Page 32 of Ruin

When he pushed me, my frustration and anger exploded out of me, and I went after him, fists flying and eyes seeing nothing but the red of anger.

I just got angrier when he started talking between blows.

“We don’t have time to wait, Knight.” He punched and missed but recovered quickly, his weight surprisingly well-balanced on his toes. “Devil is after us, and we’re not going to get away from him. You chose this, and now you have to finish it.”

“What do you mean I chose it?” I asked, ducking another blow and landing one in his solar plexus. “Devil is the one who’s coming after us.”

Brock paused and gave me a narrow-eyed look. “And he’s coming after us because you fucked his old lady. Don’t be stupid. He’s coming after us because of that girl.”

That was it. I flew at him, enraged and so angry I couldn’t see straight. Some part of me, some hidden, fading voice, reminded me that Brock must weigh twice as much as I did and that I’d never seen him lose a fight.

But the man had just insulted not only me but Saraya as well, and I wasn’t going to let that stand.

Then Saraya herself was between us, pushing and shoving and shouting, and Remy was beside her, getting Brock to back up and back off.

“This is ridiculous!” Saraya shouted, her voice shrill and broken. “You two are on the same team, and look at you! This is exactly what Devil would want! He broke the code. Yes, Knight and I broke the code by sleeping together, but Devil broke it first. He tried to kill me, the woman he was supposed to be protecting. Knight, you’re the one who told me that. Devil. Broke. The. Code. And we’re going to make him pay for it. But fighting amongst ourselves isn’t going to make that happen.”

I looked at her, and then up at Brock, wondering if her words had gotten through to him. And I saw... bashfulness. Apology.

“She’s right,” I said quietly.

“And smarter than both of us,” he added. He pulled me in for a hug, engulfing me in his huge arms. “I’m sorry, brother. I just want to avenge my brother.”

“We will,” I told him. “That’s a promise.”

CHAPTER 18

SARAYA

WE’D BEEN AT BROCK’S for nearly a week, now, and I was starting to get... restless.

I knew I’d had that big speech in front of Knight and Brock about not getting restless and realizing that we couldn’t fight among ourselves if we wanted to win the day, but that was getting more difficult to believe with each passing second. We were essentially pinned down in this house, unable to do anything but run covert missions to the market for food, and I was bored. We still hadn’t heard much from any of the other guys—and who knew if they’d seen or understood the note Knight had left at the clubhouse—and didn’t know how many of them were still free. That, of course, made the question of when and if we were going to be able to strike back at Devil even more complicated.

Adams, the infamous lawyer that I still hadn’t seen in person, also hadn’t had any luck with getting any of our crew back out of jail. He kept telling Knight that everything was moving forward as it should be, with paperwork and judgments and the like, but the police department was being stubborn about holding on to their prisoners and finding ways around the judgments Adams was getting.

I didn’t understand most of it, never having been a lawyer myself, but Knight was muttering about the PD actually breaking the law to hold on to our guys rather than letting them go, and wondering aloud—and often—about how much Devil had paid them and where he’d gotten the money to do so.

I had a feeling I knew. Devil had been running meth for a big dealer for years now, and though I didn’t know how much that paid, I knew it was dangerous work that no one else had wanted to take on. I was guessing it paid better than your normal transport projects. I was also guessing that Devil had either been paying the police department for a long time, or had been saving up for exactly this situation.

Which meant he’d been planning this for who knew how long.

And I’d given him the perfect excuse to get it done.

I walked out onto the porch, a cup of coffee in my hand and my eyes on the buildings around us. We were in the middle of town, which should have meant we had plenty of action around us. Instead, the people who lived on this street seemed to have closed us off from the rest of the world. It was like they knew we were in hiding and had all agreed not to see us or even be out on the street if we were wandering around on Brock’s property.

It was... lonely.

And claustrophobic at the same time.

I also couldn’t shake the feeling that we were under surveillance, like there was always someone out there on the street, just waiting for us to make a wrong move. Or communicating our movements back to Devil and the guys right under him.

I stared hard at the streets, checking every car out there for a silhouette in the driver’s seat. Checked every corner for a head peeking out around it, and the sidewalks for someone walking too casually, their face turned in our direction.

But there was no one. No one was out there. I wondered if something had actually happened to the city and the place was deserted, but surely Remy, who’d been to the market last, would have said if the world had experienced a nuclear winter or something.

It seemed like the kind of thing the cashier at the market would be talking about.

Far more likely people were just staying away from something they saw as trouble, and that left us isolated and vulnerable to an attack. No one standing between us and the people attacking us.