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The man has been overly generous to me. So much so that I’m suspicious of him. It’s the reason I keep looking for the bad in all these people and hating when I come up empty. I don’t get bad vibes from any of them, and that’s suspicious as fuck. Everyone gives off at least a little menace because, as humans, we’re all capable of evil shit when pushed to our limits.
“Maybe.”
“But you can’t offer up a room that isn’t empty,” I explain for him.
He gives me a soft smile. “We have an empty room at my house, and Misty and Shadow have space as well.”
“That’s very kind of you, but not necessary.”
I give him the smile he expects before walking away.
Unwanted.
Unwelcome.
Familiar feelings for me.
I should be working, not getting the boot from Kincaid. I should be chained up to a wall, looking for a way to save the women chained up beside me, not sipping on beer, wishing I was as brave as my sister.
“Not long before the ball drops,” Emmalyn, Kincaid’s wife, says as I approach the long table with every finger food one can imagine.
“Not long,” I agree, my smile a little more forced after speaking to her husband.
Feeling unwanted and practically being told I am, are two very different things.
I embrace the minimal hurt it brings, knowing I’ll need it to fall asleep.
I contemplate causing problems as I look around the room.
Emmalyn doesn’t take long to busy herself with something other than being forced into niceties with me, but I imagine it’s a skill long mastered, considering she’s the very first woman to come to the clubhouse and be kept for the long haul. Once a domestic abuse victim herself, rescued by Kincaid, she’s now the mother hen around here with children and grandchildren of her own.
I’m still deciding on what type of trouble I want to stir up when the front door opens.
Rather than another gaggle of women hoping to wake up in a Cerberus member’s bed, a ghost enters, one just as tall if not slightly more haggard than the one I met years ago.
My breath catches, my heart pounding a mile a minute in my chest as his eyes dart around the room.
“Angel,” I whisper, but no one notices.
They’re all too shocked at the sight of him to pay any attention to me. Good thing because the sight of him leaves me more than a little vulnerable, and that’s not something I want anyone to witness. Vulnerabilities are always used as weapons later on.
I look around the room, knowing I’m not the only one seeing him, but unable to understand how he’s standing in the room.
Grinch looks down at his woman, confusion marking his brow.
“Baby? Who is that?” he asks as he looks toward Angel, his woman growing more and more terrified by the second.
Angel has always been intimidating. His size, the constant snarl of his lips, would make anyone with an ounce of common sense back away. I’ve never been known to have such sense, and I pushed this man, tested him, played games with his head before stepping over his dead body without a backward glance in El Salvador years ago.
“He’s… that’s… when I was kidnapped. He was the leader.” I expect the words to come from Cara, although her recollection of the details isn’t very accurate. Thumper led the crew in El Salvador.
Grinch’s woman Grace is the one who spoke.
It was another case Angel was on. Had to be.
He was working a job in El Salvador, a mercenary looking for a certain woman so he could get paid. He didn’t go out of his way to hurt the women. That’s not what he was hired to do. He had a single focus until I crossed his path. Somehow the hired gun felt the need to intercede, to step in and shield me from my job. The memories still annoy me, but deep down there’s… relief.
He didn’t die, despite the lack of effort I put in to making sure he was okay.