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“Don’t do shit behind my back ever again,” Vi warned her.

“It was a test, I wanted⁠—”

“Shut it.”

Vi could feel the air shift inside the TAV.

“Not even to tell you where the nearest car wash is?”

She was being harder on her sister than she needed to be, but she shouldn’t ever be left in the dark when it came to the safety of her team. “Sorry.”

“You’re coming off an adrenaline rush, Vi.”

And maybe it was due to the fact that she had been close to losing the man she apparently had a fuckton of feelings for.

She did it to herself. She slipped and did nothing to stop it. But catching feelings, especially with an employee, could get messy.

It could also implode the team from within if the relationship went sideways. She knew that going in but did it anyhow, thinking it would only be fun and never anything serious.

Unfortunately, her unexpected reaction to this whole situation proved the opposite. But she had no idea if he felt the same way.

She might have hidden it from everyone, but she had been scared out of her fucking mind with the possibility of him being seriously injured or killed. She had turned that fear into anger and revenge, but now that anger was sloughing away.

“Make a right up here, then take your second left.”

She followed Indie’s directions and turned into a self-serve car wash and pulled directly into a bay.

She needed to get out of the Terradyne. She needed some air.

Some space.

And to get her shit together before she completely unraveled.

Because she was beginning to fray now that he was safe.

Her voice was thicker than she’d like when she pushed open the heavy driver’s door and said, “I’m just going to—” Her voice caught and her eyes stung, so she slammed the door shut before finishing.

But before she could go get quarters to spray down the Terradyne, her sister was by her side.

“I got it. Go take a breather,” Indie whispered before wandering out of the wash bay to the change machine. While her sister did that, she quickly walked the opposite direction and out of view of the TAV.

Hugging her own waist, she stood at the edge of the pavement, looking out into the dark while taking a few deep breaths. Suddenly, exhaustion hit her, seeping into her bones and flesh.

Indie was right. She’d been running solely on adrenaline since she got the call from the Chens. She dropped her head and covered her face with her hands, breathing as deeply as possible.

“Hey,” she heard immediately before being wrapped in very strong arms from behind.

She twisted in Reaper’s hold, fisted his T-shirt, and buried her face in his chest. Mostly because his touch made her want to bawl like a fucking baby and she was trying to hide it.

She failed.

He pressed his nose into her hair while adjusting his arms around her to hold her even tighter.

He then simply held her quietly as she lost her shit.

Sobs wracked her body and tears spilled down her cheeks. While she hated every second of it, all her pent-up tension went along with it.

But, they couldn’t stay too long in the area. They needed to get out of Ohio and away from the Chens. Between the bodies left behind from Reaper’s work and also what she and Indie did at the Triad’s warehouse, she couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t be looking for revenge.