Mark (Mallick Brothers 3)

"What the hell happened?" Atlas asked, sitting down like his legs couldn't hold him from the relief.

Because they were my big, bad, protective older brothers.

And I was the woman they still saw as a little girl in pigtails and overalls. I was still the tomboy following them around like a little lost puppy, fascinated with all their fun boy stuff. Who wanted to play with dolls when you could be falling out of trees or jumping into lakes?

I was still the very impressionable, very needy teenager who lost her mother and was left in their care. And, God bless them, they truly did their best. But they were only in their twenties themselves. And we all know what young men in their twenties with no supervision were like. There were many-a-nights when I had Lucky Charms for dinner with my feet propped up on a beer pong table, still sticky with spilled alcohol from the party the night before.

But they cared about me more than anything.

Enough so that Kingston used a name during a robbery he was so worried.

My brothers were very much how Mallick had described them. They were all tall, strong, but not huge, dark-haired, and dark-eyed. And while they were my brothers and commenting on their looks was creepy as hell, I could say that we all shared some really good genes and that they had no trouble finding women when they wanted them.

I had barely stepped inside the door before I found myself hauled up against Kingston's chest, crushed there by an arm across my back, holding me so tight that the air got constricted in my chest. "Don't you fucking ever scare me like that again, do you understand me? You took twenty goddamn years off my life today."

That was Kingston for you. Being the oldest, he had a lot of responsibility dropped onto his shoulders before he even hit thirty. He had been forced to have three of his grown brothers and his seventeen-year-old sister in his one-bedroom apartment. His bills tripled from lights to water to food shopping. At the time, he had been working as overnight security in a store. But after a while, he had needed to get a day job as well, washing freaking dishes at a diner. He had done so much for all of us. And, for the most part, we had repaid that with a lot of bitching and moaning for the first few years.

But he had been mom and dad to all of us who had neither anymore.

Ten years later, he still held that role in most of our lives.

Hence the lecture.

"You can't even blame me on this one," I said as he released me and stepped back. "Today was a shitshow. What the hell happened? The timing on the lights was off. I wasn't even close to being in position. The NBPD got there too fast. The escape was way too close. I had to talk to the cops."

"You had to talk to the cops?" Nixon asked, looking worried. It wasn't a look you saw on his face often. "How? Why? You were in the store, right? Why didn't you head for the planned exit?"

"Because some jackass with a savior complex was holding me captive with his good intentions. Had a hand over my mouth in case I screamed," I added, lips twitching. They all smirked in unison to that. I was not that kind of girl. How could I be with them as the people I looked up to in life? "We need to look into him. He got a decent look at you guys, but I gave a very different description of you guys. Bet my cut," I said, gesturing toward the money on the table, "that he is some kind of criminal around here. The cops were on first-names with him, but not in a 'we drink beers on Friday' kind of way."

"Well, if he's a criminal, I don't see why he has any vested interest in trying to take us down. Kind of goes against the whole honor among thieves thing, doesn't it?" That came from Rush, the youngest of my brothers. He was only two years older than me. He was also our wheel man. And if you were wondering, yes, Rush was his real name. He was two and a half months premature because he was in 'such a rush' to get into the world. It just so happened that the name was a bit of a premonition because Rush always had and always would like everything fast and reckless. He was zig-zagged in scars to prove it. And he was the best driver I had ever seen.

"I don't know. I just got a weird vibe off him. I want to look into him and see what we find, just for my peace of mind. I mean, he saw you guys in shadow. But he saw me. Let's just cover our bases. But first, we need to dissect this job. A repeat of this can never happen again."