Despite the hardass bravado he put on to everybody around him, he was nothing but a coward at heart.
But that made it all the more shocking that he’d actually come in person to this supposed handover. I wasn’t sure how much of what’d driven him had been the idea of coming face-to-face with his long-time enemy, Slade, again, and how much had been about his desperation to have Natasha back.
I took in the asshole who’d caused me and my woman so much fucking trouble and pain over way too many years.
Thinning dark-gray hair hung down just shy of his shoulders, framing his face that’d taken on several more age lines since the last time I’d seen him. He was dressed in all black, from his worn jeans to his shirt and cut, still the tall, hulking figure he’d always been. Those creepy black eyes of his were rife with an intimidation factor that would have lesser men pissing themselves. But as he met Slade, he couldn’t compare with his intimidation factor. Unlike him, Slade didn’t need armed men to bolster him. We were just a precaution, on standby, basically. Nah, his own ferocity just emanated from him cutting right through anything coming from Nik.
It didn’t mean he wasn’t still the dangerous fucker he always had been though. It was his mind that had always been the troubling thing about him. He would point and shoot his club muscle in strategic directions. He’d never had to rely on his own brawn to win a fight.
He jerked his head at the sedan. “She in there?” he demanded of Slade.
“Deal’s a deal, ain’t it?” Slade responded, the lie coming easy to him. Smooth bastard.
Nik stared at him for a moment, the tension mounting. Then he pulled an envelope from his leather jacket pocket and handed it to him. “That’s all the shit I got on your boy and the rest of you.”
Slade snatched it from him and shoved his hand into the envelope, rifling past the thick wad of papers to what was beneath. He pulled out a handful of flash drives.
“That’s every copy. We got nothing left, no files, no hard copies,” Nik informed him.
Even though they were enemies, there was a code in our world that should’ve ensured Nik was telling the truth, that his word was solid.
But there was no way we were gonna trust in that. When you dealt with crazy you couldn’t expect logic to ever win out.
Slade tucked the envelope away into the back of his jeans.
“When you take a liking to a woman there just ain’t no letting go for you, is there?”
Oh no. I tensed, my hand going to the butt of my gun holstered at my hip.
Nik took a step closer, a nasty smirk on his face. “You wanna go there?”
“Prez, what you playing at?” Liam’s voice sounded down the line.
Slade didn’t show any sign of hearing Liam’s warning. Damn, he was good at keeping his game face on, no matter what.
He even had the balls to fold his arms across his chest when he should be palming his piece at all times, given how precarious the situation was to begin with and how him going off book here with what we’d planned was quickly escalating it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” he told Nik.
“Fuck, Slade. Don’t. We talked about this. Don’t fucking do this,” Liam warned again.
What the fuck had they talked about? What was happening? What was Slade’s game here?
“Lisa was mine. You were the one who fucked all of that up and brought all that pain down on her when you stole her away.” Nik seethed.
“You demented shit. You guys broke it off, then I made a move. Not before. There weren’t no saving what you had, cuz it weren’t never nothing to begin with. But you don’t get casual. All these years later and you’re pulling the same old shit with Nightshade.”
“You’re the one holding her against her will on your fucking territory. I’m here to pull her out.”
“Yeah? Outta the goodness of your heart?”
Nik’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Nah, cuz she’s mine. Always was. Always will be.”
Slade shook his head, his incredulousness matching mine. “She hates you. All she’s wanted is to be free of you. The second you showed your true colors she’s been running. She ain’t playing hard to get, you psycho. Just like Lisa weren’t. They were afraid of you. Both of ‘em wanted you gone.”
“Nightshade’s mine. I just gotta remind her of that,” Nik said, getting in Slade’s face. A twisted smile played on his lips, as he added, “And Lisa got her reminder, didn’t she, brother?”
“Fuck,” Liam sounded down the line again. “Get ready to move on my signal, brothers.”
A bunch of confirmations rang in my ears.
But they sounded so far away now, my focus shifting with a jolting suddenness at Nik’s fucked-up words, actually hearing his threats and twisted intentions for Tasha in person.
My body was shaking with a brutal influx of adrenaline, my heart hammering wildly. That hyper-vigilant mindset that always came over me when I was about to go into battle set in. That rage I’d tried so hard to hold back lately took hold of me.
I was out for blood.
Nik Stone’s blood.
And this time I wasn’t gonna stop.
“Cole?” Liam’s voice sounded. “Cole, answer me. Do you fucking well copy?”
No, I fucking well didn’t.
I was done with this bullshit. Sitting on the sidelines. Taking orders that I didn’t believe in. Endlessly waiting. Days ticking on by with Tasha still in danger.
Yeah, I was beyond done with all of it.
Pulling my gun, I broke cover, starting to bolt out into the open.
But I was beaten to it.
By Mason.
I was so shocked that it stopped me short, just shy of exposing myself.
Amid the
