “Brysen doesn’t get out much since she moved home. It sucks her one night off from work had to end that way.”

  I shoved a hand into the water and yanked it right back out. Ice cubes couldn’t be any colder. I shivered and twisted the knob the opposite direction.

  “Why does she work so hard? I thought her family was pretty well off. I know she lives in a nice area, has a nice house.”

  Dovie sighed again. “I don’t really know the entire story. When I stayed with her while things with Bax were all over the place, I got the vibe that she’s running the house. She takes care of her little sister. I didn’t even see the parents while I was there. You should know better than anyone not to judge people based on the zip code they grew up in.”

  Fair enough.

  “I’m getting ready to take a shower. Are we good?”

  “I love you, Race. Please keep that in mind.”

  “I know, Dovie. Believe me, I know.”

  “And I think Brysen has a crush on you.”

  That had me howling with laughter. “You wish. She loathes me.”

  But there was that kiss. The kiss that was just the tip of the iceberg to the sexual fantasies I had where she was concerned.

  “Seriously. I talk about you all the time. When I bring Bax up, she changes the subject, gets nervous and weird, but when I bring you up, she just lets me talk and talk. You would look beautiful together.”

  We would, and I would give up every dollar I had stashed in that safe just to get a peek at Brysen Carter naked.

  “It’s nice you haven’t lost your ability to dream.”

  She laughed in her lighthearted way and told me good night. I tossed my phone next to the sink and stripped down so I could climb under the scalding-hot water. I hissed at the discomfort between my teeth and let the steam and burn work out some of the sexual frustration that was coiled in my gut.

  I could feel her. Full breasts, soft skin, silky hair, and a mouth that was equal parts greedy and sweet. She kissed me like she knew just how naughty and raunchy I wanted her to get for me. I winced as the blazing-hot water cascaded over my rising erection. Maybe I should have picked the cold water if X-rated images of her were going to follow me into the shower.

  Chapter 3

  Brysen

  I DON’T KNOW WHAT that guy’s problem is.”

  I shoved my latest test adorned with a big fat D on the top of it into my bag and shook my head. I was walking out of my Math Theory class and looking at my friend Drew out of the corner of my eye. I only had one semester left before I graduated with my B.S. in math, at least I did if I managed to get past this class. The professor was fine, but for some reason, the TA he had working under him hated me, and I could see my GPA taking a nosedive after every single exam. I had tried to talk to the teacher about it, but he just assured me that all tests were graded fairly and suggested I looked into finding a tutor.

  I sighed and shoved some of my hair out of my face. I wa
nted to be an accountant. Numbers I understood, had a quick mind for them, and there was no reason I should be failing this class. Drew laughed at me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have laughed in his face when he asked you out. I think he might’ve taken it personally.”

  I winced involuntarily because he had a point. I hadn’t been laughing at the TA, I had been laughing at the idea of finding time in my life to work in something as frivolous as a date. And if by some miracle I did get a break in my schedule, I wasn’t inclined to spend it with a guy who had greasy hair, acne, and a weird twitch he couldn’t seem to control when he looked at me. I also didn’t think dating him was appropriate, since he was involved in the class and had a say in my grade. Unfortunately, since he was also a student, there were no hard-and-fast rules in place to prevent him from leering at me or seeming to be messing with my educational future. Not without undeniable proof on my end, which I hadn’t been able to produce.

  “The idea of a date with anyone is a joke.”

  Drew gave me a little squeeze and let me go. I had two more classes and then I was supposed to touch base with Dovie before her night classes started. I worked tonight and then had to get back to the house to make sure my sister’s homework was done and that Mom wasn’t drinking herself into oblivion. It was all getting so tiring and there wasn’t a break anywhere on the horizon.

  “Adria told me there was some guy at the party that had you all googly-eyed. What’s up with that?”

  Adria had a big mouth and didn’t understand why lusting after Race was my own personal hell and temptation.

  I shifted uneasily and narrowed my gaze a little bit. Drew was a nice guy, and he was cute in a very all-American, wavy-brown-hair-and-bright-blue-eyed way. He had mentioned on more than one occasion that if I was interested in taking our friendship to another level, he would have no arguments with it. But again, I didn’t have the time or the space for a guy in my life, and when it came right down to it, even if I did make the space or found the time, Drew wasn’t the guy I wanted.