Elf Against the Wall: A Holiday Romantic Comedy (The Wynter Brothers Book 2)
Elf Against the Wall: Chapter 32

“Isee why you’re out there hanging Christmas decorations for her,” Aaron said, taking a swig from the bottle of homemade liquor that the enforcer had foisted on us after we’d had a call with his boss and assured him that Van de Berg Insurance wasn’t going to be ratting out the Vesuvio Syndicate to the Feds and that the women had not been harmed.

“I can’t even whack the dog?” one guy nursing a deep bite wound had complained.

His boss had slugged him in the face. “Any more of that, and I’m going to take that finger.”

I grabbed the bottle from Aaron. “I told you it wasn’t about Evie. It was the job, for you, for your money.”

But Aaron didn’t drop it. Instead, he seemed intrigued, which was a problem for me.

“Who the hell even dresses like that? She was wearing that skimpy costume, in a mob hangout no less, and then starts a fight she cannot possibly win,” he mused as we crunched through the snow back to my place. “She’s perfect chaos.”

Of course Aaron would be enamored with Evie.

I took a long swig from the bottle.

“Don’t tell me you’re about to go through a rolling quarter-life crisis. All your uptight workaholic tendencies are coming back to bite you, and you want your own little manic pixie holiday dream-girl doll.”

It was too much, too personal. I knew it as soon as the words left my mouth. Aaron and I weren’t really friends—even though I was probably one of the few people he spent the most time dealing with on a regular basis that he wasn’t related to, aside from Betty.

But I was too drunk to care, and I was prepared to fight just to keep him from going after Evie.

Aaron didn’t seem pissed. His smirk widened to a smile. “I was right.”

“Fuck you.”

“I was right because I’m always right. You’re fucking in love with her,” he scoffed. “You think a nice girl like her wants a guy with a record?”

“Evie lives in an unconverted attic. She has low standards.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Aaron preened. “She said I was just her type.”

He laughed as I took a drunken swing at him, grabbing the bottle from me before it could spill.

“Fuck. You.”

I leaned against the doorway, taking two tries to unlock it.

Aaron stumbled in behind me as I flicked on the lights.

“Oh, fuck me.” Because that was just what this night needed.

Our doppelgangers were waiting for us.

Aaron’s older brother Grayson was leaning against one of the heavy wooden worktables, while Hudson flipped through a folder with my files on Braeden and Evie.

“It’s like neither of them has a girlfriend they’re supposed to be spending time with.” Aaron half fell onto the couch.

I snatched the folder away from my brother.

“Were you in a fight?” Hudson demanded.

“Who the fuck are you? You get into fights all the time.” I whipped off my shirt, heading to the sink to start washing off the blood.

“Does he have more tattoos?” Grayson asked Hudson. “No wonder he doesn’t have any money if he spends it all on body modifications.”

Hudson went to the freezer, grabbed several ice packs, and tossed a couple to Grayson.

“Get away from me,” Aaron warned his older brother as he approached him.

I pulled the rubber cork off the bottle of homemade liquor.

Hudson sniffed it. “I’m surprised you all can still walk if that’s what you’re drinking.”

“Just let me—”

“Get off of me,” Aaron complained as Grayson tried to clean up his face.

I took Hudson’s offered ice pack and held it to my shoulder.

He pressed another to my face. I tried to tilt my face away, but he reached for my jaw. I raised a hand to him.

“Don’t.” He shook me. “I will kick the shit out of you, and you’ll spend Christmas drinking Pedialyte out of a straw. Again. Jesus, you two are too fuckin’ old to be out there getting in bar fights.”

“It was the Vesuvio Syndicate’s racetrack,” Aaron drawled.

“Are these mob guys going to be a problem?” Grayson’s tone said that he would make sure they weren’t anymore.

“Leave them alone. I don’t show up at Richmond Electric and slap the dicks out of your mouths. They’re my cash cow.” Aaron loosened his tie. “Sometimes I have to remind them I can fuck with more than their money.”

Grayson’s lips thinned.

“They’re a hell of a lot better than the dog-pound people.” That was aimed at me. “Because they don’t try to fuck me around, and they pay their fucking bills.” Aaron scowled.

“Sorry I’m not running around with a psychopath’s DNA,” I snapped, raising my hands. “You’d have put all those elderly animals on the street. I did that for your soul as much as mine.”

“You put white trash in a suit, and it’s still white trash.” Aaron slapped away the ice pack.

“Aaron doesn’t have a dog,” Grayson said to me. “He doesn’t understand.”

“You coddle those Dalmatians.” Aaron shoved his brother off as Grayson tried to put antiseptic on his bleeding knuckles, holding his hand away from Grayson.

“Switch,” Grayson said to my brother.

Hudson watched him warily as he approached me.

Grayson pulled butterfly bandages out of the first aid kit and sprayed antiseptic on my face while my brother patched up Aaron.

“I’m surprised one of them got you in the eye like this,” Grayson said conversationally as he taped the cut under my eye.

“We were up against like twenty violent killers.”

Aaron glanced around Hudson, peering at my face. “That wasn’t the mob guys. That was a little girl.”

“You were fighting a girl?”

“It’s the one he likes.” Aaron snorted.

That earned me a look from Hudson.

“We were protecting her. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why are you lying to me?” my older brother demanded. “What are you hiding?”

Hudson and Grayson looked at me expectantly.

“It was an accident,” Aaron, that fucker, piped up. “She hit him in the face with a dildo. Of course he’s going to lie to you, Hudson. It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“It did that much damage?” Grayson peered at my face.

“It was reinforced. It’s like a hunk of concrete.” I mimed. “With rebar.”

Hudson swore violently. “That’s what went through my truck window, isn’t it?”