Page 26 of Hawk

Knuckles stepped closer to the gate.Hawk gently moved me away and stepped in front of me.

Knuckles crossed his arms over his chest.“Ain’t lettin’ the enemy inside the gates like some Goddamned Trojan horse.”

“On my honor, Knuckles.”Victor stuck his hand through the gate, offering it to Knuckles.“I only want a safe place for my brothers if things get too hot with Flagg.I’m getting ready to bring the house down on him, and I don’t want them to get the blowback.If all goes as planned, you’ll never know anything’s going on.”

“And if things go sideways?”Hawk took a threatening step forward.

“Then the city may get a little nuts until the power void is filled.Either way, no one will be looking in your direction.No one knows about our association other than me, you, and anyone you told.”

“Which is exactly no one, until today,” Knuckles said.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was necessary, man.And only for my brothers.No matter what, I will need to stay as far away from anyone I don’t want scrutinized as I can.”

“When do you expect things to start happening?”Knuckles reached out and accepted Vic’s hand.

“Forty-eight hours.”

“The only phones and shit we have stays inside the compound.Give Knight your contact info.Any communication will need to go through him.”

“I’ll take it.Expect a call from me in the next three days.If I don’t, then things really went to shit.”

Knuckles stepped back.“Carrie’s safe here.If you need to send your brothers, they’ll be safe too as long as they don’t try anything funny to get Carrie to leave.”

“Unless she wants to leave,” Vic added before looking at me again.“Are you sure this is what you want?I’d feel better if you let me take you somewhere I know you’ll be safe.”

“If you could do that, Vic, you’d have done it years ago.”

Vic didn’t even try to hide his wince.“Yeah, kid.I’m so fuckin’ sorry for that.If I could have taken you away from him, I would have.But I was afraid he’d find you, and we wouldn’t be there to protect you.”

“We?”

“Come on, Carrie.”Vic gave me a pleading look.“You know we all love you.You’re our baby sister.”

“You and Zach, yes.I was never so sure about the others.”

“Flagg pitted us all against each other, but we older boys learned early on to pretend to be adversarial in front of him.But we’re all really tight.We tried to keep you out of Flagg’s notice as much as we could.The best way was to pretend to be annoyed with you so you stayed out of his way.The downside was, you never learned to trust us like you should have been able to.”

“Father never really knew what to do with me.”

“Oh, he knew.He was saving you to marry one of his rivals.To make an alliance.”

“Yeah, not on board with that.”I gave him a cheerful smile I didn’t feel at all, but my sarcastic attitude sometimes got the better of me.

“Never figured you would be.”With a heavy sigh and one long look at me, Victor finally addressed Hawk.“You don’t treat my sister like the fuckin’ princess she is, I will end you.”

“You don’t think she can take care of herself if I’m not good to her?”

“I trained her.I know she can.”

“Then let me just tell you, when she came here late last night, she was covered in blood and was spitting out the remains of one of those bastard’s ears she’d bitten off in the fight.Trust me when I tell you, your sister can take care of herself when it comes to me.Anyone else she needs rid of, I’ll be the one to do it.”Hawk offered his hand to my brother.“I’ll guard your sister with my life.You have my word.”

“His word good, Knuckles?”

“He was my SAA before I went away.He did his time on the inside like the rest of us, but he’s solid as they come.All my men are solid or they wouldn’t be here.”

Vic took Hawk’s offered hand.“I’m holding you to this, Hawk.”

“You take care of your father.Then come back and let your sister know you’re OK.”

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