Devil May Care: Boxed Set (42 page)

“What I’m saying is that this deal went outside Nevada lines and went past Axel’s territory. He lost control and things went bad and now he’s in prison. You think it’s coincidence? Hell, maybe it’s not even coincidental that you’re getting the blame for it.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Either way, Axel was probably set up, but he should have known better.”

I frowned. It sounded a lot like Dagger
was
saying this was a setup, rather than simply an arms deal gone wrong. But who had it in for the Renegades like that? “You know who’s responsible?”

Dagger lifted his shoulder in what was probably supposed to be nonchalance, but it didn’t hold true. He looked nervous and not too keen on sharing the rest of this with me. “I don’t know who he belongs to, but…” He trailed off, his eyes darting uncertainly out the window, then back to me.

“But
what
?”

He leaned forward again and I had to strain to hear his voice, slipping out as barely a whisper. “All I got is a name. Lucifer.”

***

Dagger wouldn’t say anything more than that. I didn’t know if he actually had more information on this Lucifer guy—did he have his own club? Or was he something different? Working with the mob or dirty cops or what?—or if he was just too scared to say one way or the other, but eventually I just had to leave. Dagger was spooked by the mere name of Lucifer and I wasn’t so stupid as to not know what that name was.

Lucifer, most beautiful angel in heaven. Also happened to fall and become the Devil, ruler of hell. Talk about one hell of a name. Either he had the worst kind of reputation I didn’t know about, so maybe it was something local here in California, or his parents were the worst kind of parents.

Even
mine
hadn’t named me after evil incarnate.

I considered what the name might mean or why it was important, who he was, what he wanted, and what Axel was doing making deals with him during the drive back to the hotel. I was thinking about other things, too. Like whether or not I should take Dagger’s advice. I didn’t want to, but a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach made me think that this wasn’t going to be an option much longer. And what I was going to tell Olivia. She was waiting for me, expecting answers. Amongst other things.

She’d want to know what happened with my source. Was I cleared? Did I have what I’d been looking for? And I didn’t think I would be able to explain that I’d sort of gotten what I needed—and didn’t really get anything at all for it. Whether Dagger was useful or not was unclear. Lucifer, intimidating though it was, was still just a name. It didn’t tell me where to go from there and I had a feeling asking around was going to get me into a lot of trouble. Now, I was wondering if I didn’t need to go back and talk to Axel, somehow circumnavigating Jacob and his goons so that they couldn’t get to me before I got in to see him, to see what he was doing to get himself landed in prison.

How the hell was I supposed to explain all of that to Olivia? She wasn’t supposed to be a part of this and now somehow she was right in the middle of it all.

I hadn’t reached a conclusion about Olivia by the time I got back to the hotel. Other things were rolling around in my head, distracting me. Most of them were hormones reminding me that Olivia had been desperate for me to stay, her body pliant and wanting of mine when I left the hotel earlier that day. My body was telling me that I needed to slide my hands over her until she cried out, while my head was trying to convince me that Dagger was right
and
wrong.

It was conflicting enough that I wasn’t sure what I would do when I walked in there and saw Olivia, but as I got out of the car, I knew that at the very least I
needed
to see her.

I used the keycard to open the door, pushing it open to get inside. Though the card worked, the door caught before I could force it. “Olivia?” The door wouldn’t open more than a crack and I saw that it was held back by a chain.
I guess I’m lucky she didn’t deadbolt it,
I thought wryly. But I couldn’t blame her. She was being cautious and, right now, that was very smart of her.

But when she didn’t answer, I got a little nervous. I tried calling to her again. “Olivia? Open the door. It’s me, Rome.”

There was more silence coming from the room and now I was
really
worried. Was she gone? Had something happened to her? Did Jacob and his boys somehow get a hold of her? Had she had to run? But then I heard the springs of the bed squeak and several moments later, there was a pushing against the door, forcing it closed again. I stepped back and listened. The chain slid, but the door didn’t open again. Frowning, I tried it. The door opened easily and I saw Olivia, dressed in plain jeans and a basic shirt, walk back over to the bed where it looked like she’d been waiting.

