Always Salty

Semyonov Bratva

Book Four

Lani Lynn Vale

This is a work of fiction created without use of AI technology. Any names, characters, places or incidents portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental or fictional.

ALWAYS SALTY

Semyonov Bratva, Book 4

Copyright © 2025 by Lani Lynn Vale™.

All rights reserved.

www.lanilynnvale.com

Available in ebook, print, and audio.

Cover Design © 2024 by Cover Me Darling.

Photographer: Golden Czermak of FuriousFotog™.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Without limiting the author's and publisher's exclusive rights, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited.

LANI LYNN VALE® is registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Contents

Always Salty

Prologue I

Prologue II

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Coming Next

Acknowledgments

Other Titles by Lani Lynn Vale

About the Author

Always Salty

Semyonov Bratva, Book 4

DIMA + KEELY

Was it considered stalking if the woman you were stalking liked the idea of being stalked?

It started out like any other job.

My brother, the head of the Russian Mafia, wanted me to delete an opponent. Like the good brother I was, I decided to give him what he wanted.

In doing so, I ended up finding a woman that made my cold, dead heart start to beat again.

One day while doing some reconnaissance on my target, I happen to overhear Keely telling her friend one of her darkest fantasies, and I decide that I’d be the one fulfilling that particular craving for her.

I tell myself that it’s only once. I’d give in to that darkness inside of me once, and I’ll leave her alone from then on.

Except, once turns into twice. And twice turns into way too many to count.

Just when I plan to cut all ties so she doesn’t start to develop feelings for a killer, I find out that Keely doesn’t have just one stalker. She has two. And the one that wasn’t me wanted her dead, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.

Not to her.

Not to the woman that not only chased my demons away, but also didn’t care that I had them in the first place.

To the man that owns my heart. I love you despite the fact that you can’t find a fucking trashcan to save your life. I love you even though when you shave your beard, all of your hair lands in the freakin’ sink and you don’t clean it up. I love you even though you’re the messiest cooker on the planet.

I love you because you give me anything I want. A hug when I’m in the worst mood. A sweatshirt because you know I’m cold. A lift down out of the back of the truck when I could just as easily jump down. A batch of cookies even though you didn’t want to make them. A complicated coffee drink even though ordering it takes you a whole thirty-nine seconds to tell the barista what I want.

I love you because you’re the dad to our children my own father never was.

I love you because you’re you.

And this book, like so many others before, is for you.

When I win the lottery, the first thing I’m going to buy is a pot to piss in. I’ve always wanted one of those.

—Keely to Copper

KEELY

13 years old

I didn’t want to go home.

But, because I had no other choice, I started walking anyway.

I didn’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call one of my brothers to pick me up. Consequently, I was soaked when I arrived home because, although it was only misting, I’d been walking in that mist for a solid forty-five minutes.

Luckily, it was warm out.

When I arrived home, I put my backpack in the laundry room where hopefully it was warm enough to dry off quickly, then deposited my shoes on the mat beside the door.

Since I was the one who cleaned—everything—I’d implemented a rule with my family that we always took our shoes off at the door to avoid having to clean any more than I had to.

My brothers followed this rule—at fourteen, sixteen and seventeen. My father, however, did not.

It was almost like he experienced joy every time he walked into the house with his shoes on, always searching the room for me to make sure that I saw that he was wearing his disgusting shoes in the house.

Sometimes I swore he stepped into the dirt on his way inside just to spite me. As a big wig real estate mogul, the man never saw anything but concrete and asphalt. God forbid he actually have to get his hands dirty.

Needless to say, as I was taking off my shoes, I felt a stab of anger roll through me.

Not that I would ever, and I do mean ever, call him on it.

I was a pushover.

It literally hurt my soul when faced with confrontation. My skin broke out in a cold sweat, my heartbeat accelerated, and my flight or fight response was activated. And let’s just say, fight was never my response. It was always flight.

When my feet were bare, I peeked around the corner to see if my father was anywhere in sight and found him nowhere.

Running through the kitchen, I stopped at the next checkpoint at the mouth of the hall, peering down it to make sure my father’s study door wasn’t open.

When it wasn’t—meaning he was working—I took off like a shot down the hallway, making sure to keep my feet light so he didn’t hear me pounding past.

I spent the majority of my time in my room when my brothers weren’t here.

So when I got to my bedroom, I gathered my things, then headed across the hall into Chevy’s room and closed, then locked the door.

Much more comfortable now that I was in a room with a locking door—Dad felt that I wasn’t responsible enough for a lock on my door—I showered in relative peace, uncaring that all I had to clean myself with was Chevy’s bougie man body wash.

Once I was finished, I walked out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around me, heading for my clothes on Chevy’s bed, and froze.

My dad was sitting on Chevy’s bed, eyes gleaming.

I swallowed hard, my flight instinct kicking in, and I ran.

My dad had made the mistake of keeping the door open, which worked out well for me because I hauled butt right out of it and made a beeline for the only other place that I knew I’d be safe—my neighbor’s place.

Not that she knew that I was there, but her greenhouse had a lock on it, and I stayed there a lot when my brothers weren’t there because I knew he wouldn’t follow me.

I didn’t make it out the door, though, when my dad caught me.

His arm went around my waist and he pulled me back into his huge, disgusting body.

