Page 72 of Unlucky Like Us
Luna.
A territorial feeling scalds my muscles. “I can keep up with her better than alright, trust me. Her lip wouldn’t be busted right now.”
“Keep your voice down,” Ian whispers. He was hired only a year and a half before me, and he’s acting like he has decades of seniority here.
But yeah, Luna is looking.
The Cobalt brothers are watching.
I couldn’t care less about protecting Epsilon’s reputation and image right now. Security’s dirty laundry rarely gets aired among clients, but they’re making me want to dump the entire soiled hamper on their heads.
“It was a family fight,” Novak retorts.
I whisper, “You let one of the boys hit her?” I frown though, knowing that’s not right. No way would Tom, Eliot, or Beckett lay hands on Luna. I glance back at her best friends.
Eliot sees my confusion and calls out, “Her lip was an accident!” He pauses before adding, “My rage wasn’t.”
Ian whispers to me, “Her bodyguard would know that if she were here. Where is Frog, by the way?” I open my mouth, but he keeps going. “Eighteen.Barely trained. Who’s Akara going to hire next—his wife?”
Vance chuckles.
“Like you had any training before you were hired,” I tell Vance. “You got the job purely because of your brother.” I turn to Novak. “You got the job ‘cause of yourdad.” Silvio Novak is his father, the bodyguard who protected Xander for a while and retired. “Don’t act like you’re better than us, ‘cause you’re not.”
“We’re not fucking our clients,” Ian whispers with bite, and truth: it feels like a mic-drop.
I want to sling something pithy back like,sucks for youorsucks to suck,but I’m not suggesting that he should fuck Luna (makes my skin crawl). And I can’t allude that I’ve also had sex with a client. He has no clue I’m in the same boat.
“Cool,” I say tightly and shoulder-check him.
Ian is pummeled to the left, and I make my move to Luna.
Beckett studies me as I approach his cousin, but it’s hard to meet his gaze. Still don’t know what he thinks of me after the assault, and right now, first, I just want to ensure Luna really is okay.
“You alright?” I ask again.
She nods, but her hand shields her mouth. Even so, she’s so fucking pretty. Her light-brown hair hangs in cute scraggily strands and frames her round face. She stuck green star stickers in the corner of her eye, and her lashes are shaded with a cool purple mascara.
“Can I see?” I reach into my back pocket where I stuffed a half-empty bottle of water. The plastic crinkles as I pull it out.
“It was an elbow to the mouth.” She lowers her hand, her bottom lip swollen and bloodied. “I just got in the way…I was trying to help.”
“Consequences of being a ride-or-die, I know it well.”
She smiles a little.
“Can I touch…?” I motion to her lip.
She nods, and I gently peel her bottom lip down, seeing a tiny gash in her gums, made by her teeth—which are all intact. “Doesn’t look like you need stitches, but I’m not a doctor.” Blood still stains her teeth, so I pass her the water to swish. “If you don’t want to swallow, you can spit in the plant over there.”
Her flush inches higher with her smile, and it makes me grin back, especially as she says, “You never know what powers you might get by swallowing.”
I smirk. “You seem pretty powerful to me already.”
She grins into a gulp of water. “I am a swallower.”
I make arock ongesture.
“Donnelly,” Ian reprimands, still in earshot. He acts like I’m crossing an invisible line. One I’ve seen him hurdle plenty of times. He’s takenwhiskey shotson-duty before with the manager of Tom’s band, and I said nothing.