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“Angel,” Thumper says. “Why are you here?”
I take a deep breath. Being hated isn’t a new thing for me. I seldomly meet a person who walks away much less walks away with a good opinion of me.
“I was working in Telluride,” I explain, wishing I’d just dropped that little girl off on their front doorstep and drove away. But if she died because of the temperatures outside, that would be on me. I don’t like blame. It makes my skin itch.
The atmosphere in the room changes some, but I continue. I don’t know how long these men will let me explain before all hell breaks loose and one of them tries to put an end to me.
“I thought your man was there for the same reason, but he left before getting anything done.”
“I thought you were dead,” Thumper says, digging up shit that has long been buried.
But how is he to know that the Angel he thought he knew is dead?
I can’t think of El Salvador, or the way my heart jumped at seeing Lauren Vos in the fucking living room.
I don’t often let betrayal seep into my bones, but that fucking woman makes me see red.
Had Thumper not been taken, I know he never would’ve left me bleeding out on the floor like she did.
He wouldn’t have left me for the cleanup crew to discover. It took me eight months to get away from that group of deranged assholes.
“I saw you go down. Lauren said you were still on the floor when she left with Cara, Penny, and Amanda,” Thumper continues.
His words confirm what I already knew, but they still somehow have the power to anger me.
Laurensaid.
I bet Lauren said a lot of fucking things.
But I’m not here for Lauren.
“Everyone, sit the fuck down!” Kincaid roars, and the men in the room move like the robots that they are, pulling out chairs and dropping their asses down.
It seems Kincaid is a good teacher as well. I respect the man for it.
Wielding such power over a group of testosterone-riddled men can’t be easy.
Even the pissed man who feels the need to defend what happened in his woman’s past takes a seat, but he never drops the rage from his eyes. He’s twitchy with it. I know without question if we were left in a room alone, he’d try everything in his power to rip my throat out.
Good for him. Having goals is important.
“What’s your full name?” a guy in the corner asks, his fingers hovering over a keyboard.
“You’re not going to find shit on me, techie,” I say, smirking when the man lifts an eyebrow in challenge.
“Angel Guerra.” The man I became the day my mother was taught her final lesson.
His fingers fly over the keyboard, and it only takes a second for his eyes to lift back to mine, brow scrunched.
“As I was say—”
I clamp my jaw closed, and I take a deep breath to calm the irritation forming in my gut when a knock at the door echoes in the room.
The door is opened by the same guy who held the man back who wants my head on a spike.
“This is club business,” Kincaid hisses, and the door is immediately snapped closed.
Without even seeing her, I know it was Lauren Vos who knocked on that fucking door. The woman plays her parts very well.