Bile rose in my throat, and I closed my eyes as I disappeared into my mind.

Roses.

I loved roses.

I loved Zinnias even more. I loved how they were all different colors, shapes, sizes and so vibrant.

I loved…

An unholy roar tore me out of my head and into the present.

I was naked, standing in the middle of the kitchen, and my dad was down at my feet.

What was surprising was that my brother was there, too.

He had Dad down on the ground, and he was kneeling over him, straddling his body, and punching him over and over again in the face.

The sound of flesh meeting flesh should’ve been terrifying.

It should’ve been a whole lot of things, but peaceful wasn’t one of those.

I watched with a dispassionate eye as Copper beat my father to death.

He didn’t stop until my father’s aide came through the door looking for him.

Copper stopped, picked up my towel that was covered in flecks of blood, and wrapped it around me before putting himself solidly between myself and Martin Palmer’s gaze.

Martin’s gaze went from my brother to my dad—which I could see in the reflection of the mirror across the room—and then stopped on Copper. “You’re done.”

Copper’s deep voice filled the air before he announced, “Ask me if I care.”

I’ve been single for four years. Please congratulate me for my bachelor’s degree in singleness.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

“You’re too dangerous to be allowed back into the military.”

That wasn’t even a fucking thing.

“What?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard correctly.

“Highly trained individuals like yourself can’t just go back into the regular military. Rank and all that will be questioned, and it’s never going to work. It’ll be too frustrating having to take orders from people that you feel aren’t as qualified as you. Trust me,” he informed me.

Years ago, I’d joined the military because I wanted to fly.

I did fly, for a bit.

Then someone who knew someone who was connected to another someone found out that I was Shasha Semyonov’s brother, pakhan of the Russian Bratva. From that moment forward, my military life had changed.

Gone were my dreams of flying, though I still did it, just not nearly as often as I’d liked. In the place of my flight career had been a new, not wholly unwelcome, path in life.

Killing for the United States government.

But, like my handler had just informed me, taking orders had rankled, and I was tired of the bullshit.

I didn’t want to kill people they deemed necessary.

I questioned everything and wanted proof.

I didn’t care that I killed.

I cared who I killed.

And today’s kill order, a member of government in a country that was loyal to us, had been my last straw.

I wasn’t willing to kill a pregnant woman.

I certainly wasn’t going to kill a pregnant woman with no information as to why I was killing her.

I didn’t just kill without thought.

And my handlers were tired of me pushing back.

Today I’d pushed back, and I’d gotten the ‘do it or else.’

I’d chosen ‘or else.’

I’d quit.

They’d threatened.

And I’d told them in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t one to be messed with.

My brother knew everything I did.

He knew where I was, what I was doing, and who was pulling my strings.

The moment that they fucked with me, they fucked with the Russian Bratva, and they wouldn’t like the consequences if they did the ‘or else’ they threatened.

“You’re dismissed from the US Military,” my handler said. “Don’t fuck this up.”

I caught my papers and headed for the door, but not without my last parting shot.

“That woman y’all wanted me to kill?” I announced. “She knows that you’re wanting to do it. You send someone else to do it, and you’ll be getting a war you didn’t expect on your hands.”

The handler cursed.

I kept walking, heading for my car.

A smile was firmly in place on my face as I drove away.

Aggressive cuddler.

—T-shirt

KEELY

Present Day

“I, uh…” I hesitated, wondering if I was crazy enough to say what I had to say next. Then, without giving it anymore thought, I just blurted it out. “I want to be fucked by a stranger. Preferably one wearing a mask.”

My therapist didn’t even blink before she replied.

Damn, she was good.

“It’s very, very normal to have kinks, period,” my therapist explained. “You’re a healthy, well-adjusted woman despite your upbringing and everything you faced in your teens. It’s healthy to want sex. It’s healthy to crave sex that’s exciting. It’s even healthy to want sex with a man wearing a mask. Every red-blooded, straight woman craves the kind of sex that thrills her. Sure, not everyone has those kinds of kinks, but it’s highly likely that they’ve all considered it before.”

My therapist, Jenny, was a great lady. I liked her a lot.

I’d been seeing her since I was twenty-one, once or twice a year.

I’d started seeing her after my old one died—who I’d absolutely adored, too.

My brothers had felt like it was a good idea for me to start seeing a therapist after what my brother, Copper, had done, and what I’d experienced at the hands of my ‘father.’

The experiences at the hand of my father were something that I needed to talk to a therapist about. What Copper had done to my dad upon catching my father doing those things? That I didn’t care about. That had actually helped me.

Seeing my father suffer? That had been the best feeling in the world.

I’d felt loved and cherished. I’d felt protected again, like nothing could ever hurt me.

And the sick sense of dread and fear no longer dominated my thoughts.

My father hadn’t raped me.

Not fully, anyway.

But he had touched me inappropriately. He’d tortured me by making me think he was going to rape me. He’d beat me. He’d mentally abused me.

But he hadn’t raped me.

Not that the rest of it wasn’t bad enough, but I’d never had that particular violation happen to me.

Even if my brothers didn’t believe it never happened. They thought that I was trying to make them feel better for not noticing. I hadn’t been, but nothing could convince them otherwise.

“So, say I really get off on those types of things—the domination and the force—that’s not a bad thing?” I asked warily.

