6. Ranger

[ 6 ]

RANGER

Viktor’s dead.

The thought slammed into me harder than any punch ever could, common sense and logic fighting to catch up. No one knew how I felt about Viktor. That I fucking cared. There was no rhyme or reason to the don of the Russian mob making a special trip to tell little old me that the best kiss I’d ever had was gonna be my last.

He’s not here to see you.

That made more sense, with or without Vik dying. But I ran out of time to curb the soap opera playing out in my head, cos Doherty the Third was on me again and he wasn’t letting go.

We fought like dogs and I stopped caring about anything except hitting him. I didn’t even care why I was doing it as I became the sum parts of the violence consuming us.

Doherty gained the upper hand. For a fucking second, before I threw him off and stamped on his leg, sending him crawling back to his corner.

Was he done?

Maybe not, but neither was I. Not now I had something else to care about. Somewhere else to be, before Jakov vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared, and no fucker around here would tell me what the hell he’d come to say.

End this.

I meant it. And Doherty knew it. As he turned to face me again, the fucker pulled a shiv. A flick knife from his boot, white-knuckling the handle, blade glinting beneath the obscene fairy lights above.

Here we go.

I licked blood from my teeth, a crazed laugh bubbling out of me. Energy shifting. Mine. His. The crowd as bodies from my corner surged forward. Brothers, charging to put themselves between me and Doherty’s blade.

I caught Folk. “Let him come.”

Folk shook me off but stayed at my side as Locke called time-out on the fight.

The mob jeered. Couldn’t tell why.

Didn’t care.

I bounced on my feet, clinging to the rabid energy in my veins with both fucking hands.

Waiting.

Waiting.

For Nash. It took him a minute to haul himself into the ring. Then he went straight to the Doherty corner and nailed the old man in the face. “Get your house in order. Or you’ll fight me.”

The crowd hushed. Nash was a nice dude, but even with a crocked leg, a bout with him was a surefire route to annihilation.

Nash crossed the ring to reach me, off balance with his limp, anger messing up his usually mellow face. He held up the blade. Damn. I hadn’t even noticed him disarming Doherty the Third. “By rights this is yours.”

I waved the knife away. “Give it back to the cunt. Let’s finish this.”

“Sure about that? He might finish you.”

“You think?”

Nash gave me a hard look, one that made it obvious he was searching me, inside and out, for how much gas I had left in the tank. “It’s not a fair fight if he has a tool and you don’t.”

“He won’t have it long.”

Nash pinged a glance beyond me. To where Cam stood with Jakov the Russian. With Jake, the man Viktor called brother. Then he seemed to either make a decision or acknowledge an order I didn’t catch, and he tipped me a grim nod. “Make it count, but don’t leave me a fucking bloodbath to clean up.”

“Aye, captain.”

Nash spared me a grin, returned the blade to the Doherty camp, and left the ring, accepting Rubi’s helping hands down from the mat.

For the first time ever, Locke’s gaze didn’t follow him. It bored into me, heavy with concern. With love and the weight of all the years of pain and heartache we’d survived to reach this madness. “Is that head of yours ever screwed on fuckin’ right?”

“Still on my shoulders, Lockie. Hasn’t flown off yet.”

Locke almost smiled, but a missile from the crowd—a beer bottle—missed his face by a hairsbreadth, and my giant friend jumped the ropes to deal with his own shit.

I didn’t watch. Locke had always been shit at fighting for himself, but he’d burn the world down to stop Nash doing it for him.

The satellite chaos left me with Folk, and the dad look on his face wasn’t a world away from Locke’s. But it was more resigned. He knew me. This was happening whether he tried to talk me down or not.

He didn’t.

My old pal wiped blood and sweat from my brow and tipped a bottle of water over my head. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast. Before the coke across the way kicks in.”

“I ain’t scared of a little sherbet.”

“Good for you.” Folk gripped my chin. “Now take the war to him and don’t fight fair.”

“You telling me to fuck him up?”

“I’m telling you, again, to finish this so we can all go home.”

Folk knocked his forehead to mine, then moved to the middle of the ring. It wasn’t his way to be the centre of attention, but with Locke occupied, it fell to him to restart the fight.

He brought his hands down. A heartbeat passed. Maybe two. Doherty tossed the knife from one fist to the other, white powder glittering at the base of his nose, pupils already expanding. He lunged, but I was already in motion.

Take the war to him.

Folk had always preached that. If a fight was inevitable, make it your bitch. And this bitch was mine. Fuck it. They all were.

