Page 114 of Root

I’m betting the guards will let me out, so I put on the helmet and gun the bike’s engine, heading down the drive to the gates, which open. Like fucking magic.

It’s probably more Trojan than gift horse, but I take it and head to that bar in the business district.

Lucy’s prettier, deadlier in person. She leans on her desk, looking up at me, having listened to what I had to say.

And she nods. “So let me get this straight, this gang took the bar, and are using it as some prime location to take control of the money flow?”

“I don’t know if that’s—”

“I do. Bunny Munroe sits close to ports and other outlets for smuggling. It’s meant to be neutral.” Her gaze flicks over me.

“It’s your territory. You can stop them.” I look at her. “I know they want to own Queenstown. They want real power. If they topple Rush—”

She snorts.

“You mean Nikolai. Babe, he’s not Mr. Cuddles. He’s a brutal man. Touch what’s his and everyone will die. I know because I’m the same. What’s mine is mine and no one fucks with that. They won’t get to us.”

“But they could get to Rush…”

“And?” But she’s interested, she’s sitting up, not moving and I swallow hard.

It’s all a bluff, it’s flimsy and it’s all I have.

“They’re chaos. They don’t play by rules. They need to be stopped, and if you and Wilder and your affiliates go on the attack—”

“To save Rush Rhodes?”

“Yes.”

“Nikolai Wilder’s family.”

I will my hands not to bunch. “They won’t stop there.”

“Sure,” Lucy says, “but what’s to stop me using you as bait?”

“Me.”

I turn.

Rush.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rush

I’m not alone.

And fury eats at me. Fear, too.

Lucy saw me before she threatened to use Jess as bait, and the worst of it all is that Tony heard too. And if Tony heard?

Nikolai will.

Jess has nothing except some death wish pushing her, and the only thing she said in her mass of lies and half-truths from our time at that lookout was her brother’s in trouble.

I’m gonna say he got himself there, because she forgot she claimed she was the cause. I don’t blame her. I was in the middle of making her come when she said that.

I run a hand over my face and don’t look at Jess. I can feel her fear, the little vibrations that bite and swirl in the air.

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