Creed (Unfinished Hero #2)(10)

After that, he’d dismissed everyone but Rhash and me and shared that he had a gut feeling Serena was the beginning. He’d had someone come to him on the hush-hush saying they were hearing something was brewing. An old nemesis was back in town, Knight had f**ked him over years ago and he was setting up to f**k back. Knight’s brother was also back in town and although he seemed to be towing the family line, they’d had issues and Nick, Knight’s brother, used to work for Knight. He knew the operation and Knight wouldn’t put it past him to sell information.

Knight was also concerned about a mole.

That meant, he’d told us, he’d brought in outside talent. Someone objective. Someone not on the team.

Someone Knight wanted me to partner with to investigate Knight’s operation and assess the danger, inside and out, and neutralize it if we found something while Rhash kept an eye on business.

The outside talent Knight brought in was Tucker Creed.

“Talked with Sebring after your meeting earlier,” he stated, confirming what I knew. “He told me he told you. After that, I shared with him we had history and I was gonna have a word with you ‘cause if we’re gonna work together, we need to talk about that history.”

I stared at him, my brain moving fast.

I did what I did for Knight Sebring because I knew how it felt, to spread your legs for someone because you were forced to take him for whatever reason forcing you to do it. I had no Knight Sebring to protect me from his bullshit, his demands, his temper. I had no Rhash or Live or Tiny to swoop in and teach him a lesson on one of the numerous occasions he did something I did not like.

There was no denying Knight and his boys operated outside the bounds of law.

In my mind, there was also no denying what they did was providing a needed service.

Until I learned the hard way how to protect myself, I would have done anything for the kind of protection they provided the girls.

Now I provided that protection. I got paid for it. I broke the law to do it. I conspired to break the law, making it safe for them to do it. And I did not give one f**k.

This meant, if there was some ass**le out there that wanted to take over Knight’s operation, I had to do what I had to do to stop it.

Even take a partner.

I was down with that.

Until now.

“We’re not working together,” I told him, moving out of the room and feeling him following me.

“He considered assigning this to you but you’re tight with his team, might not be able to be objective but more, Sebring doesn’t want you out there on your own,” Creed said to my back.

“He’s protective. He’ll get over it,” I said to the bathroom as I walked into it.

I went right to my toothbrush.

Creed stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.

“Sebring strikes me as a man who likes things to go the way he wants ‘em to go,” Creed noted and he was not wrong.

“I’ll have a chat with him,” I muttered to the basin as I grabbed my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.

His voice changed, it was deep, there was roughness to it with an edge of smooth and that was also a change. It had been deep and smooth back in the day. Now that hint of rough said he smoked. It said he drank. It said he lived as jagged as his voice.

But when it came at me just then, there was a vein of soft that brought back the raw.

“Sylvie, we need to –”

I turned my head to him, toothpaste in hand and cut him off to declare, “I don’t do partners.”

“You did,” he returned immediately, his eyes watching me closely. “But he died.”

That sent raw through me again for two reasons.

One, because he was right. My partner died and he did it leaving a wife, a kid and one on the way. Stupid f**k enlisted. Enlisted when we were at f**king war. “Gonna do my bit,” he said. Fucking f**ker got out of the Marines, set up a life where there was a possibility, not a probability, that people would shoot at him and then he went back to the probability, re-enlisting and got himself shot dead.

The other reason was because I knew Creed had checked me out and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like him knowing anything about me. I figured, Knight hired him, he was good at what he did.

So he knew.

Everything.

I turned back to the mirror and loaded up my toothbrush. “Yeah, I did. He died. Learned that lesson. Now I don’t do partners.”

“This shit is what Knight thinks it is, the ride’s gonna be bumpy. You need someone at your back,” he replied.

Maybe but it sure as hell would not be him.

Before shoving the toothbrush in my mouth, my eyes went to the mirror and I returned, “Need it, I got Knight or Rhash,” then I started brushing.

Creed appeared in the mirror behind me and my eyes went up to his in the mirror.

“He might have a mole. As far as his team’s concerned, it’s business as usual for both of them,” he told me something Knight explained last night. “Banks nor Sebring are available to you.”

I shrugged.

“Sylvie, I’ve already been workin’ this job a month. I know that team better than you do.”

That pissed me off enough to pull the brush out, spit out foam then catch his eyes in the mirror again. “No f**king way. You may think you do and they may have secrets they haven’t shared but no amount of digging you could do in a month tells you more than what I know working side by side with those guys for years. You’ve lived the life, Creed, it’s written all over you. You know that. You had something on one of them, Knight would already have that intel. So you don’t have shit.” After delivering that, I shoved the brush back in and kept at my teeth.