The Sunset Job (The Rainbow's Seven 1)

“Yeah, you’re right, that does sound messy, broki. But here’s to new beginnings, eh?” He lifted his glass and offered an infectious smile, which surprised Wyatt when his lips curled to mirror Bang Bangs. He clinked their glasses together and drank.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have a new beginning with Roman. I’m here because I want a better life for me and my sister, and that’s it. When it’s over, it’ll be over between Roman and me, too. I’ve already been burned once, and it ain’t happening again.”

Bang Bang arched a bushy brow, crossing a tattooed arm across his chest and scratching at the side of his neck. It was an impressive tattoo, the entire sleeve on display since he was wearing a tank top. There were light blue peonies and dark red roses flowing gracefully up his forearm, wrapping around the main event: a pin-up tattoo of a man with a pair of booty shorts bulging with the thickness of the thighs, one leg kicked back and one arm holding up a bright golden pistol, lips pressed with a smile against the barrel.

“What about you?” Wyatt asked. “How did you meet Roman, and what did he do to fuck up your life?”

Bang Bang gave a deep belly laugh at that before finishing off his bear and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Roman and I met at a bathhouse, actually.”

“Of course you did,” Wyatt said.

“We were there working the same job. There was a meeting being held there between the heads of two rival gangs. This was up in New York, and I had been hired to take one out while Roman was there for the other. Big payday for the both of us, but shit went south. I got shot in the leg, and Roman got a knife slash across the chest, both of us fighting while butt-ass naked, but we made it out together, and we were both successful. Figured we should work together after that. Have been ever since.”

“What a feel-good story,” Wyatt responded with a sarcastic edge in his smile. “And I assume it’s all just been guns and roses since?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Bang Bang said, eyes drawing up and to the side toward the door that was now open. Roman filled the frame with his broad build, an easygoing smile playing on that perpetual baby face of his.

“Hey, boys, mind if I join?”

Chapter 9

Roman Ashford

Roman couldn’t sleep. He thought crashing at the aquarium would be a good idea but now started to wonder if maybe his condo would have been better. His entire body buzzed with a current that kept his eyes open and heart racing. It wasn’t nerves or fear or apprehension but excitement. Roman could see the finish line now, and beyond that, he could see the prize. His entire life—and the lives of his entire crew—were about to be astronomically different. He just needed to get them across that finish line.

And then there was Wyatt, whose big brown eyes and rare-but-effortless grin were no longer confined to Roman’s dreams anymore. He was back—his best friend, his awkward first time, his first love, his last devastating heartbreak. Roman had fucked around after their breakup but had never felt the same kind of “sunshine in the coffee cup” kind of feeling he used to describe to Wyatt.

And then Roman went and fucked it all up. He had derailed Wyatt’s entire life, ruining his chance at a degree from his dream college and fucking up his shot at a dream job, and there was nothing Roman could have done except profusely apologize.

None of those apologies landed. Wyatt stopped answering any of his texts or calls, and the last eight years they had spent together as best friends (and two as boyfriends) were flushed unceremoniously down the drain. Roman lasted two years at Yale before he dropped out, his adventure-hungry and risk-seeking lifestyle leading him to find work with an uncle in Greece, a man who happened to be one of the most prolific grifters of the twenty-first century. Roman had learned a lot from his uncle, up until the day he was found dead in a lake with a bullet through the skull.

To this day, Roman still wasn’t sure who killed his uncle. One of the things he vowed to do with the money from this job was to find the killer and make him pay for taking one of the last blood relatives Roman had left on this spinning rock. If everything went according to plan, then he’d have his revenge served on a gold-encrusted platter.

He got up from his bed, deciding it was time to take a trip to the kitchen for a beer. As he padded barefoot back to his room, he heard noise coming from behind Wyatt’s door, Bang Bang’s voice carrying into the hall as if the guy was speaking through a megaphone.