Crooked Crows by Elena Lawson

Three scrapsof paper and a pen and suddenly I’m the fucking devil. Corvus got over it, but Bri…

My phone went nuclear at lunch. The instant we entered the cafeteria, she and her little posse turned up their noses and left. She barely waited two minutes to send the first in a slew of bullshit messages.

None of which I replied to.

She knew what we were. I made it clear to her from the start, and she agreed we wouldn’t get serious. That didn’t stop her from trying to lay claim to me in other ways, though. She’d already run one girl out of Briar Hall for daring to get too close to me. I didn’t doubt that was precisely what she planned to do with this new one, too.

The mere thought of the new girl had my cock hardening beneath my jeans. She was not what I expected, and I’d gotten good at knowing what to expect. How to play those expectations to my advantage.

Ava Jade was frustratingly, and refreshingly, divergent from all my expectations. I didn’t know what to make of her.

Callous. Vulgar. Sly as a fox.

And smarter than she looked.

We shared AP calculus third period, and she finished her work for the day before me. I thought she’d handed it in unfinished, or riddled with errors, but I saw the look on Mr. William’s face when he marked her answers. Looking at her like she was some fascinating puzzle he’d like to unravel.

I couldn’t blame him.

Hers was not a conventional sort of beauty. Not the type best suited to be wrapped up in silk or adorned with flowers and jewels.

Ava Jade’s was a brutal beauty. Forged of sharp edges and heavy contrasts. Lips bowed sharply and turned down at the corners. Eyes dark despite their arctic color, hooded and calculating.

Rook elbowed me hard in the ribs, and I cleared my throat, readjusting my cock as Diesel stood from his seat to go to the bar.

The warehouse was a temporary meeting place since the new headquarters weren’t finished being built. We’d grown out of the old lodge but still laundered money through it—and about eighteen other properties from here to Stockton.

Thirty or more shot glasses were lined up in two neat rows along the bar, filled to their brims with whiskey. Enough for nearly everyone here to have two if Rook didn’t drink his usual five first. Whispered conversations from the other members quieted as Diesel lifted one.

His cut-glass eyes skimmed the faces of the members. Pausing briefly at the low table where the other guys and I lounged near the open doors and the barbeques pouring burger scented smoke into the night outside.

“To Randy,” Diesel said, suspending time for an instant before knocking back the whiskey and upturning the glass on the bar.

His eyes glimmered with malice as he licked the shine of the drink from his lips. “His death will be avenged.”

A few shouts of assent rang through the gathering.

Diesel moved aside for the next member to pay his respects to a drumbeat of fists pounded on cheap tables until someone flicked the radio back on.

“What’s up with you?” Corvus asked, his jaw working as he picked at the label on his beer, eyes boring a hole into me. Looking like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about and didn’t fucking approve.

“Bri,” I lied. “She’s still in a fit about homeroom.”

Corvus rolled his eyes but visibly relaxed, smirking. I got the sense he was glad Bri decided she didn’t like Ava. Less work for him if he wanted to get rid of her, which seemed like exactly what he wanted to do.

Stooping to helping Bri—a bitch he’d made no secret of disliking—set the girl up for theft? Since when did Corvus need help getting rid of a body? If he wanted her gone so damn bad, then why was she still here? I had a feeling there was more to it than I thought. He must’ve seen something in her, or knew something about her that we didn’t. I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he’d already nicked her file from the office and used our contacts to dig into her past. He didn’t like wild cards.

“What is it about the new chick that’s got you all twisted?” I asked, regretting the question almost as soon as it left my lips. His cheekbones flared, and I was narrowly saved by Diesel coming to the table.

He slapped his hand down onto Corvus’ shoulder and gave a squeeze. “I’m going to need you this weekend,” our adoptive father said, slipping into the chair next to Corv, the mask he wore for the others slipping around the edges.

His exhaustion was apparent in the heaviness of his shoulders and the flare of red veins in his eyes.

Diesel rubbed the edge of his mouth, thinking, before wiping his palm down his short blond beard. Barely forty, but in this moment he could’ve passed for closer to fifty with all the hard lines creasing his forehead.

“Recon?” Corvus asked, running his tongue over his teeth as he turned his mind from the banality of Briar Hall back to business.

Diesel nodded.

“I don’t think it was the Aces,” Corvus said. “Doesn’t sit right.”

“We can’t assume anything. Not until we have something concrete to base it on.”

Corvus clearly disagreed, but said nothing else.

“Good?” Diesel asked, his gaze resting on each of us briefly before he stood again.

“Good,” he said when none of us rebuked his order. We rarely did. “Now go pay your respects and get out of here. It’s late. Grey, I’ll get Cook to wrap you up a plate.”

My stomach pinched at the mention of food even though I’d just eaten before we left home. “Thanks, Dies.”

Corvus was the first to get up, abandoning his half-drank beer to head to the bar.

