Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Not anymore.
“I’m sorry, Yasmin,” I say.
She pauses. I imagine her face scrunching up and her forehead furrowing.
Then I know she frowns, and her eyes widen as it hits her.
“It’s Operation Red, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say.
Operation Red. The name I gave to the plan to protect Yasmin if Mr. Red ever went back on his word.
“Why?” she whispers.
Because they want me to kill your future sister-in-law.
I keep that sentiment to myself. Even if Yasmin has always been more emotional than me – not a difficult feat – I think even she’d double take if I told her how I really feel.
“I’ll explain later,” I say. “Pack a bag. Kenny will be there soon.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Freya
“I’m telling you, he loved you,” Lexi says, her voice loud as she speaks over the music.
The party is going now, more people arriving, the dance area extending into the main bar as people spill out.
“I don’t think so,” I reply, trying to keep my tone casual.
I hope the volume of the music makes it more difficult for her to pierce right through my casual words.
She’d probably stare at me with her mouth wide open, comic-book style, if I told her how badly I want to believe her.
Literally, believe her. I want it to be genuine, this love, and not in the way she means.
I want real love with my man, children, happiness, and a future we’re working toward together.
“I know so,” Lexi replies. “Trust me. I can read men. He was hot, but he wasn’t interested in me. He only had eyes for you. If he doesn’t want to hire you, he wants you, full-stop. And that’s a fact.”
I try to laugh off her comments, but I can’t help but let a little glimmer nest inside of me.
It goes deep, far beneath common sense, beneath reason. I should know it makes no sense. The intelligent thing to do would be to forget I ever felt this way.
“If that were true, why did he disappear?” I say, trying for a smile.
It’s the sort of smile that says – I hope – I don’t need him anyway.
I’m above it. I don’t care.
But the truth is the exact opposite. I felt like I lost something truly important to me the moment he left.
“Maybe he had to take a call,” Lexi says.
“Maybe.”
I excuse myself and go to the bathroom, feeling out of place as people get more drunk around me. It’s not that I judge them or anything like that, just that it’s a stark contrast between their mood and mine.
But even so, I feel drunk.
Drunk on him.
I should want to laugh at something so supremely cheesy, but I can’t. There’s a growing warmth inside of me, expanding each moment, making me more certain that I need to find him again.
Felix.
Somehow….
Maybe I could find out what studio he owns and turn up asking for a job. I made a promise to myself that I would stop letting nerves rule me after all.
Why shouldn’t I be the woman who goes in there and confidently inquires about a job?
I take out my cell phone, deciding to text Julie and let her know I’ll be coming home soon. Maybe she’s still up and will want to watch a movie.
I pause, staring at my phone.
Nine missed calls, all from Julie.
I walk down the hallway, holding the phone to my ear as I head toward the side exit. By the time I’ve walked into the small alleyway adjacent to the club, Julie’s voice is in my ear, raised and frantic.
“Freya?” she says tightly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, thinking of the night her dad died in the gas explosion.
There’s the same pain in her voice now, the same sense of desperation.
“Something bad has happened,” she says. “Not happened. But I think it might.”
“Wait a second.” I find myself pacing the alleyway from the trashcan to the wall, and graffiti dotted here and there, hard to make out in the shadowy semidarkness. “You need to slow down. I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember my ex…Mike?”
He was around thirty-five, and I only met him twice. I didn’t like him, how he stared at Julie like he owned her and how he glared at anybody else who looked at her.
That’s ironic, considering that’s exactly how I want Felix to look at me… and to get pissed if other men want me. The same way I would if Lexi tried to hit on him in front of me.
But with Mike, it was the way he did it. Mostly, it was something difficult to define.
His aura, his general himness.
I was relieved when she broke it off.
“Yes,” I say, thinking of the conversation we had after the first time I met him.
I told Julie he was too old for her. She was nineteen then, meaning he was twice her age.
Now, with Felix, I find myself almost laughing at the thought of caring about that.