Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(15)

“Look,” I tell her. “If you don’t talk, Gage will kill you. He’ll end you right here in the middle of the floor, and the only thing he’ll feel bad about is what it does to the carpet.”

I don’t know if I’m getting through to her, but I keep going. “We don’t give a shit about that guy you killed. We’ve got no vendetta against you for that. We already took care of the body, and we can consider that water under the bridge. But we need to know what the hell is going on and why you killed him, because if it’s some gang war that spills into our club, it’ll be bad for business. You understand, right? We’re trying to protect our interests here.”

Her eyes narrow while I talk, and she looks like she’s chewing it over, weighing her options. Gage isn’t pulling the trigger, at least, so that’s one thing going right.

Finally, the girl sighs. “It’s not a gang war,” she says. “I’m not in a gang.”

“Then why did you kill that guy?” Gage demands, still sounding on edge.

“Because he had it coming,” she snaps.

“Why?”

“He… gave me bad information.” Each word comes out of her mouth slowly, like she’s debating whether she should say it or not. I can tell she’s not going to give us everything, but hopefully she says enough.

Gage frowns, but I keep smiling, taking over. “So it wasn’t just a personal vendetta?”

“It was,” she says. “But he’s not my end target.”

“Then who is?”

There’s another pause, and then she lifts her chin, meeting my eyes with a defiance that makes my cock twitch all over again. “Ivan St. James.”

My eyebrows shoot up when she says that name. Oh shit, this is perfect. It couldn’t be any better if I’d planned it.

I turn to grin at Gage. “See? Maybe she’s not so much a thorn in our side as the perfect solution to our problem.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” the girl demands, folding her arms and glaring at me.

I ignore her just as cheerfully as I ignored Gage before, keeping my gaze on my friend. “This could be a great solution, and you know it.”

“It’s dangerous,” Priest points out, talking for the first time since the girl and I came up the stairs.

“You say that about everything. We live dangerous lives,” I tell him. “Sometimes you have to take a… a calculated risk.”

“Is that what you call it?” he fires back, glancing down at my crotch.

I just grin back at him, shrugging. “Hey, I like what I like.”

“But can we trust her?” Gage cuts in.

“She wants St. James dead, at least,” Knox says. “I trust that. She knocked off some other dude trying to get to him, and you can tell she’s serious. If she wasn’t, she would’ve just told us what we wanted to know in the first place, right?”

“Could be an act.”

“Nah.” Knox shakes his head. “I know a personal grudge when I smell one.”

“So you’re just going to talk about me like I’m not standing right the fuck here?” the girl asks, sounding ticked off.

No one stops to answer her, which makes her lips flatten into a thin line in irritation.

“You were just foaming at the mouth about St. James earlier tonight,” I point out to Gage, even though it feels like it might as well have been another day, considering how much has happened since then. Night has pretty much given up the ghost and turned into morning by this point. “We’ve got someone here already gunning for him. Someone who doesn’t seem like she’s gonna stop until he’s dead.”

“I’m going to kill him one way or another,” the girl called Ghost says forcefully, and when I turn to glance at her, that fierce light is back in her eyes.

It’s not an idle or empty threat.

She means every word of it, and she’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. I can tell that much. She already ripped up her wrists and went up against me unarmed just to get out of our basement, and judging from the look of her, that’s probably not the hardest thing she’s come through to get to where she is now.

I raise an eyebrow at Gage as if to say ‘see?’ and he sighs and grits his teeth. I can tell it’s going against pretty much every instinct he has to let her walk out of here after everything, but he nods in the end.

I flash him a bright smile for his trouble.

“Fine,” he says. “She can handle this.”

“Oh wow, thank you,” the girl deadpans. “I’m so happy you’re willing to let me continue the thing I was going to do anyway. You’re all just too fucking nice.”

Finally, we all turn to look at her. She still has her arms folded, still looks guarded and tired as hell, but that doesn’t take away from how gorgeous she is even a little bit.

“You’re welcome,” I tell her cheerfully. I take a step closer and put a hand on her shoulder, massaging it a little as if that will relieve some of the tension coursing through her.

When she glares at me, I just wink back, flashing her my most winning smile.

“We’re not bad guys,” I continue. “Well… not all the time. We can work together on this.”