“Oh, yeah?” Zeus asked, vaguely amused even though his eyes sparkled with something meaner, something lurking and chained in his gut that, when unleashed, would destroy everything in its path.
“Yeah.” I nodded curtly. “We’re going to go at Javier’s Achilles Heel. We’re going to go at his wife.”
Zeus’s amusement froze on his face. “And how the fuck do you plan to do that?”
My smile was a wide, slow spread across my face. “I’m going to offer myself up for Irina Ventura’s sex trafficking and illegal pornography business.”
“The hell you fuckin’ are,” he growled, lurching forward in his seat to snap at me, nearly pressed to the plexiglass. “You wanna head straight into the viper’s den? You got suicidal intentions I don’t know ’bout?”
“No,” I said calmly even though my palms were sweating at the thought of what I’d have to do. “I have a family that I was lucky enough to find after I’d lost every single thing that mattered to me as a girl. I have a family that’s being attacked, and I am not the kinda girl who is going to take that shit laying down.” I took a deep breath. “And I have an in with Irina Ventura that no other person in The Fallen has.
“I’m the daughter of Ignacio Davalos. The same Ignacio Davalos that used to run the Ventura’s drug operation in Entrance before they moved operations up here. The same Ignacio Davalos who is going to vouch for me when Irina goes to him to ask if I’d make a good assistant.”
“No. End of fuckin’ discussion.” Zeus seemed three times larger, inflated by the fury Ignacio’s name always invoked in him. “You are not talkin’ to that scumbag for any reason. You say he’s your father? Fuck. That. You got no father. You were an orphan and then the Booth’s took you and then we did. You know what Diogo’d think if he heard you spout that crap? You got no father by that name, and if you never thought ’bout him again, I’d be happy as fuck.”
I let him rage. Ignacio and the club had co-existed years ago when I was a girl, but only because Z’s evil uncle Crux was Prez of The Fallen back then. Of course, he and Ignacio had got along just fine.
“She came to the bar,” I admitted, because Irina Ventura confronting me at Eugene’s Bar had been the spark that lit the kindling of this plan in my mind. “She knew who I was, Z. She asked me straight up if I wanted the job.”
Z’s brows shot into his hairline. “You’re fuckin’ with me. In front’a Eugene?”
“She asked me in Spanish,” I admitted. “But yeah.”
“You said no,” he stated, even though it was a question and one I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted to. When I only pursed my lips, he cursed and corrected himself. “You’re gonna say no.”
“I don’t want to. She doesn’t know I’m part of the club. I have no official affiliation, and working at Eugene’s isn’t enough to mark me as yours.”
“You’re property of the fuckin’ Fallen.” Zeus slammed his fist down on the table so hard, a guard lingering at the wall behind him startled and started toward us.
I kept my cool because I needed reason to prevail here. I needed the chance to be a hero for the men who had saved me from my youth.
I had no great love like Zeus or King or my girl, Harleigh Rose. I had nothing to lose, and so, wasn’t it only fitting I be the one to take the risk?
If it didn’t work.
If I died…
At least I wouldn’t leave behind a love like theirs who would never recover from my death.
I’d had a fiancé, a good man, one who treated me well even though he hated The Fallen.
I thought I could’ve loved him one day and I knew he loved me.
But Jake would’ve recovered if something happened to me.
To be honest, after what happened at Eugene’s, I wasn’t even sure I could go through with the wedding, let alone give thought to what he’d feel if I died.
The kinda love Zeus, King, and H.R. shared with their partners?
That kinda loved wasn’t something a person could ever get beyond.
One of them died, the other would.
So I’d do this, if they’d let me.
It would crush the Booths to lose me, but they had the rest of their sizable clan, and I knew from experience they would band together and get through alright because they’d helped me do just that when Dane passed.
Martyrdom seemed to run in the Davalos blood, and even though I was a Meadows now, that didn’t mean I could shake the ache to protect.
“No, Z,” I said coolly. “I’m property of no one. I came to you as a courtesy, but I’ve got to do this and I will, with or without you at my back.”