Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 346(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I’m going to cry.
No, no I’m not.
“Thank you so much, it’s an absolute honor.”
He smiles and then tells me he’ll be in touch.
With that, he leaves.
And my whole world is changed forever.
5
ZARIAH
I open my front door when a knock sounds out to see Alarick and Kendric standing in the doorframe. I stare at them for a moment, quite surprised to see them here. “What do I owe this pleasure?” I mutter.
I haven’t spoken to Alarick since he refused to allow me the chance to know who he got information about Blanche from. He kept me on the sidelines after everything I’ve done and, quite frankly, I’m still pissed about it.
“Can we come in?” Alarick asks, peering past me when he noticed Jayden come barreling out from the kitchen with an apple in one hand and a truck in the other. “That your boy?”
“No, I stole him off the street,” I murmur, shoving the door open so they can come inside.
Jayden skids to a halt when he sees the two very big, very scary men standing in the doorway. He’s not met anyone from the club, mostly because I never involve my son in any of my business, work or otherwise. But I know they’re good people, so I have no problem with them meeting him.
“How are you, little buddy?” Alarick asks, squatting down so he’s not so scary. “Is that a fire truck?”
Jayden looks at the truck in his hand and then looks back to Alarick. “Yeah,” he says in his cute little boy voice.
“That’s a cool truck. I have a cool motorbike I ride; do you want to see it sometime?”
Jayden nods. “Bike!”
“Yeah, bike.” Alarick grins, standing. He looks to me. “He’s a cute kid.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, my voice a little too full of sarcasm.
“Look, I know you’re pissed at me, Zariah, and I get why, but you gotta understand I just got fucked over in a big way, Kendric took the fall for it, and my club has a fuckin’ snitch I don’t know about. You gotta understand my hesitation.”
“I understand it, Alarick, but you shoving me aside when I’ve already risked so much makes me feel like you don’t trust me. I don’t appreciate that.”
Kendric crosses his arms, and then his eyes flitter to Jayden when he walks up to him and hands him the truck. Jayden rarely approaches strangers, he’s a really shy kid, so to see him walk up to the big, burly biker has me pausing. I’m not sure if I pause in concern at how this is going to play out, or awe that my little boy has the guts to walk up to a stranger in such a confident manner.
Kendric looks down at my son and surprises me when he too squats down and says, “How are you, boy?”
Jayden gives him the cutest, shyest smile I’ve ever seen and then reaches for Kendric’s hand and demands, “Play?”
Oh god, he wants to play with him.
My heart flips and feels a little strange.
“I’ll play with you in a minute, okay?”
Jayden lets Kendric’s hand go and turns, sprinting toward his room to, no doubt, grab his toys and prepare them.
“You don’t have to play with him,” I say, my voice careful.
Kendric straightens and looks to me. “I don’t have anything against your son.”
No, just me.
Of course.
I look back to Alarick. “What are you here for exactly?”
“We’re here to fill you in on what we’ve found out about Steven.”
I exhale. This feels a lot to me like they’re wasting their time looking for the wrong person when they should be focusing on Dax and Peter. I’m not going to turn them away though, considering I’m about to start working with Steven. I’m curious to hear what they have to say, even though I don’t believe he has anything to do with it.
I just can’t come to that conclusion, no matter which way I try to present it to my brain.
“Come in.”
We walk into the kitchen and take a seat at my dining table. Both men sit down, and Alarick starts talking immediately.
“We’ve got word that he’s been seen with Peter, speaking to him and exchanging information.”
I frown. “That could literally be about anything. Steven is an investigator, how are you to know that he’s not working for Peter or even working the case on Dax? The station has that case pretty high on their radar right now.”
“You could be right, but we found a document in relation to the selling of those women, and on one of them that we managed to pull up, there is a receipt stating that two women were sold to someone of the same name, that’s not a coincidence.”
Okay, that’s a bit sketchy, but it could be a way of concealing something else, too. Perhaps they were using Steven’s name to cover another track. If it goes down, they take someone else. That’s a logical plan.