Page 18 of At the Edge of Surrender

So fucked up.

Groaning, I flopped over and rammed the heels of my hands into my eyes then forced myself out of bed. I grabbed my phone where it was charging on the nightstand and thumbed into the screen.

A grin hooked the edge of my mouth when I saw the slew of messages waiting from the group chat with my crew.

Now these…these were the people who mattered. The only ones I could ever trust. Ones who’d been there at my lowest. Ones who knew me inside and out. All the way down to the rage and the darkness and the greed.

Each of us were willing to lay it all down for the other.

Not one of them were blood, but we were family, through and through.

Our friendship forged in a fire when we’d been nothing but messed up kids running the streets of LA.

A fire that made us stone.

Unbreakable.

I scanned through the thread of the conversation that had started at the ass crack of dawn this morning. Not the one we used for Sovereign business, but the one used basically for giving each other shit.

River

Nolan wants to know when his lazy as fuck uncles are going to take him camping.

Nolan was River and Charleigh’s little boy. Kid was cute as fuck. Almost six and the ultimate fucking joy that was our crew. A symbol of our society. Of what we stood for and why we did it.

It didn’t matter how many depraved monsters we had to put in the ground. The blood that was shed or the crimes that were committed.

He represented our purpose, and we all loved him with everything we had.

Theo

Tell me those were his actual words?

Otto

His dad is River, sooooo…

River

Me? All your seedy asses are the bad influences, but no. He wouldn’t go and break his mom’s heart like that. Kid’s gold. Now when are you cockwads going to take him camping like you promised? Otherwise, it’s gonna be my kid getting his heart broken, and you know I’m not about to stand for that.

Like that was going to happen. Nolan had us all wrapped around every single one of his little fingers.

Otto

Sorry, just having a bit of a hard time working myself up to not having Raven wrapped around me, even if it’s just for one night.

He capped it off with a bunch of winky faces. I could almost hear River’s growl from across town, and a slow chuckle rolled out of me.

Otto was one brazen motherfucker. He loved to taunt River that he’d gotten with his little sister, constantly poking at that burly bear.

If you asked me, dude was lucky River hadn’t chopped off his dick and crammed it down his throat for hooking up with her, but hell, every single one of us knew Raven had been obsessed with Otto for years and Otto had basically worshipped the ground she walked on.

That shit was bound to happen.

It had taken River a minute to come to terms with it, but he finally realized there wasn’t anyone in the world who would love and protect Raven the way Otto would. He’d even gotten down on one knee and put a ring on her finger to prove it.

Didn’t mean River didn’t gag whenever he thought of the two of them getting naked.

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