Page 38 of Gluttony (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hadley

“I’m not sure whether to be impressed or pissed the fuck off.” My brows are up in my hairline and my smirk is uncontrollable.

“I…I…Shit!” Bowie throws the gun to the floor and all the chaos from before grinds to a halt.

“Impressed. Definitely be impressed. Your girl’s got big ass hairy balls.” The guy with a scar, Dmitry, wraps his heavily tattooed arm around The Shadow, AKA J, his wife and the capo of the Reapers mafia crew.

Yeah, we got the mafia involved.

“I could’ve…oh my god, I could’ve killed you. Why the fuck would you push a gun into your skull when a fucking crazy lady is hovering over the trigger?” Bowie shoves her head in her hands and I think…yep…she’s crying.

“You needed to get it out of your system.” What I’m not telling her is that I knew the clip was already empty. I counted the shots and I know guns.

With a sharp flip of her head, Bowie glares at me with the strength of a million death lasers.

“But what if you died? I’d be a murderer and you’d…you’d be dead.” She waves her hands in the air. “Then there’d be some kind of gangland shootout in here and that blonde woman would be laughing over all of our dead bodies!”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic, Little Rabbit.”

“Dramatic? Dramatic?! Ha. Let’s talk about what’s a little dramatic, shall we?” Her whole body is vibrating with an anger I can recognize all too well, not helped by the snickers from The Shadow’s crew behind me.

I turn and find Hayes kneeling on the floor beside Orion, who is sitting up and holding the top of his arm.

“Fuck, did he get shot?” I’m torn between attempting to comfort Bowie and making sure Orion is okay.

“Kinda.” Orion shrugs, then winces immediately after and continues to rub at his arm.

“If you’d move your fucking hand and let me see what the damage is, it’d be really fucking helpful right now, Ry.” Hayes frowns and sighs deeply.

“Oh my God, I actually did shoot one of you!” Bowie runs over to Orion and kneels in front of him. “I’m so fucking sorry. Is it bad? Are you going to die? Did I kill you?” She bends forward, her head against Orion’s chest as she grips onto his shirt and sobs.

I think she’s finally cracked.

Hayes clears his throat and stands to face The Reapers, who are all by the exit like some kind of superhero team. All mighty and judgey.

“We’ve got it from here, Shadow. Apologies for the mix up.”

She respectfully tilts her head. “It’s been…” J pauses and twists it around as if searching for her words. “Fun, actually.” She grins. “We’ll be in touch for payment.” With a wink, she spins on her heel and the men behind her part like the red sea to let her through before following.

“Did you really just say apologies for the mix up to a mafia capo?” I laugh because this whole situation is fucked.

I mean, J was right, it has been kinda fun, and her husband would be a great killing buddy, but I don’t like how broken Bowie looks right now. She’s sobbing into Orion’s chest and it’s tearing me up that we did this.

Because, essentially, it was the three of us who did this to her. It may have been Hayes’s plan, but Orion signed off on it, giving it his input, and I made the call.

“You need to shut the fuck up, you complete and utter wanker. Why would you let anyone hold a fucking gun to your head?”

“Ah, but I love it when you say such sweet things to me, big brother.”

“He has a point, Hads. What the fuck were you thinking?” Orion’s tone is a lot softer than Hayes’s, but he’s also still sitting, now stroking Bowie’s messy red hair. He’s no longer holding his arm, and I can see some blood, but nothing life threatening. The bullet grazed him, at best.

Rolling my head in exasperation, I first look to my twin, then to Orion.

“I was thinking that our Little Rabbit here was holding a Sig Sauer P320 XTen with a fifteen round magazine, and she had already shot them all into the ceiling…and Orion. So there was never a chance that she was gonna shoot me. Okay? I won’t lie, though, the whole thing did get my dick hard.

I may have to come up with a sexy scene where our Little Rabbit uses a gun…

or maybe I’ll use the gun.” I shrug. “Whatever. There will be a gun anyway.”

The sobbing has subsided, and while both Hayes and Orion are shaking their heads at me, Bowie lifts hers and slowly turns to look at me.

There’s anger in her eyes, and it’s sexy as fuck. I want to rile her up and get it all out of her. She’s been through a fair bit recently, which we’ve just added to, so she probably needs a good shouting session, then a good fuck.

“Got something to say, Little Rabbit?” I give her my best smirk, knowing damn well that she has plenty to say.

