At Dillon's look of disbelief, Nasa huffed a humorless laugh.
“No joke. Some jack-off mother fuckers in black suits told me I would disappear without a trace, never to be heard from again if I made any waves or spoke up against the injustice I'd been subjected to.
“I'd been told by those same jerk-offs I wasn't allowed to go anywhere near a computer, but I wasn't about to obey the people who'd fucked up my life without a shred of hard evidence.
“I cracked that case wide open in a matter of days—something I was told would be impossible—and I watched while a man twice my age with a serious chip on his shoulder was frog marched out of the Pentagon with a black hood over his head.
“Gerald Barnes couldn't handle the fact that a twenty-four-year-old kid had taken his job and done it ten times better than he ever could.
“My stay in prison wasn't a cake walk; I was easily the tallest guy in there, but I wasn't the strongest or anywhere near the meanest, and more than one dude tried to rape me.
"I thank my lucky stars no one actually succeeded, but I didn't sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, hyper-vigilant to anything that even sounded like some butt-monkey and his buddies after my ass.”
It was wrong to laugh, but the colorful way he chose to describe a truly horrible situation had Dillon biting into her cheek to stop herself.
“I lived for the moments in the yard where I could be outside and have plenty of time to bulk up to deter anyone from thinking I was an easy mark.
"I was white enough to gain the protection of the Aryans inside, but I really didn’t want their help either.
“I remember sitting in my bunk at night, in a room I could reach out and press my palms flat to the walls on either side of me, listening to the guys who weren't so lucky get brutalized.
“I'm not comparing my stay in prison to what it must have been like to disappear into a black site, and the scars I got inside are nothing compared to the ones you've got, but I understand what it's like to disappear into a dark hole because some asshole couldn't take losing something he thought belonged to him.”
Her entire body felt like a block of ice, and not even Elka's warmth against her side could hold the bone deep shivers at bay.
It sounded like he understood perfectly. Like he knew everything, and she wasn't sure how that was possible.
Dillon wanted to speak, to say something, but her jaw was locked. Had she said something, only the guttural sounds of a wounded animal would have escaped.
Nasa lifted one hand up to circle his long index finger to encompass the room.
“I get you don't want to be here. That being surrounded by strange men you have zero fucking reason to trust is putting a massive strain on you.
“In your shoes, I would probably shoot first and ask questions later, especially considering the way you were attacked in your own bed.
"The fact that you've had no one to rely on or trust, except for your dog, makes it that much harder to believe in us.
“Veracruz told me just how well you can take care of yourself, and with that in mind, I say to you with the sincerest respect: you have no idea what you're dealing with. If you stay out in the cold on your own, you're going to die.”
As she'd just shot a man in her front yard and commanded her dog to kill another, Dillon didn't really have any hope of winning an argument to say everything would be fine, so she didn’t even try.
When she remained mute, Nasa dipped his chin to give her every ounce of his focus and made her feel rooted to the spot, bolted down under the weight of his stare.
Strangely enough, the tangible press of that stare didn't freak her out.
It comforted her.
Then it pissed her off because it comforted her.
Even if she could trust these men, she didn't need them. She had other places to escape and retreat to where the Leviathans couldn't get to her. Places Ghost would have a hard time even—
“I see the wheels turning in there, Tiger Lily,” Nasa told her quietly, interrupting the wild dash of her derailed thoughts.
“You're probably thinking the women's shelter you helped put together here in Dallas is a much better bet than throwing in with me and my people.
"Maybe you're considering utilizing the same folks, who create new identities for the women you help, to get you out of dodge and make you disappear.”
The shivering intensified because that's exactly what Dillon had been thinking about. It sounded like Nasa did, in fact, know everything, and Dillon was too mired in panic to feel relief of not having to keep her secret anymore.
“If that's what you want, I'll help you, no strings attached. But I want you to consider this: Three years ago, Ghost infiltrated my club by posing as a guy I hired to work urban investigations.
"When I tell you I dug deep into his background, I mean his five times great-grandfather, dead and buried, felt the excavation.
“Still, Ghost took on the guy's identity, his face, his fingerprints, learned everything about his back story and fooled me—a candidate for paranoid personality disorder—and twenty other men for an entire year.
"He ate at our table, protected our women, helped run our businesses, and we had no fucking idea who he was.
“When we started getting close to outing him, he took two of the club members hostage. While they were hanging from pipes like slabs of beef, the Leviathans came at the compound with rocket launchers and burned it to the ground with us inside.
“The only reason we survived was because I am a paranoid bastard and made my basement into a fallout shelter, preparing for the