The place smelled faintly of pizza, which she must have settled on earlier that day when we checked in. I saw a box with several slices still sitting there, the cheese looking lukewarm and congealed. The next thing I noticed was her bag. I hadn’t expected it to be unpacked or anything, since this was only a hotel and it wasn’t like they were moving in, but there was something odd about it. Like she’d taken everything out and repacked. And the way it was sitting there beside the bed at her feet, like she was ready to bolt at any moment.

Suddenly, I was nervous. What had changed since I’d been gone? “I found my guy,” I told her carefully, testing out the mood in the air. Her face pinched together and she crossed her arms over her ample chest. My eyes darted down to her breasts, watching how the movement hefted them up and rounded them off, making them look even better than before—not that they needed the help.

This was obviously not the correct thing to do, because a second later she refolded her arms so that they were on top of her tits instead of beneath them, and her face turned into more of a scowl.

“Where’s my phone?” she asked, though it almost sounded more like a statement.

I blinked. “What?”

“My phone,” she repeated, her voice sounding angrier and angrier by the moment. “Where is it?”

“I told you, you probably let it slide between the seats, or maybe you left it at the gas station.” Lies, but she didn’t know that. At least, I thought she didn’t.

“I didn’t even have it out at the gas station!” she yelled at me, her voice high pitched, almost like a shriek. Her eyes looked wild with something that was caught between rage and panic. Almost like she was afraid of me. “What did you do?”

“I…” I was about to come up with something to tell her, a lie, but her eyes were so big and she was
shaking
now, that I couldn’t do it. I shook my head.

Her voice dropped down to a whisper as she asked, “Did you take it? Did you…did you
dump
it?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, then in the biggest moment of stupidity I’d had in a long time, I told her the truth. “Yes. I did.”

She was still quiet and almost timid as she asked a simple, “Why?”

Running a hand through my shaggy hair, I let out a huff of breath. I didn’t know how this was going to go over, but since I’d already decided on the truth, there wasn’t much point in going back now. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? “That asshole boyfriend kept texting you. I know you said you didn’t want to talk to him anymore, that you weren’t texting him back, but you wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t going to back off and you were just going to get all keyed up. I didn’t want you doing something stupid like caving, so I took the temptation out of your hands.” I shrugged, like I didn’t know what else to say. “I don’t want him in your life anymore. Period.”

Olivia

It was the finality with which he said it that finally sent me careening over the edge.
I don’t want him in your life anymore. Period.
It was this sense that he had any right to be telling me what I could and couldn’t do, like he
owned
me. And that was how he said it. Like I was a stupid child who couldn’t handle things responsibly. Who was going to mess up everything because I had the option to.

My body was shaking at this point and I thought initially it was from the anger. How dare he assume he could do something like that? That I would let him? The indignation felt good, better than anything else, but as I stood up from the corner of the bed I’d been sitting on, I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t shaking over indignation or anger.

I was shaking because I was
afraid.

Terror began to wind its way through my body, keying me up until I felt like I might bolt or explode or just crumple up into a tiny ball and roll underneath the bed until the boogeyman went away. Except the boogeyman was my husband and I wasn’t sure if I could get away from him so easily now.

I stood there staring at him, seeing all the things that initially attracted me to him, even when I was trying to deny it. He had those broad shoulders that dropped down as they turned into well-muscled biceps. The kind of strong arms that could scoop you up and heft you high up into the sky without much effort. His chest was like that, too, incredibly strong and defined, built as though carved out of stone. It tapered off to a trim waist with those darts cut into his hips, leading down to other things. Things that were equally as impressive as the rest of him. He’d proved that the other night when my towel had dropped to the floor in a heap as he explored my naked body. I was begging for him without even realizing it at the time and he’d delivered in ways I couldn’t have possibly expected. And even then, I’d been ready to go again.

Probably, if he tried that with me right now, pinned me to the bed and started caressing my flesh beneath my clothes, I would cave to him. I would want him, even as the next thing occurred to me:
Rome is dangerous.

I shivered as I thought it, but couldn’t deny its truth. I’d thought so when I first met him, but it was for different reasons then. He was part of some motorcycle club—I didn’t see why they didn’t call it what it really was, a
gang
—and clearly was on the wrong side of them. That was why they were trying to kill us. But that wasn’t what made him dangerous to me right then. It was the unnerving similarities I was finding to the man I had just left.

