Sweet Sinful Nights(61)

Clay adopted a who me look. “I never piss anyone off. But you? You’re another story. If memory serves, you were pretty skilled in pissing off Shannon back in the day. You learned your lesson on that front? You’re treating her well now?”

Brent flashed back to last night and Shannon’s cries of ecstasy. To the past week, and how her eyes lit up with happiness over their lunches. To the sadness he saw in them, too, when she shared all her fears. All of it. Everything. He desperately wanted to be the man to make her happy. To give her hope.

“Like a queen,” he said. “Like a queen.”

“Excellent. That’s the only way to treat a woman.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Shannon crossed her arms and watched her brother mow down targets with clockwork precision. Huge earphones covered Ryan’s head, muffling out sound as he fired with one hand. A sure shot. She knew how to fire, too, though she rarely did. She owned a sub-compact Glock 42 that Ryan had bought her when she moved back to Vegas.

“It’s your housewarming present,” he’d remarked when he took her to the gun store.

“You afraid the Royal Sinners are coming for me?” she asked, joking but not joking.

He’d squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “They’re not coming for you. But you never know who is.” He’d filled out the paperwork, plunked down his credit card, then handed her the weapon and said, “Welcome home.”

Then he’d taught her how to handle a gun.

Sometimes she joined him at Reiss, sharing his intensity of focus, his cold concentration. Other times, she wished she’d never learned to shoot, never imagined that she might need to. Even if you were skilled in how to shoot, a gun couldn’t always save you. In fact, it probably wouldn’t save you. If her father had carried a gun, he’d still be dead. He’d been shot in the back, and never saw it coming.

Guns were useless when someone put a price tag on your head.

Ryan took aim at another black and white cardboard cutout. Shannon counted off in her head with each bullet.

One target. Two targets. Three targets. Now, four. Now, five. Absently, she crossed her fingers, hoping for a perfect six. Random, but that was the number she picked.

He landed the last one. Straight down the middle. He lowered his arm, his revolver solidly in his right palm. After he tugged off the earphones and goggles, he turned around, and flashed her a bright smile. He blew on the end of the gun, and winked.

Show off, she mouthed, watching him from just outside.

He waved her into his lane, gesturing for her to join him. “You hit half of what I did, I’ll buy you lunch,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, but accepted the challenge. He positioned the earphones over her head, placed the goggles on her eyes, and set the Smith & Wesson in her palm. She planted her feet wide, peered down the lane, and raised both hands, keeping the weapon steady, solid against her flesh. She peered at the target at the end of the range, a black and white sketch of a body with a bulls-eye on his chest.

She tried not to think of Stefano ending her father’s life. But that trick never worked. She always pictured that man, that street thug, that f*cking scum who took a job from her mother.

That killer.

If she didn’t see Stefano at the end of the barrel she’d imagine her mom. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t live in that land of hate for the woman who’d raised her, taken care of her, kissed her goodnight. If she pictured her mom, she’d be just the same as her.

Her hate was reserved for the triggerman. For the man who had shed her father’s blood. Her jaw tightened, and she watched the reel. Each unlived moment played before her eyes. Her father would never know where she’d gone to college, what she did for a living, if she was happy, if she was in love. He’d never walk her down the aisle, and he’d never tuck his grandchildren into bed or take them to the park.

He’d never enjoy a day of fishing as a retired man—his dream.

He’d never celebrate his fiftieth birthday. He was eternally thirty-six, and always would be.

He’d never grow old.

They took that all away from him.

From her.

From her grandparents.

From her brothers.

Her teeth were clenched, her lips were a tightrope, and her hands belonged to a surgeon. Steady, practiced, perfect.

She fired three shots to the heart.

Adrenaline surged through her, lighting up her bloodstream with wild energy. She could lift a car, fight a man twice her size, or run down any enemy. Her chest rose and fell; her fingertips tingled. Then those endorphins were chased with a dose of red-hot anger, with the madness that comes from the black hole of loss.

She pressed her fingertip to the trigger, wanting, wishing, eager. Itching to fire again.

Before the anger consumed her, she lowered the gun. She handed it to Ryan. “I’m not hungry.”

Minutes later, they sat in his car in the parking lot. The engine was off. The radio was on. The National, Ryan’s favorite band, crooned about missing the one you love. Such a moody song. Fitting, too.

“What’s the story?” she asked, cutting to the chase. “Is Stefano facing more charges?”

Ryan shot her a quizzical look. “No. Or not that I know of.”

She rolled her hands, as if to jog his memory. “You told me your friend in the DA’s office said he visited Stefano in prison about other crimes or something.”