Maestro nodded. “Absolutely. The women were asking all sorts of questions, but all personal. They weren’t going for club secrets so much as trying to figure out where we all came from and what we did before we ended up here.”
Lana nodded. “Before I left, a couple of the men were plying me with compliments and liquor, asking similar questions.”
Alena agreed. “They’ve figured out that there’s more to us than a few friends getting together and riding. We rescued Hammer’s wife from the Ghosts when they couldn’t, and we did it fast. I imagine they’re wondering about us.” Hammer was president of a Demons chapter that had come to them looking for help.
“I believe we can count on them as allies in a pinch,” Player said. He looked around the table. “Did you all get that same impression?”
Czar had taken Blythe home after the barbecue. He looked to Reaper. Reaper and Anya had attended and stayed longer. Because Reaper had a woman of his own, he had more of an opportunity to observe the men and women who had come to party.
“They want to know who they’re getting in bed with, Czar,” Reaper said. “They want us as their allies, but they don’t want to get caught with their pants down.”
Steele seconded that. “I have to agree. We’re looking for just as much information on them. Code does that for us. They aren’t going to find jack on us, no matter how hard they look. Code can feed them bullshit, small random pieces on us he manufactures, if you think it’s necessary.”
They already had enough enemies, and they were right in the middle of Diamondback territory. That was an uneasy alliance. Adding another chapter to Torpedo Ink might make that alliance even shakier. Having the Demons at their back was a good thing. Of course, that meant doing business with them, but that was the name of the game. And they were very good at the game.
“It’s not necessary,” Czar said. “We’ll meet back here tomorrow and hash out with Breezy where to start looking for Zane.”
FOUR
Steele entered his bedroom at the compound quietly. The room smelled different. He’d always kept it clean. He was a doctor, and often, his room was nearly sterile. He used antibacterial spray on everything, but mostly it was antiseptic. He wanted his room sterile. It was the one place he never brought a woman—or women. This was where he was most vulnerable, and he wasn’t going to allow anyone or anything that might remind him of his childhood and the place he’d shared with the other members of Torpedo Ink as well as those who didn’t make it.
The moment he thought of it, the smell was there of blood and death, the moans and cries of the dying. Of the brutalized. Boys and girls. Sometimes they waited in rows of two, lying on the floor curled into bloody balls of what once was human flesh and now was just a mass of blood he was supposed to miraculously cure. It had been cold. So cold, there was no way to warm those bodies, or himself.
He shook his head, his hands curling into two tight fists. He couldn’t go there, not now, not when he had a second chance at life—a real life. It was dangerous to go back, at least for him, to even think of those days when he was too young and had no way to save the dying. He could only whisper to them, tell them not to be afraid, and that someday, he would avenge them. That was all he had to give to those little boys and girls with the open, weeping sores and infections that smelled so bad he knew they were rotting from the inside.
Deliberately, he inhaled, taking Breezy’s scent deep, knowing his woman could drive out every bad thing, every ugly place, the smells that seemed to follow him wherever he went and replace it all with her. It didn’t matter if it was temporary, she gave him what no one and nothing had ever been able to do.
Right now, his entire room smelled fresh and feminine. He leaned one hip against the door, looking at his woman lying in the middle of his bed. She’d always done that—curled up like a little cat right in the center of the bed. She had all that thick tawny hair and it spilled across the pillow, covering most of her face from his sight.
A thin sheet was pulled over her body and she shivered continually. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her arms were held tight into her. He moved closer to her, leaning down to look at her face. She’d been crying, and his heart turned over. Still, there wasn’t a single line there. She looked like an angel with her fair, rose petal skin and the sweep of those thick, tawny lashes. He should have known she was underage when he’d met her. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to know, not with his body’s reaction to her.
He’d never had that—a real reaction—not that he could remember. His training had been brutal, just like the others’. The beatings. The sex. Learning to kill. He hadn’t had it like some of the others. Reaper. Savage. Ice. Storm. Maestro. They’d been nearly wrecked as human beings. He didn’t know how they’d survived—but then he didn’t know how he had. In truth, there were parts of him that hadn’t.
Steele couldn’t help himself, he covered Breezy with the blankets and then stepped back. All the way across the room to the door again. Away from her. Just having her that close was dangerous to both of them. He wanted her with every breath he took—he had from the first time they met. His body reacted the moment he inhaled her scent, fresh from the bath. He tended to get his way in all things—especially with her. Breezy had given him that. She might have continued if he hadn’t sabotaged the relationship.
He recognized what he’d done. He was intelligent. He felt he didn’t deserve her—and he didn’t. He’d sent her away as much for his own punishment as to save her. He was that screwed up. Now she was back, and he had to find a way to keep her. He’d tried living without her, and it hadn’t gone very well. He would be fighting her as well as fighting himself because if he didn’t find a way to keep her, this time there would be no survival for him.
He looked slowly around his room. He was a doctor. A surgeon. He’d had more specialized training than most doctors. Over and over, he’d violated his oath—his need—to heal others. He’d murdered his enemies, keeping his promise to the dead. He’d assassinated for his country. He’d been following orders—but it was still murder. He went after child predators, but he’d made the same mistake he killed others for. He hadn’t known her age, but then he hadn’t bothered to find out. He was guilty as hell—even if the law didn’t condemn him, it didn’t make him less so in his own eyes.
Breezy moved. Those long lashes fluttered. “Steele?”
The ache in her voice was an arrow piercing his heart. “I’m here, Bree.” He stayed right where he was, planted against the door, afraid to move. He’d walked into a room filled with enemies, never flinching, and would do it over and over, but this woman held the power to ruin him.
“I want him back. I want my baby back.”
The little sob was his undoing. She was weeping. It was heartbreaking and so unlike Breezy. She didn’t cry. He’d noticed that before he’d ever been with her. He’d seen her father backhand her, sending her flying. She’d picked herself up without even putting her hand to her face. She’d simply done the task Bridges had wanted, without a comment or sound. He’d wanted to kill her father, and that had been the first time he’d ever had to be physically restrained by Savage and Czar. It wasn’t the last. He’d been the one to make her cry the last time, telling her he didn’t want her, that she was nothing to him. Could he hate himself any more? Yes. The answer was yes, because if he was any kind of a good man, he’d get their child back, give him to her and get her out of the country.
There were Swords overseas, and they’d look for her as well—that was what he told himself. He knew he was just a selfish son of a bitch and he was keeping her because no way in hell, after seeing her like this, could he let go of her twice.
“We’ll get him back.” He poured confidence into his voice because he believed it. He moved to the edge of the bed, every step slow and deliberate, his boots making a whisper of sound on the floor. He didn’t want her to reject him. He needed her in that moment. Zane was his child as well. He might not have known about him, but that connection was already there—through Breezy. Now, someone had his son, his worst nightmare coming true.