Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “Your brother? Prison? Ron, I’m going to need some answers here.” She took the car keys out of her purse and dropped them on the sidewalk. I scooped them up for her, walked to the driver’s side and unlocked. She was way too shaken to drive.
I was too, but not anywhere close to the level she was at. Veronica trembled and opened the passenger side door without complaint, then she got into the car.
I spared a final glance for Jax.
He stood outside the front of the restaurant, staring at me, his gaze hotter than it’d ever been, his fists clenched at his sides.
Who are you?
Chapter 15
Jax
I held my cards close to my chest, so fucking close they were practically inside it, and this was the result. Fuck, I didn’t have to discuss my history at length with anyone. I’d have done it eventually with Riley, but it’d been a goddamn week. A week.
How the hell was I supposed to know that my sister would pop out of fucking nowhere after years of no contact?
The last time we’d spoken had been a month after I’d gone to prison. That’d been, what seventeen years ago? That panic attack had been bullshit. She didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her.
“Dude, are you OK?” Bane asked, from the passenger seat of my Lamborghini.
“Fine,” I replied and shifted gears. “I’m dropping you off at the office. You good with that?”
“Of course,” he said. “Whatever you need. So, that was your sister, huh? Veronica? She was—”
“A total fucking loon,” I replied and took the corner way too fast.
Bane didn’t sweat it. He’d driven around with me enough to know I wasn’t about to go careening into the pedestrians on the sidewalk. That or he’d simply developed nuts of steel.
“Still, she was pretty.”
I kept my eyes on the road but stiffened. “Don’t even think about it, dude. She’s my sister. And she belongs in a nuthouse if she thinks I’m some kind of ex-con manipulator who’d—”
“Easy.” That was like his catchphrase today. I couldn’t blame him. Things had gotten intense back there. I cruised to a halt in front of the office building, and he cuffed me on the shoulder. “Seriously, Jax, take it easy. All right? Things will get better. I guarantee it.”
I grunted by way of reply.
He got out on Brickell Avenue and patted the top of the Lambo. “Keep calm, aight? I’ll call you in the morning about the restaurant.”
“Right,” I said.
He shut the door and left me in relative peace. My thoughts chased it away.
I took off down the avenue and headed for my apartment building in Miami Beach. It was a twenty-five minute drive, traffic factored in, and it gave me too much time to think about Riley. About Veronica. About all the bullshit going on.
Christ, if only I knew where the hell my crazy-ass sister lived, I’d drive over there now and pull Riley right out. I should never have let her go with Veronica. Who knew what bullshit she’d feed her? Some crackpot story about my convictions when she knew exactly dick about them.
Thirty minutes later I was in my apartment, the scent of Riley’s lavender and vanilla perfume still on the air, and my mind racing. I paced back and forth in the living room, over the white carpeting, the view out of the windows lost on me. What did the distant city matter? What difference did the ocean view make?
She wasn’t here.
She was with someone who thought I was the devil’s right-hand man.
I charged through the living room to the hall and down it, to the guest room. Her door was closed, and I pulled it open so fast it slammed into the wall and rebounded against my palm.
“Where are you?” I growled. “Where the hell are you?’
She had to have an address book or something. Find the address book, get Veronica’s address, get over there and win her back. Goal set.
I pursued it with all my focus, charged to her dresser and ripped it open. There was nothing but sports bras, cotton panties, and a few lace ones inside. They would’ve given me pause any other time.
Had to get to her and make her understand that “Cole” wasn’t who I’d become. He wasn’t the real me. Riley had been the first person to see that “real me,” and I wouldn’t let that go.
I shut her dresser and moved to the armoire, tore the doors open, and went through that too. Nothing but a few pairs of clothes, the same ones she’d brought with her the first night I’d found her. Her gym bag was on the floor in the corner. No address book there either.
Frustration pulsed through me. “Fuck, Riley, where are you?” I whipped out my phone and tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message, tried again, and again.