I flew at Doherty, wrapping both hands around his wrist, going straight for the knife, ramming my knee into his gut.

He went down, taking me with him, the tip of the blade an inch from my chest, and this prick was strong. Heavy. We rolled, him bearing down on me. I kicked his arms, redirecting the knife to my ribs, but his weight had me pinned.

Fuck with his head.

Not Folk’s advice.

Mine, and I heeded it. Relaxing. Giving Doherty that precious inch he needed to become a bigger fool than the one who’d rolled out of his bed that morning. The knife scraped my skin, piercing it—slicing it, spilling blood. Drawing pain and apathy from the worst parts of me.

I laughed.

Doherty’s eyes widened. His coked-up brain had a second to wonder how the fuck his shitty little life had come to this. A snatched inhale to absorb the message. “Tell your pops if he breathes near those kids again, I’ll slit his fat throat.”

Then I reared back and nutted that fucker in the face.

Doherty slumped on top of me. Unconscious or dead. Couldn’t say it mattered to me as faceless Rebel Kings dragged him away and I staggered to my feet with the flick knife.

Folk relieved me of it before I could throw it at the next person who annoyed me. “So he does listen.”

“To you? Always, brother.”

Folk snorted, pressing a towel to my bleeding torso, but my attention was already diverted, scanning the crowd, searching for the tall sharp-eyed Russian I’d glimpsed through the blood still hazing my vision.

I pushed away from Folk, ducking out of the ring and jumping into the mosh pit the yard had become. More Kings than I expected slapped my back and called me brother, but I barely noticed.

Where the fuck did he go?

The possibility that Jakov had already left spun my head more than the concussion already setting in. I pushed through bodies, searching, searching, searching, but all I found were leather-clad piston-heads and girls with inked tits wanting to suck my dick.

I liked tits.

And I liked getting my dick sucked.

But a woman going to town on my cock hadn’t crossed my mind since I’d kissed Viktor on his living room floor. Because Viktor had been on my mind every hour, every minute, every second I hadn’t been preoccupied with something else.

The familiar squeeze in my chest felt like death—a slow one, and call me fucking stupid, but my fight-addled brain had the daftest idea that if I could find Jakov, if I could look that cunt in the eye and get him to tell me Viktor was okay, that maybe I would be too.

If. The word of the day. I shouldered through more Rebel King foot soldiers, darting my gaze around like I was the one with a gram of sniff charging my veins.

Someone called my name.

Irish, not Russian.

I ignored them and pushed on, that fucking pain in my heart expanding into frenetic energy. Anxious. Desperate. My breath caged in my lungs.

Fucking Viktor. If I ever saw him again, I was going to kill him myself for doing this to me. Why couldn’t he have kept his shiny smiles and bright eyes to himself? That soft-as-shit hair?

Those lips⁠—

A hulking body blocked my path. “Are you fucking deaf?”

I snapped to. Cam O’Brian stood in front of me, tall, hot, and annoyed. Then his lethal gaze settled on me, and whatever I’d done to piss him off seemed to fade. “Come with me.”

There were some people in this world even my contrary self had the sense not to argue with. Cam was definitely one of them. Besides, if anyone had answers on Jakov’s whereabouts, it was going to be him.

He’s not going to tell you shit.

The thought hit me like a stone. Course he wasn’t. Unless I gave him good reason to keep me in the loop of mob politics, and the only one I could think of was that if I didn’t get news on Viktor soon, I’d legitimately die.

Cam led me to the chapel. I followed him through the door, my brain spinning wild circles. I was colossally awake and foot-dragging exhausted rolled into one, and it was the most fucked-up combination.

The worst.

I missed the door swinging back. It hit me in the face and fresh blood dripped into my eye.

“Christ.” Cam seized my shoulder and propelled me to a chair. “You’re a fucking mess.”

Couldn’t deny that. I took the rag he held out and wiped my eye with it, but honestly, it was the least of my worries.

I examined my crooked ring finger while Cam levelled a glare at the slash wound on my ribs. “That might need stitches.”

“It does not.”

I jumped. Whipped my head around fast enough to almost roll my bleeding shambles of a body right off my chair. “You motherfucker.”

Jakov smiled. “I am not hiding, Ranger. You did not think to check the room before you walked into it?”

No. Because I’d been with Cam and I’d trusted him to do the checking for me. And honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that an outsider would be lurking in the sacred chapel, even one as powerful as this smug wanker. “Where’s Viktor?”

