I clenched my jaw. “Careful. Don’t think you’re not replaceable.”
“Oh, but she’s not? You barely know this woman!”
“Come on, P. You grew up with her. You really think she’s capable of giving up her career to run a cartel? I’m not that fucking stupid. Besides, you two pricks are the ones who encouraged me to go after her.”
“She might do just that if she finds out the whole truth and decides to get her revenge quick and swift,” Paulie chided.
She already knows,I wanted to snap, but didn’t feel like escalating the argument further.
“Hope her pussy was worth the risk,” Duane grumbled, falling into his desk chair in front of the security monitors. He jiggled the mouse, and the blue lights from the screens illuminated the space around him.
Fury blazed through my veins, making my hands curl into fists. “Watch it, Duane.” He snapped his mouth shut. I wasn’t beyond decking one, or both, of them if they continued.
“Seriously, you think she cares about you? You’re a convenience to her. The answer to the problem she’s been facing for over a decade. Every powerful man in history has said the same things you are,” Paulie pressed, and now I trembled with the restraint it took to hold myself back.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I trust her, and that should be enough for you,” I snarled, pointing a finger in his direction. “And watch your fucking mouth before you open it again. You have no idea what’s gone on behind the scenes with us.”
Just as Paulie was about to retort and receive an inevitable black eye, there was a frantic knock on the door. All of our heads swung in the direction of the door. I sighed in frustration, yanking a hand through my hair, before strolling over and throwing open the door, revealing none other than Sophieherself. There was panic in her eyes and a drink carrier wobbling in her quivering hands.
“Soph?” I said, my entire existence softening at the sight of her, then tightening when I realized something was off. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s more of them,” she sputtered, accepting my invitation to join us inside when I opened the door wider.
“More of who?” I questioned, turning toward her as soon as the door was shut.
“The rebels you were telling me about.”
I bristled, my spine snapping ramrod straight and gaze flicking to Paulie and Duane as if to say,I told you so.“The fuck do you mean, there’smore? What happened?”
She took a shaky breath. “I-I was just in line to get coffee and then he stopped me. Blocked my path and wouldn’t let me leave. Then he said that thing. ‘Long live the Reyes’ reign.’ Like you told me about this morning. And I-I freaked out. I knew something was wrong right away; I almost reached for my gun, but…” she chewed on her lip nervously, clearly rattled.
I cupped her face and kissed her to calm her down. At first she froze, but then she moved her lips against mine and let my tongue in. I took all I could from her, waiting until her shoulders dropped before pulling back.
“Can you guys do that on your own time? There are bigger things at play here,” Paulie grumbled.
“Jesus, I didn’t know there were other people here,” she muttered, but her nerves seemed to have settled some, especially as she recognized Paulie. “Hey, Paulie. How are you?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Fine. What the fuck are you doing here?”
She stiffened, glancing up at me with curiosity.
“Relax. He’s just being pissy because he thinks you’re here to take us all down,” I reassured her, brushing a few of her wavesbehind her ear. I loved that she’d kept her hair natural. She was so goddamn gorgeous, it almost hurt to look at her. Especially in the tight-fitting black jumpsuit that molded perfectly to her body and made me want to bend her over the couch.
“Oh.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I don’t blame him. I’m new here. Though, I’m not sure why he’s being so pissy when his dad was my dad’s right-hand man,” she said pointedly, her voice calm as she challenged him with a cocked brow.
Paulie straightened, shifting back and forth on his feet nervously, almost as if she’d made an implication. I smirked, having known that already, but let him take the brunt of Hurricane Sophie. “Now, hold on—”
“In fact,” Sophie continued, “if it hadn’t been for you and your dad, my father wouldn’t have had the manpower toallegedlyexpand into human trafficking, isn’t that right? Which, as I’m sure you know, resulted in him being murdered by Chavez and Porter.”
Paulie’s throat bobbed, his usual bravado faltering as if the weight of her words had knocked the air from his lungs. “Sophie—”
She took a step toward him, squaring her shoulders. “Don’t fucking question me again, understand? I’m as loyal as they come. I have no interest in swooping in, let alone putting my mom through the same nightmare she’s been living with since my dad died. You’d probably feel the same way if you found your dad beaten to death by ‘robbers’ who broke into your childhood home, then watched him bleed out in front of you because the police took way too fucking long to arrive. Andthenhad to hold his corpse, sobbing for Daddy to hold on until help got there.
“Then you spent the next seventeen—yes, seventeen—minutes waiting for someone to tell you what you already knew. That your whole life had just been ripped away from you. That he was never coming back. That he was dead. But what no one told you—what no one even dared to say—was why the people who had once stood beside him, his most trusted men, just disappeared. That maybe, they weren’t loyal to him at all. That maybe, they had already chosen another family to serve before his body was even cold.” Her chest heaved by the time she was done, fury and pain lacing her voice, and holy fuck, I was speechless.
So was Paulie, who looked ashamed. “Sophie, I’m sorry.”
“For what? For bullying me in school, or for abandoning my family?”
