Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

“Ah,” he said, looking over my shoulder, lost in thought for several long, awkward seconds. “Yes, I’m surprised she didn’t tell me.”

A shiver nibbled up my back with viciously sharp teeth. “Why would she? I’m no one.”

He laughed lightly, but there was too much shrewdness in his eyes to pass it off as casual. I watched him suspiciously as he rolled to his feet gracefully and adjusted his cufflinks and blazer. He was a handsome man in the way a car salesman was handsome, studied and slick because he knew good looks were powerful. He had the same eyes I did, a warm brown spiked through with green and gold. Only his were narrowed, calculating and suspicious, glittering with dark joy.

“Silly of me to assume you would remember me. I knew your parents.”

Of course, he did. Ignacio had been his primary dealer on the coast of B.C. before they expanded their operations.

“Right.” I smiled anemically, feeling spread as thin as butter over toast. I needed space to make sense of the last two hours, of Irina’s capitulation to my stand-off, Javier’s odd intimacy, and Dane.

Mostly Dane.

“You look like her,” Javier continued as his eyes swept me head to toe. “As a girl, you looked like your father, but now you’re grown, you look very much like Ellie. You have her grace.”

No one had ever told me I had grace before. I was a girl inked in flowers who wore cowboy boots and ripped concert tees. I was nothing elegant or graceful, at least not in the traditional sense. But the way Javier said it, as if he was compelled to praise me for it, set my teeth on edge.

“Um, well, thank you. I should go, though, my friend is probably outside waiting for me,” I hedged as I moved toward the door.

“Oh, don’t worry about Nova Booth. My wife has always been quite taken with him, I’m sure she’s only too happy to entertain him.”

“Excuse me?” I almost barked.

Irina and Nova?

His eyes glittered, elongated like a snake’s and just as evil. “Oh, yes, they had a brief tryst some years ago. Irina never quite recovered from it. I wonder…have you?”

My poor, battered heart set a limping gait in my chest, but I stared down Javier with all the hatred I could muster, and it was considerable because this was the man who had framed Zeus and propped up Staff Sergeant Danner’s corrupt force which led to King’s death. The man who sold women like cattle, drugs like candies, and had no respect for human life other than his own.

“You may have known my parents, Javier, but don’t believe for one moment that I am anything like them. They were my blood, not my family, and thank God, I was raised by better than them. Better than you,” I snapped recklessly, so overloaded with emotion that I had no thought to my safety.

I didn’t linger to see how Javier would react to my outburst, so I didn’t see the way he flinched slightly at my words. Instead, I pushed out of the office, stalked through the now empty studio, and through the side door out to the parking lot.

Irina was there, her long fingernails on Nova’s chest as she flirted shamelessly with him.

Red obscured my vision like a cloak prompting something animal in me that ignited the need to charge.

Nova saw me first, stalking toward them with fury engraved on my face, and he grinned.

Grinned.

As if the sight of me aflame with jealousy was amusing and maybe even a little endearing.

It only fueled me further.

It was the proverbial icing on the cake of my supremely shitty day.

“Excuse me, Irina,” I seethed as I stepped up to them and attached myself to Nova’s side.

Without hesitation, Nova lifted his leather clad arm and tucked me into his side.

Irina’s eyes narrowed on us.

“Have you met my boyfriend, Nova?” I asked sweetly even though the words burned on my tongue.

He wasn’t my boyfriend. I knew that. But I needed this. I needed someone to believe he was mine and respect it. Even more, I needed Irina and Javier to fuck off.

She blinked, her red mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise. “I wasn’t aware the famous Casanova dated anyone.”

Nova squeezed my tense shoulder and shot her a lazy smile. “I wasn’t until I got my head outta my ass and noticed Lila as more than a friend.”

I squashed the happiness that bloomed in my heart under the heavy heel of my mind. He was just playing his part in the charade, and I knew better than to believe his lies.

“If you’ll excuse us,” I said in that same sugary tone as I started to lead Nova toward his Harley. “We have a dinner to get to.”

Irina didn’t say anything as we moved away, but I felt her gaze brand itself into the back of my head as I settled onto the bike behind Nova and we took off with a roar of pipes.