Page 109 of Ruthless Reign

“No, honey, I need you to take Casey and go, don’t wait for me,” Mitch was saying to his wife on the phone. I could hear her frantic on the other end of the line. I swallowed, trying not to eavesdrop more than I was kind of forced to in the cramped quarters.

“What do you mean they said you can’t come?”

Any Saint families who were able to leave to stay with family out of state were ordered to do so by Damien, but there were still so so many who stayed behind. Whether because they didn’t have anywhere to go or because they didn’t think leaving would help them.

If Séamas O’Sullivan could reach the Senator in Panama, then what good would hopping a state line do them if he decided to use the Saint families against them just like he had the first time Damien met him?

They wouldn’t go to another safe house owned by the Saints, and I didn’t blame them. There was no way I would, either.

But still, I wished they would go. Just…anywhere else.

After the explosion last week and Chase and Israel never returning from their scouting mission, these streets were the last place any of them should be.

I felt for Damien. Having to explain to two more families that their husband or father or brother or son wouldn’t be coming home. Apparently, Pope’s wife refused any help from Damien—financially or otherwise. And even called him a liar when he explained what Pope had done and what he’d been forced to do in turn.

“Who pissed in your coffee?”

Aodhán slipped onto the couch next to me, tossing an apple from hand to hand.

I gave him a heinous look and set back to filling mags. He wasn’t helping with virtually anything. Hardin and Kaleb wouldn’t let him help plan the route. The other Saints didn’t trust him to load mags or pack out the gear they brought. So, he’d just been floating.

Walking around in a mashup of Hardin and Kaleb’s clothes, eating everything. His appetite knew no bounds.

I caught Hardin staring at me from across the room and looked away. I knew I told Kaleb I would make more of an effort to eat properly, but every time I took a bite out of anything I felt sick to my stomach. Kaleb didn’t push it, just offered me more water.

But Hardin?

The fucker forced me to sit in a chair at the table and tried to glare and growl me into eating an entire meal in front of everyone. Fucking dickwad.

I knew he was doing it because he was worried. Hell, so was I. I caught my reflection in the mirror after I showered this morning and that shit wasn’t pretty, but right now all I seemed capable of consuming was iced water and hot coffee and nothing else. It wasn’t like I was going to die.

It wasn’t like before. Those first few years of high school when my dad had to have me hospitalized and even went so far as to hire a live-in nurse for me at Briar Hall to cook for me and report back to him on eating habits.

This wasn’t about how I looked, now, though, this was different.

This was about how I felt.

I clenched my jaw, setting down the mag to pick up another, distracted as Aodhán pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flicked it open, carving off a slice of apple to set between his teeth.

He caught me watching and did some fancy fuckery with the blade as he chewed his bite of apple and then handed it to me hilt first. “Pretty thing, that,” he said, indicating the details on the handle. It looked like ivory bone or mother of pearl. Soft and worn from years of use, shining in the amber light from the lamp next to him.

“It was my Mum’s.”

I didn’t take it, and Aodhán crooked a brow at me, setting his partially eaten apple down on the side table next to him. “You know how to use a blade, mo mhuirnín?”

“What does that mean?” I asked him. “Mo mhuirnín.” I tried to repeat the words, completely butchering them with my American accent.

He shrugged. “You didn’t answer the question.”

I wanted to tell him he wasn’t exactly answering mine, either, but I sighed and looked at the blade he was still holding out toward me. “No. Not really.”

I’d been practicing close range shooting in the yard with Hardin, Kaleb, and a few of the other Saints. Each one of them seemed to have some different tip or trick to offer me and it made learning a little quicker than I thought it might be trying to figure it all out on my own.

We’d done a little hand to hand combat, too, but I was still atrocious at that.

No blades, though.

“Come on, then, I’ll show you.”

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