Talk about burly assholes.
He flashed his badge at the prick who had his meaty palm on my arm.
Everyone scattered.
Motherfucking rats with a light shined in their sewer.
The guy released me and backed away, his hands held up in surrender. But he clearly wasn’t what Mack was interested in. My best friend grabbed me by the collar and started to drag me down the opposite side of the hall toward the emergency exit at the end.
He shoved it open and tossed me out into the cool night.
I stumbled across the pavement.
The aggression burning all the way to my bones surged, emotions thick, too much, so dark I couldn’t see.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I managed to press out, my knuckle coming up to my mouth and finding I had a busted lip.
He laughed a hard sound. “I’m a detective in Charleston, Ian. It’s my job to know whatever shit is going down. Have a connection who works here. She recognized you, gave me a text when you got in that prick’s face and said things were about to get heavy. Was having a drink with Jace two blocks over since he’s in town for business, and I booked it over.”
“You have a contact? Inside? Here?” Incredulous, I spat the words at him, angry that he might have someone following me.
Paranoid and delusional, I knew. But when it came to Mack and me, we kept our jobs to ourselves. Our secrets tucked away because the two didn’t mesh.
No doubt, he knew I’d done some questionable shit in my life. Last thing I wanted to do was put him in a bad position, to have to make a judgment call when it came to right and wrong when the guy was always in the right.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t really want the answers to.” There was something in his expression, something that set me off kilter, a warzone in his eyes.
Like he was holding something back. Instantly, I was taken back to our conversation from two nights before that somehow felt like a century ago, when he’d warned me to cut ties with Lawrence.
God.
Maybe I really had gotten myself in too deep.
A loud truck engine rumbled at the head of the alley. It came to a stop, and Jace ducked out.
Great.
Just what I fucking needed.
My brother and best friend thinking they needed to wipe my ass.
Hold my goddamned hand.
I turned on Mack. “I was completely fine. Don’t need you showing up here like the calvary. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
He quirked a brow. “Says the guy who just about started a brawl. Those fuckers aren’t to be toyed with.”
“Seemed like good enough fun to me.”
He scrubbed a frustrated hand over his face. “Fine, man, laugh it off. But there’s shit going down in there that you don’t need to get involved in. I’m serious.” His voice went low.
“I was only there to have a drink or two to unwind after a long day’s work. Prick tried to swindle cash out of me. You should know me well enough to know that wasn’t going to end well.”
Jace edged closer to me like he was corralling a caged animal. Like I just might attack.
Wasn’t so far from the truth.
Adrenaline still pumped and burned, and I was itching to throw back open that door and hunt those pricks down. Easy prey.
Expendable.
Just like Lawrence Bennet was trying to make me.
“Are you okay, man?” Jace asked, caution in his tone, eyes searching me, forever the protector. He zeroed in on the cut on my lip, like I was a two-year-old who’d fallen and scraped his knee.
“I’m fine. You didn’t need to come over here.”
“You sure about that?”
“One hundred percent.”
Jace turned his attention to the back of the seedy club and shook his head.
Not like it was some big-ass deal that a lowlife like me would show up at a place like this to see some tit at the end of the night.
But Jace knew . . . he fucking knew, and it grated on me.
He knew my predilection.
The compulsion.
Right then, it felt like he was reaching in and searching through all the shit I didn’t want him to see, the scars and the agony and the bottled pain.
Too much like that girl who was driving me crazy.
Grace.
Sweet, sweet Grace.
Grace who had immediately filled my mind when the girl inside had been climbing all over me.
The one I couldn’t have, and I was aching to take.
“You don’t have to hang on to it any more, Ian. I know you blame yourself. By now, you have to have realized, it wasn’t your fault. She chose that life, not you, and there was nothing either of us could do to stop her.”
The second the words left Jace’s mouth, a fiery bolt of fury shot through my body.