Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,34

turning up to kill me himself or if he hands that kind of work over to you now."

Stone cold silence hit me in response to that and I arched a brow as Fox gave me crickets, his jaw ticking.

"Bullshit," Chase called, stepping out of the house to stand beside Fox and pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "No way you don't know about Luther."

Fox turned to glare at him and Chase arched a brow like he didn’t know what he’d said that was wrong.

"What about him?" I asked, sitting up and leaning out to steal a smoke from him without bothering to ask.

I was aiming for rude but the casual over familiarity of the gesture had me mentally sitting in the back of his mom's car while the rain pounded down on the roof and we talked shit about everything and nothing while laughing our asses off for a brief moment before I blinked the memory away.

Chase observed me for a few seconds with a look in his eyes that said he wished I hadn't come back and as fucked up as that was, I actually preferred that attitude to Fox's weird overbearing shit and JJ's casual disregard for what I wanted.

Fox glared at the cigarette in my hand like he wanted to snatch it away from me and I gave him a flat look which dared him to do it.

Chase sparked up and then leaned down to let me light my own smoke from the end of his. As I inhaled deeply, the cherry flared with heat and I watched as it was reflected in his eyes, the scent of sea air, chain smoking and danger coiling around me from his skin as he got too close.

Chase had always been slim and underfed when we were younger, but it looked like he'd gone on a mission to rectify that in the years we'd spent apart. His body was thick with muscle that said he did more with it than just work out in the gym and the ink on his skin was as dark as the soul that peered back at me from within his ocean blue eyes.

"Daddy Harlequin is-”

“Dead,” Fox ground out and my gaze flicked back to him as my lips popped open at that piece of lifechanging information.

My gaze slid back to Chase for confirmation and he shrugged.

“Dead as a fucking doornail. Took a bullet right between the eyes a few years ago," Chase confirmed, taking the cigarette from his lips as I took a drag on mine.

"Good," I replied as the shock of that statement sank in and I leaned back in my sun lounger as I tried to feign indifference, but shit, that was big news, huge, enormous, gigantic, fuck you up the ass with a baseball bat news.

With Luther Harlequin dead and buried, I was free - assuming his heir hadn't decided to stick to his decisions and would kill me for him. But as that heir was standing over me looking like he was trying not to blow a gasket as he drank me in with a mixture of so many emotions in his gaze that I couldn't count them, I was going to guess not. Fox could have killed me the moment I was shoved through the front door and yet here I was, lounging by his pool and drinking his OJ.

No one called me out on my joy over Fox's dad's death which said plenty about the motherfucker in question and I lifted the cigarette to my lips, taking a long drag as I bought myself a few seconds to process that shit because it changed…everything. And nothing.

JJ cleared his throat from inside the house and gave Fox a hard look which seemed to hold a question while Fox just shrugged innocently before turning to look back at me. There was a time when I could interpret every look my boys exchanged and send them silent messages of my own, but unless Fox was having trouble holding a fart in, I was lost as to what they were thinking about me in that moment.

I only usually smoked when I was stressed, but I figured this situation met the requirements. Mutt didn't seem to like it much though, hopping up off of the sun lounger and moving around the pool before cocking his leg against a potted palm.

"This is why I don't allow dogs in my house," Fox grunted, his eyes following Mutt with distaste written on his features