Chapter 10

REUBEN

If I was ever going to slam my fist down onto a tabletop, it would be now.

Inside, my blood was boiling. I kept it contained, kept my exterior calm, if tense.

"Even if Kurt Lasalle was dead, we should be able to find him," I said. "No one disappears off the face of the fucking planet unless we have a hand in it."

"It's possible Samuel Bell or someone else dealt with him," Damon said.

"If Bell did, he'd leave tracks in the sand deeper than his asshole," Gianni said.

I grimaced at that analogy. Bell didn't have the finesse we did, but the last place I wanted my thoughts to go was his asshole.

"Is there any chance he convinced his sister to harbour him?" I asked.

I didn't want to have to deal with Daisy, or Mina's cousin Ric, but if they were hiding Kurt, I'd have no choice. I suspected if they were, Mina wouldn't want me to be gentle with her cousin either. Not if he was complicit in what happened to her. It wouldn't matter if he was her cousin or a complete stranger. She'd want his head in a bag beside Kurt's.

Her comment about finding his disembodied head instead of clothes made my blood surge and my balls take notice.

There was something incredibly arousing about women who liked revenge. She was completely serious about wanting to see him dead in front of her. She wouldn't have flinched. At least, she wouldn't regret it if he was dead.

Seeing a part of him, without warning, may have served as a trigger. One that no one in this room would have blamed her for. No, we'd hold her close while Kurt's blood seeped into a puddle on the hardwood floor.

Damon shook his head. "I spoke to Caleb this morning. He said there's no way in hell Daisy would protect her brother. She was pissed when she found out what he did."

Caleb was probably pissed at getting a call from Damon instead of me. The second oldest in the family, my brother tended to believe in his own importance. He was useful, or he wouldn't have the responsibilities he did, but sometimes he came too close to overstepping.

I nodded slowly in response. "We have contracts out on Kurt?" I knew the answer, but I asked the question anyway.

"Every mercenary, hitman and assassin," Damon said. "All vying for a substantial amount of money." He'd questioned the need to offer that much, but I insisted. I would have offered double if it meant Kurt was found faster. Triple. I'd stipulated that he was to be brought in alive. His death was a last resort.

"I bet the Sparrow would have found him," Gianni drawled. "If anyone could, they could."

I grunted my agreement. When they were active, the Sparrow was one of the most skilled and feared assassins in the business. No one knew who they were, including me, which still irritated me after so long. No one knew why they'd gone inactive either.

They took a job a few years back, completed it and disappeared. Speculation was rife, as was to be expected. Maybe the Sparrow was dead. Maybe they made enough money to retire and were living quietly in a house beside a forest, where there were no people around for days.

If that was the case, I envied them. I owned a house like that, but didn't go there nearly enough. Maybe now I would, since I had more reason to spend time there. I could show Mina the place. I had a feeling she'd love the calm, the nature, the roaring fire in the massive fireplace. It was the perfect place to stop, think and just be.

"Given we don't have help from the Sparrow, we'll have to rely on what resources we do have," I said.

I glanced up as Mina stopped in the doorway leading into the kitchen. My breath left my body.

She was dressed in black jeans and a tank top in a shade of red so dark it almost looked black. Everything was slightly loose, giving her room to fill into it, but the sight of her still sent a surge of blood to my cock.

If I ever had a wet dream, it would feature her, just like this. I wanted to peel off every layer slowly, revealing her skin, scars and all.

I wanted to suck both of her nipples, the perfect one and the one Kurt tried so hard to destroy. I didn't care what they looked like, every part of her was mine. I wanted to touch her everywhere. To show her how beautiful she was, how strong.

"I'll get you food." Gianni leapt up from the table before I could finish taking a breath.

She turned to him and offered the smallest of smiles. "Not too much."

He picked up a plate and glanced back to grin. "Definitely no overdoing it this time."

He placed a piece of toast and a rasher of bacon on her plate before putting it down beside his spot. He poured her a cup of tea and placed it down before pulling out a chair for her.

I held back a growl. Not because I should have been doing those things for her, but because she seemed so determined to do those things for herself. He shouldn't be trying to undermine her. Lucky for him, she didn't seem to mind him helping right now.

She sat graciously and picked up her toast to nibble on the corner.

Gianni plonked himself back in his chair and resumed eating his own breakfast.

"We were just saying we haven't found Kurt yet," I told her.

"We're still looking," Damon said. "We'll find him." He seemed to take Kurt's continued ability to evade us, personally. Not for Mina's sake, but because he was one of the best. He hated to be shown up, especially by a prick like Lasalle.

"Hell yeah, we will," Gianni said. "Terry, this bacon is perfection."

