Chapter Five
Backbone
Rock Chick Rewind
One week later …
I sat in my Mustang outside the Balducci brothers’ pool hall.
I had my gun in my purse.
As Darius promised, he’d taken me to Zip’s Gun Emporium. I’d picked out a little .22 I could fit in most of my bags and Darius arranged for Zip to open late so I could go to his range with no one around, thus no one to see me, and practice.
I also ran once a day (mostly, and I was right—I rocked running gear and those awesome headbands, though I was only beginning to rock running; that shit was not easy). I went to Zip’s one or two nights a week (depending on my shifts at Brother’s). And last week, to get my mind off Ren (though Darius didn’t know why I was fired up to go), Darius had taken me down to C. Springs to run the warehouse maze.
This was also not easy, and I knew this because I went through the drill six times and shot at least one innocent each time. I felt like a moron until Darius told me he’d taken that trip down to C. Springs three times before he ran the drill and passed.
We were going back next week, but not for me to go back to the warehouse. For me to run the defensive/evasive driving course before the weather turned iffy seeing as it was September (or, as it went in Denver, since the weather was always iffy, iffier).
But I was there, outside the Balducci’s pool hall, with my gun because last night, Ricky Balducci raped Sadie.
No, that wasn’t right. He’d beat the shit out of her and then he raped her.
And I’d been mean to her.
I didn’t know she was Hector’s. I thought they’d be sworn enemies seeing as Hector was the undercover DEA agent who brought down Sadie’s drug lord father (suffice to say, trouble—this time crazy, serious, heartbreaking trouble—had hit a Rock Chick).
I learned that morning she was not only his, but also that the reason I’d been mean to her—that she’d done something nasty to Daisy at a society party—did not happen.
Daisy was beside herself with fury and sadness. The first, because Marcus knew Sadie never talked trash about Daisy and he didn’t tell her, for reasons I got but were now very distressing. The second because Daisy had liked Sadie before she thought she talked trash about her. They were friends. Daisy cut her out and now her friend had gotten raped.
And I’d been a bitch. A bitch to a petite, scared woman who looked like a fairy princess and came to my brother yesterday to get his protection.
I’d been a bitch.
God.
I closed my eyes tight. My hand fisting, everything in me beating back the desire to grab my purse with my gun, waltz into that pool hall and pistol whip Ricky Balducci, an asshole who’d beat the shit out of a fairy princess and violated her, to within an inch of his life
I fought back that urge and when I opened my eyes, automatically, I scanned my mirrors.
That was when I saw the hips in suit trousers approaching my car.
My body stilled.
I knew those hips.
I loved those hips.
I missed those hips.
I swallowed.
Those hips approached the passenger side and Ren’s handsome face appeared in the window.
His eyes locked on mine and I stopped breathing.
He lifted his hand and tapped a knuckle on the window.
I sucked in needed breath, hit the locks then reached out and grabbed my purse, clearing it from the seat seconds before Ren’s fine ass settled in it.
He slammed his door and turned to me.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey,” I replied, but my voice sounded croaky so I cleared my throat.
“How you doin’?” he asked, still gentle.
“Good,” I lied in answer. I was not good, not with him in my car looking beautiful and being sweet. Not with me being a bitch to a girl who’d been raped. Not simply knowing someone who’d been raped. “You?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes traveling down my torso before his head turned to look at the pool hall.
He came back to me. “Been better.”
He knew Sadie. He also knew what happened to Sadie.
This was not a surprise. Marcus, Vito, and Sadie’s now incarcerated dad, Seth Townsend, all occupied the upper echelons of Denver’s criminal underworld. It would make sense they and their families would hobnob.
“Can I ask what you’re doin’ here, honey?” Ren requested.
I held his eyes and whispered, “You know.”
He studied me a moment before nodding. He knew.
Then he said, “Let me deal with it.”
On one hand, I liked this idea. I’d seen Ren in action against Luke. On the badass scale, Luke blew the lid off, totally redefining the scale. And Ren not only held his own against Luke, he matched him. It was a fair fight that didn’t go long enough to declare a clear winner. Seeing this, I knew Ren could undoubtedly fuck Ricky Balducci up big time. Because if he could go mano a mano against Luke, he could kick anyone’s ass.