Winter
* * *
I lean back into my chair and rub my temples. A headache is forming. One I don’t have time for. There are too many balls in the air at the moment that I have to keep focussed on.
Axe hasn’t reported anything new on our rat; Scott hasn’t called with news on Zenith; Zane hasn’t dug up anything on Leif Jensen; and Striker hasn’t reported in on Eloise Carter. We’re nowhere closer to fixing all the shit we’ve got going on and my patience is reaching breaking point.
Fuck.
A text comes through.
* * *
Torres: The shipment has been delayed by a week.
* * *
Christ.
I shove my chair back and stand to go find King. This delay will cost us and he won’t be happy to hear the news.
I’m halfway down the hall when I hear Birdie’s voice. “Who let you in here?”
“I fucking let myself in. I’m looking for the big dudes with the beards.” Moses.
“Yeah, that doesn’t really narrow it down,” she says, and I hear the amusement in her voice. Amusement I don’t share. Not when someone talks to my wife with that kind of attitude.
I round the corner as he says, “Fuck, lady, just get me whoever’s in charge.”
Before Birdie can respond, I bark, “You talk to her that way again, you’re not gonna like the consequences.”
Both their eyes come to me. Birdie speaks first. “It’s okay, Winter—”
I lock eyes with Moses. “It’s not fucking okay, and he won’t do it again.”
Moses blazes with insolence. “I just wanna know why the fuck my aunt came home today and lost her shit when I told her you two dropped by yesterday. I don’t fucking like being the punching bag for her stress.”
King steps into the corridor. “She’s not your aunt.”
Moses swings around to face him. “The fuck?”
King moves closer. “What do you know about your parents?”
“I know my father killed my mother and that he disappeared after that. My aunt took me in.”
Compassion fills King’s eyes as he breaks the truth to Moses. “It’s true that your father killed your mother and then disappeared. But Eloise is not your aunt. She was a friend of your mother’s. She went missing the same time you did. We never knew what happened to you until now.”
Moses stares at King in silence. Finally, he says, “Why should I believe you?”
“Believe what you want,” King says, “but that’s the truth.”
“So my father was a member of Storm?”
“Yeah,” King says.
“And a murdering asshole?”
King doesn’t respond to that.