Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“I know. That wasn’t my doing. I have another. I can’t give it to you because I don’t know if your calls are being traced.”
“My calls?” I asked, confused.
He nodded, then let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Shit I can’t tell you, Shakespeare, and I’m sorry. When it’s over, I will explain. But for now, trust me.”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to ask the next question, but needing to know at the same time.
“When you said your being here was going to get you killed …” The last word got stuck in my throat.
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to my lips. Gentle, the briefest brush. “I have too much to live for, Shakespeare. We have that forever I promised you’d get.”
Twenty-Two
Ransom
This was peace. The silence. Noa curled up against my chest, asleep, my fingers slipping through her silky locks as I watched her. I much preferred this version of observing her while she slept. I could hold her, touch her, and even feel her heart beating, see the pulse in her neck, watch her slow, even breathing up close. I didn’t want to ever fucking leave.
But that wasn’t my reality. If I wanted this—and I did, more than my next breath—then I had to go. I wanted her safe and away from the dangers of my life, but I also needed her so goddamn much. It wasn’t fair, but had my life ever been fair? I’d not been born into a family where I got to make my own decisions. I didn’t have the freedom to decide I wanted to move off and do something different.
Truth was, I’d never resented it until now. Until I was told I couldn’t have the one thing on this earth I was willing to die to have. Her. Noa. My Shakespeare. The girl who had charmed me with her wit and brain alone when she was only sixteen. Even back then, when shit got dark, I had found myself thinking of her last witty comment, and I’d text her. Needing to be distracted. To smile.
If I were any other man, I wouldn’t have heard it. The smallest click. Most would have assumed it was another guest going into the room nearby. But I wasn’t most. I knew exactly what it was, but the who I wasn’t certain of.
Easing my arm out from under Noa, I slipped from the bed, grabbing my jeans without bothering to find my briefs, and jerked them on silently. I reached under the mattress, where I’d hidden my .22, just as the light from the hallway spilled ever so briefly into the entryway.
Flattening myself against the wall, I eased closer to the corner, where whoever had the disengage tool on hand to unlock the bolt to a hotel room door was just as fucking silent as me. This was family. It had to be. They’d found me. I probably had a goddamn tracker on me and didn’t realize it.
I was fucking pissed. Linc could have stayed out there and called me. I’d have come out. They didn’t have to break into the room where Noa slept. Damn him and his commands. This wasn’t her fault, and they had no right getting so damn close to her. If she woke up, she’d be terrified. It was best I faced them and left quietly. Although I didn’t even have on my boots.
When no one appeared, I cocked my piece and stepped into the line of sight. A cold dread iced my veins. It wasn’t Bane or Oz.
“Well, happy New Year to you too, Carver.”
The eerily languid tone didn’t fool me. I knew who it was, even in the darkness. He didn’t even have his gun pulled. Instead, he stood, leaning against the wall with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and his arms crossed over his chest, as if he had been waiting for me. Inside the family, there was only one crazier son of a bitch than the one staring at me now. And honestly, I thought I’d have preferred the other one. Because the real psychopath wasn’t Blaise Hughes’s best friend.
This one was.
Which meant he wasn’t here on Linc’s orders. The boss had sent him.
“Gage,” I replied.
“Real nice room you got. Bet that view was something,” Gage Presley said as he pulled out a lighter from his pocket and flicked it, illuminating his face. That was his biggest weapon. His looks. He was even fucking prettier than Oz, but unlike Oz, the man had no soul.
And this was who Blaise had sent to get me. My future had just been shortened.
“Where are we going?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He shoved off from the wall and inhaled. “Ah, back where the sun is shining and it’s a brisk sixty-five degrees.”
Ocala. To the Hugheses’ property. The billion-dollar horse racing ranch that also housed the most dangerous and powerful man in the South.