“My cousin fucking Merciless,” Maverick muses, his gaze moving between us. “Wouldn’t have put that together, but somehow, it fits.”
“Not fucking,” Angel says, wrapping a protective arm around me again. “Mercy’s my girl.”
The warmth that fills my chest at his words makes me want to melt into a puddle. Yes, he told the others that I’m his girlfriend, and he walks around campus and eats with me like every other couple, but this is different. This is his family, someone from the part of his life he never wanted to share with me before. Someone who might have thrown bricks through my window, who might hate me if not for Angel’s words marking me as off limits and under his protection.
But it’s not just the safety his words afford me that I’m grateful for. Being claimed in front of his family with such obvious pride makes me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. I’m proud to be his girl too—I find myself straightening, standing a little taller, holding onto his tattooed arm with a certainty I hadn’t felt until now.
“So who’s getting tattooed today?” Maverick asks, straddling a stool beside one of the two tables in the small shop. Each one has a curtain that can draw around it, but they’re pushed back now, leaving us visible from the parking lot, like we were the last time I was here. There’s a small, one-stall bathroom to one side of the space, the door plastered with a collage of photos of happy customers showing off their tattoos and piercings. I spot a photo of Heath lifting his shirt all the way up with both hands, showing off his nipple piercings. The picture was taken in the parking lot outside, and his eyes are squinted closed against the sun, his head back, tongue out through a wide grin. It’s hard to picture the angry boy I know ever being that young and carefree. It breaks my heart a little.
The guys seem to exchange some silent conversation for a minute before Heath hops up on the table. “You can do me again.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Maverick says, giving Heath an assessing look, his gaze hooded.
Heath just grins and peels off his shirt before lying down flat. Maverick picks up his tattoo gun and, without bothering with a stencil or preliminary sketch, starts to work around an intricate serpentine tattoo already climbing Heath’s side.
“So, you wanted to talk to me?” he asks, not looking up as he works, his strokes smooth and confident, his lines fine and straight.
“Yeah,” Angel says, taking the stool from the other table. “About Eternity.”
Maverick doesn’t answer. The buzz of the machine is the only sound in the room.
“We left you with her,” Angel says. “You’re the last person who saw her.”
I check on Heath, but he’s just staring up at the ceiling, arm tucked under his head for a pillow, jaw tight, though I can’t tell if it’s from the pain of the needle or the reminder of his sister.
For a long minute, I don’t think Maverick is going to answer at all. I’m tempted to jump in and beg, but at last, I trust Angel enough to obey his earlier order and let him deal with it his way. He knows Maverick better than anyone, and the other guys aren’t saying a word, so I don’t either.
“I already told you,” Maverick says at last. “She got in a car with three dudes. A black Bentley with tinted windows, no plates.”
“Yeah, I know,” Angel says. “But we’re looking for her now. The Disciples know, so it’s no secret. I figured we’d come by and see if you remembered any other details.”
Maverick is quiet another long minute, the buzz of the machine filling the silence that feels too heavy now, too big for the quiet sound to conquer.
“You think she’s still alive?” he asks at last, deftly maneuvering his wrist around the cord and leaning over Heath’s ribs.
“I think we’re going to find out,” Angel says. “Whatever happened to her.”
This time, I’m prepared for the silence, but it still feels endless as it stretches between us. Saint crosses his arms and frowns, but he doesn’t rush Maverick. No one does.
“You sure you want her here for this?” Maverick asks at last, sparing me the briefest glance before going back to Heath’s skin.
“I wouldn’t have brought her if we couldn’t trust her,” Angel says, and I hear the same confidence in his voice that I feel for him. Something has settled between us today, a commitment to something deeper than our relationship. It’s the relationship of all of us, the group, our friendship. We’re finally on the same side.
“You keep your mouth shut,hyna?” Maverick asks me.
“Yes,” I say. “I kept my identity secret for years.”
He just nods and dabs some beads of excess ink off Heath’s skin before changing out his guns. “I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you,” Maverick says. “I don’t know any of you, so I’d rather not talk to you, but he says you’re okay, and I trust him. With my life, I trust him.”
He doesn’t even have to look at Angel for me to know who he means.
Angel answers in Spanish, and though I don’t speak the language, I gather that it means something along the lines of, “Me too, brother.”
“If this leaves this room, I’m a dead man,” Maverick says, his voice grave but no different from before. “And you will answer for that.”
No one speaks. The lower register of the shading gun scrapes through the room.
“You good?” Maverick asks under his breath, so low I barely catch it, but it’s not meant for my ears anyway. It’s for Heath, who nods, though again I’m not sure if he’s responding to a question about the pain of his tattoo or whatever Maverick is about to tell us.
