Page 33 of Shadow

I dipped my chin. “I’ll do my best,” I promised him. It was the least I could do for the man who’d had Malik’s back in prison.

26

Rurik

“Man, fuck you,” Malik growled at Malachi, making me lift my head from where I’d been staring at my laptop. The two of them had taken to playing on Malachi’s gaming system to pass the time while I was eyeballs deep in planting viruses in Savage Dream MC’s security company, Safe Dreams. It wasn’t something that could be done quickly, which meant I’d been sitting here for a while, carefully planting a little virus here and a little virus there, which would eventually cause their entire system to fail. And planting little viruses like this would keep them from tracing it back to me.

“It’s every man for themselves,” Malachi retorted.

Malik scowled at him as Malachi worked to revive his character. “It’s a goddamn team game, Malachi.”

I let Malik out of his sling for a little while after he’d given me his word he’d take it easy on his shoulder. And he was. He was leaned back in the computer chair he was sitting in, and hehadn’t moved his arm all that much. Until the doctor gave the all clear for him totryto resume daily activities, I was keeping Malik and his arm on a tight leash. The last thing I wanted him to do was further injure himself more and set himself back in his recovery.

“Then play like we’re a team, Malik,” Malachi retorted. I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not, and the frown Malik was aiming his way told me he wasn’t sure either. That was the thing with Malachi. Sometimes, none of us knew whether he was being serious or not. Some injury or another had scrambled his brain a bit; honestly, I didn’t care enough to know what’d actually happened to him.

So long as I could rely on him to have Malik’s back, that was good enough for me.

I focused back on my computer as the sound of gunfire ricocheted throughout the room from the TV. The noise was grating on my nerves, but I wasn’t keen on being too far away from Malik. When Malachi started shouting at someone on their team, I ground my teeth together so hard, it was audible enough that Malik looked away from the TV to shoot me a questioning glance.

And his character promptly died.

“Oh, are you fucking kidding me,” Malachi growled. “How are you down again?”

“Got distracted,” Malik muttered, focusing back on the television screen.

I snorted. Yeah, he’d gotten distracted alright.

“Here,” Hyram said, setting a mug of coffee and a set of earplugs in front of me. “The more Malachi gets into that game, the louder he’s going to get.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled, opening the fresh pack of earplugs. I stuffed them into my ears. They didn’t silence everything, which was good since I still wanted to be aware of what was going on around me, but they muffled it all enough that I could finally fucking focus again.

After taking a sip of the coffee Hyram had given me, my eyes widened a little in surprise. There wasdefinitelyalcohol in it—tasted like Baileys. Hyram grinned at me from where he’d dropped into a seat at the table I was occupying.

“You’re a God-send,” I told him, lifting the coffee mug in his direction.

He snickered. “Listening to those two go back and forth will drive anyone to drink.”

Malik lifted his good arm, giving Hyram a stiff middle finger before he quickly dropped it back to his controller, getting back into the game again. I hunched back over my laptop, getting back to work. If I could stay focused, I could probably get this done by dinner time.

“Done,”I announced just as Nolan and Chet walked through the door with pizzas. William, who’d been silently reading a book for the past hour, looked up as the scent of pizza wafted through the room.

At my words, Malik instantly forgot about the game they werestillplaying, and he smirked. “It’s done?”

I nodded. “Yeah, baby. In about forty-eight hours, their entire security system will crumble, and it’ll affect everyone who does business with them.” I yawned and stretched. My damn back was stiff, and my ass hurt from sitting so long.

“It’s weird how turned on I am right now that you’re a fucking geek,” Malik said, ignoring Malachi, who was currently bitching at him for giving up the game.

I smirked. “Yeah?” I rasped, my cock thickening. Didn’t take much to turn me on where Malik was concerned, and when he was open about wanting me? Fuck, that was even hotter. I liked toying with him and working for it, but there was something about him giving in to me so easily that fucking drove me wild.

“Keep it in your fucking pants,” Hyram growled as he made his way to the bar where Nolan and Chet had deposited the pizzas. “I swear to fuck, I got enough of that shit listening to Digg edge himself while listening to the other inmates jack their dicks.”

That was how Hyram had come to be tied into the Ghost Born MC. Digg, the mother charter’s road captain, had landed his ass in prison as Hyram’s bunkmate. It was also how Digg had come to meet Hyram’s little sister, Frankie. Hyram had asked him to protect Frankie when Digg got out, and Digg took that so literal, he’d stalked her, essentially kidnapped her, and then wifed her up.

“Wait, what?” Chet blurted, a grin splitting his lips. “Oh, you got to tell us more, man. You can’t say some shit like that and leave us hanging.”

“I’m frankly good with not knowing more,” Malik spoke up, making me snicker.

Hyram pinched the bridge of his nose, then pointed a finger at Chet. “No. I’m fucking scarred. I don’t want to relive that shit.” He then looked at me and Malik, who had come to sit in the chair beside me. “If you two could keep your nasty ass talking in the bedroom, you’d be doing me a wondrous favor.”

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