Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 109086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
I packed him up and we went to the city, where I joined the academy.
Being alive for Justin had been my main purpose for so long. Then he died and for the last six months, I found new purpose in finding his killer. My fucking cousin, Nicolai. That’s who killed him. It was another nail in their coffin, as far as I was concerned.
Who else knew about it? I didn’t believe that no one else knew. Nicolai might not have been the one who pulled the trigger, but he was the reason behind it. Then there I was. A cop who no longer wanted to be a cop. I’d been forced to walk the line between good and bad, needing to choose the dirty side at times, but fuck’s sake. No one knew my world.
Justin was gone.
I’d been finding solace at the bottom of some bourbon bottle, then scraping myself out of whatever one-night stand’s bed that I went home with for the night.
I was heading to the bar to do just that when my phone started ringing. Recognizing the number, I contemplated not answering it. It kept ringing, and I cursed, knowing she was just going to keep calling. I greeted her with a growl. “Shit’s over between us, Laila. Leave me the fuck alone.”
She was silent for a beat before sniping, “Jesus, your ego is inflated. Not calling you because of that, asshole.”
I frowned. “Why are you calling?”
Laila was another cop. She and I had tangled naked together enough times over a few months that she started thinking we were in a relationship. Hell. Maybe we were, but that was the time my brother’s body was pulled from the water and nothing had been the same again for me. Laila didn’t just fall to the sideline. I’d punted her ass across the continent, as far as I was concerned. It’d not been the nicest thing, but my mind frame didn’t give a fuck.
“I got one of your cousins here.”
“Not interested—” I started to say. Any of my cousins, I didn’t give a fuck about them either.
I heard shouting in the background, and Laila cursed on her end. “Jesus Christ. She said she’s family. I’m doing you a solid. You can come down and pick her up. We won’t charge her if you do.”
“Her?” I quieted.
“Yeah. Says her name is Viv—”
Vivianna.
Of all my family members, all the different branches, Vivianna was one of the few that was intertwined with the West and Walden Mafia families. She wasn’t a part of the Worthing Mafia family. That was a whole other side, but she knew of them. Some of our uncles went into the oil business. Some went into being professional criminals. Of that side of the family, both did well with money. Vivianna, unfortunately for her, was used to that lifestyle, except she’d also gotten hooked on a fast way of living back in her modeling days. She wasn’t modeling anymore but hadn’t been able to stop trying to live that fast life.
This wasn’t the first call I’d gotten about her, but considering how my own life was going, it might be the last. I sighed into the phone. “Yeah. I’ll come down and get her. I’m guessing you won’t just release her?”
“Yeah.” Laila laughed, harshly. “No. You can get your ass down here. I’ll let you take her home, but she needs to go to rehab. Look of her, she’s not going to wake up one of these times she puts a needle in her arm.” She waited after delivering that stark statement.
I checked my stop and saw the one coming up I’d need if I was going to the station. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
Twenty-three minutes later, I walked in and boom.
There she was.
Not my ex–booty call.
Not my cousin.
But the woman from the subway who had been plaguing my mind.
I almost turned right around to leave because this woman was trouble. She’d had my dick hard on the train. It’s the whole reason I was in her face, grilling her about needing an ambulance. And that mouth.
Christ.
Her fucking mouth.
The way she’d been biting it on the train. When she’d been wringing her hands together, when she didn’t even know she was doing it, getting all worked up. I didn’t even know the shit going on in her mind but I knew it wasn’t good. But she’d been gnawing away at her bottom lip and I had to say something. I got up in her face, downright pushing shit on her that wasn’t even the truth, all because I had to say something. If I hadn’t, I was a second away from doing something else to her mouth to get her to stop chewing on it. No woman affected me like that. I didn’t like it. Goddamn. I didn’t have time for a woman like her, and now, seeing her on the same bench where they put people being detained, I stopped in my tracks.