of it that way. She only had to fit with Absinthe. No one else. He definitely fit with her. She liked that he thought she was perfect for him. Maybe her imperfections were what drew him to her. Everything about him, so far, had drawn her to him. He had a way of thinking that made her believe she had a chance at life.
“These hell-raising brothers of yours …”
“I may as well tell you my sisters are a bit of hell-raisers too.”
She laughed aloud at the mixture of mock exasperation and very real affection in his voice. “This family of hell-raisers you have, are they going to be around a lot?”
“They’ll be in our back pockets,” he admitted with another exaggerated sigh. “You’ll learn to ignore them.”
Her heart took a little plunge. “I’m not good with a lot of people,” she confessed, genuinely worried again.
“They’ll have your back too, Scarlet,” Absinthe said, confidence in his voice. “They’ve suffered loss, just the way we have. Every single one of them. I wanted to meet with you at the coffee house, somewhere neutral where you would feel safe, because I want to tell you as much as I can about me, about my life and my family, so you know me, you know us, and you feel comfortable enough to make an informed choice. I want to be your choice all the way. I want you to give me your trust, and to do that, baby, you have to know me.”
She took a deep breath. He was so amazing. He was everything she wasn’t. Willing to make himself vulnerable, turn himself inside out in order to take a chance with her. She wanted to be like him, give herself to him so freely. Jump in with both feet. There was a time she could barely remember, when she was young, that she used to trust everyone. She couldn’t remember her mother ever yelling at her. She believed in people and always told Scarlet that there was good in everyone. Her mother was wrong.
“I swear, Absinthe, I’m coming to you to do the same.” She was. To the best of her ability, she was determined to give him what he’d asked of her. She was going to give him the woman she’d locked away—Scarlet Foley.
Absinthe glanced down at his phone. A message had come in from Code and there was an alert on it. “Gotta go, babe. See you in a few.” He waited for her acknowledgment. Then he checked in with his team. “Transporter, you have her yet?”
“Your woman drives like a bat out of hell, Absinthe. She knows her way around a car and a road, that’s for damn sure.”
“Stay on her and pass her off as soon as possible. She has good instincts, and if she picks up that she’s got a tail, she’ll ghost out of here so fast we won’t know what hit us.”
Code’s message was to call. It was urgent. Absinthe did so immediately.
“Patching you in on a conference call, Absinthe, with Czar and Steele as well,” Code said. “I’ve got an alert on that bastard Holden any time he contacts his security company or his attorney, or Scarlet’s name is mentioned. Basically, any time he moves. He rages against Scarlet more and more. At this point, he’s obsessed with her.”
Absinthe clenched his teeth, wanting Code to get on with it. He felt like reaching through the phone, grabbing him by the throat and shaking the information out of him. Instead, he calmly picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip, looking out at the street. The umbrella over his head was striped green and white, casting some shade over the table and chairs. No one but Torpedo Ink sat at the tables in the outside patio, but several cars lined the outside drive-thru to get drinks.
“Seems to be half the world is obsessed with Scarlet,” he said.
“She’s that kind of woman,” Code conceded. “Holden’s offered a reward to the Venomous club to bring her to him. He wants her alive so he can make her suffer. He made that very clear, over and over. She is to be alive. He doesn’t much care what shape she is brought in or how badly used—in fact, the worse the better—but she has to be alive.”
Absinthe’s gut knotted. He glanced at Savage and Lana and then across to Mechanic and Alena. They would be sent a report. He could imagine how they would all take it. They