beatings and the ones he’d endured; the ones the others had hadn’t been done with slaps or fists. Punches and kicks had been frequent, and there had also been chains and whips and cattle prods. There’d been all kinds of torture devices. Beatings hadn’t been the worst.
He looked up, his eyes meeting Maestro’s and then Keys’s. “Breezy thinks if Bridges kicks or slaps Zane that’s the worst that can happen to him. She’s so worried. I held her last night while she cried herself to sleep, just wanting him safe. That’s all she wants, our little boy safe. She has no idea what the worst can be. I know the Swords sell children to predators. Bridges will know the kind of bank he could get for a boy that age.”
“Steele,” Maestro began. He glanced at Keys. What was there to say? One of their own, one of their family was in the exact position they had all been in as children. Someone had taken him from a safe environment and might give him to vile predators for money. Steele had every right to worry. Bridges had sent his daughter out to seal deals when she was no more than a child. He wouldn’t care about his grandson, especially when the boy was Steele’s son.
“We’ll get him back,” Keys said. “He’s ours.”
Steele didn’t voice his worry, that even if they did get him back, he’d be like those children lying on that filthy floor, staring up at him with despair. Bloody. In pain. Infections raging. He’d fought rats off of them. Laid on them to keep them from freezing to death. Stayed up all night to keep the bugs and rodents off of their dying bodies. So many.
“Fuck!” He yelled it, wanting to throw the cut-up meat. Those children had been nothing but meat to the predators and he’d been a child himself, unable to save them. Unable to help them in any way.
“Steele,” Maestro said softly, trying to call him back to the present. “It’s over.”
Steele shook his head. He knew better. Maestro knew better. “It’s never going to be over, and you know who’s going to pay the price? That woman up there. She’s going to pay it just like Anya pays it for Reaper. Just like any woman you find that does it for you will. We’re so far gone and there’s no coming back from it.”
“We can learn …” Keys began.
“What? Social norms? We feel safer fucking our women when we’re together because we’ve got eyes watching out for danger. Our childhood was spent on survival, on killing to survive. We don’t know how to be without one another and we sure as hell don’t conform to other people’s ideas of bullshit rules. We’re assassins. It doesn’t matter how far we put down roots here, our first inclination when someone crosses us is to eliminate them.”
Maestro shrugged. “We’re getting by, Steele. Reaper found Anya. Breezy’s back.”
“Bree has this misguided belief that I’m a nice man and will be a good partner to her. She had a year with me; how she doesn’t remember what I was like, I’ll never know. She also thinks that if she wants out, I’ll let her out.”
Keys snorted. “She ought to know better than that. She was raised in the life.”
Steele looked down at the chicken again and the churning in his stomach grew worse. His past was too close. All those children. Dead. Over two hundred and fifty deaths. On him. It hadn’t mattered how many of the bastards they’d killed. Even when they’d been just kids, Sorbacov had replaced their guards with even crueler wardens—or he had until he’d begun to run out of criminals.
“I can’t do this.” He shoved the offending chicken away from him. “Not yet. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be back.”
He had to get himself under control. He didn’t lose control. That was too dangerous. He’d done so on occasion and the results had been … monstrous. He stepped away from the work aisle and started toward the glass door that led to the extensive patio.
He caught her scent and turned, his breath hitching in his lungs. A knot rose in his throat. Breezy stood in the door, her gaze on Maestro and Keys, a soft flush rushing over her, making her skin glow. She had discovered the clothes he’d put in the drawers just in case he found her. Things he liked. Things he wanted her to wear in their home.
The little shorts