Page 22 of Savage Hero

“I was going to do it in the bathroom,” she cuts in, her face growing red spots. “That was the plan. No one would even have known.”

“That you’d killed Bryan Domingo, Capo of the Domingo fucking—” I stop talking. “They’d have known, Angel.Trustme.”

Her eyes narrow. She slips a finger behind the waistband of her panties, and suddenly I’m witnessing a fucking magic trick. It takes less than a second, then she’s holding out a thin wire.

“You were going to garrote him?” My voice is hushed. My cock started getting hard the minute she began her strip routine, but now it’s starting to tent the jeans I changed into after my shower.

She might have been able to pull it off. She’s definitely not weak. But Bryan would have seen it coming. You’d have to be in just the right position to slip something like that over someone’s neck, and there’s no way—

“Garrote? What’s that?” she asks, one side of her lip twitching up.

“Strangle. With a wire.” I point at her hands.

“What? No.” She shakes her head and then manipulates the wire until it’s straight. There’s a glint of pride in her eyes when she looks up and says, “I was going to stab this into his kidney.”

My throat goes dry. Such a thin wire could easily pierce skin. If she did manage to find the kidney and rupture it, toxins would fill the bloodstream, and pretty soon—

“No one would even know what had happened,” I say quietly.

She shrugs again and drops the wire to the floor. Then she grabs her underwear and drags the fabric down her legs. I’m still standing there, not sure if I’m disgusted or slightly in awe of her plan, when she picks up the slip of fabric and tosses it at me.

“There, pervert. Smell it, keep it, I don’t give a fuck. Just get this over with.”

There’s a patch of light brown curls at her apex. A tattoo of a butterfly above one hip bone. A scar on the other.

Adeepscar.

I turn and go into my closet, absently dropping her underwear in the laundry hamper just inside the door. When I come out and hand her a stack of my clothes, she gives me an unreadable look.

“He’s going to ask your name, where you’re from. Tell him—”

“I’m Nick Jones from Kansas.” Nyx pauses in the act of stepping into a pair of my gym sweats, looking at me over her shoulder. She’s got a thick accent, and her voice is rough and low. “Came here looking for a job, and well, I tell you, it’s tough out there.”

“Fine. Tell him that. And then you shut the fuck up.”

She rolls her eyes at me before pointing over at the sports bra. “Best I put that back on.”

I can’t argue. Her breasts are large and much too obvious without the flattening effect of the bra.

“He’s going to offer you some money. You thank him like you worship the ground he walks on, and then we get the hell out of there.”

“We?”

I frown at her, but before I can say anything, she adds, “Then it’s off to the kennels, I suppose? Why bother taking me to your father first? You could just tell him I slipped and fell into your dog’s mouth.”

I can’t answer her.There’s not a shred of logic in any of this.

But as if the Universe is trying its best to help me out, the kid on the bed makes a little gurgling sound. “Expect me to drag a baby around everywhere I go?”

“Oh, right.” She almost sounds disappointed, but maybe it’s my imagination.Nyx turns, holding out her arms. “Well?”

I slide a finger over my top lip. “Where’s that thing of yours?”

She sighs and goes to pick up her jacket. When she turns around, the scrappy mustache is plastered above her mouth again.I shake my head, sneering at her pathetic disguise.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t put on his glasses,” I mutter.

Chapter Eleven

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