Page 10 of Altered By Fire (Undercover Sinners 1)
"Let the girl make her own choice," Hawke snarls, standing back up and staring at me across the suddenly heated space. There's so much testosterone and violence in the room that I feel like I'm choking on it. "I can take her to the nunnery right now. It’s not too late."
"Get ye to a nunnery," Colt quotes, coming into the room dressed in his priest robes and chuckling under his breaths. "That's from a Shakespeare play except, like, it doesn't mean nunnery. It means brothel. Like, he's literally telling the chick to go to a whorehouse. Messed up, right?"
"Shut the fuck up!" Hawke roars and everyone goes quiet.
Wow.
Guess we know who the leader is here.
The fifth man, Weston, walks into the room, also dressed in some sort of religious uniform. Now that he’s out of the dim corridor, I can see his hair is streaked with a brilliant emerald green color. He's got piercings on either side of his lip and in his eyebrow, and he doesn't look a goddamn thing like a man of the cloth.
"Bro, take your piercings out," Colt whispers, tapping the side of his mouth.
I'm so confused at that point that all I can do is sit there and gawp.
"Natalia. Do you want me to take you to the nunnery?" Hawke repeats, and I slowly, carefully, tear my eyes from him to look over at leader of the group. I sense an or lying in wait there, so I sit still and watch him, the scent of pancakes wafting around me. "Or do you want … something else?"
"Something else?" I choke out as Arsen grins, like a shark. "What do you mean, something else?"
"We know who you are," Arsen whispers, almost hisses. "We know who your father is and all the naughty things your family is responsible for."
In an instant, I'm up and backing away from five monstrous men with muscles that are too big, and tattoos, and angry facial expressions. Good God, and I'm standing here in a t-shirt with no underwear.
"How?" I whisper, horrified, and Arsen smiles that shark smile again.
"We're hunting him, that's how, and then here you are, falling, almost literally, into our laps."
"Arsen," Hawke warns, moving around him to take a few steps closer to me. Colt and Weston exchange glances as Mace sighs and leans his ass against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. "Listen, Natalia," he starts as I look for a way out.
Just a few feet away from me is a back door. There are a few boxes stacked in front of it, like it hasn't been used for a while. Without waiting to hear what Hawke's going to say, I lunge for it, turning the deadbolt and the handle at the same time.
The door opens inward, pushing the boxes out of the way, and I stumble forward, hitting the screen at about the same time Hawke wraps an arm around my waist and yanks me back, my shirt rising up and flashing … everything.
To an old lady standing outside on the lawn in a big, floppy white hat.
"Mrs. Carroll," Hawke says, setting me down suddenly and grabbing the hem of my shirt. He jerks it back into place and covers up all my lady bits.
"Father Dell used to … set a box outside this door to collect donations for the homeless," the woman says, staring, not at the giant man in the body armor and guns, but at me. Me!
I try to move, but Hawke tightens his grip, the muscles in his arm bulging and tensing like steel. I can hardly even breathe. But having that big, solid form behind me is exhilarating. Hawke smells like leather and musk and man.
"Yes, well, that's an excellent idea," he grumbles as I stand there like the typical mob-daughter that I am. Here is a person, unconnected to all of this shit, and I’m not screaming or calling out for help. Because back home, all that would do is get the old woman killed.
That's what my father would've done, and what if these men are worse?
"We'll look into that," he continues, reaching past me with a big hand, and slamming the door closed in the old woman's face.
"Your cover is fucked," I breathe, but Hawke just grunts and lets go of me, before putting his hands on my shoulders and spinning me around to face him. His eyes bore into mine as I swallow past the lump in my throat. I look up, up, up at him and wonder if this is the moment where it all ends. "So, are you going to kill me now?"
Strangely, this idea doesn’t fill me with the fear it once would have. Maybe because I know death here, by a bullet in the brain, will be far more merciful than anything my father would do to me now.
