Page 114 of House Rules
Businessmen hate bad investments. They hate losing face even more.
Or maybe I’ll go another route. Steal that detective’s number from Storm. Feed her everything she needs to make the biggest bust of her career.
I don’t know yet. But I have to do something.
Letting them bleed for my problems isn’t an option.
Yes, Storm fought for me. But that was against two bottom-feeders, not the top tier of the mob boss’s muscle. He’s brilliant, but brilliance doesn’t stop a bullet. Neither does trauma. Neither does ego.
I have to move first. Turn myself in. Leak intel. Run.
Is running even an option anymore?
Or have I already dragged them into the undertow so deep that even if I vanish, they’ll still be marked?
Con shifts behind me, and I realize my fists are clenched under the blanket. My heartbeat is too fast. His breath warms the back of my neck, and for a second I almost let myself believe it means I’m safe.
But safety isn’t real here. And the longer I stay, the more I believe I’m going to have to burn something down to make it out alive.
It’ssix a.m. before I can work up the nerve to do what needs to be done. Six in the morning before I’m sure all four of my men are asleep.
Con tucked me into his bed last night and stayed there, one arm anchored across my waist like he could keep the world from getting to me if he just held tight enough. I never made the call. But maybe I don’t need to.
“Where are you going?” Con’s voice is still heavy with sleep as I slide from the bed.
“To the bathroom,” I lie, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyes stay closed, but the corner of his mouth tips up as he yawns. A moment later, he’s gone again, breaths deepening.
I wait anyway—counting them until they’re slow and even. Then I slip back to my room.
I dress swiftly and silently in the darkness, finding a pair of shorts that aren’t too short. A shirt that won’t get me stopped in the street. Old sneakers.
I will not let them suffer for me.
There’s nothing I won’t do to keep them from drowning in my damage, and I won’t watch Storm spiral further into his demons because of me. I won’t watch any of them lose their freedom. Atticus would probably thrive in prison—he’d have the guards working for him in hours—but I’m not giving anyone the chance to find out.
The suite door clicks shut behind me. For a moment, the ghost of Con’s warmth still clings to my skin—the faint scent of his cologne, the solid weight of his arm across my waist—before the emptiness swallows it whole.
I keep my head down as I move through the silent casino floor, the air inside humming faintly with electricity, the overhead lights dimmed to a tired glow that turns the rows of slot machines into shadowed sentinels. My sneakers whisper over plush carpet still warm from the night’s crowd.
Outside, the doors sigh open and the morning air hits—cool, salt-laced, tinged with the faint musk ofthe river. The city is hushed, the cobblestones damp beneath my soles, the only sound the soft lap of water against the pilings below.
I won’t have far to go, I know. They’ll be watching, aware that I’m important to the Titans by the simple act of them attempting to pay my debt.
Sure enough, I haven’t walked a full block when something prickles along the back of my neck, an animal awareness that I am not alone. I glance over my shoulder—nothing but the dim street and shuttered windows—but the feeling doesn’t fade. It follows me as I walk, keeping pace in the hollow space between my footsteps.
I tell myself it’s just nerves, that Savannah before sunrise is bound to feel empty and strange, but every corner I turn feels too quiet, every shadow too deep. My sneakers scuff on the uneven stones, the sound loud in the stillness. A single gull cries overhead, and I nearly flinch.
Half a block later, I catch a flicker in the reflection of a darkened shop window—a shift in the shadows across the street. When I look, there’s nothing there. Just the rhythmic sway of a tattered flag above a closed café. My heart keeps up a drumbeat anyway.
By the second block, the air seems heavier, the kind that wants to press you into moving faster, and I have to stop myself from breaking into a run. A muffled engine hums somewhere behind me, low and steady, then fades. I tell myself it’s nothing.
But it’s not nothing.
The third block is narrow, the buildings leaning in like they’re trying to listen. I’m halfway down when the black van noses into view from the far end, its headlights off, moving with the kind of deliberate slowness that makes your stomach turn. The prickling on my neck becomes a full-body chill. By the time it pulls across my path and stops, I already know—this walk was never mine to finish.
Pedo-stash isn’t with them, but Baldy is, and he looks pissed. There’s already sweat beading on his forehead and trailing down to his jowls, even in the brisk morning air.