Jenny smiled. “No. I know that I usually don’t share personal information with you, but I feel like maybe this one time, to hear that someone as adjusted as me has these same kinds of fantasies, might make you feel better. I go to sex clubs. I enjoy role play, domination, and light slave play.”

I don’t know how I kept my mouth from falling open in shock, but I did.

Composing myself, I drew a deep breath and said, “It does.”

She closed her book and stood. “That’s all for today then. If you have any more questions or would like to meet any other time in the next six months, feel free to make an appointment.”

I stood up, too, smoothing my scrub top down over my hips.

After saying our goodbyes, I headed to work.

I worked at a sleep center in the middle of Dallas, and there wasn’t a night that passed that I didn’t question my thought process.

I could be working at a hospital as a registered nurse, yet I was here, working at a sleep center with my friend Dorie, making about half of what I could be making.

I made decent money.

I worked three twelve-hour shifts a week. I made enough money to pay my utility bills, and I had a fully paid-off apartment that’d lasted for a solid three years, thanks to my granddad.

When all the crap had gone down with my dad’s passing, Granddad had been the beneficiary of Dad’s will.

He’d taken us in, raised us, and then given us all of my father’s spoils. He’d even left Copper a plot of land on the lake that was sandwiched in between Chevy and Cutter’s.

For me, since Granddad knew I hated the lake and everything that it represented—my father’s ultimate goal of having a home there that was so grand no one could compete—he’d given me the money from the sale of our childhood home and a place in Castanon Enterprises whether I wanted that position or not.

I’d taken that and split it in half, giving half to Copper’s life-after-prison fund, and the other half to pay for my college completely and about three years’ rent on an apartment in the middle of Dallas.

Though, that three years was running out soon, and I’d have to start paying for my rent again before I knew it.

Which sucked because that meant I’d have to move.

I couldn’t afford my place much longer with my salary.

My place was bougie as hell, in an upscale apartment building that overlooked the Dallas skyline.

Sadly, my impending circumstances gave me a lot of things to think about.

I didn’t necessarily hate my job at the sleep lab, but I didn’t love it, either.

To be completely truthful, my ultimate goal was to find someone that adored my kinky side and wanted to give me everything—i.e., allowing me to stay home, raise our kids, and be available to him mind, body and soul any time he wanted me.

I wanted to not think.

I know that’s a crazy concept in this day and age, but that was my goal. I wanted someone to take care of me, give me what I needed, and love me unconditionally. All the while I’d give them everything that I had in my soul.

Was that too much to ask for?

Working when you truly didn’t want to work was a mind game.

All thoughts on my life and what I was going to do with it were put on the back burner when I got to work and spotted a close-enough parking spot that I wouldn’t be walking for eight days in the dark.

I expertly backed into it, shut the engine off, and gathered my things.

The sleep lab, though nice during the day time, was a bit scary at night.

In the middle of a rougher part of Dallas, it didn’t give me the warm fuzzies when I got out of my safe car and headed down the street to work.

Like all parts of downtown, there wasn’t much parking to be had, and I was lucky to find one as close as I did at this time at night when everyone was usually home or getting home for the night.

I had to walk past six alleyways on my way into work, and all of them were occupied by questionable looking people. The trick was to avoid eye contact, and always have a knife in your hand to make you look crazy.

My brother, Chevy, taught me that.

The more crazy you look, the less likely they are to mess with you.

That was why I walked with a huge hunting knife that likely looked too big for my hand.

But it worked.

No one ever messed with me.

On the last alley I passed, a light caught my eye.

The burning end of a cigarette.

I glanced that way, which was a rookie mistake, and felt my heart flip when the burning ember illuminated a masked man standing in an alley. He was leaning against the exposed brick wall, shoulders against it, and one booted foot up against the wall.

My heart picked up speed because from what I could tell, the masked man had a great body.

He was wearing fitted pants, a pea coat, and the mask.

It was too hot out for a mask, well over eighty degrees, and not nearly cool enough to need a mask like that. And, since I had a sense of self-preservation, I didn’t dally for long.

But my thoughts were on masked guy for the rest of the night while I got our first two patients set up for the night.

A solid hour later, I met up with Dorie in the lab in the middle of the rooms and touched base.

Since she really was the only friend I had—outside of my brothers and Cutter’s wife, Milena—I, of course, opened my mouth when I shouldn’t have.

Then we were talking about our kinks all of a sudden, and I was blurting out things it’d taken me an entire year to work up the courage to even tell my therapist—who, might I add, was bound by law not to share my information with anyone.

Dorie, however, didn’t have that same code of conduct.

This was what happened with coworkers. They knew everything about your life.

Then again, I knew more about her life than I thought necessary.

Like right now, she was telling me that she wanted to fuck a werewolf.

“I think it would be really cool,” she said. “I mean, werewolves are awesome, right? I think my desire to do that stems from Beauty and the Beast. I mean, he was so dreamy as the beast, wasn’t he?”

I didn’t get the chance to answer before she was continuing on.

“I think you should go with it,” she chirped. “You know Craig?”

Of course I knew Craig. Everyone knew Craig.

He was a doctor at the sleep center that we worked at.

“Yes…” I drawled out.

