to begin with. The implication that he wasn't enough.
Easy to think. Admitting it out loud--shit. The thought alone made him cringe, so he shifted the conversation to something less embarrassing. "It's not about trust, but yeah. I get jealous. And not just over sex, love. I got jealous as hell when Gideon started running his mouth like you two have some big secret."
She exhaled a short laugh. "Only because of his cousin. Mad's been helping me funnel money into some of the other sectors, a little aid for people who need it."
Not the answer he'd been expecting. "Why don't I know about this?"
"Because of how I get the money."
In the earliest days--days when she was new to the gang and he was still wondering if she was a trap Cerys had set for him--he'd kept an eye on her. Followed her.
Watched her steal a whole lot of shit.
In the beginning, he'd thought it was about security. She had no reason to trust him, and anyone who'd come off the streets in Sector Three was liable to hoard anything they could get their hands on. Time had passed and Lex had taken ink, and the bouts of thievery had come to an end.
Or maybe they hadn't. He'd stopped watching so closely after she'd quietly paid off Cerys. That was another secret he wasn't supposed to know about, but it had been the turning point. The proof she wasn't a trap--or, if she was, that the endgame was so subtle and convoluted he'd never uncover it by shadowing her.
So he'd stopped, and he'd assumed she'd given up climbing through third-story windows in search of valuable items. After all, he gave her any fucking thing she wanted.
The silence had stretched out uncomfortably, so Dallas shifted Lex in his arms until she was facing him. "You steal." Not quite a question.
She held his gaze unflinchingly. "Yes."
"From where?"
"Three, mostly. But I've been into Five and Six a few times."
Emotion churned in his gut, and he honestly didn't know if it was anger or fear. Three was bad enough, but at least he knew she could handle herself against lowlifes and thugs. Five, on the other hand...
He curled his hand around the back of her neck. "Do you know what Fleming does to pretty women who cross him?"
Her lips pressed together in a tense line. "I'm not stupid, Dallas. I know what I'm doing."
As if that made it okay. "Then what the hell could be worth risking your foolish fucking neck?"
"I want to help." Her voice dropped, low and almost ashamed. "Most people don't get as lucky as I did."
Christ. He lifted her chin to force her to look at him. "Did you think I wouldn't let you?"
"No. But I didn't want you to feel like you needed to take over and do it for me, either."
He didn't know what was worse--that she assumed he would, or that he was half-convinced he wouldn't. It was the first lesson he'd learned growing up, the one that had always seemed to weigh heaviest on his mother's shoulders. You picked your people, and you held them close. You didn't have to go out of your way to hurt anyone else, but you couldn't save them all, either. It had been true on a tiny ranch in Texas, and it was true in the sectors surrounding Eden.
Lex had always given him too much fucking credit--and it always made him want to try harder, to be worthy of it. "You do help. Jesus, Lex. You've changed the lives of every woman in this fucking sector."
Her brows drew together in a frown, and she reached up to rub her thumbs over his cheeks. "But is it enough? I don't know anymore."
"We're about to change a few lives in Three, too. That's a quarter of the sectors, love. It's a lot."
Mollified, she pressed her forehead to his chin. "I swore Mad to secrecy. Dr. Jordan, too."
Doc didn't wear his ink, so he owed him no loyalty--nothing beyond what any man in Four showed him out of sheer practicality, anyway. But Mad... Dallas sighed as he sank his fingers into Lex's hair. He knew what Mad's defense would be, as if he'd already heard it. What, O'Kane? You want her out there without backup?
Dallas doubted she even knew how deep Mad's scars ran, but those old wounds made it easy for Dallas to understand his motivations. Mad had suffered the backlash that came from standing too close to power. He knew all the ways