Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 72790 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72790 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
“What do you mean?”
“He had her in there. It sounded…”
“It sounded like what?”
He turned the key as ice filled my veins.
“It sounded like he was hurting her.”
The door swung open. Neither of us made a sound. We just stared. I don’t think either of us expected to see what we saw. Sal lay in the middle of the floor. A puddle of blood surrounded him. A big puddle.
Sal was a big, dead puddle.
“Fuck!” I held the gun out again. “Shut the door!”
He slammed the door and locked it. We looked at each other, both in shock for a minute before we remembered that we were on different sides of this issue.
“She’s dead, Lucky. She can’t walk away from this.”
I held the gun up.
“We don’t know that she did this.”
“It doesn’t look good.”
“If she did, it was self-defense.”
“That might work with a jury but it don’t mean shit around here.”
“Paulie, I don’t want to have to shoot you too, but I will. No one else knows she was even here tonight.”
He held his hands up.
“We got to call Vincent.”
I shook my head.
“No. We just… we bag him up. We take him out and bury him.”
“I can’t do that, Lucky. Sal’s a made man.”
“You are that loyal to this piece of shit?”
“Fuck no. I was keeping an eye on him for Vincent. But there are rules.”
“Nobody is going to miss this piece of shit. Close the place early. We clean it up. And nobody ever has to know.” I was close to begging and I didn’t care. “Please, Paulie. She doesn’t deserve this.”
He hung his head.
“I have to tell them he’s dead.”
“But you don’t have to tell them how, or what you think happened. You found him and you took care of it. End of story.”
“What if I just give you time to get her out of here? I feel bad for the kid.”
“Bad enough to keep this a secret?”
He stared at me for a minute then he nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“Okay. We clean this up. I go get her. You talk to Vincent. You don’t lie but you keep it real vague.”
He nodded slowly. We stared into each other’s eyes. I had no choice but to trust him. It was either that or shoot the big guy. I’d kill anyone who tried to hurt her. But this wasn’t that.
I took a calculated risk and handed him back his gun.
He tucked it into his holster and looked at his dead boss.
“How did she do it?”
I leaned down and stared while Paulie searched the room. There was a hole in his temple. But it wasn’t from a bullet. There was no gun powder and the hole wasn’t perfectly round.
“I don’t know.” I looked around. “Maybe a pen?”
“Well, it’s good that she got rid of it. The room looks clean. Other than…”
“Right.”
“Right.” He slapped his legs. “I better go shut this down. You better get rid of your guys unless you want them to know about this.”
“Okay. Right.”
Paulie was right. I didn’t want everyone to know my Angel had turned into an avenging Angel.
“And Lucky?”
I looked at him.
“Never pull a gun on me again.”
Chapter 19
Devlin
“Hey now. Hey now.”
I bounced the baby on my knee, muttering in a sing-song voice. “Who is a big boy?”
I sounded ridiculous. I would have laughed at myself a year ago. But it was a fact. Babies made you dumber.
Or at least in my case, goofier.
Not that I would change a Goddamn thing. Life was perfect. I had my woman and a baby boy to love. Kaylie walked through the living room, pausing to kiss the baby. I gave her puppy dog eyes until she laid a kiss on me too.
Motherhood became her. She was a little softer now. A little rounder and ten times as pretty, if that was humanly possible. Her lips tasted so sweet and she smelled so nice.
I held her close for a hot minute before letting her go, careful of our son between us.
“You’re going to squish the baby.”
“You’re the one who is going to get squished.”
She laughed.
“Ew! What a way to put it!”
I grinned wolfishly at her and watched her walk into the kitchen. She was cooking something for dinner and it smelled good. Almost as good as she did.
We had a sexy time date tonight, and I didn’t want her to forget it.
Yes, I was scheduling sex with my wife. If I didn’t, the woman fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. I decided we were going to have sex standing up, if that’s what it took.
My phone buzzed and I looked at it.
Shit.
It was Lucky and it didn’t sound good.
Need a place to stay. Secret
Urgent
I put the baby down in his playpen and picked up the phone.
Cabin is yours. Remote enough?
Yeah for now. Thanks man.
I frowned at the phone then picked it up to call Jack.