It bubbled out of me before I could stop it.

Jakov stared, his brown eyes gleaming in the dim light of the room. “He is home.”

Home. It should’ve settled me. I had no fucking clue where that was, but Vik had mentioned it enough for me to know it was a place he liked to be when this life allowed it. A place where he was safe. But it wasn’t enough. I was coming to learn that nothing was. That nothingcould shift this weight on me, not even the empathy that bled from the gaze of a ruthless Russian crime lord.

Jakov came closer and pulled out a chair. “You have a medical kit?”

The question was for Cam. A loaded silence passed before he pushed off the wall and retrieved a bag from the chapel kitchen.

He dropped it on the table.

Jakov unzipped it and pulled out all the shit Locke and Folk liked to brandish when brothers got messy. “Maybe some water?”

Cam grunted. “Don’t boss me about. This is my fucking house.”

Jakov was a weirdo. He was a level ten gangster. His life revolved around smoke screens and life or death blags. Manipulation. 5D chess matches that never fucking ended. But like Vik, he had this smile that never felt fake. Warm. Friendly. Even for Cam, who stared him down like he wished he was dead. “For Ranger,” Jakov elaborated. “And to clean him up.”

“I knew what you wanted it for.”

Cam returned to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of warm water in one hand, a bottle in the other.

He passed me the bottle and settled close enough that he loomed over me like a territorial wolf. It was kinda cute, but I couldn’t figure out if he was protecting or claiming me. If this was business or brotherhood.

Did I care?

Wasn’t sure.

I needed a fucking nap.

I needed Jakov to tell me more about Viktor, instead of putting stupid gloves on his hands to touch me. “You don’t have to patch me up.”

Jakov gestured for me to lift my arm and cleaned some blood from my skin. “Someone does, no? And I am here.”

The cloth caught on my broken skin. I hissed through my teeth and contorted my neck to examine the wound.

“It is not deep.” Jakov set the cloth down and reached for some tape. “But you will need to keep it clean.”

“Calling me dirty, Jakey?”

Cam cringed into a low rumble from his chest. “Behave.”

Jakov smiled again. “Is okay. I am used to Viktor.”

Cam still hovered like he worried I was going to get shanked for my big mouth. I glanced at the door, and at the ceiling for cameras, wondering who else had eyes on us. Saint had disappeared, and I hadn’t seen Alexei, but that meant nothing around here.

Jakov taped my torso back together, then moved on to examining my face. More wet cloths. More silence. It took everything I had not to shove him away and scream.

Actually, it took Cam’s hands on my shoulders.

Heavy.

Restraining.

As if I had grenade tattooed on my fucking forehead. “Simmer down. There’s no one left to fight tonight.”

There was. Myself. Always, always myself. And somehow Cam knew it and kept his hands on me until Jakov was done. “Tell him why you’re here.”

Fucking finally.

Jakov sat back in his seat and snapped off his gloves. “Two reasons. To see for myself that Locke was doing as well as reports suggest. And to see you, Ranger.”

He glanced at Cam, expecting him to leave, maybe.

Cam stayed.

I scratched dried blood from my cheek. “Reports? The fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing complex. I am in contact with Alexei and I ask him about Locke often, but I knew Viktor would feel better if I saw the situation here with my own eyes.”

Viktor. Locke. Viktor. Locke.

Locke had been cleaned up by the time I’d seen him after his crazy escape and evasion adventure, and I hadn’t seen Viktor at all, but unwelcome images bombarded me anyway. Blood that wasn’t mine. Pain I’d take a thousand times if it spared them. “And now you’ve seen him. Right as fucking rain. What do you want with me?”

“A favour.”

I stopped gouging blood from my face in the same moment Cam leaned infinitesimally closer, threading his arms across his chest. “With the ports?”

“Not exactly.”

Colour me intrigued. And relieved. Until recently, aside from getting messy with Viktor that one fucking time, every moment I’d spent up north in recent years had been violent as fuck, and I was tired—a realisation that took hold with a splintering headache.

I don’t want to fight anymore.

At least, not any time soon.

I waved a hand for Jakov to crack on, and he surprised me by sighing and running a hand through his hair, messing it up. Maybe he was tired too.

“Viktor and I . . .” he said eventually. “We have a home overseas. In Europe. He has been recovering there, and we have family close by, but they are not soldiers. It concerns me that they are unprotected when I am away so much.”

I frowned. “Unprotected? You’ve got a fucking army.”

