Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,73

to our Old Ladies.”

My top lip quirked up to the side. “Yeah? Then Giulia is a lot more chill with you than Indy is.”

“Either that or you ain’t keeping a handle on her.”

I snorted. “You met your sister? I have plenty of a handle on her, just like she does on me. I’m not just doing this because you’re her brother, I’m doing this because she matters to me. We’re wasting darkness with a pissing contest that makes no sense because in three weeks’ time, she could decide to end shit because that’s what she does.”

“Yeah, she does. A commitment-phobe that’s my sis, but when it happens, are you gonna grow a pussy and start whining about what you’ve done for her?”

Maybe he saw that he wasn’t the only person with malevolence in his soul, because when I leveled a look his way, his eyes narrowed. “She’s safe with me.”

And that was all I was willing to say on that matter.

He got it, too, because he shut the fuck up and we got to work.

Both of us with the same task in mind—keeping Indiana Sisson’s ass firmly out of jail.

Him, because she was his baby sister.

Me, for more complicated reasons. Not just because I was boning her, or because she was turning into my sub—neither of which even quantified how much she meant to be—but because Indy would die in jail. I wasn’t talking about being shanked or shit like that. Nothing to do with her gang affiliations.

I was talking about her soul.

She’d die without freedom. Her spirit would wither away, and when someone came along like her, a woman with a soul as beautiful as Indy’s, it’d be a tragedy not to do everything in my power to keep her safe.

Eleven

Indy

I didn’t wake up with Cruz that following morning, which, I’d admit, made my heart sink.

More than when I realized why he wasn’t here. I mean, there were one of two reasons. He was still working on getting rid of David’s body, or he was disgusted by me.

For obvious reasons, I preferred the original train of thought.

Dealing with Cruz’s repugnance was as hard as dealing with the potential truth that he was a rat.

As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling as light flickered through the dreamcatchers I had hovering over me while I slept—dreamcatchers that didn’t work, I might add—making shadows on the walls, I tried to process just how evil I was if I didn’t care that David was dead, but I cared that Cruz hadn’t come to bed.

David had been a part of my life for a long time. A loooong time. Not of my choosing, obviously. Thing was, I’d always just dealt with him. Just let him hang around, never really thinking about him as a person, just as a thing. Like an accessory I didn’t want but had to have on me at all times.

That was David.

I’d met him when he came in for a tattoo. He’d surprised me because this weedy little guy had just stared stoically up at the ceiling tiles as I inked a sleeve on him, one that was dedicated to his mom. I’d pretty much read between the lines, seen that he was a Momma’s boy and that, likely, she’d died.

A strange memoriam for a man who looked like he worked an office job, never took one foot off the normal path, always doing the supposed ‘right’ thing. I’d been kind to him at the end, and that was when it had started.

An act of kindness.

He’d come in four times to finish off the ink, and that fourth time, he’d cried as he looked at the complete image. His mom and him in an ornate oval photo frame, and this was no word of a lie, on a tattoo of a wall in his house. He’d even brought the picture in, where it had markings of him getting taller, and pictures she’d framed that he’d drawn over the years.

I’d had weirder requests in my time, and it had been quite a challenge getting the shading on the wall right without it just looking like his skin was dirty, but after, when it was done, I’d hugged him, and I’d been paying for that hug ever since.

Nyx always said that it didn’t pay to be kind, and he was fucking right.

The blankets were tangled about my legs, speaking of another fretful night, a night that I’d anticipated ending with me having at least one goddamn orgasm after which