Page 58 of The Vows We Keep
I grin as he grabs the tin.
“Morning,” he says, brushing a kiss to my forehead as he walks by.
“Morning.”
“Hey, Cat,” Halo says. “You settling in okay with our brother?”
I want to say it’s not permanent, but I also don’t want to embarrass Niro in front of these men. “Just fine. You guys want coffee?”
“Please,” Vex says. “I need at least six cups before morning makes any sense to me, and I’ve been awake all night.”
“What were you doing?” Niro asks as I spoon coffee into the filter.
“I hacked Los Reyes.”
I drop the spoon, and it clatters on the counter. “What? Someone opened one of those links you were going to send?”
A shiver of fear ripples through me. It’s one thing to extricate myself from Los Reyes in a bid to find the truth. But it’s an altogether different thing to be party to a rival club hacking their messages.
Vex shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I sent a link to Felipe for a porn website that, when opened, left some malware on his phone so I could extract everything he has on there. By the way, the horny fucker must have a major hard-on for you. His search prompts revolve around your name and your looks. Oh, and women stepping on men in heels. He’s watched that one four times.”
“The idea of him jerking off to images he’s pretending are you makes me ragey,” Niro says. “I’ll kill him if he ever steps foot in Jersey. It’s bad enough the fucker texts you.”
“How did you know about that?” I ask, my mouth dry.
“I read the messages on your phone,” he says, as if there were nothing wrong with what he’d done. “They flashed up one morning while you were in the shower, so I read them.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Vex mutters.
I rub my hands over my face. “You don’t get to just read my messages.”
“Why not?” he asks. “Have you got something to hide? His first message was some why-aren’t-you-responding-baby bullshit so I knew you weren’t replying to the slimeball.”
Halo grins. “Dude. It’s not about whether she has anything to hide. It’s privacy. Trust. And you could’ve just asked her about the messages. Strikes me if Cat wants to find her dad badly enough that she was willing to come here and try kidnapping our president, she’d have talked to you. Plus, don’t be a dick. Don’t do that again. You wouldn’t want her checking your phone, right?”
“She could if she wanted. I’m an open book.” Niro looks at Halo for a second as his jaw twitches, before he turns to me. “Sorry, Cat. Didn’t think it was a big deal, but it’s clear it is. Won’t happen again.”
“Holy shit. Did our boy just grow up and actually apologize?” Vex asks.
The fact Vex is shocked by Niro’s apology suggests it’s a rare occurrence, but that doesn’t make me feel better. “It’s not that easy, Niro. You don’t get to do big things that ruin trust and then just say sorry and expect it to be over.”
The sound of Halo’s laughter fills the kitchen. “You get used to it after a while, Cat.”
Vex nods. “Niro never means what he does. He often acts without thinking. Just does the thing that’s at top of his mind and rolls with it.”
Niro takes a step toward me, and on instinct I take a step back. For anyone else, these would be major red flags. But I already know Niro doesn’t think the same way as others do. “Your phone was just sitting there, buzzing. I was only gonna turn the volume off, but I saw his name and it pissed me off. By the time you got out of the shower, I’d done a dozen other things and forgotten about it. I didn’t look at anything else. Didn’t try to hack into your phone or anything.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I think of Felipe’s messages, his uncomfortable attempts at dirty talk and control. The way I pacify him to keep my options open for a return to Los Reyes. While I don’t like his attention, it provides me with a lot of aerial cover. The other brothers leave me alone because Felipe is the president’s son.
But it also means I’m on a collision course, with him wanting to formalize our relationship. And there is no way on earth I am signing up to be his old lady. To sit on the sidelines and watch while he goes off and has all the fun. Plus, he’s already hinted that my involvement in club business would stop if we were together, because he wouldn’t want his wife “at risk.”
I don’t even know why I’m thinking about that, because I don’t want Felipe.
How could I when I’ve experienced Niro?
I look up at him. It’s clear there’s more going on here than his ADHD. I don’t know what it is. But his explanation is genuine. I see it in his eyes. And more, as I get to know him, I’m realizing he doesn’t lie, even if it could get him out of trouble.
There’s more to this man than I think even his brothers see.
