Page 3 of Entangled in Them

Kodee finally turned his head and looked at me. He spotted the bruised cheek and frowned. “What happened?”

I covered the area with my palm. “Nothing. I came off my bike.”

The lie tripped easily from my tongue, and I realized I wasn’t ready to have any difficult conversations with him about the Capello brothers.

He lifted his eyebrows. “And you weren’t wearing your helmet?”

“It was stupid.” I shook my head, not meeting his deep brown gaze. “I hadn’t even got the bike started, so I didn’t have my helmet on yet. I just tipped over, and my face took the fall.”

“Really?”

“What would you rather hear? That I was drinking in a bar and got into a fight?” It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d done something like that. My temper seemed to flare after I had a couple of drinks inside me.

His handsome face didn’t betray any information. “Did you?”

I exhaled a sigh. “No, I didn’t. I already told you what happened.”

“You fell off your bike?”

“That’s what I said.”

One of the bedroom doors opened, and Ryan emerged, buttoning up his shirt.

There were certain rules we followed to keep up appearance. First was that we each had our own rooms, avoiding any awkward questions. It wasn’t a problem. I thought deep down, we each liked to have our own space, anyway. Living and working together didn’t exactly leave much room for alone time. The second was that we always tried to give the appearance of smartly dressed businessmen. Not all the time, admittedly—there were times like now, when I was more comfortable in a leather jacket and jeans, but most of the time we were seen outside of this apartment in expensive suits. It was another way of keeping up appearances. When people saw a man in a suit, they assumed he was respectable. They thought businessman, office job, nine-to-five.

They didn’t think criminal.

Of course, there were times when we relaxed, but that was always done behind closed—and locked—doors.

Ryan frowned at me. His blond hair was still dark from the shower. “What did you do to your face?”

“He fell off his bike,” Kodee interceded before I got the chance to do anything.

“Seriously?”

I looked between both men. “Aye, I did. Why would I lie?”

Ryan pursed his lips. They were thin, where Kodee’s were full, but that didn’t make him any less gorgeous. “Because you got yourself into trouble again.”

To try to stop any more questions, I crossed the room to him. “I’m not in any trouble.” I cupped his cheek in my palm and kissed his mouth. He responded with a nip and a groan.

Ryan came from a tough background, but he was most definitely our sub. When he was in the right frame of mind, nothing got him hotter than being told exactly what to do. That only applied in the bedroom, however. Outside of the bedroom, we were all equals, despite our differences in personality.

Kodee was the eldest at twenty-eight, and was also the cool, calm one. He had the highest level of education among us, with a master’s in graphic design, which was a skill we put to use in our business. He could be working in a regular office instead of with Ryan and me, but he had his own reasons for living outside of the law.

Ryan was complicated. He carried demons with him, more than any of us, even more than Kodee. Maybe that was why he liked to sub with us. It was the one time he could hand everything over to someone else, and perhaps not need to feel like he was himself, or shouldering his burden. Fuck. I didn’t know. I wasn’t a psychologist.

I wasn’t going to tell them why I’d taken the job behind their backs. It would look as though I was palming my reasons off on someone else, and I didn’t want to do that.

A banging on the front door caught our attention. We turned as one toward it, frowning. People didn’t just come straight up to our door. We had a doorman in the lobby to prevent exactly this from happening.

“Who the fuck is that?” Ryan snapped.

“How the hell should I know?” But my stomach twisted. I had the feeling I knew exactly who it was going to be. Frankie Capello had said he knew where I lived, but the reality of them following me here dawned. Somehow, I hadn’t actually expected him to bring my payment to the door. What was wrong with just giving it to me at the disused warehouse, like we’d planned? How was I going to explain him handing my payment over to me in front of the guys? They were not going to be happy.

I darted for the door, hoping to get there first. But Kodee was closer, and he was taller, his legs longer. Within a couple of strides, he’d made it there before me. He held up his hand to tell me to stop, and then reached out to the entrance hall console, where he slid open a drawer and pulled out a gun. He only half opened the door, keeping the hand with the gun hidden from sight of whoever was on the other side.

It wasn’t Frankie Capello standing in the hallway, but I did recognize two of the men from the crew who’d surrounded me in the disused warehouse downtown. The person they held between them, however, was a complete stranger.

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