Until I learned the hard way how to protect myself, I would have done anything for the kind of protection they provided the girls.
Now I provided that protection. I got paid for it. I broke the law to do it. I conspired to break the law, making it safe for them to do it. And I did not give one fuck.
This meant, if there was some asshole out there that wanted to take over Knight’s operation, I had to do what I had to do to stop it.
Even take a partner.
I was down with that.
Until now.
“We’re not working together,” I told him, moving out of the room and feeling him following me.
“He considered assigning this to you but you’re tight with his team, might not be able to be objective but more, Sebring doesn’t want you out there on your own,” Creed said to my back.
“He’s protective. He’ll get over it,” I said to the bathroom as I walked into it.
I went right to my toothbrush.
Creed stopped in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.
“Sebring strikes me as a man who likes things to go the way he wants ‘em to go,” Creed noted and he was not wrong.
“I’ll have a chat with him,” I muttered to the basin as I grabbed my toothbrush and turned on the faucet.
His voice changed, it was deep, there was roughness to it with an edge of smooth and that was also a change. It had been deep and smooth back in the day. Now that hint of rough said he smoked. It said he drank. It said he lived as jagged as his voice.
But when it came at me just then, there was a vein of soft that brought back the raw.
“Sylvie, we need to –”
I turned my head to him, toothpaste in hand and cut him off to declare, “I don’t do partners.”
“You did,” he returned immediately, his eyes watching me closely. “But he died.”
That sent raw through me again for two reasons.
One, because he was right. My partner died and he did it leaving a wife, a kid and one on the way. Stupid fuck enlisted. Enlisted when we were at fucking war. “Gonna do my bit,” he said. Fucking fucker got out of the Marines, set up a life where there was a possibility, not a probability, that people would shoot at him and then he went back to the probability, re-enlisting and got himself shot dead.
The other reason was because I knew Creed had checked me out and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like him knowing anything about me. I figured, Knight hired him, he was good at what he did.
So he knew.
Everything.
I turned back to the mirror and loaded up my toothbrush. “Yeah, I did. He died. Learned that lesson. Now I don’t do partners.”
“This shit is what Knight thinks it is, the ride’s gonna be bumpy. You need someone at your back,” he replied.
Maybe but it sure as hell would not be him.
Before shoving the toothbrush in my mouth, my eyes went to the mirror and I returned, “Need it, I got Knight or Rhash,” then I started brushing.
Creed appeared in the mirror behind me and my eyes went up to his in the mirror.
“He might have a mole. As far as his team’s concerned, it’s business as usual for both of them,” he told me something Knight explained last night. “Banks nor Sebring are available to you.”
I shrugged.
“Sylvie, I’ve already been workin’ this job a month. I know that team better than you do.”
That pissed me off enough to pull the brush out, spit out foam then catch his eyes in the mirror again. “No fucking way. You may think you do and they may have secrets they haven’t shared but no amount of digging you could do in a month tells you more than what I know working side by side with those guys for years. You’ve lived the life, Creed, it’s written all over you. You know that. You had something on one of them, Knight would already have that intel. So you don’t have shit.” After delivering that, I shoved the brush back in and kept at my teeth.
“You’re right,” he confirmed. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t something to get.”
I shrugged again.
“You know what hangs in the balance,” he stated and I held his eyes.
I knew but he told me anyway.
“Scenario one, Knight keeps business open and another girl gets it worse than Serena last night. He keeps it open, that shit escalates and girls get hurt. Scenario two, he shuts it down. Okay for him but if he can’t neutralize the threat in a timely manner that means, first, he’s gotta let boys go. He doesn’t need a team that big when there’s no girls to look after. Second, the girls are fucked. They got no jobs, they got no money then they look for alternate ways to get paid without a man or a five foot two powerhouse at their back. You know Sebring. He won’t put them in danger. He’ll shut down. That club turns over a mint, he’ll survive. Those girls won’t.”