“Well, Craig has a certain kind of…” She hesitated, trying to find the right words. “Okay, well, you can’t tell him that I told you, but Craig belongs to the elite sex club here. It’s called Torment.”

I’d actually heard of that one.

In fact, it’d been a place that I was willing to go to to feed this clawing need inside of me.

I just craved something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I thought Torment might actually be a place that could fix what was broken inside of me.

To hear that Craig was a part of that place…

Normally, I’d take everything that Dorie said with a grain of salt.

Lately, she’d been super, duper salty about my brother, Cutter, breaking up with her.

She’d thought they were going to go all the way. I’d known differently.

Though, Dorie had helped it along when she’d told Cutter that saving money for when Copper got out of prison was stupid when he was living in a hovel.

Truthfully, Cutter didn’t care if he lived in a hovel. He loved where he lived, which was on a houseboat on the lake.

It was something that was given to him by our grandfather, and he’d adored that place—even if I hated it because it reminded me of times that I didn’t want anything to do with.

But I digress.

Cutter didn’t fix his place up because nearly half of his income went into a savings account for our brother, Copper, to use when he got out of prison.

All of us had agreed that we would put our extra money into an account, and we had, for seventeen years now.

That account was very, very healthy, and Copper would be set up for life when he got out.

When Dorie found out that months after breaking up with him, Cutter had met and married a woman he barely knew, it set her off.

I had to work with her every day, and at one point, I’d thought for sure that our friendship was going to die.

But then one day she’d come into work with a new boyfriend, and it was like she was back to normal.

So I didn’t think she was vindictive enough to lie to me about Craig.

“You should ask him,” she said. “I’ll bet that he’d be willing to indulge that fantasy.”

I liked Craig.

He was a very sweet guy that was quite attractive.

Sure, he didn’t give off the “fuck me” vibes that I craved, but he was safe, and I was nothing but aware of how dangerous this world could be.

Exploring things with a nice, safe guy sounded like the way to go.

“Ugh,” Dorie said. “Speaking of assholes.”

I didn’t need to look up to know who she was talking about.

And though we hadn’t actually been speaking about assholes, but nice men, I didn’t bother to correct her on it.

“What the fuck are you two even doing?” Dr. McCinnish snarled as he walked into the room. “And why are you two sitting here doing it? Get to work.”

I clenched my hands into fists and kept my mouth shut.

I was a doormat.

Everyone knew it, but Dr. McCinnish definitely knew it.

I hated him with every fiber of my being, and if the man happened to die one night, I wouldn’t care at all.

Apparently “spite” is not a correct answer when asked what motivates you.

—Dima to Nastya

DIMA

I watched her walk past me, and felt my entire body go tight like a bowstring.

She was magnificent.

I didn’t think that scrubs could be attractive, but I was proven wrong in that moment.

The tiny little thing that was all of five foot nothing was so goddamn attractive that I popped a semi in the middle of a mission.

Her curly brown hair was bouncing with each of her steps, and even though I couldn’t see the color of her eyes, I somehow knew they’d be green.

But what really topped off the entire package was the hunting knife in her left hand.

She held it in a backward grip, knife swinging behind her as she walked.

I inhaled my cigarette and cursed myself for forgetting what I was here to do—kill a man.

Shasha had given me the man’s name and address a month ago to take care of, and I’d spent that time researching.

I didn’t kill indiscriminately, even for my brother.

Not anymore, anyway.

Once upon a time, before the US government decided to use me as their rabid dog, I’d have given my brother the same trust he gave me. I’d have been his to point and aim.

Now, I was my own man, and I did things based on how I felt.

So I took my time learning everything I could about Dr. Cordell McCinnish, and what I found out, I didn’t like.

According to Shasha, McCinnish had decided to start supporting a certain bill that was set to go up to vote in Congress next year. The bill would “crack down” on organized crime and give the authorities certain rights to do things, whether they were highly illegal and invasive or not, if the ‘criminal’ was suspected of organized crime.

McCinnish had become quite vocal about it and had gone through multiple avenues to ensure that this bill would pass. Using his voice as a prominent doctor in the community to do it.

Upon investigating him, Shasha had discovered that McCinnish wasn’t clean himself. Where he’d spouted his disgust with organized crime from every rooftop party he could get into, he was assaulting his patients in their sleep after shooting them up with sleeping drugs to ensure that they didn’t wake up.

Over the past week, I’d stopped McCinnish from doing just that twice. Both times during the two nurses on shift’s lunch breaks.

The first time I’d stopped him, I’d given him a little warning on his car as I’d left to keep him in line.

The second time I’d caught him, I’d called the alarm company and told them that I was about to break into the building next door.

Cops had come screaming into the area lights and sirens, and McCinnish had hauled ass away from his patient like he’d never been there.

But it was enough information for me.

I’d seen enough.

Which was why I was here today.

The woman, however, was the one that I was waiting for.

She opened the sleep center at night, and I needed her and the other one to get inside and turn on all the lights before I could slip into the back and observe.

I’d found a nice little hidey hole in the back of the sleep center. A rarely used room that they didn’t keep ready for patients because the monitors in the rooms were broken, and the owner wasn’t willing to repair them.

Having been into the building twice now during non-working hours, I found out that the room was perfectly located so no one saw into it or accidentally walked into it without purpose.

