My brows rose. “Again?”
Ares lifted the edge of his shirt, showing off a wicked scar a few inches over his stomach. “Perks of living here.” He grinned. “Now, do we have a deal or not?”
I glanced at my men, waiting for their nods of approval before I agreed to Ares’ request. Leaving Widow and Delilah to stay with the cars was natural, and I didn’t even have to ask them – they knew what I would do and moved to sit in the front seats, as the boy called Beni hopped into the back with them. I could hear him asking questions about their guns and what it was like being a gangster, long before the doors shut.
“Madd’s will come with me.” Ares nudged his friend our way, ignoring the way the kid’s hazel eyes rolled. “Follow us.”
The one he called Madd’s walked behind us, hovering at the edge of the group as though he were doing nothing but relaxing. And not taking a bunch of gangsters into one of the nearby houses that had a cute front door painted bright yellow.
Shannon O’Malley’s house was pristine on the outside; the grass was even freshly mowed despite how rainy it was and had no doubt been for a while. There was nothing about it that screamed deadly and dangerous to me, nor was there anything rich about it. Which was slightly odd considering the O’Malley’s came from money the same way I had. Even if theirs was only millions compared to my billions.
Just as Ares headed toward the door, it was yanked open by a bundle of pale skin, and long limbs. The girl who stood there was dressed in pyjamas with weird letter and number combinations all over them, and the wordsvaccines cause adultsemblazoned on her top. Her hair was a mountain of bright red curls that no amount of her attempts to tie back seemed to combat.
She looked nothing like her twin brother. Not an ounce of them was similar, even down to the shape of their features or the fact she was taller than him.
“Hades, I presume.” I cocked my head, trying to work out how the hell the girl was already the same height as me despite her young age, and if it made me a loser to be jealous of that fact.
“D, what the fuck did I say about opening the door?” Ares barged into the home, shoving his sister out of the way with a clap around the back of her head that held no menace in it.
She ignored him, choosing to offer out a blinding grin behind him. “Hi, Maddox!”
“Hey, beautiful.” Maddox strolled into the house, ruffling her curls and drawing a slight scowl. “You should be in school.” He said to her.
She huffed. “So should you.”
Her brother and his friend bickered with her a moment as Ares waved us inside, straight into their living room. Well, living room and dining room. The home was tiny, and it seemed they had no hallway, and only the one room to fit everything in, witha set of carpeted stairs to the left, and what I presumed was the door to the kitchen on the right. And whilst the entire place was clearly cleaned and maintained, there was no denying that they were definitely as poor as I was thinking they were. The furniture was mismatched and old. The wallpaper was peeling slightly, and the floor was a hideously patterned green carpet.
Misha had said my daddy had given Shannon fifty million pounds to start her life in England, so where the hell had all that money gone?
We huddled into the lounge as Maddox and Ares left the room a moment, the pair heading upstairs to change whilst Ares left us in his sister’s perfectly capable hands. He’d told her we were friends, but that was about the gist of it, so I understood why she cocked her head, staring at me the minute the two boys had run up the stairs.
“Who are you?” Hades asked. She wasn’t being overly hostile or polite. It seemed she was just curious and not concerned.
“Sapphire.” I replied, as I hovered in front of my boys, each of them standing behind me as they glanced around the room filled with pictures of a loving family throughout the years. “Specifically Sapphire Montana. My daddy and your mama were… friends at one point.”
She folded her arms over her chest, unblinking. “You’re American. I think there’s a trace of something else in your accent too, like Spanish? But not from Spain. Somewhere different, with a twist of something else I can’t place.”
“Colombia; my mama was from there and I spent more time there, and around other countries like it growing up.” Though I was confused about her line of questioning, it didn’t seem rude or anything, so I had no objections to replying. “I speak Spanish mainly, but I am fluent in English, of course. And Russian.”
“Colombian and the Russian is what I can hear too.” She bobbed her head as though confirming something in her own thoughts. “Your country is famous for the amazon rainforest, the Andes, Pablo Escobar, and coffee.” She grinned and instantly switched her next words to flawless Russian, surprising me once more.“You are also somehow connected to my parents. My mum more so. But I’m not sure why yet, even if I am sure that you know them.”
“What makes you think I know your parents?” Seeing as nobody else in the room spoke Russian, I kept the conversation going in English.
She pointed to the Red Diamonds tattoo visible on three of my guy’s arms.
“My parents are American, and they have the same tattoos as you. I presume that’s part of the gang they used to be in before they ran away here and you’re either here to kill them or talk to them.” She explained. “I figure you want to talk, seeing as you’ve not shot my brother or Maddox, and you’re being calm. Calmness indicates you are here for peaceful reasons. But even without that, you have more skill than we do, and my brother wouldn’t have let you into the house if he was worried.”
“What makes you think we have more skill than you?” I was curious to see what logic the girl had behind her reasoning, even more so when it seemed she was a little different than I had been expecting for a child.
She seemed… smart. Smart in an odd observational sort of way and I was intrigued by it.
Hades pointed at each of my men and their guns as she answered my question.
“There are six of you and three of us. And even if we were all armed with guns, at least half of you are competent shooters, and my brother and I have only been trained to use shotguns, not handguns. I presumed there would be a difference in skillbased on that alone, but based on my calculations, at least half of your group are proficient with weapons, which makes a bigger problem.”
I could feel Misha bouncing a little next to me and wondered if he found her just as curious as I did, or if he was just nerding out over her outfit. It looked science-y and my Misha did love science stuff.
“Which of us do you think are good with guns?” I smirked as I crossed my arms over my chest. “You don’t know us, and I am curious to why you pick your answers.”
