She tensed in my arms. “I’m the only one who can get into the lab. I have fingerprint access.”
“No.”
“Yes. And you have no say in what I do.”
Vic cleared his throat and from the corner of my eye, I saw his lip twitch.
“Oh, baby, you are way off base if you think that.” She tried to get off my lap, but I tightened my hold. “If Vault is watching the place already, which I suspect they are, they won’t hesitate at killing you,” I shot back.
Vic said, “She won’t go alone. Tyler can go with her. He’ll hack the computer.”
“Tyler and Josh will be gone for days,” Deck said. “By the looks of Connor, he doesn’t have days.”
There was no chance I’d let her go in without me and I was good with computers, but I knew one person who was better. “Chaos.”
All eyes went to Deck. The man had been protecting Georgie all her life and he wouldn’t like the idea of her going in. But Connor was his best friend, and Georgie’s brother.
Deck shook his head. “That’s not an option.”
“And this isn’t your decision. You forget who’s running this operation,” I said.
“And you forget you’re outnumbered,” Deck retorted.
I smiled. “True. But the difference between you and me is that I don’t give a fuck if Connor dies and you do. So, I suggest if you want him to live, Chaos goes in.”
But what I said sat uneasy with me because I knew Chaos would be destroyed all over again if her brother died. I’d seen her devastation when she was sixteen; although at the time, I didn’t care. “We get the drug, the files and then we have something Dorsey wants.”
London stiffened. “And my dad?”
Deck met my eyes. There was no love lost between us, but we walked the same path now, although we’d always be on opposite sides of the fence. “It needs to be dealt with,” he said.
I knew what he was talking about and it was ironic that he was the one who was being cold about her father’s life. I shouldn’t care, but I did because London would never forgive me if I killed him. The reality was, her father was a liability because he knew the drug and that meant he could more than likely reproduce it without the files, but Westbrook was also on borrowed time.
“I know.” But as soon as I said the words, they felt wrong. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t willing to take out a liability and I wouldn’t allow Deck or his men to either.
“What does?” London asked.
Deck was quick to answer. “The situation. Connor is in bad shape. We’ll leave as soon as Tristan can get his pilots here. A few hours maybe—”
Connor’s roar had Deck and Vic running to the basement door. Then there was more of Connor’s shouting and what sounded like a body crashing against the wooden stairs.
“We need to get the drug, Kai.” She was still looking at where Vic and Deck disappeared. Connor had kidnapped her, more than likely the one who shot her, and put her in hell, and still she cared. She cared what happened to him.
I didn’t know how a man like me who never cared about anything was lucky enough to have someone as special as London. I wanted to forget everything and be inside her again. I wanted us to find lightness in all this darkness.
“I’m going to fuck you now. You good with that?” I didn’t wait for an answer as I stood, taking her with me.KAI KICKED THE door closed and before I could take another breath, he had me back against it and his mouth on me.
I quivered under his lips and my belly whirled as he kissed me. He locked my wrists together above my head against the door while his thigh shoved my legs apart and pressed into my sex, sending tweaks of need through me.
I never thought I’d be doing this. Kissing a man as dangerous as Kai.
I never thought I’d love so fiercely that it ruined me. Because no matter how I looked at it, that was what he did to me. Kai ruined me. For other men. For life without him.
I’d hated him.
Feared him.
Desired him.
Needed him.
And loved him.
I’d fallen for him before I was Raven, not loved, but I saw something in him. It was the good in him. The need to protect. The desire to care and yet he couldn’t.
Being with him was like breathing in too fast and becoming lightheaded. There were no restrictions as to who I was. Then or now. Kai let me be me and he knew exactly who I was. Sometimes, I think he knew me better than I knew myself. Maybe he did because he pulled me from a place within myself where I’d been slowly dying.