Also, I’d put in a couple of cameras so I could monitor the rest of the place from my hidden position.

After fifteen minutes, when the patients started arriving, I went right in the front door, unsurprised to find that no one was there.

I moved with purpose through the building right to the back room while the short nurse and the mouthy one were busy with patients.

After I moved to the back room, I got comfortable on the bed behind the curtain, slipped my phone out of my pocket, and deposited one earbud into my ear.

For the next four hours, I watched and listened.

By the time the two women started talking about their sexual desires, I thought I was going to literally die on this mission.

A mask?

Kinky.

I had a mask.

Just knowing that this woman wanted some stranger to fuck her while remaining anonymous really got my crank cranking.

That excitement flagged when my target showed, bitching and moaning the moment he walked through the door and, gasp, found the women doing their jobs.

I listened to him continue to be a complete dick and leave after he’d checked on the patients.

I knew he was supposed to be here for a solid eight hours along with the nurses, but his MO was to leave and come back, and act like he was here the entire time.

And since he was the senior doctor there, no one usually complained.

Hours into the shift, I heard whispers coming from outside the door of the room I was in, and looked up.

“Listen,” I heard the tiny nurse say. “I know this is super, duper crazy but…”

There she went explaining her fantasy again, and I started to slowly rub my dick through my pants.

God, just hearing her explain it sounded…heavenly.

“I, uh…” The doctor she’d been talking to, Craig something or other, was stuttering like a fool.

I guess it wasn’t every day that you got propositioned to fuck someone wearing a mask outside in the dark alley behind their work one day during her lunch break.

A grin played at my lips.

“I know this is insane,” she whispered. “But Dorie told me you belonged to Torment, and I thought this would be okay. You’ve asked me out so many times, and I just didn’t think that you’d be into the same things that I was into. Now that I know you are…”

“I’m, um.” He stuttered some more. “I’m…”

I nearly snorted a laugh.

“Can you give me some time to think about it?” he asked. “I know this sounds stupid, because I really am part of Torment and experience this a lot. But it’s in the safety of a club setting.”

“Would that make you more comfortable if we do it there?” she asked.

I grinned wickedly.

Smart girl.

She needed to do this in a safe place.

Not outside in an alley on her lunch break, but I could see the appeal. The ‘danger’ wouldn’t be there at the club.

A club that I just so happened to be a part of…

Thoughts and planning started to filter through my brain rapid fire, and a plan started to form into place.

If she wanted a masked man…

I listened for the rest of the night as the two ladies talked, and then when Craig finally got the balls to agree with sweet little Nurse Keely’s request.

Keely was actually Tequila.

Her full name was Tequila Rose Clayborne, and she went by Keely always.

She had a bachelor’s in nursing from the University of Texas. She lived in an apartment in the middle of the swanky part of downtown, and shared a cat with her neighbor, Trixie. I’d dug more into Keely’s past, but I usually didn’t get to know my target’s complete life backgrounds unless I also suspected them.

Since I didn’t suspect Keely, I’d tried not to invade her privacy too badly.

But maybe I’d dig into her a little more, find out more about the woman I was about to fuck…

The dawn’s rays started to shine through the glass of the room I was still in around five fifty that morning, and with it, came Dr. About to be Dead.

Shortly after Dr. ATBD arrived, he dismissed the rest of the work crew, and I knew what was about to happen.

At least, what he thought was about to happen.

The moment that the staff was gone, leaving only McCinnish alone to handle patient checkout, I struck.

The kill came quickly—much too quickly for the man that’d just administered all of the patients enough sleeping medication to make them dead to the world for hours—and soon he was on the ground looking like he’d suffered the heart attack the medication I’d given him alluded to.

I waited until his eyes lost the color in them before I cleaned up my mess.

Mostly, I put him in a room that didn’t have a woman in it.

I moved him into the three-hundred-pound man’s room that had been suffering from what he’d assumed were ‘sleep apnea episodes.’

Ol’ dude would burn through his medication faster and sound the call for help.

After I was done, I headed back out the main room door.

I called Shasha when I was about halfway down the block and asked, “Want some coffee?”

“No,” Shasha answered. “I just had some.”

“Huh,” I breathed. “Well, I guess I’ll go have some by myself.”

My older brother sighed. “You’re a pain in my ass, Dima.”

I chuckled. “I live to make your life miserable.”

Shasha snorted. “I know you do.”

Affectionate friends scare me. Why TF are you hugging me?

—Keely to Cutter

KEELY

I couldn’t believe that I was doing this.

Seriously, I was at the biggest sex club in the city, I had a wristband on my arm that signified I “wasn’t up for playing” and was “with someone.” Oh, and I was staring at people having sex everywhere.

I’d read a ton of BDSM books in my lifetime, and none of the clubs described in my books looked like this.

I half expected to be greeted by a bunch of awesome people, a lot of those men Dominants that wanted to make my life easier, yet none of them approached.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure what the hell was going on tonight.

It just seemed like some huge orgy going on all around me.

There was a cross in the corner that was holding a woman that was being fucked by a giant dildo.

Then there was a medical exam table there in the middle of the room that had some man on it with a woman between his legs wearing a doctor’s coat and nothing else.

All of the men were drinking, which I’d heard was a no-no in my books.