“Yes, but they are not family.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I do not think I have.” Jakov took the water bottle I’d clutched in one hand since Cam had given it to me. “You have spent time with the men who work for me. Would you leave your family with them? Your grandmother?”

He knows about Jean.How? Had he paid more attention to me than I’d ever noticed? Or had Viktor told him? “No offence, mate. But take my nan out of your mouth.”

Wow. Okay. That sounded terrible, but I was all in, committed, scowling up a storm, not backing down, even as Jakov’s lips twitched, fighting a smile as he tipped his stolen water down his throat.

“I think I know what you mean by that, and I apologise. I am just looking for common ground, no?”

One-handed, I dug my battered baccy pouch from my pocket, gathering the makings of a rollie with practised ease. “By asking me to morally evaluate your goon squad?”

“By asking you to travel to my home and protect Viktor while I cannot.”

The half-rolled cigarette slipped from my fingers, tobacco scattering. “Say what now?”

“Exactly what I said.” Jakov claimed my supplies and rolled me a fresh smoke with the same cool efficiency he’d used on my body, but it didn’t match the conflict raging in his gaze. The unguarded emotion he was letting me see. “Viktor is strong, and you are right—we have any number of men who can guard our home. But maybe the worst enemies we have do not come for us in the night with guns.”

He rose as he spoke, nodding to Cam, pausing only to spark a lighter under my cigarette. “I do not expect an answer now. Rest a few days. I will be in touch.”

I didn’t need to rest, but my skull chose that moment to vibrate with a discordant buzz, stealing my ability to string a sentence together. By the time it faded, Jakov had gone, leaving me with the grumpy president of the Rebel Kings MC.

Me and Cam. We’d never been close. But his steady presence comforted me now. His bulk as he filled Jakov’s vacant seat. “That shit was personal.”

I took a deep drag on my smoke, exhaling through my nose. Regretted it as the headache plaguing me ratcheted up a gear. “Did you know he was going to ask me that?”

“Not exactly.” Cam helped himself to my tobacco. “But he’s been asking after you for a while now.”

“How long?”

“Pretty much ever since Locke and Viktor came back and you did a bunk.”

“Vik did a bunk first.”

Cam’s dark brows ticked up. “Vik? And fucking Jakey by the way? You have a death wish? That dude is dangerous.”

“Why are you so pally with him then?”

Cam glared.

I smoked some more, letting it all fester, knowing Cam was right, but struggling to see it. I’d seen Jakov in action. Seen him roll up on a raid and shoot a man in the head without blinking.

But I’d seen him in the dark days Viktor had been gone too—when we’d sought each other out, searching for clues. Seen the fear and desperation in his eyes. The grief as those days had turned into weeks, before I’d been called home to protect Locke from a rampaging Priest. That I hadn’t connected two of my friends being took would haunt me forever.

Cam got up and cleared away the med kit. He took the blood-stained cloth and water to the kitchen and returned with coffee, typing one-thumbed on his phone. “I’m sending all the dads home, unless you think you’re banged up enough to need Folk or Locke.”

“I’m good.”

“You sure? That was a heavy fight. You took some nasty hits.”

“Smashed it though, eh?”

“Fuck yeah.” Cam shot me a dark look. “You had me worried for a second. Then Alexei told me why, and I knew no fucker was walking out of that ring except you.”

His words sank in. Why. “He told you? Git. I thought he’d keep his mouth shut.”

“Maybe he planned to. But we’re working on that instinct to keep nasty shit from each other. It doesn’t do us any good.”

“All right. Don’t need your life story, boss.” Head still pounding, I leaned forward, arm braced to the slash Jakov had repaired. Before he’d asked me to think about being Viktor’s bodyguard. “Do you think he knows Jakov came here to ask me that?”

Cam watched me shift around on the chair, hands twitching as if he wanted to help me more than he already had. “Who?”

“Viktor.”

“Honestly?” Cam scraped a rough hand along his jaw. “I don’t know. Jakov didn’t tell me much more than he told you.”

“Much more?”

The door opened before Cam could answer. Rubi stuck his head in and tossed a pile of cash on the table.

It was more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I was a scrapper, not a banker. A grafter. As long as I could pay Jean’s bills, I didn’t give much of a fuck.

“It’s yours,” Rubi said when I didn’t react. “Seems only fair when we’ve been wanting to fuck up those idiots since forever.”

I shook my head. Regretted that too. “That shit was on the house.”

Rubi came closer, peering at me. “You dizzy?”

“No.”

“Pukey?”

“Never.”

