Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
And we’d been inseparable ever since.
That was why I trusted him to do what he was doing.
He wouldn’t let the sick fuck of a woman out of his sight until I was back—before dinner time, might I add. No one messed with Melisandre’s dinner. Even women who sold their souls to the devil.
“I’m not going to stay here!” Idabell all but shrieked. “I don’t even know where here is, since you wouldn’t let me look out the freakin’ window!”
I rolled my eyes and headed out of the lounge where I’d met my clients. We’d flown into a private airstrip at my client’s private estate, and he’d given me permission to stay as long as I desired.
But unlike when I’d planned it with him, I no longer had a desire to stay any more time than I had to.
I suddenly had something very interesting at home.
Exiting the room we’d had the meeting in, I walked out into the beautiful day and straight to my plane.
“Ready, boss?”
I nodded and topped the steps, taking a right into the cabin while my pilot took a left into the cockpit.
We were in the air when I tuned back into the feed.
“You got her in the back bedroom?” Jareth asked.
LaDerrick shook his head. “No. I put her in that big linen closet. There wasn’t anything that she could destroy in there or use as a weapon to hurt us.”
“I’m sure she could find just about anything to use as a weapon,” Crimson muttered darkly. “Hell, she could strangle me with a sheet if she got out.”
Both men looked at her, and she flinched.
They took that as her being scared of them when in reality she just hated having attention on her.
I’d witnessed that particular feature about her twice now in person. Even with her family she was reserved and didn’t draw attention to herself. But it was in the videos that I hadn’t had to force myself to watch, over and over might I add, where I watched her perform on the tight rope.
There was a moment when she got on stage, and the lights hit her, that she winced and withdrew into herself.
The first show I’d watched was the one where she’d first started performing. She’d been all of twelve at max at the time. She’d walked on stage and she’d looked absolutely terrified.
She’d smiled up at someone off stage and had put what felt like these blinders on that had blocked out the crowd and the lights.
She moved directly to the ladder that’d been set up on one side of the building and had climbed and climbed and climbed until she finally reached the top. And, to my utter shock, she’d walked right out on that tight rope without a fuckin’ safety net, harness, or anything.
She was literally fifty fuckin’ feet off the ground, throwing herself around on a tight wire.
And when she’d gotten off and everyone had clapped, she’d paled.
Then her dad had chewed her out while she was on stage in front of what looked like hundreds of people.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” LaDerrick promised, bringing my focus back to the three of them on my screen. “We’re just here until Mr. Osborn gets home.”
That’s when Crimson smiled. “Did you know I’m Ms. Osborn now?”
LaDerrick blinked. “Your last name is Singh.”
His positivity was amusing.
“Nope.” She popped the p. “Not anymore. As of oh-nine-hundred hours, I’m officially an Osborn.”
LaDerrick looked confused. “You…y’all married?”
His confusion was rather adorable.
At least to her.
“Sure, if you want to say that,” she said. “And I’m fairly sure Winston wouldn’t have sent you after me had he been worried that you’d hurt me. Not to mention, if you had hurt me, he might’ve killed you. Friend or not.”
No. I wouldn’t have. Maybe.
I trusted those two men with my life.
And my trust.
That was an enormous amount of power they could wield over me. They could sell me out to any trafficker in the world, and I’d find myself buried with the fish in the next hour. But they didn’t. They felt just as strongly about all that they’d experienced in their personal life to ever stop me, or harm me in any way, because they knew that I did the work needed to make this world a better place.
To harm me would be to harm themselves at this point.
“Good,” LaDerrick said. “I’m not sure about where the spare bedroom is, but…”
He looked around in confusion, making me wince. I probably should’ve given them the tour before now.
“Oh, I’ll be taking over Winston’s room for now. Thanks.” She batted her eyelashes. “I know where it is.”
She faked it well.
She walked down to the end of the hall like she knew exactly where she was going. As if she’d been there a hundred times before.
She walked right into my room and closed the door behind her as if she owned the place.