The woman off to the side was having hot wax poured all over her, and there was a bunch of name calling going on, all of which I didn’t suspect were untruthful based on the woman’s very real reaction at each verbal blow.

Then, there was…

“This way, ma’am,” the man from the front, dressed all in black and wearing a ton of wristbands on his wrist, urged. “I’ll show you to the room.”

When I’d walked in, he was sucking a man off at reception.

He’d only stopped long enough to hand me a clipboard with a nondisclosure statement for me to sign.

“Ma’am?” the attendant said impatiently. “Are you ready? Your room appointment is in five minutes, and I have somewhere to be.”

But before he could get me there, he was distracted by a woman carrying a paddle and a whip who stopped him with a question.

I kept wandering, unable to stop myself.

I’d thought I was kinky, but maybe not the kind of kinky that would necessitate myself being in a place like this.

It was the two men and two women doing lines of coke off the glass mirrored table in front of me that made me realize I was wrong.

“I’m just going to go,” I said to myself.

Hopefully Craig wouldn’t be too upset with me for dragging him here and getting his hopes up. But the sex club that I’d expected was not the one that I got.

And I wasn’t super comfortable being here.

I turned around to go and found myself outside in the back alley with my phone in my hand and zero signal.

The club had told me that they put up a signal blocker that would stop people from texting and using their cell phones, but I hadn’t expected it to extend into the outside area.

I stepped farther out of the way when a limo filled with half-naked people pulled up and started spilling out its occupants.

All of them looked high as kites, too.

I guess I’d expected a bit more decorum when it cost fifty grand for a membership to Torment.

But maybe that was my mistake. Maybe the whole point of this place was to be in a place that didn’t have rules, where the elite could go be their disgusting selves.

I backed farther into the alley, absentmindedly pulling out my hunting knife as I went.

My phone still continued to show no signal, so I decided maybe the best thing to do was…

That thought never finished forming because I was pressed up against the building by a strong, muscular body.

My eyes widened comically as I saw the masked man in front of me.

“Craig?” I squeaked.

The man’s teeth flashed in the darkness, and I loosened my grip on my hunting knife.

“I almost stabbed you,” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”

Craig didn’t say anything, and before I could say another word, he turned me around and whispered, “Say yes, darling.”

I swallowed hard as excitement poured through me.

This.

This was what I’d craved.

Dominance.

Excitement.

“Yes,” I breathed.

His growl of pleasure at my agreement had me shivering in anticipation.

“Don’t turn around,” he ordered, the sound of his voice making my heartbeat flutter. “You turn around and see my face, and this fuckin’ stops.”

I had no idea Craig could sound so…dangerous.

But that’s exactly what he sounded like. Deadly. Possessive. Exactly like I’d always fantasized.

God, I had to be crazy for being so into this…

I licked my lips. “Keep the mask on.”

“Then I won’t be able to taste you,” he said as I felt his hot mouth travel over my trapezius muscle. “And that would be a travesty.”

His hands went in opposite directions. One traveling up to cup my chin, hand partially covering my neck. And the other traveling down to reach bare skin.

The one at my chin tightened, and my face was turned away, but I’d gotten a glimpse of the mask being pulled down.

He was wearing a baklava, but he’d pulled the mouthpiece down far enough that his mouth was exposed.

I’d seen a flash of facial hair, but not enough to really tell what he looked like.

With the darkness, the shadows being casted from a distant street lamp, and the darkness of the man’s hair, there really wasn’t much to make out.

But I’d seen a flash of white teeth.

Then pain as those teeth sank into my trap, causing me to gasp and push myself backward out of reflex.

“Hey…” That was all I got out before two thick fingers were shoved into my mouth.

I moaned at the way he’d so efficiently gagged me.

A shiver of fear traveled down my spine, one that warned me that I might be in over my head.

But that hand that’d found bare skin was traveling up the inside of my left thigh, fingers grazing over the seam of my panties before he said, “Spread your legs.”

I swallowed hard, and gave him what he asked for, spreading them just far enough that his hand could fit between them.

“More,” he ordered.

I gave him a little more.

Which, apparently, wasn’t enough because the next time I spread my thighs apart, it was by him kicking my feet and forcing me as wide as he wanted me.

I whimpered and tried to speak, but his fingers pressed down onto my tongue, causing me to gasp instead.

“Don’t say anything, or we’ll be caught,” he asserted. “We’re not protected by the club.”

I closed my eyes as I started to get dizzy.

Way, way, way over my head.

What had I been…

His fingers found the leg of my panties, and all of a sudden, his large fingers were delving between my folds, heading straight for…

My wetness paved the way for his fingers, three of them, to slip inside of my pussy without any preparation.

One second, I was empty and needing more, and the next his fingers were buried deep, the webbing of his fingers the only thing stopping him from going farther.

I moaned, and his fingers left my mouth before my face was turned toward him.

He took my mouth, and I closed my eyes as my senses started to get assaulted on all fronts.

I was so lost in thought, my orgasm only a few curls of his fingers away, when everything stopped.

He pulled away with a dark chuckle, his mouth going to my neck, as his fingers continued to stroke in and out of me slowly.

“I need more,” I begged.

Required was more like it.

If he didn’t get me off in the next ten seconds, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

“You’re not in charge here, darling,” he rasped, his voice so deep that another twinge of awareness pierced through the fog of pleasure.

