TWENTY-TWO
Anthea
Brant probably assumedI’d be too freaked out by having a gun pointed at me to do anything other than stand there like a deer in the headlights. He had no idea how many weapons I’d already stared down in my twenty-three years.
My phone dinged with an incoming text. I’d already lowered my hand; I couldn’t risk even the movement of lifting it to check what Felix had said. It probably wouldn’t make any difference to my current dilemma anyway.
I jerked my thumb across the touchpad as quickly as I could. I couldn’t compose a coherent message, but if I could sendsomethingthat would indicate to Felix that the situation had turned sour—
Brant walloped my wrist with his free hand, sending the phone clattering across the pavement. I couldn’t tell whether I’d managed to hit enter in time. He shoved me after it with the gun still at the back of my skull and stomped on the screen for good measure. The crunch of the internal circuitry fracturing made me wince internally.
Well, I definitely wasn’t chatting up anyone on that thing again.
While he was focused on destroying the phone, I flicked one of the needles tucked into my left sleeve into my grasp and jerked my hand past him as if trying to free myself. I scraped him with the toxin-laced tip lightly enough that he’d think it was just my fingernails.
Brant swung around, outright smacking me with the gun across the side of my head. Pain splintered through my skull, and I couldn’t suppress a gasp. Stumbling without needing to fake it, I let the needle fall with the rasp of my feet on the asphalt to cover the sound.
I couldn’t lace a tip that tiny with enough of anything subtle that would completely spin this encounter in my favor, but getting that jab in might have bought me a big enough opening to turn the tide. My hand itched to reach for the gun in my right sleeve, but with the muzzle of Brant’s pistol still pressed against my scalp, I knew I wouldn’t get far with it. Not yet.
I had to save my few secret advantages for when I could make the best possible use of them.
Holly had spun around at the noise of our scuffle. “What the fuck is going on?” she snapped at Brant under her breath in a tone that confirmed my suspicions that there was no personal affection between the two of them.
“It’s the Noble bitch,” Brant said. He prodded me toward Holly and the stacked boxes beyond the doorway, not caring about how I winced when the pistol’s muzzle bumped the tender spot where he’d bashed me earlier. “She tracked you here somehow. I told you that we had to be careful.”
“Maybe she trackedyou,” Holly snarked back. They made such a cohesive team. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you doing here, you stupid girl?”
I gave her a tight smile, keeping my fingers curled inside the jacket’s wide sleeves. “I should be asking you that, I think, considering that the stuff behind you belongs to either my brother or the Hell Kickers depending on how you look at it. It definitely doesn’t belong to you.”
“Finders, keepers, isn’t that how it goes?” she said in an arch tone.
“I don’t think you exactlyfoundthat shipment,” I replied dryly.
Holly scowled at me, probably annoyed that I wasn’t cowering at their feet. She’d have to break my knees before I ended up down on the pavement.
“Where’s your other accomplice?” I went on, figuring I might as well drag whatever information I could out of them by playing clueless while I had the chance. It’d also be helpful to know if I should be prepared for any other men with guns to turn up out of the blue.
Brant rapped me with the gun. “What are you talking about?”
“That Griffin dude. Isn’t he in on this with you? He sure seems keen on the whole war thing.”
The guy behind me snorted. “That fucking idiot doesn’t have any more clue than the rest of them. Just another bootlicker. Worked in our favor, though, pushing Marcel along like that.”
I forced my eyes wide. “You and Holly pulled this off all by yourselves?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Holly sneered. “No one in that fucking house ever gave me the chance I deserved.”
So it really was just these two coming up with the scheme on their own. Well, I suspected Holly had done most of the thinking. Brant was the muscle—and the gun.
“Were you really so peeved about Marcel divorcing you that you had to pull this?” I asked her, partly out of honest curiosity. “I mean, you were wifey number three. You didn’t figure that was a bad sign from the get-go?”
Holly bared her teeth at me, her pretty face transforming into something hard and a little unhinged. “I could have stood right beside him properly if he’d let me prove myself. He was only looking for arm candy, it turns out. So I’ll just have to build my own empire.”
Holy hell, the delusions ran even deeper with this woman than I’d imagined. She wasn’t just out to undermine two major gangs—she figured she was going to start her own with her ill-gotten gains? With this shithead Brant as her right-hand man?
But even as I scoffed internally, I had to admit she hadn’t gotten off to a totally bad start. She’d set two major powers in this part of the country at each other’s throats, ready to tear away at one another—and maybe she figured she could fill in the gaps they left.
There was something kind of thrilling about the idea of a woman in charge of a syndicate like the Nobles or the Hell Kickers. If it’d been a different woman, if it hadn’t meant the potential destruction of my own family’s legacy, I might have cheered her on.