Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(52)

“To do what?”

“I don’t know,” he growls. “To make us… unstable. Tear us apart. Something.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s it. I think she’s just toying with us because she wants to think she has the upper hand here. Because we’re forcing her to stay. Killing Ivan is her main goal. Everything else is just incidental.”

Priest doesn’t like that explanation, I can tell. He pushes off from the wall and takes a step closer to me, but it’s not threatening. More like he just needs to be moving.

“And what about after she kills him?” he asks. “What happens then?”

“Then Ivan’s dead,” I reply. “And thank fuck for it.”

He scowls at me. “You know what the fuck I mean.”

“I know. You’re worried someone will connect Ivan’s death with us, even if it’s her who carries it out.”

He nods, his light blue eyes glinting. “We’ve had issues with him in the past, and people know it. It could get pinned on us because of that.”

He’s right, and it’s something I’ve considered a little bit since River’s been here. Ivan St. James is a powerful person with as many allies in Detroit as he has enemies. Fucking with someone as big as him in the underground of the city will upset the balance of the whole thing. Being seen as the ones who killed him could get us a new kind of respect, but more than likely will just paint a big-ass target on our backs.

“Well,” I say after a long moment of silence, speaking as I think. “We won’t be the ones who killed him. So we’ll make sure people know who did.”

Priest’s eyebrows lift at that. “Pin it on her?”

“It’s not pinning it on her if she’s the one who did it. She was going to go after him with or without our intervention. We’ll just make sure credit goes where it’s due. It’ll keep our names out of it and keep us from having to deal with the fallout.”

“Yeah. That’s a good plan.” He nods, relaxing for the first time since we came down here to talk in private. “They’ll eat her alive. All the bottom feeders and the idiots who were hanging on to Ivan will come after her.”

“It would have happened anyway,” I say.

There’s a part of me that… doesn’t like this. We have no way of knowing if River had some plan to make sure Ivan’s death was discreet and no one would find out it was her. Getting mixed up with us strips her of that, but that’s not our problem, so I shove the mixed feelings aside.

Above all, I’ve got to protect my family. These men are my brotherhood, and I’ll do anything to protect them. Even if that means sacrificing someone else to make sure none of us go down for this.

Besides, River already made her bed. Whatever she might have had planned, she’s been aiming to kill Ivan from the start. And she said before that she’s not afraid of death, so it’s not like she doesn’t see what could be coming in her future if she goes through with this.

Still, part of me feels like a monster anyway.





21





RIVER





I CAN FEEL the angry energy roiling under my skin after my encounter with Ash, all the sated, relaxed feeling from the orgasms nothing but a distant memory already. I’m on edge and pissed off, and I hate it. It’s like the ground is shifting out from beneath me, like I can’t find solid footing anywhere, and that unbalanced sensation makes me want to lash out.

It would make the most sense to go up to my room and hide out until I feel better, but for some reason, I don’t want to do that. Being idle sounds shitty, so after depositing my shit upstairs, I stalk around the house instead, feeling defiant.

So far, I haven’t poked around their space too much. I go from the room they gave me to the kitchen and sometimes to the living room, but not really beyond that.

Now I don’t stop myself from doing what I want, striding from room to room as if the whole house is my personal domain. I yank open a door down a corridor off the main entryway and find a well-kept baby grand piano inside.

I roll my eyes at the fucking luxury these assholes clearly live in and look the instrument over. One of them must play. Even though they have so much nice shit, it would be stupid to have a whole-ass piano in here if it didn’t get used. Which one is it, I wonder?

Staring at it doesn’t yield any answers, so I march back out, closing the door behind me.

Another couple of doors just lead to closets, and I bypass them, not caring enough to rifle through coats and boxes and shit. But the next door I try reveals a small library.

That’s the only good word for the room full of books. There are shelves lining three of the walls, and an arm chair with a small end table beside it tucked into a corner. It looks like the kind of place that gets a lot of use, which is surprising as hell since none of the guys seem like the intellectual types.

Just the thought of Ash or Knox sitting in that chair with a cup of tea and a thick book is almost enough to make me laugh. It’s a toss-up with Priest, and Gage could go either way too.

There’s a set of encyclopedias on one of the shelves, and I roll my eyes because apparently we’re back in the dark ages or some shit. I move on from those and find a stretch of classic books.