“Shut up. I’m getting you out of here.” I hissed and tried to grab him. 

“You can’t! They saved my damn life, I just have to do this and—-”

“You’re manufacturing drugs for criminals!” I yelled, my anger getting the better of me, and Roan slapped his hand over my mouth now. 

“Stop yelling before you get us both into more trouble. If they catch you, you’re just as fucked as me.” Roan hissed and slowly uncovered my mouth. 

“I am not about to leave you here.” I snapped and grabbed him by the arm, yanking him with me. “I refuse to just leave you here. I have done things for you, and this is how you use the skills I paid for you to have. You have got to be fucking kidding me, Roan. I am getting you out of here and we can figure this—--” I yanked open the door, and the man from before stood there “Shit.” I muttered. 

Roan yanked me away from the door and stepped in front of me, saying all kinds of shit about how he would not leave and he was trying to send me away and not to tell the boss, and that it was going to be settled in a moment. The guy looked like he believed as much of this crock of shit as I did. 

“You. You broke the window?” he asked, his hand sitting on the weapon on his hip. My weapons and hand to hand training was far more limited than his, so there was no way to pull a fast one on this guy. The man swore, before he used the cellphone in his breast pocket to call someone. 

“Roan, check him over for weapons. If we find anything on him afterwards, you’ll be dead.” 

Roan paled, but grabbed me roughly, and started to check me over. He took my flashlight and set it aside. He unbuttoned my coat, and I let him. 

“Rhory, do you have anything on you that might be considered a weapon?” Roan asked. His eyes pleaded with me to be forthcoming with information. 

“No. Just house keys in my back pocket.” I muttered. 

He took them out of my pocket, and set them aside on one of the wooden crates, and checked all the rest of my pockets, before he took my coat off me too, and I finally noticed it was warm in here. 

“You should have just stayed at work.” Roan bitched. 

“Right, because that’s what I should do when my only kid brother is reported missing.” I snapped. 

“I would have shown up, eventually.” 

“Yeah, fucking dead Roan! You would have shown up fucking dead. Motherfucker, I can’t believe you!” I yelled at him again. 

“Quiet. Stop yelling.” Roan groaned and looked over my shoulder at the man. “They saved my life, Rhory.”

“You best start fucking explaining that, Roan. Now.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” He muttered, stepping away from me, and turning his back, going back to working on his drugs. 

“Try me! I wouldn’t understand. Bullshit. Stop trying to shake off the fact that none of this was necessary. You picked this!” 

Roan grabbed something off the table and threw it at me. “Enough! I don’t need you here. Fuck.”

The man with the gun grabbed me rudely, and my brother stopped what he was doing to get the man’s attention. 

“Be gentle with him. He’s not a stranger. He is my older brother,” he said, before he went back to work and the man dragged me off. He pulled me through the door, to the outside and into the building beside it. He tossed me onto a couch and angrily pulled a hand through his hair. 

“He would have been better off if you didn’t show up.” The man muttered and pulled out a chair at the table, and sat down. He was keeping his eyes on me. “Do you have any identification with you?”

“Yeah. Back in my coat.”

The guy nodded, and I muttered something. He paused and looked at me. “What?”

“How did my twenty-year-old brother get wrapped up in this shit?” I said, covering my face with my hands. I was so damn disappointed in him.. 

“Like he said, we saved his life two weeks ago. If we hadn’t, he would probably be gutted somewhere unsavory, but you should worry about yourself.”

The door to the building opened, and Roan was pulled in by the scruff of his neck basically, and tossed beside me by a well dressed, latino man, and he was pretty damn angry. 

“Explain this fucking shit to me right now!” he demanded, his eyes not once leaving me, and I could feel him practically burning holes into my being. 

“He is my older brother, and I don’t know how he found out I was here. I left nothing for him to tell him anything. Hell, I was on the run. I didn’t leave any clues. He will leave peacefully.”

“The hell I will! Not without you. We have unfinished business to discuss—--”

“Shut your damn mouth. My unfinished business is more important.” The latino man snapped and glared at my brother. “So just how the fuck are we going to fix this, Roan? I put my ass on the line for you. You know this.”

“Rhory is going to leave and forget all about this,” Roan said, and there was pleading in his voice. 

“Nope. Fuck that. I refuse.” I snapped and crossed my arms, leaning back on the couch. 

“I could just fucking kill you.” 

“Let me change my will first. This little motherfucker isn’t getting everything I worked my ass off for, so he can use it to sling drugs.”

That seemed to make the man pause, and he actually let out a chuckle. He looked at Roan and spoke. “Get the fuck back to work.”

“Please don’t kill him!” Roan said. “I’ll work twice as hard if you—”

“Shut the hell up!” I snapped at him. 

“Your brother can bargain for his own life. Now fuck off!”

Roan scurried off and the man from before went with him. The man unbuttoned his suit jacket, and turned a chair around, sitting down, and he stroked his chin, light dusted with stubble. “Now, what to do with you?”

“You realise that Roan is a kid.” I said, and he hummed. 

“To you. He is legally an adult, and he isn’t as dumb as you might think.” The man said and looked me over. “You wouldn’t make a good working man. You’re far too fit for that,” he muttered. 

I looked at him and just blinked, mildly stunned by his words. 

“Tell me, what are you good at?” he asked. 

“I’m a game warden.”

“You have experience with firearms, then?”

“Limited, but yes.”

“Tsk. no good for that either.” He muttered before he laughed. And pulled out a pen and a paper. “Can you take neat notes?”

“Depends on what you think neat is.” I said, and he passed me the pen and paper. 

“Write a few things down.” He all but demanded, so I did. He snatched the paper and pen back and hummed. “For the time being, you’re going to prepare notes for me. I don’t need you, so remember that. This is for your benefit. I’ll even let you see your brother. That way, you don’t have to scale my fences and break my windows again.”

“If I say no?” I asked him, and his eyes darkened, and he chuckled. 

“I could do things to you that would make even the worst killers look gentle.” 

I nodded. 

“As long as you jump when I ask, then you’re safe. Your brothers learned in his short time, I have a belief that you will, too.”

“My brother, how did you save him?”

“That question will cost you.”

“Cost me how?” I asked, and I saw something twinkle in this man’s eyes. 

“Have you ever felt the touch of another male?” 

“What?” I asked stupidly. I knew exactly what he asked me, but I didn’t expect him to be so damn forward with it. 

“Answer carefully,” he warned me. 

“Yes. I’ve experimented.” I muttered, unable to voice that it had been a while ago. These days, I don’t have time for that. But I had a feeling even telling him that didn’t matter. He smiled tightly, his eyes raking over me, and leaving me feeling slightly exposed in my jeans and T-shirt. 

“We have much to discuss. Come along. You might have value in other places yet,” he said, his voice far too cheerful to be discussing my value. 

Swallowing the uncomfortable lump in my throat, I followed the man outside and led me to a truck. He opened the passenger side, and we locked eyes. 

“Get in.” 

“But—-” 

“Do you want to freeze out here, because I’m good with either option?” 

Getting into the truck, he closed the door, and I shivered watching him walk around the front of the truck and get in. He pulled out the keys and started the truck. Warmth filled the cabin of the truck quickly after that, and I was grateful for that. 

He leaned over, and a smirk settled on his terribly handsome face. His honey brown eyes were like warmth embodied. “I can make you a lucky man, as long as you can make yourself valuable to me… Rhory.”

The way he said my name gave me chills and made me almost look past the fact this man was basically telling me I could be happy if I was a valuable possession.