Vance pulled me deeper into his body and I felt his lips touch the nape of my neck.
Then he said, “Mace doesn’t have a lot of patience with men who f**k with women. He doesn’t give a shit if they do it or threaten it. Livin’ in fear of gettin’ hurt is almost as bad as gettin’ hurt. Mace’ll do what he has to do to get them to back off.”
“What about their boss? Won’t he be pissed, you guys f**king with his boys?”
“You already know we’ve declared protection. Lee drew a line in the sand. Everyone on the street knows you’re marked which means they’ve stepped over that line. What that means is, if the bosses back their boys, we’re at war. That kind of war has no rules.”
Oh my God.
I had no idea this was so huge.
I rolled around so I was facing Vance and looked at him in the moonlight. “Does that mean you guys are up against the drug lords?”
He shook his head. “The bosses have cut their boys loose. Shard’s got no beef with you, I took him down. He’s just an ass. Clarence and Jermaine have gone against direct orders. You’re an annoyance, but you’re also a social worker. There are lots of ways to put you out of commission that don’t include what those boys had planned for you. I made a deal with their boss. They reneged on that deal. Looks bad for the boss. This morning we spread word you’re off the street. They should have backed down. They didn’t. They’re on their own. Not a lot of people would invite war against Lee, at least not about this.”
“So now it’s just Shard.”
“It’s just Shard.”
“You going to find Shard?”
He shook his head again. “Luke and Ike are tracking Shard.”
I figured Shard would shortly be joining Mace’s party.
“What about Hector?” I asked. “Did you tell Lee I saw him?”
“Yeah. Lee told Eddie, they intensified Brody’s hack. Hector’s DEA. Deep cover, been workin’ at gettin’ close to a local big man for over a year and has had success. Anyone finds out he approached you, he’s dead.”
Fuck!
I closed my eyes and pressed into him, nuzzling my face in his neck.
I was such an idiot.
What was I thinking, going out and annoying drug dealers? How lucky was I that, in the end, I found Vance?
If I hadn’t and I was alone facing this shit, I’d be f**ked and not in a good way.
“I’m an idiot,” I whispered.
His arms got tight around me. “You’re not an idiot,” he whispered back.
“I just wanted to –”
He interrupted me. “You got passion, you got courage. Nothing’s wrong with either of those. You just got to learn to point them in the right direction.”
He was right. I hated it when he was right.
“If anyone gets hurt because of me –”
“No one’s gonna get hurt.”
He said that with such certainty that I believed him.
I willed myself to relax, willed my mind and body to go still.
It didn’t work.