Page 86 of Prodigal Son

“I’m not anybody important,” she said, and it wasn’t bitter or ironic. Like she was stating a plain fact. “They don’t care if I’m standing out in the dark by myself.”

It disturbed him. “That’s not true.”

She lifted her brows in challenge.

“Maybe Pseudonym doesn’t care – and that’s a good thing by the way; it means you’re safer – but people care if you’re in danger.”

“People.”

“I care, alright? And you’re on camera from today. Pseudonym probably cares too, which…” It hit him again, that all-at-once crush of danger, and loss, and impossibility. It was Dad, and Cass, and Fox, and the whole club, and all of them, and it was exhausting.

He scrubbed both hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “I’m just trying to keep everyone safe, okay?”

She softened. “Yeah. Sorry. I came down here because Raven’s drinking herself to oblivion.”

“That’s not your job to look after her. Sorry.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you get Tommy? Or Miles? Or Phil, even?”

“Oh. I thought…” She fidgeted with one of the buttons on her jacket.

Oh. She’d come to him. He didn’t want to think too deeply about the reason why, but it stirred something warm in him anyway. How silly that he should feel warm now, given the circumstances. Any port in a storm, he supposed.

“I’ll sort Raven when we get back. Make sure she gets to bed. Come on with me.” He headed toward the back.

She hesitated a moment before following. “Where are we going?” Concerned lift to her voice.

“To gear up.”

Albie did something that he knew he shouldn’t; something he would have berated one of his brothers for doing. He followed through with it as if in a trance, vision blurred at the edges, heartbeat frenetic, but hell-bent all the same.

He led Axelle into his workshop, and then pulled up the trapdoor, flipped on the light, and went down into his cache. She followed.

He’d never let anyone besides family – blood and club – down there with him.

“Wow,” Axelle breathed, and she sounded truly impressed. Her hands fell to her sides as she surveyed the backlit walls of mounted guns, dark and deadly behind sliding glass panels. The vast island with its stacks and stacks of drawers. Louder, almost frightened: “Shit, this is…this is like the gun counter at Cabela’s.” She turned to face him, eyes wide, face pale in the wash of blue light. “Only it’s in your basement.”

God, he’d brought her down here. He could go to prison seven times over for this little nest. But it wasn’t fear that left his pulse throbbing. Not now. Not looking at the reflected blue sheen in her eyes, big, and pale, and somehow lovelier for her surroundings. He wasn’t right in the head he supposed – and not just now, because of the stress. Not ever. He was Devin Green’s son, after all, and there was a reason all seven boys had patched into the most vicious outlaw MC in the world.

“It’s my basement,” he said, “but they’re the club’s guns. You can’t have them in the UK, you know, not like you Yanks do back in the States.”

She nodded, and turned away, spun a slow circle, taking it all in. Her voice grew distant. “The club sells guns, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She already knew about the drugs; he didn’t see much sense in lying to her. “But these are ours. The ones we use in times like these.”

She turned back, expression hard to gauge. “Little sisters get kidnapped a lot?”

“Shit goes south a lot.”

“Maybe that’s because being a criminal tends be a south-bound way of life.”

He felt a grin threaten. “There is that.” He went to the island and started pulling handguns, laying them out on the countertop.

He half expected her to run; go back up the stairs, light out of the shop. Maybe even call a cab and ask to go straight to the airport, back to the life she’d left behind in Tennessee, because it couldn’t be as wild and frightening as this.

But instead she stepped up beside him; close, unafraid. “Are you passing these out like party favors? Or are they all for you?”

“Me,” he said, and began slotting them into the holsters he’d strapped to his body.

“What’s your plan?”

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