He exchanged a loaded glance with Cam. “Needs watching.”

“I know.” Cam lit his cigarette. “I’m on it.”

Rubi gave me another once-over. “Gotta say, Rangie Roo, I’m impressed. You fight like that on McDirt nuggets, you’d be the fucking terminator with a proper dinner in your belly.”

Thinking about food made me a liar. Nausea rocked me. Motion sickness. It would come to nothing—I’d never puked in my life—but I couldn’t fucking wait to go to sleep. “Can I have more water?”

Rubi passed me a bottle and left.

I was alone with Cam again and apparently he wasn’t done uncle-ing me. “That war you were fighting up north. You know it’s not over, don’t you?”

I frowned through a haze of smoke. “I just came from up there. It was quiet.”

“In the north-west maybe. We just spent three months making it so. But the east is a different story since the Russians gave up the ports.” At my frown, he expanded. “Without Viktor, they didn’t have the manpower to hold them.”

“They’ll take them back.” I didn’t know shit about the finer details of mobster business, but I’d spent enough time around Viktor defending those ports to know they mattered to more than just him.

They’ll take them back.

But Cam shook his head. “I don’t know if they can. Jakov’s a powerful motherfucker, but he doesn’t have as many friends as his father before him, and trust me, I know how that feels.”

“To be a powerful motherfucker?”

“The rest of it.”

I nodded. But thinking so hard about the world Viktor came from made my bruised skull throb harder. “Vik always gave me the impression the ports were the endgame. That’s why he fought so hard to take them back the first twenty times.”

“He fought that hard because it’s as personal for them as it always has been for us.”

Not the ports. The trafficking operations that flowed through them when they fell into the wrong hands.

I knew that too, but as fight-fuelled adrenaline seeped out of me, it took with it my ability to think clearly, leaving me with Viktor’s face every time we’d stumbled across undeniable evidence of monsters trading in flesh and bone.

Fuck.

Maybe I was going to puke. Was this how that felt?

Cam dropped a hand on my arm. Warm and parental, like Locke’s. But he wasn’t Locke. He was a gangster boss, and this conversation had a purpose beyond speculation.

Too tired to fuck around, I asked him straight out. “Are you trying to tell me something I haven’t figured out yet?”

Cam jammed his smoke in his mouth and shifted in his seat, leaning back like a motherfucking don, all the while studying me with school nurse vibes for days. “I don’t know much about Viktor, which is goddamn weird for a bloke who’s saved us more times than I can count.”

“If you’re asking me to fill in the blanks, you’re shit out of luck. I don’t know anything about him either.”

Lies. I knew he liked to steal all my stuff on stake-outs. That he repaid me in chocolate and shadowy grins that somehow shone brighter in the dark.

I knew he had epic music taste.

I knew his lips felt like sweet sin against my skin.

“I’m not asking you about Viktor.” Cam’s deep voice startled me. “I’m trying to warn you that the Russians are heading for the fight of their lives with those Albanian cunts, and the closer you are to them when that happens, the bigger the chance you won’t make it home.”

“You didn’t give much of a fuck about that when you sent me up north in the first place.”

The barest hint of a flinch marred Cam’s face, reminding me that despite the words I’d just flung at him, he wasn’t like the MC presidents I’d known before him. “I didn’t send you. I gave you a choice, and I’m still giving you that. All I’m saying is that, quiet or not, this calm . . . it’s deceptive—it’s fucking dangerous, and the risk is bigger now than it’s ever been.”

I believed him. But he was wrong about something, and it took me a couple of seconds to figure it out. “It’s not just Albanians.” I frowned, sifting through the few Viktor-themed memories that didn’t involve his warm skin and soft lips. “They . . . merged—an alliance, whatever. With that Romanian bunch that used to fuck around down here before . . .”

The name escaped me, slipping through my fingers, and I couldn’t tell if I’d forgotten, or I’d never cared enough to remember it.

But it felt important. To me, and to Cam as he leaned closer and gripped my chin. “Which Romanians? Aldea?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“Think. It’s important.”

“Why?”

“If that’s where it ends, it’s where it started.”

Cam’s snap did nothing to shift the intense fog in my brain. I chewed on it. Smoking. Drinking water while Cam stayed quiet, letting me stew, growling at anyone who poked their head around the door.

After a while, no one else came. But I still couldn’t catch a thought, and I came out of my daze no different from when I’d fallen into it.

Cam was glaring at his phone, and his expression had returned to one of a man who knew Old Man Doherty had nearly clocked Ivy. One who was watching it happen on the screen of his phone.