That sure didn’t sound like Craig…

But that thought dissipated when his fingers came out and flicked my clit.

I nearly dropped to my knees at the assault of pleasure that nearly overwhelmed me.

“Stay there and be a good girl,” he ordered as he slowly started lowering himself down on his haunches.

Then my back was slamming against a likely dirty brick wall, and my leg was curling around his shoulder as he guided it there.

I had just enough time to think, “I should’ve gotten rid of my panties,” when they were cut free of my body with a knife.

I blinked down at the masked man in shock, trying to place the position of the blade in the darkness, but didn’t accomplish anything.

It was too dark, and before I could comment, his mouth was suctioned to my clit, and I was keening in surprise.

“You draw a crowd, I’m not going to stop,” he drawled.

I swallowed hard and tried to get myself under control but…the man had a very talented tongue.

So talented, in fact, that I barely had enough time to prepare myself before I was falling over the edge into the abyss.

My legs went shaky, and my vagina slammed straight into his mouth.

He didn’t seem to mind, and likely had already been prepared, because I didn’t fall.

He didn’t even grunt in surprise when he took nearly all of my weight in his arms.

My out-of-body experience—better known as the orgasm to end all orgasms—finally dissipated enough to allow me to think, and I forced my feet back to the ground.

He chuckled as I came off his face, his fingers digging into my bare thighs for a long second as I steadied myself.

Only when I was sure that I would make it did I take a step away from him and apologize. “I’m sorry.”

“Darling,” he said as he came back up the length of my body, pulling his mask fully back into place as he did. “I can think of way worse ways to go.”

A flush heated my cheeks, and though I was sure he couldn’t see it, his fingers dusted my cheek anyway, as if he knew it was there.

“Turn around,” he ordered.

I licked my lips, not sure that I wanted to turn around with the intensity that I could feel coming off of him in waves.

“I didn’t ask if you wanted to, sweet darling. I said…” He twisted my hips and I was facing the wall with a quick flick of his fingers. “Turn around.”

There was that shiver of fear again.

I had no clue Craig was this strong.

And now that I think about it, I’d never in my life thought his hands were that big.

Or rough.

The memory of his fingers dancing over the soft skin of my inner thighs came to mind, and I specifically remembered callused hands.

Craig didn’t have…

“You’re not a virgin, are you, darling?” he asked into my ear, his voice pitched low.

“N-no.” I swallowed.

I almost wished that I was.

To give a man like this my virginity…it would’ve been way better than how I’d given it when I was in my late teens.

“Condom?” he rasped.

I closed my eyes as the heart rate that I’d thought I got under control took off on me again.

“I’m on birth control,” I said. “And I do know that you have to have regular blood tests to be a member of this club. They made me get one before I could come. Are you clean?”

His hand traveled up to cup my breast over my tight, black strapless dress and squeezed. “I’m clean.”

The way he said that against my shoulder blade made me shiver.

“But I’m gonna wear one for your peace of mind,” he said.

“No!” I all but blurted. “That’s not part of the fantasy.”

His hands stilled at my hips where he’d begun fisting my dress up inch my inch without moving his hand placement.

“You want it raw, darling?” he asked.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and said, “Yeah.”

He rammed his cock home, and I screamed.

The only thing that kept that scream from penetrating the darkness was his hand that covered my mouth in anticipation.

I didn’t think it was possible, but all of a sudden, I was right there again.

The need.

The buildup.

It all led to this moment right here…

“By the way…” he breathed as he pulled almost all the way out. “I’m not Craig.”

Shock tore through me, then the most absolute of pleasures.

The terror and fear, combined with the overwhelming pleasure, was really fucking me up.

I didn’t know how to react.

I didn’t know what to do.

But my body did.

My body opened to him.

It flared to life with each drag of his cock against my sensitive nerve endings.

He was big.

Really big.

Bigger than anything I’d ever felt before, and some of my exes hadn’t been slouches in the girth department.

But they’d never had both girth and length.

And the man inside of me, the man I didn’t know, was fucking me in a way that I didn’t think I’d ever recover from.

The orgasm pulled me under, sucking me straight into the darkness.

The only thing visible were stars as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut in reaction.

His body continued to pound into mine. His hand in my hair roughly pulled my head to the right.

And the other hand on my hip was squeezing so damn tight that I’d be wearing his bruises there tomorrow.

But he didn’t stop.

Not when my feet couldn’t hold me anymore.

Not when I was gasping so hard for breath.

Not when I was literally limp in his arms.

He fucked me until I felt like I’d never recover.

And when I came for a third time, forced to by his talented fingers, he finally allowed himself to let go.

I came down from my high, and terror once again made itself known.

“W-who are you?” I asked.

He pulled out and the rush of his release spilled down my bare thighs.

“Maybe one day I’ll tell you, darling.”

Then he left me standing there in shock.

I’ve been ordering the same Subway sandwich my whole life. What makes you think I’ll cheat on you?

—Keely’s secret thoughts

DIMA

I couldn’t sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, my mind kept going back to what I’d done the night before, and I couldn’t turn the replay off.

I found myself heading to my computer and using my rudimentary skills to find an email address for Keely Clayborne using her work’s website.