He’s just as controlling and abusive as Tom is.

The only thing that terrified me more than the sinking realization that I’d found yet another man who was just as bad as the last one was the knowledge that now I’d have to find a way to get away from
him
, too. And I’d only just barely managed to ditch Tom.

If you can call it that when he still shows up at my door step threatening me,
I thought miserably.

Fear thrummed through my veins as I realized how much more resourceful—and how much less afraid—Rome would be. Would I be able to shake him? He was going to come looking for me, I knew. He wouldn’t be the kind of man to just let me walk out of his life. It would be a form of disrespect, wouldn’t it? Like I was somehow challenging him. He looked like the kind of man who held dominance in high regard. I shivered at the thought. If I walked away now, what would he do to me?

I didn’t want to know. Not letting myself finish that thought, I finally snapped back to the present, finding myself standing there petrified in fear in the middle of that hotel room. Looking apologetic—
ha, like I haven’t seen that before!
—Rome tried to approach me, reaching out for me.

I jerked back away from him quickly. That movement set me into action. I had to get out of there. Quickly, I reached down for my already packed bag. I grabbed it up and when I straightened, I found that Rome had moved closer to me.

His sudden nearness again made me blanch. I jerked away from him and nearly knocked myself over onto the bed.

No, don’t fall onto the bed!
I thought in horror, because despite my fear, I was still worried that if he got me on the bed, it would all be over. I’d succumb to whatever deep-seated desire I had for him, the desire I couldn’t seem to shake even as I was angrier and more terrified than I ever had been in my entire life.

“Stay away from me!” I yelled at him, my voice sounding pinched and high pitched.

“Olivia,” Rome tried in a deep, sultry voice that was either meant to calm me or seduce me. It did neither, instead ramping up my already in overdrive survival instinct. “Please, calm down.”

“Go to hell!” I yelled at him, and when he reached for me, I made my move. Moving as quickly as I could, I ducked down beneath his arm and scrambled away from him, heading for the door. Thankfully he hadn’t closed it, so I was able to just dart out onto the hallway, which was more of an outdoor veranda than anything else. I could hear Rome calling after me as I ran, but I was already halfway down the stairs—I could be fast when I needed to be—when he came barreling gracelessly from the room.

“Olivia! Wait!”

But I wasn’t waiting. I was running, pumping my arms and legs as hard as I could, aiming for the street. I saw a couple of cabs parked there waiting for passengers and hoped that if I ran quickly enough, I could catch one before they took off. I heard Rome behind me, and pushed myself harder.

I have to get to that cab!

Rome wasn’t even across the parking lot when I jerked the door to the cab open and tossed my bag inside. “LAX?” I asked breathlessly, risking a glance behind me. Rome hadn’t given up and was quickly gaining on me.

“Yeah, sure,” the cabbie answered in a deep voice.

I slid the rest of the way in and slammed the door behind me. “Go! Go
now
!” I all but yelled at him. The cabbie pulled out into traffic just as Rome hit the curb. I saw him wave at me, trying to get my attention, and saw my name mouthed on his full lips. When I saw that he wasn’t going to try to chase after the cab, at least not on foot, I turned away from him and relaxed back into the leather seats.

We were silent for several blocks before the cabbie glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Ex-boyfriend or something?”

I glanced down at my hand to see the silver wedding band on my finger. It made me want to cry and I couldn’t keep myself from shaking. I began to spin the ring around the meat of my finger, using that one thing to focus my energy on.

How did I mess this up so badly?

After a moment, I shook my head in answer to the cabbie. “No,” I told him, feeling worse and worse by the second. “That…that was my husband.”

I saw his expression in the mirror shift. His thick eyebrows rose in surprise. I couldn’t see more than his eyebrows and eyes in the mirror, but it looked like his mouth pulled down in a frown, maybe? “Huh, I didn’t see that one coming,” he admitted. His tone was strangely lighthearted, and almost giddy, but maybe I was just imagining the whole thing. Since he was sitting in the front like that, pointed away from me, I couldn’t see much of him. He sounded young and there weren’t a lot of wrinkles around his eyes, though I noticed a dark, nearly black freckle on the outside of one eye and I saw that his skin was wrinkled and leathery. It looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun, which seemed odd given that he was a cabbie. Wouldn’t that keep him out of the sun most of the time?