First looking at the cut on Orion’s arm, checking for herself the severity of the wound, she must decide it’s okay because then she stands to her full height. I’m ready for it, for her verbal tongue lashing, but instead, she turns and squares up to Hayes.

Won’t say I’m not disappointed, but I can do a bit of voyeurism…

The height difference is comical, her chin almost pointed to the sky with how far she has to look up to his face, but she doesn’t back away, and neither does he. True to form, my twin remains stoic, glaring down at her, his hands firmly in the pockets of his trousers.

“Let me get this straight. I come clean, and yeah, okay, I was totally in the wrong before but I explained myself, I was ready to leave in the morning and you’d never have to see me again.

Anyway, so I come clean, and your response is to let me think I’m being arrested, only to later find out that I had been taken by the fucking mafia who, essentially, didn’t actually need me for anything because they didn’t say a fucking word.

All of this after finding out my entire life has been a lie, my partner is a complete douchebag and had me attacked, all my savings are gone, my condo is sold, my rental taken away and all my things moved into the spare room of a penthouse with my three bosses…

and to top it all off, the three of you have been giving me signals more mixed than…

than…I don’t even fucking know because my brain is scrambled and I can’t think straight.

” Grasping at her hair with both hands, she lets out a loud grunt of frustration with her head to the sky before making eye contact with Hayes again.

“Did I miss anything, Sir ?” Venom drips from the word sir, but her body denies what she’s trying to convey.

Her nipples are rock hard beneath that very flimsy PJ set she’s wearing.

“There are a few things missing from your side of the story, but you hit the main points.” Hayes raises a brow in challenge and I can’t help laughing.

She may not know it yet, but she’s all in. Just like we are.

The door to the exit is wide open, we’re not trying to restrain her or keep her here in any way, and yet she’s choosing to stay and argue this out. That Dmitry guy was right, our girl really does have huge, hairy as fuck balls.

“And you, Mr. Hunt And Prey, Origami Making, Fucking Psycho.” Her head spins and suddenly her angry glare is on me. “Don’t you stand there laughing your fucking socks off. Because this shit isn’t funny.” Next to turn is her body as she slowly stalks toward me and juts out her exquisite chest.

“It is a little funny.” I grin down at her, enjoying the way her taut nipples are pressed against me.

“No, it is not. Do you have any sane explanation for me as to what the fuck this stunt was all about?” Her head wobbles a little as she demands an answer from me and I shrug.

“Nope. No sane one.”

“Oh my God!” She flings her head backward and her body follows as she throws her arms into the air. Then her attention is on Orion, who is now standing.

We make a nice little triangle surrounding her, not that I think she’s realized, yet.

“Orion, you seem to be the most logical one here. Sorry about kind of shooting you, by the way.” She’s not standing quite so close to Orion, and her tone is a lot kinder, sweeter, as she places a hand on her hip. “Could you explain to me what the point in all this was, please?”

“Oh, come on! He gets a please? Come back, let me try again, but only if you say please this time.” Still grinning, I beckon her toward me by tilting my head as I mirror Hayes’s stance with my hands in my pockets.

A quick glance and an eye roll is all I get in response, only making me laugh once more.

“Orion?” She doesn’t need to say anything else, he knows this is a very polite reminder that she’s waiting for his answer.

He looks to each of us first, then sighs. “To be fair, this was arranged before your big confession…”

“Nah ah, no. Nope. There’s no ‘to be fair’, there’s no ‘fair’ in this, at all.

I only planned to rob you, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t follow through with it.

But you three did this . You made me think I was being arrested, to then think I was going to be killed by the fucking mob.

So no ‘to be fair’, but carry on. I can’t wait to hear this.

” She folds her arms across her chest and all the sweetness she allowed Orion has disappeared.

“The whole idea was to make you confess, to see if you’d give Mickey and the con u—”

“I already fucking confessed!” She throws her arms out to the sides again like she’s just really done with this whole conversation.

“Listen, Diamond. You have to understand a few things before you judge this.” Hayes speaks up and Bowie swings her attention on him with narrowed eyes.

“We’re a unit, have been for over twenty years, and it’s my job to make sure we’re all safe.

From the moment you walked into my office, or more like from the moment we met you in that club, that safety I built around us felt like it was crumbling.

I can’t say why, or how, but it was happening.

And slowly but surely, you’ve wound your way so fucking deep into each of us that it’s been impossible to tell my arse from my elbow. ”