Page 4 of Ride with the Devil

…unless you have to.

Cross nods at me. “Let me guess. Boss is on the side of town for dinner?”

“Yup.”

“Thought so. Genevieve was supposed to have dinner at the house with her brother and cousin tonight. He cancelled last minute, said Family biz came up. Damien’s gotten better. Heonly shuts my butterfly out when it has something to do with Winter. If Devil’s with him, maybe they finally got a lead.”

That would be great. Not like I’m afraid of him gunning for me, but I did go undercover, using my time as a criminal in Hamilton to get an interview with Winter’s crew. I got the job on Devil’s orders once our tech genius, Tanner, figured out that was where Cross was being held, and I betrayed my ‘new’ boss when the four us escaped, leaving a body in our wake.

Does that mean Winter will come after me? Maybe. He knows my name, knows some of my history. Still, he’s got bigger fish to fry, and since no one’s seen hide nor hair of the bastard since Devil and Libellula beat him at his own game, I’m not afraid.

I’m only afraid of one thing, and it’s such a leftover from my childhood, I wish I could get over it—but I can’t, and that’s my shit to deal with.

Fuck knows that we all have our own baggage.

Cross, definitely, but with Genevieve at his side, he’s dealing.

Maybe, one of these days, I’ll be able to forget Emily completely and finally find a woman who makes me as happy as Genevieve does Cross…

Shrugging my shoulders, moving so that I’m standing in front of the reception desk, I watch Cross’s long, slender fingers twirl the item between them.

“What’s that you got there?” I jerk my chin at the tiny figurine he’s still holding on to. It’s about an inch, inch-and-a-half high, shimmering pinks and purples beneath the fluorescent lights as he spins it.

“I’ve been trying to figure this stupid thing out for months.” Cross flicks the crystal with his fingertip before tossing it onto the desk. It hits it with a softclink, and I can tell that it’s a figurine of a tiny bird. “Tanner thinks he might be closer to figuring it out. You hear about the Hummingbird, wheels?”

Wheels. Cross is big on nicknames, especially those he gives out himself. Like how he refers to Rolls—already an established nickname for our fixer, Royce McIntyre—as ‘sunshine’ because of his blond hair and charming personality, or how Genevieve is his ‘butterfly’. Up until last summer, I was just the driver, Cross the artist, but then I risked my neck to help him escape Winter and, since then, I’m ‘wheels’.

I shake my head.

He looks surprised. “Really? Not even from Devil in the backseat?”

“I learned a long time ago to block out anything that happens back there,” I admit.

Cross chuckles. “Yeah. I’ve heard about the drives the boss likes to take with his wife. Smart man.” Shifting in his seat, he swings his boots down, letting them hit the floor. “So what’s up? You need another tat?” Cross gives a little smirk, brushing a lock of hair out of his eye. “Coveting my wife, Luca? Got eyes for Genevieve? Is that number nine?”

I think of the tally marks on my forearm. There are only eight, not ten, and considering what the last two I’m missing stand for, I doubt I’ll be completing the set any time soon; not while I’m a driver instead of one of the Sinners responsible for wet work, like Killian or Max.

And I know Cross is teasing. As possessive as he is of the tiny blonde ballerina, he wouldn’t be smirking like that if he honestly believed I was interested in his fiancé. He’d be dead serious, and I would probably just be dead.

That’s Sinners for you. Fanatically loyal to our leader, but commit to a woman, and she becomes your entire world.

It happened to the boss when he reunited with his childhood sweetheart. Rolls and his wife, Nicolette. Killian and Jasmine. Now Cross and Genevieve.

Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve never found someone to replace Emily…

Eight tallies. There are only two people in this world who know why I have them: me and Cross. Mainly because he was the artist who gave me the first five, but by the time I went back for the sixth, then the seventh, and finally the eight… even the notoriously quiet Cross had to ask if the marks had any particular meaning.

Makes sense. In our line of work, it happens. Like how the Dragonfly enforcers tattoo the back of their biceps with a small leaf every time they kill for their leader. I’m the driver. What could my marks stand for?

Simple: which of the Ten Commandments I’ve broken.

I grew up a member of the Holy Church of Jesus Devotion. It wasn’t until I was free from their hold on me that I realized that the JD part of HCoJD didn’t stand for ‘Jesus Devotion’ like my parents insisted. It stands for Jack Donovan, the pastor and ‘prophet’ he reigns over the congregation.

Because it’s not a church. It’s a fucking cult, and I’m still twisted up from all of it’s teachings.

My tattoo is proof of that. So is the one thing I wish I could stop being afraid of.

Ten Commandments. Ten rules I was beaten into submission into following. Because if I broke all ten, I was sentencing myself to eternal damnation… and even as a twenty-seven-year-old Sinner, I can’t bring myself to break all the rules, just in case brimstone and hellfire would be waiting for me when I eventually died.

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