Eli kicks my leg as I drop down onto the sofa beside Bishop. “How the fuck have you managed to keep your hands off her?”
“Because I don’t think with my dick.” I turn my head until my focus is back on him.
Eli chuckles. “Fucking waste. What’s the point of having that ladder if you won’t let bitches climb it?”
I glare at Eli. Little fucker. Eli has always been the loudest in the group, and our group has Nate, so that’s saying something. “Because the bitches that do very rarely live to reach the top.”
Silence falls around me until my eyes squeeze closed and fatigue seeps into my muscles.
“Are you going to tell her that Tillie is her sister and that her mom was a psychotic bitch that we had to kill? Or that Bishop is her half-brother and that her father is a for real fucking thug dressed up in Armani?” He’s right. She should know her history, but that would open up a whole new can of ‘WTF’ when she asks who the fuck we are and how she came to be living with Lucan and me.
“Yeah, I will. Not right now.”
“Are you worried as much as I am about the friendship that could form?” Nate mumbles, watching us all skeptically from the other side of the room.
I squeeze my hand into a fist, my nails cutting into my palm. “No.” I chuckle, shaking my head. “Tillie takes care of the people she loves. I trust her with Saint.”
“Trust her?” Bishop stares at me blankly. “That deep, huh?”
My jaw clenches. “You have no idea.”
Nate built The Den with this house, but then we changed the name to Buckingham. It drowns in black furnishings with deep mahogany redwood and modern glass. There’s a bar, a rectangular boardroom table with ten seats, black plush rugs, a poker table, a billiards table, and a safe that is integrated into the wall, filled with stacks of gold bullion and fake passports. It was all part of Bishop’s plan to make some changes within the Kings’ world when he took over. Our fathers ruled with force, as well as their fathers, but it was time to modernize The Elite Kings’ world. In order to stay one step ahead, we have to make sure we’re ten steps ahead.
Falling onto one of the leather sofas, I reach for the humidor, sliding out a clean Cuban cigar. I run the trunk beneath my nose, inhaling all of the exotic notes that are rolled up while watching Bishop. To say he has been strained since Madison took off is a complete understatement. Bishop has been angry. Now he’s just hurting.
His hands dive into his hair as Nate, Eli, Hunter, and Chase make their way into the lounge area and find somewhere to sit. Bishop clears his throat. “We need to talk about Saint.” I flick the cigar around my fingers, ignoring his request. The room is silent, and I know they’re all waiting for me to answer.
I fling the cigar across the table and reach forward, snatching the joint that’s tucked behind Nate’s ear, biting it into my mouth and popping open the Zippo lying on the table. I blaze up, sucking in a row of heavy tokes. I hold in the smoke and lean back in the chair before slowly releasing the cloud between my lips in a line of smoke rings. The tension in my muscles and my mind liberate instantly.
I roll the tip between my thumb and index finger. “What do you want to know?” I kept her a secret from them for as long as I could. Lucan didn’t spill shit about shit. Even when everything went down, he still didn’t spill any details about Saint. He could have. The truce between him and Hector had cracked open. He didn’t have to keep Saint a secret, but he did. Even during his final minutes on this earth. Never thought much about that until now. “How about we start with how you know and what you know?”
Bishop swaps glances with Nate. Bishop and I haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye much lately, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take a bullet for the fool. He exhales and leans forward. “Dad told us. Said we had to keep her safe.”
My brows knit together as I take another hit of the ganja. “She is always fucking safe.”
“We know that now,” Nate murmurs, resting back in his chair. “We didn’t when we found out. So, tell us her story.”
Blood rushes to the surface. “I was seven, or six. Seven, I think, when she arrived. Barely old enough to hold a knife and fork, but fuck if you put a nine in my hand I would have shot any motherfucker that came near her.”
Bishop snickers. “So she’s your Madison?”
“Fuck no,” I dismiss him. “Never went near her with that intent. She just—I don’t know. I needed to protect her. Always felt this fucking need to protect her.”
The silence was almost loud enough to dance through the room with a pair of fucking pointe slippers on.
“All right, well, I won’t ask questions about whatever it is that’s going on between the two of you. It obviously has some history on it.”
I grit my teeth. You could fucking say that.
“There’s a problem with this…” Cash murmurs, his finger working his upper lip. He’s grown his hair out a lot, with it now needing to be tied into a pretty little bun.
“And what’s that?” I run my tongue over my teeth before baring them like a fucking wolf.
“Well, there’s a color that we have to call, you know, to let others know that she’s off-limits. So I’ll ask since no one else has the balls to do it. Are you gonna soak her in your blood so that the rest of the wolves know she’s claimed?” He even went as far as explaining why we call it “red.”
A menacing chuckle rocked through me while leaning back in my chair and keeping my eyes on his. Locked on his pretty blues, I don’t falter until the blacks of mine drown his. “I’m not calling red on her because it’s not like that.”
“Then she’s going to be fair game if she starts hanging around like I fear she may be. I mean, we all know what happened with—” Cash pauses when a loud click cracks through the air.
My eyes shoot straight to the head of the table where Bishop has his Desert Eagle pressed right against Cash’s temple.
Cash doesn’t unlock his eyes from mine, though his smirk is cocky enough for Bishop to see.
My lip curves up, because I already know why he’s landed himself in shit.
“—say her fucking name, motherfucker, and King or no King, your brains will be sprayed over the walls.” Bishop is bluffing, he wouldn’t actually kill a King. That’s never happened, with the exception of Lucan.
I can’t hold in my laughter, and my head hits the back of the chair as I flash a god-honest authentic smile right at Cash. “Ahhh, you were saying?”
Cash rolls his eyes. “You know what happened to she who shall not be named and Tillie. No one called it on them for a while. There were almost two ‘throuples’ that happened. It’s in our history books that this happens.”
There’s another long stretch of silence before I start flicking that same Zippo around between my fingers. “No one will touch Saint,” I say with calm assertion.
“You know this?” Cash fires back, and I have to stop myself from reaching over the table, latching on to his throat, and tearing it straight from his spine.
“Fact, I know it.”
“How so?”
My lip curls. “Because fucking with a girl who is owned by me is far scarier than fucking with someone who has been drowned in the blood of her lover.” I pause, tilting my head while keeping my eyes trained on his. “Care to test that theory?”