Maybe he usually drives a convertible,
I joked silently to myself, seeing if I could cheer myself up, but it didn’t really work. I still felt miserable.

How had I let this happen with Rome?

I sat back in the seat, they were worn a little, but leather and thanks to the air conditioning, still cool despite the sun and the general heat of California. I thought that the climate here was really pretty similar to Nevada, though there seemed to be a faint undercurrent of sea and salt hanging on the air, but I thought maybe I was just imagining that. We were a ways from the ocean, I thought, and probably it was smog I was smelling anyway.

Looking out the window, I tried to focus on anything besides what was going on. I focused on the movement of the car beneath me, imagining the tires spinning quickly and then screeching to a halt abruptly as we didn’t quite make it through a stoplight. The vibrations I imagined were like a massage, easing the tension from my body.

But it was mostly useless. If I found a distraction, it barely lasted a minute or two before I was brought back to what was going on, to what was wrong. To what I was running from.

How was it possible that I had escaped one controlling boyfriend only to run into the arms of another? And that one I married.

The thought sent a chill through me. As soon as I got home, I would have to see what I could do about that. I’d make an appointment with a lawyer and see if I could get the marriage annulled or if we both had to be present or just what it was I would have to do to get out of this. What an idiot I was! How could I have let this happen?

But my thoughts didn’t stop there. I followed my train of thought and realized that I was in a lot more trouble than I had initially realized. Things with Tom were bad—and likely Rome ditching my phone had made them worse—but he was just Tom. He had friends and family, sure, but none of them would be interested in participating in his creepy stalking of me. In fact, if he told anyone there was a strong likelihood that the police might get involved. Sure, they hadn’t listened to me, but maybe if they spoke to someone outside of the relationship who was also concerned, they might actually take notice.

Either way, Tom would be too cautious to ask for help from his buddies, right?

But Rome was different. He was from a different world. From the outside, Tom was an upstanding citizen and it was only in his personal life that he was a dangerous creep. But someone like Rome? He was dangerous on the
outside
, too. Rome wasn’t just some everyday, nine to five office job, sit in a cubicle all day type of guy. He didn’t have a regular job like that and while I knew he said he worked at an auto shop, I was beginning to wonder if that was true. What if he said that so I wouldn’t get suspicious? What if he was hiding something much, much worse? And even if his job was working at an auto shop, fixing up cars or painting them or
whatever
, what if there was a good chance that his job entailed more than that? What if there were other things he did, too?

After all, I knew that he was part of that motorcycle club. So even if his regular day job was on the level, there was still that chance that he lived this frightening, dangerous other life. What if he was just as bad as the men who came after me?

I shivered as I thought of them. They had terrified me that night, and not just for the obvious reasons. I had truly worried that I would be raped and that I would probably be murdered after, but it was made all the worse by how much they didn’t even seem to care. This was my life they were ruining and it meant nothing to them.

It took everything I had to keep from breaking down and sobbing right then and there in the backseat of that cab.

The man in the front glanced back at me again and I took a shaky breath, trying to regain my composure. “You alright, lady?” he asked mildly. He didn’t seem overly concerned and for a wild, paranoid second I even thought he was
grinning
at me. But that seemed ridiculous and I told myself that I was just upset and imagining the worst in people.

But what if I’m right to imagine that?
I found myself wondering.

After all, wasn’t it crazy that I wound up with Tom only to dump him and end up later with Rome? The same kind of man? What if it was both more and less complicated than I was making it out to be? I started to follow this thread as it unraveled my whole world. I thought about Sylvia’s boyfriend. I had gone back and forth between believing that he was a good guy because he was able to share her sexually without freaking out and thinking he was a controlling asshole like Tom, because they would get into fights over stupid things and he would always use her car instead of getting his own. I never really leaned too heavily in either direction and Sylvia had always told me that I was paranoid because of the whole Tom fiasco, but now I wasn’t so sure. I tried to come up of other examples of men in my life and the lives of my friends that I didn’t trust.