Darling Wildfire (Red Rabbit #2)

3

NYX

“Atlas and Lach are on the way home,” I said.

North turned away from the window in his office. He nodded but I could tell he was distracted as he came and sat down behind his desk. He leaned back in his chair and stared out at the cityscape, illuminated brightly by the full moon. I sank down into one of the plush chairs in front of his desk.

“When do you think we’ll hear from him?” I asked.

My nerves were all over the place now that we’d initiated things. This had been the plan all along but it was one thing to plan for a decade, and another for the time to arrive to actually execute that plan. North didn’t answer for a long moment. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking but that was nothing new so I waited him out.

“Hard to say.”

“I would be really surprised if he hasn’t tried to find you at least once since we escaped,”

I scoffed.

“I’m not hard to find.”

“You’re also not easy to find,”

I smirked.

North finally turned to me and a ghost of a smile slid across his face as he inclined his head in agreement. His calculating eyes fixed on me, those gray depths always so efficient at seeing past my walls. He was the only person, besides Atlas, that I could be transparent with. Abruptly, he stood and walked over to his minibar, pouring out two glasses of whiskey. He came over and handed one to me.

“Are you going to tell Kaelin?” I asked.

I figured if I beat him to the personal stuff, it would delay the inevitable discussion of how I was feeling about all of this. He sat down in the chair next to mine and took a sip before answering, humoring my deflection.

“No.”

“No?”

I raised my eyebrows. “What about Graham?”

He took another sip, looking like he was maybe making this decision at this exact moment. “I mean, you’ve thought about this already right?”

“Of course I have,”

he scoffed.

“It’s okay to be worried—”

His gaze sharpened on me and if it wasn’t for our years of friendship a lesser man probably would have backed down under such a forceful warning stare but I wasn’t such a man.

“She kind of showed up in your life at—shall we say—an inconvenient time,”

I continued.

Something resembling a growl of agreement escaped North as he looked away with a frown.

“The less she knows, the better,”

he grumbled.

“That’s what they always say, and it never seems to be true,”

I muttered before burying my face in my glass, inhaling whiskey fumes as I took a large sip. The burn was welcome and did wonders to steady my nerves. Not for the first time in the last two days I wished Atlas was around to help me talk sense into North. He was always better at it than I was. I tended to stir up North’s volatile side whereas Atlas tempered it all down with reason.

“I’m going to ask Graham to join the team,” he said.

I wasn’t surprised about that although I’d thought it would happen a lot sooner. I’d been on the Red Rabbit job which was where I first met him. He was a solid guy who I’d gladly have at my back again and I knew North trusted him explicitly now.

“Then he’ll need to know all of it,”

I stressed. “What’s your hesitation? I understand Kaelin, but him?”

North sighed. “I haven’t had to tell someone the full story in a really long time,”

he admitted. “Most of the team has been with us since the beginning—West, Lach, Knight—even Knox, Tex and the Volkov brothers joined a few years in.”

He had a point. Everyone was already aware of just how deep into the shit we were. He’d found Kaelin under false pretenses and I’m sure, even now, she had no idea what kind of man he really was. The last few years had put more of a strain on him and it wasn’t just from the revenge against Vetticus.

“She could probably help us with the other thing,”

I said carefully.

Kaelin was already a touchy subject with North and I wasn’t looking to fight tonight especially by bringing up another sensitive subject. He made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, staring out the damn window again.

“She’s going to find out about—”

“Enough,”

North said quietly. “We are so close, Nyx, so fucking close.”

Regardless of whether he was talking about Vetticus, or the other thing—excitement rushed through me. I couldn’t help the dark smile that curled my lips at the thought of getting my hands on Vetticus on my terms, playing our game. The anger and hatred for him hadn’t lessened over time, it only made my resolve to rip him apart piece by piece more of an intense primal urge.

My gaze dropped to my left hand that was missing my pinky finger—a constant physical reminder of the pieces of us Vetticus had taken and the scars he’d inflicted.

“I’ve thought about this moment for a really long time,”

I admitted and when he met my eyes with a smirk of his own, I went on. “And it feels better than I imagined.”

He held his glass up. “Cheers to that, my friend.”