Page 20 of Irrevocably

“We could.” Lazarus leans back in the armchair, his tall, rangy figure stretched out, his fingers laced behind his head. He’s in a dark suit, which means he’s been to the city today. “We could wander into the station and ask ‘Hey chief, help us out here. Why do you let the MC smuggle arms through the port? Are they paying you? Can we have a piece of that pie, too?’ I’m sure the chief would be only too happy to tell us and wouldn’t call all the stations in the vicinity for backup. He might even get the MC involved and then it would be a real party.”

We’ve been through this and I can see his reasoning. We can’t take on the police and the MC both at once, so we have to be strategic. I could, of course, use Astrid as leverage to get the chief to speak and it might come to that at some point. But until then, there’s no reason to go balls to the wall straight away, not when we don’t have some allies in place yet.

“Good thing we have the girl, then,” I say.

“The daughter?” Lazarus glances at me. He’s got the same black hair and blue eyes that I do, though he’s not quite as tall as I am, and his eyes are a bit lighter. He’s also got a sprinkling of white at his temples and along his jawline. He’s only eight years older than I am, and shouldn’t be going grey yet, but it’s a hard world we live in. It ages you.

“Yes.” I put the laptop on the coffee table and consider what happened with Astrid earlier. “I talked to her tonight, and apparently her dad doesn’t know anything about the dealings at the port.” It surprised me that she hadn’t thought about her father’s relationship with her best friend’s club, but it seemed she really hadn’t. The shock on her face when I told her about the port operation was real, and once again I wonder if she ever thought about what her friend gets up to with his MC brothers. She must have, surely? Does he know what she does with her little knife in the stalls at college? Ot sitting on her bed late at night?

An unwelcome thread of heat winds through me, remembering the sight of her red blood against her pale skin, and the look of release on her face. Remembering the bruises on her throat and how, when I touched those bruises again in the alley, all the tension went out of her. How soft her bottom lip felt and how she tilted her head to the side to give me more access to her neck…

Abruptly, I’m conscious of Lazarus’s sharp gaze on me, so I push the heat aside. That’s a distraction I don’t need, not when he’s watching everything I do.

He’s still not quite sure of me. All he knows is that last month, I finally found him and the others after years of searching for them. I told them that I managed to escape the bloodbath of our parents’ deaths, went straight into the foster system, and after I aged out, I spent a long time trying to find them.

I made it sound good, the long-lost brother everyone gave up for dead returning to the family fold – and with a whole lot of very useful skills, such as expert marksmanship, an affinity for pain, and a ruthless streak a mile wide. But Lazarus isn’t a fool. Trust is rare in our world, and I’ve been gone for twenty years, so for him, where my loyalties lie is uncertain.

Of course, I know where my loyalties lie. With Enzo. I’ve hunted down my family on his orders, and they don’t know I’m working for him. They don’t know that their own plans in Blackwater tie in nicely with Enzo’s and that he’s going to use them to do his dirty work for him. Then, once they’ve taken over the Hellhounds’ operation, I’ll be handing control over to Enzo.

Then he’ll release me from my oaths to him and I’ll finally be free.

Anyway, it’s been a month and I think Lazarus is starting to trust I’m on his side. The other two trusted immediately. Thea flung her arms around me the moment she saw me, and Killian slapped me on the back, looking a little misty-eyed.

“And you believe her?” Lazarus asks now.

I meet his gaze. “She was shocked when I told her.”

“You think telling her was wise?”

“We need to know what arrangement the chief and the club president have, and there’s nothing on paper,” I say. “So, I’m trying another approach.”

“Using her?”

“She’ll get the information from her father. I’ve given her two days.”

Lazarus frowns. “I assume you’ve got some leverage, so she doesn’t tell her fucking dad that we’re sniffing around asking questions.”

“Of course,” I say smoothly, remembering the flash of anger that crossed her face when I threatened to tell her father about the cutting. She didn’t like that one bit. “She won’t say a word.”

Lazarus nods then looks up at the ceiling, quiet for a beat. Then he asks, “You remember anything about our childhood?”

I stay relaxed and don’t react, because it’s not an idle question. He’s still testing my loyalty. I was only eight when Enzo took me, so I didn’t grow up with Lazarus or the others. He protected Thea and Killian for years, he knows them and they know him, but they don’t know me. I’m an unknown quantity, and an unknown quantity is always subject to suspicion.

However, I do have one advantage. Lazarus wants to believe me. He wants to believe that the little brother he used to walk home from school with every day is still there. The little brother who used to hero-worship him, following him around everywhere he went.

Unfortunately for him, that little boy died along with our parents.

I’m someone else now. I’m someone different.

“You, waiting for me after school every day,” I say. “You used to save half a candy bar for me.”

He nods, his mouth curving at the memory. “I always wanted to eat the whole thing, but you’d whine all the way home if I didn’t give you half.”

I don’t remember that part. “Come on, I was a little angel.”

He grunts a laugh. “You were a little shit.”

“We have a problem.”