Chapter 3
Rafe was mortified on so many levels. He’d tried to flirt with Deacon, and after last night’s kiss he’d wanted more.
But he was fucking it all up. He needed to take a step back and be clever about this.
What if Felix had found Rafe moments earlier? What if Felix had found the photos that Rafe had taken, or beaten him unconscious for whatever reason his asshole cousin chose?
Fucking stupid. Rafe berated himself for that until he’d finally processed the fact that he’d nearly fucked everything up, then moved swiftly on to the shame and embarrassment of what had happened next. Deacon had found him, which was bad enough, but then he’d nearly kissed the man again. The thug his uncle had hired to keep the peace, and do whatever else it was discreet security did for an outwardly respectable company. Deacon probably killed people, or at least beat them worse than Felix ever could.
But god, how Rafe wanted to kiss him again. Deacon was danger and fire and so fucking sexy it made Rafe mad with the need of it.
On top of that, Rafe had to pretend he understood and noticed nothing, had to act as if he was thick as shit and twice as stupid. He had to look Uncle Arlo in the eyes and say that security was clearly an okay thing, and wasn’t it good that he had someone to keep the family safe.
Safe from voters, or the guy on the corner who used to stand and shout up at the open office window. The same guy who had conveniently vanished just under three weeks ago. Had Deacon been tasked with killing the short, skinny man who’d shouted that the Martinez bastard would pay
Pay for what?
Rafe had actually stood waiting to talk to the guy, but had never got the chance. Because the unnamed man had vanished. No one knew where he’d gone, or even who he was, despite Rafe’s discreet inquiries. Another chance lost.
But seriously, what kind of alderman needs personal security?
Locking his door, he pulled out his phone and scrolled to the last four photos. Maps on his Uncle’s wall, real estate parcels of land along with zoning details and a list of numbers to one side. Before anyone tried to get in by breaking down his door, which he wouldn’t put past his psycho cousin, he uploaded the photos to his remote file service and watched the bar as it crept to one hundred percent. When they were gone, he deleted the pictures on his phone and took random photos of his textbooks instead. He had no idea if the deleted images were still up in the cloud connected to his name. He hoped to hell not – he thought he’d turned off all the options he needed to, but he wasn’t a technical expert, and had just followed security advice on websites he’d searched for on Google.
Fuck it; he would prove that Arlo had been the one who’d killed his father, or at least ordered the hit-and-run that had left Héctor Ramirez dead at sixty-four. Grief curled inside him again, and all the energy left his body.
He pressed fingers to his split lip and winced at the pain, which at least grounded him and let him think about why he was even there. The ache from the two punches to the gut was a dull pain, and he pulled up his knees, which eased the tightness in his belly.
Rafe was frustrated; he had photos of maps, but what did any of it mean? According to his dad, the construction business was a front for much more sinister things. That that was where the bodies were buried. But had his dad meant that literally or figuratively?
Rafe wanted action. He wanted Arlo to admit the accident that had taken his father had in fact been no accident at all.
He wanted Arlo to confess.
Tears pricked his eyes and, unbidden, his thought process worked from his dad and the pain in his heart, onto the ache in his gut and the injustice of what had happened with Felix, and then right on through to Deacon.
Hazel-eyed, blond-haired Deacon, who stood inches taller than him, broader than him, who carried a gun and scars on those parts of his body that Rafe had seen.
Deacon was everything his dad had warned him against; rough, nasty, a man who thought and dealt with ingrained violence, a man with a gun. A bad guy.
But there was something in his eyes – concern, a moment before the mask dropped when Deacon looked at him differently. Or was Rafe just looking for things that weren’t there?
“I don’t know why he would,” Rafe muttered to no one. He was trapped here, he wanted to be here, he couldn’t escape from this family, but he didn’t want to. This whole thing was a mess.
A shower helped with the general aches, and he downed some Tylenol with a bottle of water before gathering up his last project before finals. The irony of the question from his philosophy class didn’t escape him: “Is it objectionably paradoxical to claim it is wrong to kill someone to prevent two other people from being killed?”
Would it have been wrong to take a gun and shoot Arlo to prevent him from hurting Rafe’s father? Would it be wrong to shoot Felix before he went out and killed someone?
Rafe knew he had to look at this objectively, but he was tired. Coffee was the answer, and he glanced at his watch. Three twenty-four p.m. The restaurant the family owned wouldn’t be alive and kicking for another two hours – plenty of time to set up at one of the back tables, work on this question with books out around him, and help himself to coffee from the main machine down there. He gathered up what he needed and cautiously unlocked and opened his door. No sign of Felix, but he knew he’d have Deacon on his tail as soon as he left the room.
He wasn’t wrong. Deacon fell into step with him as soon he reached the top of the stairs.
“I don’t get it,” he said, shifting the weight of the bag on his shoulder and wincing at the twinge of pain in his back. Felix had gotten in a good kick.
“What?” Deacon asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned left for the restaurant.
He had so many questions, about the kiss in the dark, about the vulnerability he sometimes thought he saw in Deacon. But at this point in time only one thing worried him.
“Why do you have to guard me?”
But Deacon didn’t answer. He just went with the normal routine; Rafe at the table studying, and him sitting by the door.
Watching.