She sat up, clutching the sheet around herself, and waited, while Mother, and Stella, and Humphries argued back and forth, voices rising shrill and echoey in the cold, empty expanse of the studio. Sweat trickled down her temple, and the makeup girl came to powder her face once more.
In the end, she applied the can, just to get on with things. Lowered the sheet and lay on her stomach on the scratchy fabric of the chaise. Turned her head and made sultry eyes at the camera.
“Gorgeous. Lovely. Beautiful,” Humphries said by rote, climbing down off the stool to take the camera in-hand and walk a half-circle around her, playing with angles.
“I can’t believe that man,” Mother said, in the car on the way home, afterward. “I can’tbelievehe insisted on that.”
But you allowed it, Raven thought. She’d argued, yes, but she hadn’t dragged Raven away from the shoot.
She sighed, and turned to Raven not with apology, but with resignation. “I’m sorry if that was uncomfortable, darling, but I’m afraid this whole business is nothingbutuncomfortable. I wouldn’t let you stay in it if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
“Yes, Mother.”
If she said it often enough, perhaps, one day, it would be true.
One
Raven Blake held a unique position within the Lean Dogs’ extended family. Had she been a man, she doubtless would have been a patched member – at least, had she wanted to be. As it was, all of her male relatives, save her father, were patched members with considerable influence within the club. One was a president, another a vice president, and half the others were trained assassins of some sort. It became clear, after even the briefest of encounters with the woman, that her brothers had entrusted her with more club business than many would have thought appropriate.
Though, if Toly was honest, the women within the Lean Dogs’ sphere had far more influence and were privilege to more secrets than he’d expected. It was one of the many ways the club wasn’t like the bratva, and for that reason he’d shrugged and accepted it.
Unlike the other mothers, daughters, and old ladies, however, Raven was independently wealthy. Had done well in a cutthroat industry that had enabled her to live completely free of the club…but only if she’d wanted to. Which she hadn’t, apparently. Had instead asserted herself in her brothers’ lives, and had used that considerable wealth, on more than one occasion, to assist the club. Though not official, those Dog ties had been enough to have her targeted by club enemies, which was why Toly was here, now, using his keycard to gain parking garage access to the elevators of the building which housed Shaman’s and Raven’s businesses.
This elevator, with its grippy rubber floor, and its smudged steel walls, and its faint odor of cleaning chemicals, was the last normal thing he’d see until his shift ended. Like always, a small part of him felt the tug of the parking garage, the echoing concrete, the rumble of engines, the motor oil drips and exhaust fumes. Nice and pedestrian and dirty, like he was used to. Upstairs waited only extravagance and elegance, and he wasn’t cut out for that. Never had been.
But he stood rigid, bag slung over his shoulder, as the doors slid shut and the cab lurched upward with a rush of gears.
He still wasn’t sure whyheof all people had drawn this gig. Pongo was out for sure, not only because he had his own dealings to handle in Manhattan – now with the added weight of playing go-between with the club and the PD through his girlfriend, Melissa – but also because he would have been a jolly-faced little pervert about the whole thing. Raven wouldn’t have liked anyone whistling at or flirting with her models, and Toly couldn’t blame her for that.
Most of the married guys were out, too: they wanted to be in Albany, close to their families, rather than stuck indefinitely downtown on an assignment without a firm end date.
Maverick, as president, couldn’t do it himself and properly keep tabs on everyone else.
That left Toly: single, serious, with the skills and experience needed to do whatever was asked of him, and the quietness to not make a fool of himself or draw undue attention to the club.
So itdidmake sense, in that way.
But he’d not ever envisioned himself as a knife-wielding shadow for someone like Raven Blake.
The elevator arrived with a polite ding and let him out into a hallway floored with patterned beige carpet, the walls a creamy eggshell, the sconces a brushed brass. Even the service hallways in this place were lovely. This one housed men’s and women’s restrooms, a breakroom that offered a proper kitchen in addition to the usual vending machines and tables, and men’s and women’s changing rooms.
Toly went to the men’s changing room, pushed through the swinging door into a space with more of the patterned beige carpet, and walls lined with benches and handsome wooden lockers. Each had a discreet little key lock, and a cubby above for street shoes. A connecting door led into a tiled room of showers and sinks; he showered the product out of his hair most nights before he left.
This morning, he unlocked his cabinet and methodically undressed down to his boxers, hanging his t-shirt, and leather jacket and battered jeans up on the hangers that had come with the locker.
A garment bag waited to the far left of the rod, and, with sourness pooling in his gut, he unzipped it and withdrew the suit that waited within. It was one offiveRaven had given him, designs that were a part of the new menswear line she was about to launch in partnership with “Jean-Jacque de Jardin.” One for each day of the week, each its own special brand of garish – in his opinion, anyway. Each night, when he took one off and traded it for his street clothes, he left it hanging up on the dry-cleaning rack, where it would be whisked away by an employee and reappear in a clear bag, spotless and fresh-smelling.
Heloathedsuits.
Andrei had insisted upon them, unless he and the otherObshchak were off bashing heads and slitting throats in the dark of night. In the Pakhan’s presence, formality was required.
Raven was nothing like Andrei…heknewthat…
But. Suits.
Today’s was the one that looked black under the harsh fluorescent lights, but which shimmered deepest, iridescent burgundy in the sun. The accompanying shirt and tie were both the color of blood – not unpractical in that respect, at least – and the lapel pin on the jacket was a small, diamond-cut ruby framed in gold.
Raven had called it “subtly glamorous.” “Fit for the red carpet.”
