Page 71 of Bad Men

Mia burst out laughing. “My smack?”

I toned them out, not having a thing to contribute. Plus, I was vastly more invested in this new change taking over my life. I surveyed her soft side profile illuminated by the glow of the TV. I traced the line of her nose, the bow of her lips, the way she wrinkled her brow when she was outraged. She had impossibly long lashes.

“Don’t you dare!” she gasped, slapping Davien in the thigh with a shower of laughter.

I found I really liked the sound of it. I liked how her whole body bowed into it, how her eyes sparkled. They turned to me, fixing me with all their light.

“Tell him, Nero,” she urged with a tug of our joined hands. “Tell him he’s crazy.”

“Don’t you dare side with this traitor,” Davien argued from her other side.

“I have no idea what we’re even watching,” I confessed.

Mia’s smile dipped. “I’m sorry. Did you want to pick something else?”

I kissed her, hating myself for taking away the only light to ever shine on me by opening my mouth.

“No,” I said, pulling back. “I’m getting my amusement by watching you two.”

Mia wrinkled her nose, but her smile returned. “You think we’re dorks?”

“Without question.”

She laughed and turned back to the TV. Some dark-haired guy was giving the screen smoldering eyes that made me highly uncomfortable, but Davien hooted enthusiastically.

“Stop!” Mia whined. “We’re not supporting this.”

“I support!”

I let their voices fade. No longer interested in the drama unfolding across the screen. My mind returned to my conversation with Alejandro. I thought of Cortez and how easy it had been for Eduardo to dispose of someone he’d known since the beginning, since my and Davien’s dads were on Eduardo’s crew. Loyalty was only a thing so long as his money wasn’t on the line. Being a collector meant very few risks we couldn’t take care of on our own. As long as we weren’t short during a drop, we were fine. But if I took this job, if I accepted Cortez’s chair, it would be my neck on the line. I would be responsible for an entire section. I would have to run a crew. Any mistakes could mean death. Not just mine but possibly Davien’s because he would follow wherever I went. That was how our friendship worked. Now, I had Mia and her family to worry about. Anything I did could fall back on them. That didn’t include being on the watch for rival gangs, other sectors, and possibly Eduardo himself. Was I up to that kind of pressure?

Had my old man been around, he would have punched me upside the head and told me to stop being a little bitch. A seat at the table had been his dream for me. He would turn in his grave if he even suspected I was having doubts.

Dad had been a cleaner before Alejandro, before me. He took care of Eduardo’s problems. He taught me everything he knew, groomed me in his footsteps so that when he died, I could easily slip into his spot. By the time I was nine, I could kill a man in broad daylight, on a crowded street and get away with it. It wasn’t a life I would put on any child, but it gave me a purpose. It gave me a unique talent that school would never have taught me. Maybe, in another lifetime, I could have been more. Maybe I could have been a lawyer or a doctor. Maybe I could have been saving lives instead of taking them. But people like me and Davien, we didn’t have the luxury of dreams and white picket fences. We didn’t get to live normal lives. Not anymore. This was it for us and anyone we brought into it had to accept we had more dark than light to offer.

I studied Mia again, thinking of her guts at the bar when she’d slapped a guy twice her size, when she’d slapped me. She had the backbone. She had the grit. Most of the girls from our part of the city did. They had to. But Mia was brave. She was loyal and trustworthy. But did she want to be stuck in the life forever? Did she even want two men for the rest of her life? We never even discussed how long she would stay.

Then there was Davien. We had rules to keep other people out. We had rules to never get caught up in a woman. Did he want Mia to stay as badly as I did? Since my fuck up, he’d made several rash decisions that contradict the rules, but that may have just been out of spite. And what if he said no? What if Mia was just amusement to him? According to the rules, I would have to let her go, too. Was she worth our friendship?

“Hey,” Mia twisted off her back to face me. The new position painted shadows over her face but her eyes gleamed. “You okay?”

I brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “How can I not be?”

Her smile shone bright, a warming glow followed by the light squeeze of her fingers. She turned back to the screen just as something dramatic happened that caused Dav to exclaim in outrage.

“How does she not see Stephen’s the wrong guy?”

Mia snorted. “He’s not. He loves her.”

He returned the sentiment with a list of all the reasons the two didn’t belong together. I listened with barely half an ear, too focused on the idea that this could be a permanent thing. We could make this ours. Christ, I was becoming a sentimental tool, but deep inside, I had been waiting for this moment my entire life. Everything about it felt right and I was a man who listened to his gut. It was what kept me alive.

“I don’t believe that,” she argued, twisting over onto her other side, offering me the curve of her back as she faced Davien.

I took the opportunity and slipped an arm around her middle and tucked her snug against the front curve of my body. My lips found the back of her neck.

“Even after everything Damon has done for her?” Dav was saying, but Mia had gone still and quiet in my arms. I would have thought something was wrong if it weren’t for the microscopic tremors I could feel passing through her.

Intrigued, and curious to see how long she could go before succumbing to the temptation, I followed the soft line of her neck with my tongue, stopping when I reached the spot that met her shoulder. Her little inhale did not go unnoticed by me. Dav was another matter. He continued to argue his points, oblivious to the hot charge in the air.

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