Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67553 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Clean laundry piled up high on her recliner.
She had good security, that was a given.
The apartment complex that she lived in was gated. She was on the third floor. She had a great dead bolt on said door. What she didn’t have was good balcony security.
Either she hadn’t expected anyone to ever be able to get onto a third-floor balcony, or she forgot to lock the door.
Either way, I slipped out the same way I slipped into her place, then scaled the metal balcony to the one below it, dropping straight to the ground once I was at a good distance to do so.
The moment my feet found purchase, I stood out of my crouch and slid my phone from my pocket.
“Lev,” I said the moment he answered the phone. “You get anything?”
Lev, my resident computer genius and hacker extraordinaire, answered despite it being a late hour.
“Sure did,” he said, sounding distracted. “Sent it to your email an hour ago.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Anything I need to pay any attention to?”
“No, not with her.” He paused. “The brothers, though, are the ones that secured your house.”
I blinked. “They are?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t recognize the company name?”
To be quite truthful, though I’d done the hiring of the job, that’d been six years ago now. A lot of things had happened since then.
“Nope,” I answered.
“That’s acceptable since they changed the name when their last brother got out of the military and joined them,” he said. “But other than her brothers being badass construction workers…nothing. She’s clean as a whistle.”
“Good,” I said. “Keep a psychic eye on her, though, just in case.”
“Will do,” Lev said and rang off.
Lev was a good guy.
I liked him a lot.
But he was also extremely introverted, and only talked on the phone with me, because I didn’t give him any other option.
Out of all my employees, he was the one that gave me the most trouble.
With anyone else it wouldn’t fly.
But Lev was blood. Distant blood, but still blood.
I’d give him a little more leeway than others because of that title alone.
My next call was to Alexi.
“Boss,” he said distractedly. “What can I do for you?”
“The Irish give you anything?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’m showing them the error of their ways right now. They might give me something by the end of the night.”
“Don’t ruin any relationships,” I said. “Just rough ’em up a bit.”
“You don’t think kidnapping one of his soldiers isn’t going to piss him off?” Alexi asked.
I didn’t give a flying fuck what pissed him off. I wanted to find out who’d killed Paulo, Joaquin, and Cameron.
“No,” I said. “Now, stop asking questions you already know the answers to and get this done.”
Cayden McCloud and I had an understanding. You could almost say we were partners, in a way.
We weren’t “friends” per se, but we were associates. Known and trusted associates. We’d been bouncing ideas off of each other since we were both young and dumb. Our fathers had been the same way.
Now we were both running our own empires, both of our fathers having fallen and handed the reins to us way earlier than either one of us wanted.
We weren’t friends.
We were respected and trusted adversaries.
Sometimes his ideals aligned with mine. Other times they didn’t.
But he damn well knew why we were in Houston.
He wasn’t a part of it.
That I knew.
But he also wouldn’t help me find out who was unless it helped him in some way to do so.
“If you say so, boss,” Alexi drawled. “Thanks for dealing with Roslyn earlier.”
I grinned then, being reminded of Brecken.
“Let me know if you have any issues with your ex,” I said, hoping to have another reason to head to the school. “I’ll get her sorted out.”
Alexi laughed at that.
“Oh, I’m sure that you will,” he drawled. “I’ll also never hear the end of it if you have anything to do with handling her in any way.”
Alexi’s ex-wife, Kira, was once one of our friend group.
Alexi, Kira, and I had grown up together.
We’d been best friends.
When Alexi and Kira had gotten together, I hadn’t been surprised.
What I had been surprised about was how she’d changed after I’d given them my blessing.
It was only years later that we would find out exactly why Kira had changed so completely.
She hadn’t wanted Alexi at all. She’d wanted me. And she’d started dating Alexi to make me jealous.
The only problem was, I hadn’t been jealous. I’d never seen Kira that way, and never would. She’d only ever been Alexi’s in my eyes.
One would think that Kira’s behavior in the end would’ve affected Alexi and my relationship with each other, but it hadn’t. It’d only made us stronger.
When Alexi finally pulled his head out of his ass when it came to Kira and scraped her off, we’d grown even more solid.