Page 40 of Ballistic

I felt desired. Maybe even beautiful, for once.

“Jay’s been known to lay someone out when necessary.”

“Lucy said you fought. On the streets? For money?” I’d gotten the lowdown from Lucy, who’d told me a lot of things about Dax. For one, that he had always been pretty good with his fists. And two, that, although he was something of a man-whore, he had a lot of respect for women. Apparently, they were his one true weakness.

“Kids do what they gotta do to survive, ya know?”

“How long did you live on the streets?”

“Most of my life, aside from some short stints in foster homes. Never really mixed well in the nuclear family unit. Was just me and my mom for a while, until she overdosed. They called it a suicide.”

“And your sister?”

“Yeah. Livvie, too. But I didn’t meet her until I was about sixteen.”

I remembered he’d mentioned her briefly, someone Tesarik had hurt, and from what I’d gathered, the reason Dax was hellbent on killing the bastard. “What happened to her?”

His eye flinched, but he continued to stroke his chin, drawing my gaze to the perfect square of his jaw. Like a Greek god, the man had a beautiful Roman nose and perfect lips, set below naturally stern-looking brows.

“Livvie suffered the same fate as your friend. They didn’t drown her, though. She was dumped in some abandoned shithole like trash.”

“I’m sorry.” I wedged my hands between my thighs, catching Dax’s quick downward glance. “They made a video of it?”

“Yeah. Found out a buddy of mine had been coerced into …” His jaw ticced and the flare of his nostrils told me a storm brewed inside of him. Whatever his buddy had done must’ve been bad, given the look on his face right then. “I beat him so hard and so long, couldn’t hardly make out his face afterward.”

“Then, you understand why I need to do this. Why it’s so important.”

“I understand. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. If something happened to you, Nic …”

Nic. Had we gotten to that point, where he’d shortened my name into something more friendly? Something familiar? And I couldn’t help but wonder what the second half of that threat might be. If something happened to me, then he’d what? Beat someone to a bloody pulp? Kill for me?

“So, these strippers …” I quickly changed the subject. No sense dwelling on something that would never be, particularly when my fate had already been laid out for me on a single path, from which I couldn’t deviate if I wanted. Something was going to happen to me. Captured, killed, or both. If it didn’t, it’d mean I’d failed, and I had no intentions of failing. “They’ve got some pretty shady friends, then? Present company not included.”

His cheek twitched as though he might smile. “What makes you think I’m not just as shady as the rest of them?”

“Instinct.”

“Yeah, what kind of instinct?”

“The kind that tells me I could probably jump onto your lap right now, and you’d be more concerned with whether, or not, the steering wheel was pressing too hard into my back.”

The twitch of his shoulder and bob of his throat confessed the comment made him uncomfortable. “Just before I drove the two of us into a brick wall. I’m not all good, Nicoleta. Remember that.”

“You’re not all bad, either. I know the bad ones. You could kill a thousand innocent men and still be more worthy of redemption.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I’m touched.” The corner of his eye lifted with amusement, and he glanced up toward the rearview mirror and back to the road. “Do me a favor and stay in your seat, though.”

“Why? Are you suddenly feeling the urge to plow into a brick wall?”

“No. Cop just flicked on his lights behind us.”

As I twisted around in my seat to catch the lights of the police car behind us, Dax pulled the ‘Cuda to a stop into some closed down strip mall’s abandoned-looking lot, riddled with weeds sticking up from cracked pavement.

Shit.

“Were you even speeding?”

“Five over.” At another glance in the mirror, he sank into the seat and rubbed his hand down his face. “Fuck me.”