"No comment, huh?" she accepted the keys with a gentled hand, studying the pained and aching way Unser was shifting his shoulders as he handed them off in the middle of the parking lot.

"The fact that my opinion wasn't wanted was made pretty clear, Ally." There was a flocking of betrayal to his words, a gray sheen over sweated skin. "By the both of you."

Her head cast up sharply, a knowing look washing annoyance into the color of her eyes like watered down paint. "Did he… Wayne, I'm sorry."

He just snorted and threw a hand between them as he shook his head, the limited control he'd had on his patience suddenly cracking open into the sun, "Wake up, Althea. Jesus Christ. You can't play house here. This club puts an end to their women, one way or another. And you damn well know it."

She cocked her glance aside at the desperate crack of honesty in his rasped tone, glance lining its way back toward the Teller-Morrow office window. Gemma was watching them with a high lifted jaw and obvious distaste on her face. But there was also a pegging of interest in her eyes, something that glittered of curiosity. Something else that looked like a manic sort of fear. As soon as the older woman realized they were looking toward each other her chin inched a fraction higher, just before her shoulder turned on the window.

"And yet that one's still running the show."

"You don't ever wanna be Gemma Teller, Ally." The saddened swing of his voice was suddenly devoid of anger and flush with a heart broken hopelessness. "Trust me."

Ally turned a glance over his face, a clattering of certainty clear in her eyes. "No, I don't."

"Tara was the… the balance of reality here. And at least she had some dignity once. And she's gone." he shook his head slowly, "What terrifies me is that I can see the both of them in you. The best and the worst of them."

The accusation and intimation he'd laid at her feet had her chest trapping up into a sudden proud swing of almost rage, "Go to hell, Wayne."

"Stop letting him bring you into this over and over again." He told her sharply as he turned away from the discussion, dismissing it. "You're a fucking officer of the law."

"And you're a hypocritical son of a bitch." She leveled back on a hissed tone.

His response was a hand behind himself and a cast off of words, "But I'm also right."

Maybe her internal store of frustration was bleeding into her routine. Maybe. Because as she leaned her hips onto the interrogation table she intentionally clipped her boot onto the chair the battered man was sitting in, making him wince as it landed on the seat edge between his legs. His eyes were rattled up ready for talking, breathing heavy through his mouth due to the fact that most of his face was a pulped mess of bruises and a shattered nose. Something sickened in her stomach when she realized she was more proud of Telford's hand taking the disgusting prick to the floor than she was sympathetic to his broken parts.

"You waived your right to a lawyer." She shrugged her shoulders back, foot wedging forward slightly to force him jolting farther back in the chair, guarding his crotch as much as he could with his hands still cuffed behind him. "Why?"

"Easier this way." He spoke softly, eyes trapping from the other officer by the door and down on to the way she was keeping a hesitance from bearing down on his groin.

Inside information had its uses.

And she swallowed the guilt she had at using it to her advantage.

She wanted this over with.

"How so?" she shrugged her shoulders in a supposedly carefree manner, a put on smile riding her lips slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not threatening you. Looks like someone already did a bang up job of that."

There were days, long days, when irony had its uses too.

"I want a deal." He blinked up at her, leaning his body farther back in his chair even as he said it.

"And I want my own personal cabana boy to bring me drinks." She wedged the toe of her boot a fraction forward on a shied smile toward her deputy, a sweetened up tone, and a turned head. "Life just isn't fair, now is it, Dulane?"

"No, ma'am." He responded, lazily leaning his hand onto the door handle as his gun belt cocked on his hip. "It really isn't."

"Sorry." She shrugged over the man in the chair.

He squeezed his eyes shut and she couldn't necessarily blame him for wanting to pretend reality was real.

"I need protection."

"I need names." She responded softly, easing her foot back on an angle that saved his battered balls from any more retribution, her eyes turning back to her second. "What do you need, Duly?"

"Could use a raise, LT." He shrugged lazily, looking as though he was supposedly bored with the interaction, but a catching mirth on the way they shared a glance. "Catholic school tuition ain't cheap."

"I'm not giving you anything until I get - "

"You're not getting a goddamn thing until I do." She pointedly shattered his argument, letting her head lean farther to an angle. "You're out of options, Healy. Because I'll let you sit on a parole violation until I can drop your ass in the local yard."

He flicked her a cagey glance, breathing whistling between wet lips again.

"Or I dump charges and release you. Wash my hands of it." She shrugged as she stood and stepped away, her tone riding suddenly low and spitting. "The boys outside of the law don't seem to like your face all that much. And the boys in Gen Pop don't much like men who fuck with children. Seems ladies don't need to get their hands dirty when so many eager gentlemen will take care of such problems for them."