Rook stared on, his leg bouncing rapidly beneath the table as he twisted his lip ring around and around with his teeth between drags of his cigarette.

Corv was right. He had the itch. If we didn’t get him some action soon, he’d go catatonic. “Hey, man,” I said, nudging him. “Let’s go get some whiskey, yeah?”

He rolled his shoulders and tipped back the rest of his beer before getting up, stomping out his smoke, and looking bored. A dangerous thing for Rook Clayton to be.

“Want to rally on the way home?” I offered and his lips twitched into a grin. We owned a good-sized patch of dirt just outside Thorn Valley with a few buildings on it. The Saints mostly used it for storing shit and taking apart stolen cars. We used it as a racecourse to destroy old junkers for kicks.

“No pussy shit,” he said, framing it like a question even though he already knew what my answer would be.

“No pussy shit,” I agreed. “We’ll bust out that old Subaru SVX Corv found. I might even let you drive.”

“You want to die?” Corvus said, reappearing like a fucking ghost out of thin air. “Because that’s how you die. You want to rally at one in the morning, fine. But Grey drives.”

“Suits me,” Rook said as though he didn’t care. We both knew he’d drown himself in whiskey before we left, anyway.

A familiar beat poured out from the speakers overhead and my throat went dry at the sound, all movement stilling as the first lyric dropped.

Corvus’ face slackened as he registered what it was and calmly crossed the room to change the radio station.

Rook’s black eyes scanned the room with unease before finding Corvus again, his analytic stare changing to a pained sort of pride.

I lowered my voice as Corv returned, still reeling but doing a good job of hiding it. “Man, was that just playing on The Edge—”

“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed. “Not here.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

“You coming with?” Rook asked him, the moment erased as though it never happened.

“No,” Corvus said in a shaky breath. “I’m heading to the gym.”

“Man,” I started, but stopped myself when I saw the look he gave me.

Corvus barely slept, that was normal. He woke at the smallest sounds around the house and refused to wear earplugs or move out to the loft where it’d be quieter. But lately, it’d been worse. Like he wasn’t bothering to try to sleep at all anymore.

For a guy who didn’t let us have any secrets, he sure kept a lot of his own. He knew everything about Rook and me. Our pasts. The things we’d done, both before we wound up at Barrett’s Home for Boys and during. I shuddered out of the memories trying to pull me under.

He never talked about his own past though. Not ever. I’d have been lying if I said I didn’t wonder what kept him up most nights—what led him to Diesel and the Saints years before we were in the picture.

“Check in when you get back to the Crow’s Nest,” Corvus added as he stalked out the open door and into the night, not bothering to look back as he picked up his pace, starting a slow jog back toward town.

“Should’ve brought his Ducati if he was going to ditch,” I mused aloud, my gut twisting as he vanished from view, swallowed up by the dark.

I shook my head. He’d be fine.

“I’d be shook, too,” Rook said, clearing his throat. “Shit’s on the radio now. There’s no taking it back.”

“Think Dies will recognize his voice?”

“Nah. I doubt it.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched before his gaze trailed away from the cool night and back toward the bar. “Let’s grab a drink and head out. I’m not in the mood for mourning.”

“I’ll let you have your fill first,” I joked. “Let me know if there’s any whiskey left when you’re done.”

He licked his lips and tossed me a wink before carving a path through the throng to the bar. I had to remind myself it wasn’t drugs, that at least we’d gotten him off his weeklong coke benders. Booze and cigarettes we could deal with. When he was on blow, he was a fucking hurricane, and neither of us could do a damn thing to stop him.

Watching the other members, most almost twice his age, part like the fucking Red Sea made me smirk. People outside of the Saints always assumed Corvus was the psycho, but he was just the most lethal of us. Rook was the one they needed to be wary of. Where Corvus would plot your murder, taking into consideration every risk and possible outcome over a course of weeks before acting, Rook was liable to just snap at any moment.

And that moment was coming.

I’d have to call Julia tomorrow. See if she had anything new for us from the helpline.

My pocket buzzed, and I dug it out in a rush, thinking it must be Corv. That the Ace who carved that shit into Randy’s chest was still around. But it was just Bri. Again.

Her message, the twentieth since lunchtime today, flashed over the screen.

Brianna: Meet you at your place around seven before school? I’ll let you make it up to me...

My brows pinched, and I looked down at my traitorous cock. The thing wasn’t even the least bit excited to get some action.

I readjusted myself.

Nothing.

Frowning, I thumbed out a quick reply. Annoyance washed through me, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed at myself or her.

Grey: Busy.

Her reply was immediate.

Brianna: Are you serious?

Was I? I’d never turned her down before. The annoyance I’d felt before magnified as the new girl’s face blew through my mind again. Bri didn’t have any sort of claim on me. It was time I stopped letting her act like she did.

I started a reply that I would’ve regretted the next time my cock craved pussy but deleted it. The worst punishment for a girl like Bri would be not to answer her at all.