Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Maybe all night.
But I wasn’t going to get too far ahead of myself. No matter how much I was dying to get that woman in bed, to see her unwind for me, relax, then come alive in a completely different way.
I was half-hard on my way out to the bike a few minutes later, needing to take a second to breathe past it before I pulled out.
The ride felt shorter than it had been when I’d been panicking about Siana’s safety, but by the time I pulled up out front of her building, I was already itching to get back to spend some time with her.
I used her key to get in the building, then took the elevator up, keeping my hand over my waist holster, the snap already undone. Just in case.
I was about five feet out of the elevator car when I knew I hadn’t been wrong to insist I be the one to go back to her place to check things out. Alone.
Because the tape was still intact on Kylo’s door.
But Siana’s apartment door was ever so slightly ajar.
“Fuck,” I hissed to myself, pulling out my gun as I moved to the door, slowly shouldering it open.
There was destruction everywhere.
Every book was pulled off her shelves, some of the pages scattered, or spines ripped off. The kitchen cabinets were opened, the dishes, cups, and mugs all shattered on the floor.
The cushions on her pink couch were slashed.
Some of her pictures were pulled off the wall, others had their glass shattered.
I sucked in a breath as I walked through the apartment, clearing the rooms to make sure they were gone, taking in more damage everywhere else.
She had a wall of nail polish.
Half of them were opened and spilled across the floor.
All of her expensive recording equipment was smashed.
“Fucking Christ,” I muttered, walking into her bedroom.
They’d slashed her pillows, for God’s sake.
On a growl, I moved into her closet, looking for luggage.
I found a few oversized bags, decided they would have to do, and started to shove some clothes into them. Then some of her shit from the bathroom that wasn’t destroyed.
I found her laptop stashed under a pile of notebooks in the bottom of her nightstand, miraculously undamaged, and grabbed that as well.
Moving back into the common area, I grabbed a few of the books that were on the floor near the coffee table, figuring those were the ones she might have been reading.
Then, finally, I packed some things for Frida.
Her toys, her bed, her bowls, and the treats and food I found in a lower cabinet.
“Yo, what’s up?” Seeley answered as I stood in the wreckage of Siana’s little sanctuary, wondering if she would ever feel truly safe in it again, even if these guys were locked up or dead. Or would it never truly feel ‘hers’ anymore after someone else destroyed it?
“Hey, any chance you’re free?” I asked, checking the time.
“Maybe. What for?”
“I need someone with wheels to meet me somewhere, then take my bike back to Golden Glades.”
“That sounds carefully cryptic.”
“It involves a girl—“ I started.
“Yep. Sounds about right. Give me an address. I’m on my way.”
I carefully closed Siana’s door when I was done.
She was going to have to come back, to file a police report, to see the damage for herself. But there was no one to say it had to be today. She could easily say she was staying with a friend after the trauma of the shootout. The cops would buy that.
She needed one night of somewhat normal before she had to face this shit.
Seeley pulled up twenty minutes later in the club’s SUV.
“Do I want to know what all this is?”
“Short story is a girl I know’s neighbor was shot up last night. She saw the guys on the way out; they made a nonverbal threat. Today, she saw them show up again, and bolted to see me. I came to investigate. And they fucking tossed and destroyed all her shit.”
“And now she’s going to be staying with you,” he said, helping me load the shit into the trunk. “When are the Save the Dates hitting mailboxes?” he asked, smirking at me.
“Things are… new,” I said. Because some part of me didn’t want to insist that we were just friends. When, clearly, I wanted more than that.
“Got it,” he said, tossing me the keys. “You want to keep the SUV, or have me meet you at your house?”
“I’ll keep it for now,” I said, thinking about Siana’s anxieties, and thinking it might be hard to get her on my bike. Besides, we couldn’t take her dog without the SUV either.
“Alright,” he said, taking my keys. “What’s her name?”
“Siana,” I told him.
“Good to know. And the dog? Remy’s going to ask,” he said, smirking.
“Frida.”
He nodded at that, then made his way back to Golden Glades on my bike.