Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

A shiver poured through me, cold and clinging to my spine. Nova felt it and tugged me even closer, nostrils flaring.

“Couldn’t be ’cause you got some fucked up idea in your head you could help us out by puttin’ yourself in the kinda jam even the club would have a hard time protectin’ you from?”

“It’s not fucked up,” I argued, finally gathering the threads of my wit so I could actually defend myself from this overprotective jerk. “I’ve got a real plan.”

And then he did something I’d never seen Nova do in the entire seventeen years I’d known him.

He blew the fuck up.

“Are you fuckin’ nuts?” he yelled right in my face, features contorted with rage. “What the fuck could you be thinkin’ puttin’ yourself at risk like that when you got no call to?!”

“No call?” I whispered, so outraged I couldn’t breathe through the crush of anger in my belly. “No call!? My entire family has been targeted by those assholes for fucking years! You think I’ve got no call to want to change that, then it’s you who’s fucked.”

He spun us so abruptly I could only be dragged the three steps to the other side of the kitchen where he pushed me up against the fridge and pinned me in the air with his hands on my wrists, his groin pinned to my elevated hips. I struggled, but I was stuck like a bug in his web.

“You listen to me, and you listen good for once in your goddamn life,” he roared. “You are goin’ in to that bitch tomorrow, and you’re quittin’. No, fuck that, you’re e-mailin’ her right the fuck now, and you’re never gonna see her or that place again. You feel me, Lila?”

“I feel you,” I echoed calmly then snarled, “I feel that you’re an overbearing asshole who doesn’t give one fuck about me unless I’m interfering with his life.”

He reeled back, struck through the middle by my accusation as he stepped away from me. I watched as he blinked away the shock then as it sank in.

“You’re fuckin’ with me,” he intoned flatly. “You think I don’t give a shit, this bein’ why I’m pissed as hell you’re involved with those murderin’, theivin’, scumbags? No, you’re right. That makes a fuck ton of sense, Li.”

“You’re blaming me for getting involved in a situation where my family, The Fallen and the Booths, are at risk, and I can help,” I argued.

“Help? Other than addin’ more work for us, already stretched thin as we are and broken from the loss of King, how the fuck is that helpin’?”

“Irina trusts me,” I said, chin to the air. “She knew Ignacio, and she trusts me because I’m his daughter.”

Something moved through him, something dark and profound like clouds gathering water for a monsoon.

“You think she’s gonna trust you ’cause of your connection to the motherfucker who blew up her operation in Entrance a decade and a half ago? What happened, Li? I thought you were a smart girl.”

“I am,” I bit off.

“You fuckin’ took off your goddamn clothes on camera for a whack ton of creepy as fuck men. That shit is out there now, Li! Curtains can try to work his magic, but it’s out there, and you took that risk without any kinda thought.”

“I’d do worse for my family,” I shouted, but what I wanted to scream was ‘I’d do worse for you!’

“You’re doin’ worse to them right now by stickin’ your nose in where it doesn’t belong. This is club business, Lila, and you got no right to it.”

It was my turn to reel back, flattening myself against the fridge so I could get even an inch farther away from him.

Property of no one.

That was me.

At the end of the day, I didn’t really belong to anyone.

Not really.

“I can’t believe you’d say that,” I whispered.

“Can’t believe you’d disappoint me like this,” he countered, breathing heavily, his entire big torso moving with the effort.

“Don’t talk down to me,” I shouted at him, shoving the heels of both hands deep into his concrete pectorals. “Don’t you dare try to shame me. Love has made people do crazier things, Nova. Just because you don’t know a thing about it, doesn’t make it untrue.”

One of his thick, brown brows arched perfectly into his forehead. “You’re fuckin’ with me. You got serious fuckin’ balls to say I don’t know shit about love.”

I cranked my chin so high in the air I couldn’t maintain eye contact with him. “Yeah right.”

Nova’s gorgeous face split apart with sudden, snarling fury, and then he was moving, lunging toward me so he could wrap a big hand around my throat and shove me up against the fridge again. My breath left in a whisper, and my heart kicked like a wild horse at a barn door.