Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 139934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 700(@200wpm)___ 560(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 700(@200wpm)___ 560(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
Timur froze right in the middle of the floor. Air was trapped in his lungs because he couldn’t exhale. His heart nearly stopped. “She’s at the bakery right now? Alone?”
“Of course, not alone. What do you take me for? She’s yours. That means she needs to be protected. I sent Gorya and Jeremiah with her.”
Two men. Gorya was good, but Jeremiah was still learning. He didn’t have the instincts that came with experience. Heart pounding, Timur tried to quiet his chaotic brain. Something nagged there. Anton Lipin in the grove shooting at him. Ashe wasn’t in danger from Lazar or Rolan because they’d completely wiped out the teams sent to get her. But there was Evangeline’s father and uncle. The uncle who had challenged Timur for her.
She had only two men guarding her when Timur had kept a full six-man team on Evangeline. He wanted to punch his brother. Temnyy roared with rage.
“You should never have allowed her to go,” Timur bit out, already turning away.
“I realize that now, Timur, but at the time Evangeline was so sick, throwing up again, and I had to call the nurse to give her fluids. I was so worried and she was crying, worried about her bakery and Ashe volunteered to go. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Ashe was very insistent, and I had the place checked out thoroughly. I sent Gorya with her. We’ve concentrated the threat on us mainly.” Fyodor was on his feet. “Shit. They’ll be expecting Evangeline to be there.”
Timur was already out of the room. He didn’t much care what Fyodor said. Timur whipped out his phone and group texted, alerting the guards to drop whatever they were doing, secure the house and guard Fyodor and Evangeline.
Apparently, Fyodor was texting frantically as well, demanding half the men go with Timur. He wasn’t waiting for them, no matter what his brother ordered.
He chose one of Fyodor’s toys, a sleek Ferrari that had belonged to Antonio Arnotto. Siena didn’t want any of her grandfather’s collection of cars and had gifted them to Fyodor, along with the estate, on his wedding day. It was a gorgeous car, but more than looks, it had speed and handling that was hard to beat.
She was there with only two guards. Gorya—his cousin who had been through too much for any one person to manage in a lifetime—and Jeremiah, a boy becoming a man. He wasn’t quite as fast yet as the others. He didn’t have experience with killer leopards—cats trained to need violence and blood the way most people needed air.
Timur texted as he drove. Over and over. Gorya didn’t answer. Neither did Jeremiah. The beginnings of panic settled in his gut. He breathed deeply to overcome it.
19
“UM, Ashe, that’s the third time you’ve set off the fire alarm,” Jeremiah announced. He hadn’t moved from where he was perched on the edge of a table, eating cookie dough. He clearly wasn’t planning on doing anything about it.
She tried to glare at him over her shoulder as she frantically waved a towel to clear the smoke, teetering on a chair at the same time. “You might help, you cretin.”
He shrugged. “There is no help for you. None. Zero. I surrender to the absolute ineptness that is you.”
Gorya caught Ashe around the waist with both hands and lifted her off the chair. “Stay down.” He took the towel from her. “And you, quit eating that and help out.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Evangeline made this cookie dough. It’s the only decent thing to eat, and I’m starving. We’ve been here for two hours already with just the blackened ruins of what is left of a once-great bakery. May it rest in peace.”
Ashe threw a blackened croissant at him and with deadly accuracy hit him in the head.
Jeremiah was unfazed. “Does Timur know you can’t cook?”
“This is baking ,” she hissed. “It’s an entirely different thing.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Jeremiah spoke with exaggerated loudness as if she wouldn’t be able to hear him over the blaring of the fire alarm.
The alarm was unnecessarily loud and she was definitely talking to Evangeline about it. Why would anyone need to have some idiotic piece of technology blaring so loudly one could barely think? It was no wonder she messed up a few recipes.
She dumped the tray of black croissants in the trash along with the other two hours’ worth of her tries. “Evangeline must be a baking genius or something. Who does this? And why?”
“The why is easily answered,” Jeremiah said. “For me. I need to eat. If there isn’t anything else she’s left overnight, then I claim this dough. If you try to actually bake cookies, you’ll just fuck those up and then I’ll starve.”
“If I had a gun, I’d shoot you right now,” Ashe declared.
Jeremiah ignored her and scooped another spoonful of dough out of the large round metal bowl Ashe had pulled out of the walk-in refrigerator. Evangeline prepared dough for pies and cookies ahead of time. Ashe had left those for last, hoping to get the harder items she’d have to bake from scratch done first. She’d followed the recipes exactly but the results were disasterous. Okay, maybe not exactly. Maybe once or twice she’d lost her place or put in one spice instead of another. In her defense, they looked alike.