Terry, who stood at the sink washing a pan, nodded to acknowledge that Gianni spoke. He was a man of even fewer words than me. He looked as though he'd punch the crap out of someone with one hand while sipping his coffee with the other. As far as I knew, the only thing he ever broke was eggs. Every so often, I'd send him out with one of the others to intimidate someone who deserved it. That usually got the job done quicker. They didn't know Terry wouldn't hurt a hair on their head. If anything, I think he found the whole thing funny.

I watched Mina as she picked up her own piece of bacon and bit off the end. She closed her eyes and sighed like it was pure bliss.

I pictured her mouth around my cock, the same expression on her face. I was a patient man, I'd wait until she was ready before I slipped my head between her lips and fucked her mouth.

My grip on my coffee cup tightened. If it wasn't for Kurt fucking Lasalle, we wouldn't have to wait. I could have her on her knees right now, licking, sucking, tasting me when I came down her throat.

Gianni made a sound in the back of his own throat like he was thinking the same thing.

Damon was staring at her too.

As if she suddenly became aware of the scrutiny, her eyes popped open. She looked around at all of us, shrinking back with self-consciousness.

"It's really good bacon," she whispered.

"It's the best fucking bacon ever," Gianni said.

"It's not bad bacon," Damon said.

Terry grunted.

Damon smirked. "Fine, it's great bacon, okay?"

"Lucky you said that," Gianni told him. "Terry has been known to stab people with a fork for less." He slid a sly glance in Terry's direction.

Terry gave him the side eye in return.

"No he hasn't," Damon said evenly.

"Okay, no he hasn't, but there's a first time for everything." Gianni shrugged and grinned.

I watched Mina as she listened to them banter back and forth. Her eyes were wide, but she seemed amused. What would it take to make her smile or laugh?

The answer to that was one reason I was willing to accept if she wanted to be with Gianni too. He could make her laugh and smile where I couldn't. Those were things that came easier to him than they did to me. I could buy her things, I could make her look the way I wanted, I could satisfy her in ways she hadn't begun to understand, but I wasn't the clown he and the twins were. I never would be. I didn't want to be. I wanted to give her everything I could offer, not the things I couldn't.

She looked back at me as she continued to nibble carefully on her bacon. From the look in her blue-green eyes, she knew exactly what was going on inside my head somehow. Or at least, on the surface and she wanted to dig down deeper.

I wanted her to do exactly that, but it would have to happen gradually. As long as I could remember, I'd had walls up higher than those around a prison yard. No one had gone past them. Few people wanted to. Fewer people were allowed to. I couldn't take the risk of letting them in, I didn't want to.

The only person I ever wanted to see the real me was her.

Had I been so guarded for so long I didn't know how to let her in either? That was going to be my battle. That and making sure she knew she belonged to me. Whatever it took, I wouldn't step aside from her. The only way anyone would take her from me was if I was dead. Or she was. If anyone tried to kill her, they'd be the ones to end up dead. Slowly and painfully.

"I heard you say something about the Sparrow," she said. She finished her bacon and licked the tips of her fingers in a way that had all three of us staring again.

Fuck. This woman and her tongue. My cock was throbbing so hard it almost hurt. I wanted to feel that warm, wet tongue circling my tip, teasing me.

I cleared my throat. "That's right, we were," I said. "The Sparrow was an assassin. Or maybe a shadow."

She frowned at that. "A shadow?"

It was Damon who responded. "No one knew anything about them. They accepted a job, got it done and took the money. People tried to hunt them down, but never found them."

"Isn't that the job of an assassin?" she asked.

"The Sparrow got into places no one else could," Gianni said. "Places no one should have been able to get into. No one knows how."

"Precisely," Damon said. "People have spent years trying to figure it out. Some speculate the Sparrow used some special technology, and some suggest they were a ghost. Some people even say there was more than one. That it was two people who worked together."

"What do you think?" She picked up her tea and took a sip. There was no groan of appreciation now, but she seemed to enjoy the taste.

Damon shrugged. "I think they were very fucking good at what they did."

"Damon is jealous of their skills," Gianni said.

"So are you," Damon said flatly.

"Fucking right I am," Gianni agreed. "I'm too tall to sneak around like that. And too outgoing." He flipped his short ponytail.

"You mean too loud," Damon said. "You'd be playing metal music so loud, everyone would hear you coming from a week away."

Mina shuddered at the mention of music, but took another sip before putting her cup back down. "I think I've had enough for now."

"You're doing well," I told her. "Good girl." I didn't miss the way her eyes widened at that. Or the way my dick throbbed a little harder.

Waiting might be more difficult than I thought.