Page 115 of Pretty Dark Vows
West Point won’t come after my sister again, and Frank won’t bother her again either, because he’ll think she’s dead too.
It truly was a solid as hell plan that Logan came up with.
The genius of the burnt out scene we left behind is that both of the gangs involved, West Point and Capside, will think the other side betrayed them. We made it in and out and left no trace that we were there. The guys took everyone out, leaving no one to report back any differently, and they did it with ammunition that will lead each gang to pin blame on the other.
Logan said it was the first time those two organizations had done business together, and now it will definitely be the last. There will be bad blood between them, each angry about their losses, which will distract Austin from his war with the Reapers.
And the Reapers won’t just get a reprieve from Austin’s aggression toward them. In the end, they walked away with both the drugs and the money.
I really can’t believe it worked.
I can’t believe it’s over.
“What happens now?” Chloe asks quietly.
Shit. I’m not as good of a planner as Logan is, and I’ve been so focused on just getting Chloe free that I don’t have a ready answer to that question.
There’s no way I still have a job at Club M. I’ve got no idea what happened to our apartment, but I know I missed rent and that both Frank and West Point know about the place, so I wouldn’t want to go back there anyway.
And other than the clothes Dante arranged to have brought over for me, I’ve got nothing anymore.
Chloehas nothing but what she’s wearing right now.
Maddoc and Dante have been murmuring to each other in low voices while Maddoc drives, but I guess they’ve been listening in too, because Maddoc speaks up when I don’t answer my sister right away.
“You’ll both need to stay with us for a few days,” he says, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. “We need to make sure everything went smoothly.”
“We need to make sure McKenna thinks your sister is dead,” Logan adds flatly.
Chloe flinches, twisting around to look at him. “Dead?”
He turns his head slightly, cutting his gaze toward her. “For your safety.”
“Oh,” Chloe says in a small voice. “Thank you?”
Logan doesn’t respond, and Maddoc and Dante go back to talking quietly to each other. I squeeze Chloe’s hand to reassure her that it’s all okay, and she doesn’t ask anything else as we head back to the Reapers’ house.
Where, if I’m honest, I’m grateful to know we’ll get to stay for a bit longer.
It’s strange. The Reapers’ house has been my prison, but now, with our future so uncertain, it feels almost like a sanctuary. With nowhere safe to go when we leave, the fact that Chloe and I will have a little protection for a few more days while the Reapers make sure everything worked out the way they planned is a relief.
We arrive at the house a few minutes later, and the guys usher Chloe and me inside with enough efficiency that I feel like they want us under cover.
For a second, fear spikes through me, fast and hard.
Were we followed? Is Chloe still in danger when I just promised her she wouldn’t be anymore?
But no. Logan planned for as much as humanly possible before we went into this thing, and whatever he was doing on his laptop afterward probably accounted for anything else. This is just an ingrained caution, the kind that must be as natural to men like them as breathing.
Chloe walks tentatively into the house, her arms wrapped around herself and her head swiveling as he takes it all in.
“Hey,” Dante says quietly as he follows us inside, stepping up behind me, close enough that I feel his body heat. “You did good tonight.”
The way he says it, his voice filled with heat and respect, warms me from the inside out. I slow my steps, not minding at all when he doesn’t, and lean back against him for a second, craning my neck a little to look into those impossibly green eyes of his.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “You did too.”
The weight of those words hits me in a rush.