"Okay, walk me through this," she said. "You're brothers, but you're not."
"Right." He'd never really had to explain it before. No outsider but Freddie had ever gotten close enough to need an explanation and he'd just understood at a glance. Hell, the crotchety old goat had probably come up in similar circumstances.
Bianca rolled her eyes. "More words, please."
How to explain this without making her think they were total street rats who'd basically raised each other, which they had been? Nobody wanted to hear that sob story and he sure as shit didn't want to tell it.
"We grew up together, Keir, Lash, Marko, Duke, and I, getting into trouble together like we were punching a time clock." It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the whole story. Hell, it wasn't even a paragraph of the whole story.
"Color me shocked." She chuckled.
It was sarcasm tinged with a teasing lightness. The mix of hard and soft was just like her at the gym. The first day she'd walked in, he pegged her for a piece of fluff—the most expensive fluff in the world, but still fluff. Then she'd taken some practice punches and he saw something in her that he saw every time he looked in the mirror. Anger. Resentment. Self-recrimination. She was looking for her redemption at the Devil's Dip Gym. It wasn't a bad plan. That's where he'd thought he'd found his.
"You're not nearly as shocked as we were when Freddie Atlas caught us breaking into his gym one night when we were about fourteen. We were damn lucky he decided against calling the cops or our parents." Not that he would have gotten ahold of any of their parents. "Instead, we had to report to the gym every day after school and he trained us when we weren't mopping the floors or cleaning the toilets."
Her gaze shifted from him to Keir and back again, a smile curling one end of her tantalizing lips. "So you're the brotherhood of the fighting toilet cleaners?"
"We should get T-shirts made," Keir said from his side of the kitchen island, no doubt only half joking. "Of course, I'd be the only one who could make that work. The ladies would love it on me. On you?" He gave Taz an up and down. "Not so much."
Without warning or clearance from him, the elevator binged it was on the way up. Reacting on instinct, Taz grabbed Bianca and thrust her down behind the island. He pivoted and grabbed the nine millimeter from the unlocked wall safe above the sink and had it pointed at the elevator by the time the doors opened.
A woman strutted out into the loft's living area like she'd just signed the papers to buy the place. Five-foot-nothing. Chinese. Long black hair with a thick teal streak in the front. A total bitch-please look crossed her face the moment she spotted him with the gun. Not that she stopped moving forward. Nope, she strode through the living space toward the kitchen island, her hands visible but not in any way held up in deference to the gun pointed at her head.
"Keir," she said in a voice that practically bled money and privilege. "Didn't you tell your friend I was coming?"
"Haven't you heard of a doorbell, Yang?" Keir asked as he waved his hand, signaling Taz to put the gun down.
Her gasp of surprise was as dramatic as it was false. "You want a delicate little thing like me to wait outside in the dark all by my lonesome?"
"Vivi?" Bianca vaulted up from behind the island like a sexy jack-in-the-box. "Oh my God, is it really you?"
The two women stared at each other for all of two and a half seconds before letting out a high-pitched squeal that must have had dogs howling six blocks away. Bianca sprinted around the island and ran to the other woman, pulling her into a hug.
Brain still trying to process what he was seeing, Taz pushed the gun's safety back in place and set the nine millimeter down on the island as he wondered what headaches this little pairing was going to cause him.
* * * *
Bianca's ribs were under threat of cracking from the power of the petite woman's bear hug, but she didn't care. Vivian Yang. Here. The weekend was turning into a St. B's reunion and the boldest, brassiest member of the old squad was in attendance. Things were about to get interesting.
Pulling away, she glanced back at Taz. He'd put the gun down, thank God. He'd gone all alpha protector as soon as the elevator sounded, which was bullshit. She didn't have a handgun hidden away in the waistband of his shorts that she was wearing, but she wasn't a damsel in distress either. There were a dozen beautifully sharpened knives in a chopping block on the counter and she could slice and dice with the best of them—or send the blades flying through the air toward their intended target. Catching Taz's gaze, she ignored the excited shiver that raced down her spine and glared at him. He shrugged, obviously not worried one single bit about his overreaction.
"Men," she huffed under her breath.
"You're telling me." Vivi accompanied her snark with an eye roll, but her focus was zeroed in on Keir.
"I can't believe you're the DEA agent who scares Keir."
Vivi turned to the tattooed muscle man, a predatory smirk upending her patented deceptively innocent smile. "Oh sweetie, do I make you nervous? Toughen up, bad boy." She blew a kiss at him and pivoted back to face Bianca. "That explains me, but what are you doing here?"
Where to start? She glanced down at the cotton ball still taped to the inside of her elbow. No. That wasn't the place. She needed to start at the beginning because, as they knew from watching The Sound of Music on constant loop at St. B's, it was a very good place to start. Her throat tightened. They used to sing those songs together all the time, with Gidget being the only one who could hold a tune.
"Gidget is missing," Bianca said. "I think the Davies-Smythes know what happened to her."
Vivi blinked several times, then she straightened and the don't-fuck-with-me-fella body language took over her casual stance. "Gidget Harms? What's your proof? What have you gotten yourself into? What's the connection to the Davies-Smythes? What kind of trouble are you in?" The questions came out rapid-fire, without a breath in between.
Holding up a hand to stop the barrage, Bianca walked over to the island and pulled out the fourth stool positioned around the granite rectangle. "Sit down. It's a long story."
By the time they'd gotten the whole thing out, Vivi had transformed from her partner in crime at St. B's to DEA Agent Yang. She slapped her notebook shut and capped her pen but didn't say a word.