"Okay."

She smiled ruefully into the whisper he'd leveled at her back and she caught the knowingly amused brow arch her deputy gave her. "Take his statement, Nick."

He nodded as he tugged the door open for her. "Yes, ma'am."

"One of the big fish you caught me just happens to be a shot caller for August Marks. Surprise, surprise."

He flinched his jaw tight into the realization that the sarcastic twist in her tone wasn't an attempt to be cute, dropping his keys to the table. "You keep them separate? Don't let 'em near each other, Ally. Just - "

"How about you just let me do my job, Telford?" there was a snapping starkness in her voice as the bottom of the whiskey bottle thunked onto the counter. "Okay?"

Filip arched a brow into the obvious frustration that was keeping her shoulders back but her head down forward, laying his voice quiet into the line of her back. "Who pissed on your rainbow, sunshine?"

"And what exactly were you pissing on when you went after Wayne Unser?" the sudden turn of her hips against the counter cracked open a heat of fury down the front of her and it waved toward him in a way that both riled annoyance and gave him a good shot of lust straight to the groin. "That was completely unnecessary."

"It was necessary." He contradicted sharply as he reached for his keys, prizing them into a glove gripped palm. "Y'don't need him holding this over your head."

She looked over his hand and shook her head, eyes riding his chest to search over his face on a cautious glance, "So you're just going to leave?"

He snorted and lifted the other hand between them. "Doesn't much sound like you want me to stay, Althea."

The beat of silence, the unflinching and unbroken way she just stared at him…

It made him suddenly very conscious of her body and the way she was defensively leaned back into the counter.

They'd been here often enough.

But this… she was skating thinned up ice and he could see it in her eyes.

"What?" he asked quickly. "I took care of a problem. You may not like the way it was done, but it was done."

"He compared me to Gemma and Tara." There was a twisted up confusion in her voice as she gave him a brief shake of the head. "And that… I will never be those women, Filip. One of them dead inside and the other dead in the ground? No, thank you."

He snorted as he studied her, a blink of realization sharing darkness in his eyes. "I never asked you to be."

"Bullshit." She snapped at him tightly. "You just used me to put a man who wants to kill you in prison and now you wanna crawl into my bed."

"It's not bullshit, Ally. We've a deal." He let the keys drop hard back to the table, stalking on her so sharply that it had her hand curling the bottle in a way that could be used as a weapon. "I don't mix my business with my pleasure – pretty as it is, Lieutenant. And we've had this discussion plenty before."

She was unmoved as he angled into the front of her, his fingers pressing a curling weight on the wrist she had on the bottle, keeping it blocked down hard as he looked over her face. "Don't get any grand delusions, love. The club is the club. It's mine. And it's who I am."

"And this?" she asked tightly, her lungs reaching for air.

"It's just what I want." His other hand caught the back of her neck fast enough that she couldn't necessary stop him completely, but she shunting break of her free hand into his ribs coughed him still as his face neared hers. "But it's what I want to keep, Ally."

"You are mixing your business with your pleasure, Filip." She whispered the words quietly, feeling his fingers reflexively pulse tighter into the back of her neck. "Whether you wanna admit it or not. Regardless of whether you tell me what's going on."

"I don't want y'to be Gemma." He shook his head slowly, his eyes studying the way she was biting down on her bottom lip. "And I'm doing everything I can to make sure you don't end up like Tara. But I can't promise you anything else."

He seemed painfully apologetic as he met her eyes again and continued. "That's reality. And that's why I went to Unser. Because his mucking about in this isn't safe."

"He could call Patterson at any time." Her eyes closed as her jaw shied down. "Did you even consider that before you threatened him?"

"He won't." he offered softly. "Trust me."

The flare of darkness as she suddenly looked up at the request gut punched him and he swallowed into the soured way she was studying his eyes. "Trust you? Well, here we are again."

"Welcome back to it." He hushed over her, his forehead gently pressing into hers as she leaned forward. "Will y'let go of the bottle?"

She shrugged minutely, "I haven't decided yet."

"Can I have a kiss hello, then? Before you bludgeon me?" his voice had recovered some bend of comforting. "Least you could do."

She shrugged on an almost pout, "Maybe."

His hand pried her close as his mouth met hers, the taste of whiskey welling so warm on her tongue that he damn near drowned himself in it. "You're a brazen fuckin' handful, Althea."

The lazily subtle blink she gave him as she smiled was enough to pull him under completely. "You can let go now, Filip."

"Unfortunately, love," he sighed out, "no, I can't."

Her smile flared up blinding like a night-time fire, "I know."