He showed me. “In case you were wondering if you overreacted.”

“I wasn’t.”

A hum rumbled from his chest. He deleted the video and dropped the phone on the table. “I can’t think of anyone at my table, including me, who would’ve got through tonight without murder, so I’m grateful for what you did, but not because you’re expendable. I need you to understand that.”

“Why?”

Cam opened another water for me. Gestured for me to take a drink. Eyeing me like a conflicted big brother as it stuck in my throat. “You’re one of us. That you choose not to be here doesn’t change that. But I have to ask, the enforcer’s patch Nash gave you tonight, is it getting chucked in a fire pit the second you leave this room?”

Patch . . . shit the bed. I’d forgotten about that. It was in my back pocket, and I fished it out, handing it over. “I don’t want it.”

“Figured.” Cam took it back. “It’s on ice if you ever change your mind.”

“I won’t . . . no offence.”

“None taken. I’d like you to stick around for a day or so, though. Whatever the answer you give Jakov when he comes back.”

“That an order?”

Cam shot a pointed glance at the hand that had somehow found its way to my throbbing skull. “Not yet. But it’s not a good idea to ride out with a head injury. Most of us have learned that the hard way. Besides, where’s the harm in some R&R?”

“Around here?” I laughed before I remembered the Jakov-shaped elephant in the room. “All right. I can stay a few days. Need to see Jean more anyway.”

Cam nodded, following my jumbled thoughts down a Russian road. “You know, however you feel about Viktor⁠—”

“Don’t.”

The warning snapped out of me.

Cam raised his hands. “Let me finish . . . however you feel about him, and however you fall on what Jakov wants from you, keeping good relations with him is vital for us. His Spanish connections help us keep Juana and Liliana safe.”

More knowledge I already had. Up north, before the world had turned to this fucked-up hell, Jakov and Viktor had spoken Spanish on the phone all the time, and I’d got the impression it was a Jakov thing. Hadn’t given it much more thought than that, though. “Sounds like a you problem.”

“Does it?” Cam ashed his smoke. “Then it stands to reason that the look on your face when Jakov said Viktor’s name is a you problem.”

“It is, but that’s none of your fucking business, boss.”

I kept my tone light. I knew Cam. He had his fingers in a thousand pies and so many people to worry about that I knew he wasn’t winding me up on purpose. Wished he’d get to the point, though. I really needed that nap. Before I slid off this chair and died.

“Can I give you some advice?”

My head had started to drop, chin to my chest, fatigue setting in. I jerked upright. “Wha—no. Fuck off.”

Cam laughed and took the water from me before I tipped it down myself. “A few more minutes, brother. That’s all I’m asking of you.”

“For what?”

“For you to understand that we’re here for you. Whatever happens. And I’m fucking proud of what you did tonight.”

Nice. But what the fuck did that have to do with Viktor? I was starting to forget the fight. The blows I’d taken. The ones I’d landed. The reasons why. My brain was a slush pile of copper-streaked hair and meadow-green eyes. My pulse a hypnotic beat of EDM and good weed. Of hot hands on my skin and those damn fucking lips claiming my mouth.

“It’s no joke, is it?”

Cam. Again. Still fucking talking.

I made myself look at him.

He tapped his chest. “How you feel. I’m not asking you to explain it to me. You’re right—it’s not my business. But let me tell you something.” Cam leaned forward. “It doesn’t go away. However much you ignore it or however far you run, it stays there, tearing you up until you find a way to live with it.”

My heart flared, smothering the scoff I fought so hard for. “How do you do that?”

“You confront it. You don’t fucking waste it. I spent too many years not letting myself feel, and all it got me was a decade of regret.”

And where was he now? Openly in love with Saint. With Alexei. And it looked good on him. I knew that, cos I’d known Cam O’Brian half my life. I’d just never imagined we’d end up on the same side. Never fucking dreamedwe’d be tight enough for an actual conversation.

If you could see me now.

That was for Rocco, but my dead friend’s ghost was quiet, leaving me drowning in whatever Cam was trying to tell me. “You think I should go to him.”

It wasn’t a question. Not really. But Cam let it percolate a moment before he answered. “I think you’re lost. And I don’t think you’re the only one. Jakov said he’ll be back. Listen to what he says, read between the lines.”

“For what?”

Cam dropped that brotherly hand on my shoulder again, as if he knew it would become the only thing keeping me upright. “For what he’s really trying to tell you.”