Page 25 of Queen Crow
“You promised. Do I need to remind you that he was ready to die for me? I decided—“
“Don’t. I’ll have to go find some washed-up Jackal junkie to bleed out if we talk about it too much.” He knocks back the rest of the whiskey in his glass and subtly looks over to his girlfriend cradling the baby.
“Can you imagine the twisted family tree? No. Senior’s DNA is going no further, not by me.”
I don’t say a word back to him, mostly because there’s no need to start a fight at little Johnny’s christening party. But also because I know my brother the same way I know myself.
I knew what he’d do if he found the tape. I knew his reactions to Lips in the dress, to Harley’s family putting him in danger, to Morrison’s father writing him out of his estate. I know every thought that he’s ever had.
I know the deep and very secret longing in him to have a family that he can guard intensely, nurture, and love. He might not be ready to admit it, but I’m not worried about it either. He has a lot of time before Lips is even willing to consider kids to work through the trauma of Senior and our childhood of terror.
Lips notices his mood and glances over to me with a look, always a complete mother hen about her guys, but I give her a subtle shake of my head back.
No need to open that box of nightmares until we get there.
Chapter Eight
Lips and her guys leave the christening in the opposite direction of the ranch without a word about where they’re heading off to.
When I slide into the Impala with Aodhan, my phone buzzes in my hand, a text from Lips that simply reads,Don’t wait up.
“I need to stop in at the docks, are you in a hurry or can you ride along?” Aodhan murmurs, and I take the moment to lean across the seat to catch his lips with mine.
I feel as though I’ve barely gotten to be with him, no matter how much we’ve actually been around each other for the last few days. There’s a distance there now and while it started with Atticus being shot, it’s been made even worse, thanks to my family coming home. I needed space to figure out Ash and his anger, and Aodhan has been so good about giving it to me without just disappearing.
I just miss him so badly though.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now,” I mumble against his lips, and he gives me one of his lazy grins, his eyes hooded but bright up close like this.
“Luckiest man alive, I don’t deserve you. Let’s get this shit over with so I can get you home, Queenie. It’s been too long.”
A shiver runs down my spine and I giggle under my breath, pulling back to sit against the old leather seats. It’s not as comfortable as my car or as smooth a ride as one of Ash’s, but it’s become my favorite.
Harley would murder me if he heard me, his loyalty to muscle cars means that he likes the Impala well enough, but he’ll never move past the Mustang that Joey destroyed. He’d sent a list of parts he needed to Poe last year and the deliveries have been coming in slowly. I’m fairly sure the original car isn’t much more than an axle and a couple of bolts, but none of that matters to Harley.
He’s set up one of the bays in Ash’s garage, complete with a lift and every tool you could ever possibly need to put a car together, and he’s ready to build the car back from the literal ashes with nothing but his own hands and some advice from Lips’ little grease-monkey sister.
The thought of it has me smiling all the way down to the docks. I’m not as familiar with this area full of cargo ships and customs workers, but Aodhan directs the Impala through all of the check-in points without being stopped, the workers all waving him through on sight.
When he pulls up at the small parking lot by the water’s edge, I can pick out all of the O’Cronins in the crowd of workers, all of them peering over at the Impala now that the head of their family is here.
There’s a lot of respect in those eyes and it calms something in me.
Aodhan unbuckles his seatbelt and leans over to kiss me gently. “I’ll be half an hour. Do you wanna come down with me?”
I shake my head, facing my phone a little. “I have more than enough to keep me busy… and it smells out there. I’m fine.”
He smirks at me as he climbs out, but I’m not wrong—the ocean smell is almost unbearable even after the door swings shut. I’m not cut out for south-side Mounty life, it’s a well known fact.
Lips once told me that this place smells like home to her, which is both incomprehensible and unforgivable to me. I sometimes imagine digging her mother up just to spit on her for leaving her young daughter alone on the streets of this monstrous city.
I pull up the security cameras on Atticus’ hospital bed to play in the background while I read through documents on Santiago Arias. Jackson is good at what he does and there’s days of reading ahead of me, scouring through every little piece of his life until I find something, anything, to hold over the Cartel’s head.
I’m still not sure exactly how things are going to go down, but Amanda Donnelley is still number one on my death list, no matter how evil and disgusting the Crawfords are… just so long as they stay the hell away from Atticus, which is exactly why I’m obsessively watching his security feed.
The half hour passes quickly, stretching out into an hour, then two. I’m not worried about it, not with one of Aodhan’s cousins watching the car for him and waving a hand at me whenever I look up at him, a sign that there’s nothing actually wrong. The docks are busy at this time of the afternoon, and I wasn’t lying when I told Aodhan I had nowhere else to be.
The roar of engines catches my attention and I watch as a whole legion of leather-clad bikers ride into the parking lot. The Unseen patches are clear across their backs and I can pick out the Boar, Harbin, and Roxas clearly, but there’s at least two dozen men here.