IGNITE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EZRA

Heavy knocking wakes me in the morning. Groaning, I stumble out of bed and open the front door to find Rev beaming at me. He shoves a giant iced coffee in my hand, topped with whipped cream and drenched in caramel.

“I went easy on the sugar for you. Don’t want you shaky on your first day playing with firearms.”

“This is easy on the sugar?” I frown, staring down at the drink.

I’m not sure if we should address last night’s incident, but Rev doesn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed about getting caught. Suppose if he was willing to have sex in the common area, he really doesn’t give much thought to privacy. Or boundaries.

I slip on my combat boots and follow Rev down to lower level two. He presses his thumb against a security pad beside the first heavy steel door. When it swings open, I gape at the bright white interior, teeming with weapons. Three walls house glass cases for guns and blades of all kinds. The other wall stretches about a hundred feet down, broken up by hanging targets.

“It’s like a shopping mall for killers,” I say, wandering over to an expensive wooden table covered in handguns, rifles, and heavy-duty plastic boxes of ammunition. My fingers trace the curved handle of a serrated blade.

“Cain wants you to learn how to shoot a gun before he shows you how to play with knives. Honestly, I think he’s just worried he’ll end up fucking you instead of teaching you. Pretty sure knives turn him on.” Rev winks, and my brows shoot up into my hairline.

“Um, can I opt for knives first, please?”

Rev chuckles and licks the excess whipped cream from his plastic coffee cup lid. “He that good for you, pretty boy?”

Flushing with heat, I peek into one of the ammunition boxes. My eyes shoot wide open at the size of the bullets. They’re as long as my thumb.

Rev shuts the lid on that box. “Outside fun only, I’m afraid. Alright. We’ll start with the basics.”

He walks me through parts on all the guns. We disassemble and clean a few of them. It’s tedious, and I don’t always remember where the pieces go, but Rev’s a thorough teacher, never once losing his calm.

After I load bullets into a magazine, Rev hands me ear protection. I drape them around my neck as he motions me over to the firing line. Paper targets—black silhouettes of people—dangle from the ceiling about thirty feet away in each individual shooting lane.

Before Rev can get me into position, the door to the range swings open, and Cain strides in, looking like a professional hitman in his navy suit, silky tie, and dark leather shoes.

“Please don’t ruin my fun,” I plead when his gaze drops to my hands as I shove the magazine into the gun. “I thought you had meetings all day.”

He strips off his fancy jacket. Resting it on the back of a chair, he gets to work unbuttoning his cuffs next. My throat tightens at the sight of his muscled, tattooed arms when he rolls his sleeves up.

“Yeah, Cain,” Rev says, fake pouting. “Thought you had meetings.”

In a smooth move, he positions himself between me and Rev. “I’m learning to offload. Plenty of employees champing at the bit to prove themselves and earn that corner office.”