Page 51 of Vengeful Eyes
I look up to him, try to gauge his mood and read what his next action will be. Fuck me, beat me, a bit of both? It sounds so harsh in my head, but I know that after the storm, comes that magical moment of peace where he lets me in. When I can feel my heart brim and salvage enough to keep me going until the next moment.
He engulfs me in his chest, surprising me. I grip on, rubbing my head into the shirt and jacket still stained with the blood from the earlier fight. I don’t care and keep burrowing myself as close to him as I can.
“I’m sorry. I thought he would kill you. I can’t lose you. I can’t. I don’t care what happens to them, but I can’t lose you.” I sob into his chest and just let it out. His body stiffens for a moment before his strength returns, and I feel it blanket me like a cloak.
“You’ll never lose me.” He tilts my head up to him. “I’m Benjamin Vico. That,” he says, nodding back to the room, “is business. Just don’t fucking pull a gun on anyone again. Unless they have one aimed at me. Then, I’d expect you to fucking shoot without hesitation. Got it?”
I nod and a crack of hysterical laughter bubbles from my throat.God, I’m going mad.
Madly in love, maybe. That’s my new goal. Get out of this mess with my life on track, and with any luck, my heart as well. Although, when Benjamin finds out about me—that I've betrayed him—I'm not so sure he won’t break both for his own revenge.
Seventeen
“Here.” Quinn presses a folder against my chest as we walk down Fifth Avenue.
“What is it?”
“Every Yakuza stronghold in town,” he says, tugging his scarf higher. I flick over the first page, my eyes scanning places I already know with little care. “One is of particular interest to me, regardless of where the drugs went.”
“Why?”
“The bitch deserves a beating.”
Sounds like my kind of party.
I cross over to Madison, head down against the wind, and hustle for the office doors. Barney opens it with a wave of his arm and a nod at me. “Mr. Vico.”
Quinn mutters something under his breath, making me look at him for more explanation. He's done a lot of muttering in the last two days, and if he's about to say something about Hope and that gun again, I'll fucking kill him.
“What?” he says.
“You got something to say?”
“No.”
Fine. I’ve got no time for pissing about with words anyway.
I stride on, banking left for the elevators to get me to the other brother who is still all over my systems. We rise up through the floors, numbers flashing in my eyeline. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got time for. That and killing anything that gets in my fucking way. The main priority being whoever had the goddamn gall to take my goods.
“Actually, the fuck was that gun aimed at my head for on the docks?” he snaps as we walk out into the office. “And all that shit when we got back to the apartment?” The whole room stops and looks at both of us.
“Bonding,” I reply, chuckling and walking towards the corner office Nathan’s appropriated as his own.
“Bonding?” he asks, as we walk into the room. I smile and look at the other brother, three screens on display and the blinds drawn.
“Yeah.” It's as close as I get to it, and he's not dead for challenging me about Hope,so… “Bonding.”
He shakes his head at me and walks straight over to the desk, reaching his hand over Nathan’s shoulder to work the keys and bring something up on screen. My brow arches at his competence, eyes watching as he scans something and then relays another set of numbers into whatever Nathan’s doing.
“You’re both in my systems?”
“They were fucking archaic, Vico. I was in before he was,” Quinn mumbles, both of them now looking at the graph that’s up on the screen. I wander around the desk and look at it, too, noting the spread of lines coming out of one single hub. A map of sorts, figures and plans attached to the side of each line. “They’re not now.” Good. I’m changing that fucking password again the moment this shit is done. Not that that seems to keep these pair out.
“What is that?” I ask.
“This is your new way of seeing threat vectors,” Nathan says, leaning back so I can get a good look at it. “I’ve even put us on it to dampen that suspicion down. We all know how fucking paranoid you are.” Cunt. My brow arches, amused at his balls while in my fucking space. “You get everything in one place. See?” He runs his fingers over the graphs, stopping where the maps move around to point out organisations throughout the US, including all my own. “I can extend it to other countries, but I’ve only had time for this so far.” He pulls up another screen on a nearby laptop. “And this. This is what both you and Quinn need. This is New York and the surrounding area.”
I look at it, tracing the lines of roads and streets, highlighting every dodgy deal of any serious level in my city. I glance at him, intrigued by how much they know of my town. Not that he's giving me anything I don't already know. “The politicians of crime are something you’ll have to fill in later, but the general layout is there, and this,” he says, pointing at a particular red dot on the screen, “is the place we can retaliate hardest.”
