Judge (Shady Valley Henchmen 1)

“We all live here,” Crow said, solving another problem I had hanging over my head. All I had to do was get in the good graces of the president, and my life was already looking up.

“Come on,” Crow said, making his way up the path. “I’ll show you around. You can meet the guys. And then we will go out and get you laid.”

That sure as fuck sounded like a plan to me.

CHAPTER TWO

Delaney

The bar was busy.

It usually was.

There wasn’t much for entertainment in a town like this.

We had the bar, a pool hall, and a diner.

And, yeah, that was about it.

So if you weren’t keen on spending yet another night at home with your streaming service of choice keeping you company, you usually ended up at the bar.

“Dell, quit daydreaming and get your ass moving,” my brother, Cillian, barked at me as he changed out one of the kicked kegs.

You know, they tell you all these lies about being the baby sister to five older boys. About how they will be so sweet and protective, about how they will take care of you.

Complete and utter bullshit, I tell you.

If anything, it was like having five demanding-ass bosses who would never give me a moment’s peace.

Not at work.

Not at home.

The freaking tyrants.

But there weren’t exactly a lot of choices for work in this town. If I quit the bar, I could wait tables, clean rooms at the motel, become a prison guard, wear one of those borderline obscene outfits at the pool hall, or deal with the sketch nature of working at the gas station.

All of them would give me more freedom than the bar.

None of them would give me nearly as much money, though.

And if I ever wanted to move out of my brothers’ place—and, clearly, I did—then I needed to make as much as I could.

“What can I get for you?” I asked a vaguely familiar guy in one of the prison guard uniforms—gray tops, black bottoms, with the logo on the chest.

“Aside from your number?” he asked, shooting his shot. Which was hilarious seeing as he was old enough to be my father. And not in the sexy, silver fox way, either.

“Yes, aside from that,” I said, giving him a big smile even though it might come off as encouragement.

Smiles got you tips.

So did listening to them talk endlessly about sports and crypto and the shitty, misogynistic podcasts they listen to.

When did listening to podcasts become a personality trait?

I had to work at being a good ear and a warm smile because those pain-in-the-ass brothers of mine. They would have my head if I tried to wear a low-cut top like the other bartenders.

Granted, I wasn’t sure if I could do it anyway.

I didn’t have that same sort of oozing sexual confidence vibe that they did.

It was no wonder.

Since I was still stubbornly holding onto my v-card like it mattered, like it wasn’t just a social construct.

I guess I was just waiting for, you know, the right guy.

And this was a town full of the wrong ones.

Not because half of them were criminals. My own brothers were too. But just because I’d kind of gotten to know them all too well since I started waiting tables.

Guys got drunk and poured their hearts out. Which, for better and often worse, meant you got to know way too much about them to even consider dating them.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, you also had the girls. Who got dragged out by their friends after breakups and angrily ranted about their shitty ex and all the terrible things he’d done.

Between those two things, it left maybe ten or fifteen guys as viable candidates.

Most of whom worked for my brothers.

Which, obviously, meant they weren’t going to work either.

My brothers had a strict “Don’t touch Delaney” rule. No one would dare test them on that. It was no secret my brothers would, at the very least, put you in the hospital and then make it impossible for you to come back to town after you recovered.

So, yeah, the sex-goddess look wouldn’t work for me even if I was allowed to dress that way.

It worked for Nyx.

“How are you so hot, huh?” I asked the woman in question as I walked down the long line of taps to find the shitty one the guy just ordered.

“Girl, if you saw me at home looking like I’m straight out of the dark ages and haven’t had a bath in half a year because my hair and face are greased up with oils, you wouldn’t think I’m so hot.”

That was a lie.

I’d seen the woman bent over a toilet dealing with a bad bout of food poisoning. She’d still been gorgeous.

In a dark, mysterious way. Like the goddess she was named after. It was like Nyx’s mom knew she was going to grow up to be gorgeous with her long, inky-black hair, her heart-shaped face, her sultry gray eyes, and her pouty mouth that could go from smiling to resting-bitch in a millisecond flat.