She was listed as one of the ‘top employees’ there, with all of her information right in the open for anyone that had a computer to see.

Once I had her email, I forwarded her a report that clearly showed that I had a clean bill of health.

Then, for good measure, I sent her the video of us fucking in that alley because I was a sadist.

For the finishing touches, I went to her company’s website and removed all of her information off of there, so all that was left was a generic photo of a woman that closely resembled her.

Then I did another hard search for her throughout the internet and went about deleting all of that information.

The problem was, the woman was everywhere.

Literally.

She had social media on every single fucking website that there was, and some of those websites she had multiple accounts.

I grinned when I saw that she had an account dedicated solely to the books that she read. She commented and participated a lot on that one. Moreso than any of the other accounts that she had.

What was funniest was that she had a family-friendly account, and then her book account, on nearly every platform.

Her family had no clue that she was so damn invested in her books, I’d bet.

Though she didn’t post pictures or videos, she did comment a whole hell of a lot.

After hiding her as best as I could, and deleting a few of the people that she followed because I thought it was bullshit she was following ‘masked men’ pages, I signed off and looked at the clock.

One in the morning, and I was wired.

So, I found myself walking.

I found myself doing that a lot.

Walking in the middle of the night.

Luckily, most of the street that I lived on was private and belonged to the Semyonovs.

The area I wound up didn’t belong to the Semyonovs, though. It belonged to the Carters.

The huge subdivision that looked more like a compound than a subdivision.

I vaguely wondered if they had an HOA where they policed each other’s houses, because all of them were immaculate.

Their yards were shaped perfectly.

There wasn’t a weed in sight.

Though there was something that was out of place…

I stopped and stared at the kid that was standing in the middle of the yard with eyes blank, staring at nothing.

I knew one of the Carter brothers sleepwalked—something I’d learned since my youngest sister had married into the Carter family—and I guessed that extended to their own children as well.

And, because I was such a stand-up guy, I picked the kid up and started walking toward the closest house.

I didn’t know if the kid belonged to said house.

All the fuckin’ Carter kids looked the fuckin’ same, and also, I couldn’t quite remember which house belonged to who. Nor did I remember which Carter sleepwalked.

The kid collapsed into me the moment he was in my arms and laid his head on my shoulder, not putting up a single ounce of fight.

Which I was thankful for, because I didn’t need any of the Carters coming out and thinking I was kidnapping the kid.

The moment I was at the closest front door, I pressed the button for the doorbell and waited.

The sound of the Ring Camera doing its thing sounded, and then a sleepy male voice rang out, “What the fuck do you want?”

I grinned at the angry voice on the other end of the line.

I had no clue which brother it was, but I bent down anyway and showed him my prize.

The pissed-off man cursed. “Be there in a minute.”

I waited and swayed, hoping the child stayed asleep—or whatever the fuck he was at this point—until the person he actually knew well was here.

I knew all of the kids.

I’d been around them enough at family gatherings.

But I didn’t know them well enough to be holding them in the dark and them knowing who it was.

The door opened after several seconds, and Quinn Carter answered the door with only underwear on and a gun in his hand.

I gave his gun a raised brow, and he shrugged.

“Occupational hazard,” he offered. “Plus, you look creepy with that mask pulled down over your hair like that.”

“How do you know it’s a mask?” I wondered.

I’d put the same mask on as last night, but hadn’t pulled it over my head. I’d left it bunched up on my head because, even though it was one in the morning, it was still hot and humid as fuck.

“Because I can see your skin through one of the eye holes.” He paused. “Why the fuck are you wearing that, anyway?”

“Because the feel of my hair blowing against my skin drives me insane, and it’s too long right now,” I shared with a shrug.

So I had sensory issues.

Sue me.

“Why don’t you cut it, then?” he asked.

“Because my sisters want to do these stupid family group photos, and they say that when I cut my hair, I look too mean,” I conceded. “So I have to wait until these pictures next week before I can cut it.”

“Ahh,” he said.

“You want this kid?” I asked. “I don’t want him to wake up and break my eardrum with his scream when he finds himself being held by someone he doesn’t know all that well.”

He took the kid from me and then closed his door before looking around the neighborhood.

“Where’s your car?” he asked, looking around as if by him doing so, it’d appear out of thin air.

“Walked,” I returned. “Across the path that leads around the lake from my place to this one.”

He shook his head. “That’s like five miles. And it’s two in the morning.”

I shrugged as I started walking with him across the road to where I guessed the kid lived.

“Can’t sleep,” I admitted.

“Thought you were gonna start taking medication for that?” he asked. “Didn’t I hear Dad suggesting it to you?”

“Yeah, but you must’ve not heard the part where he doesn’t take it anymore because he can’t get it up in the morning when he’s taking it. And sometimes it takes him an hour to come,” I drawled.

I have had sleeping problems since I was a kid.

I’d never slept well, and nothing had helped me.

I’d been on every medication alive—at least I’d thought I’d been.

But I wasn’t really willing to take a medication that made my dick not work like I wanted it to.

Sleep wasn’t worth that to me.

We crossed the road to the house catty corner to Quinn’s, and Quinn laid on the doorbell.

The same words came out of this brother’s mouth, too, when he was woken.

“What the fuck do you want?” an angry male voice said.

“Atlas, you dumb fuck,” Quinn said, sounding amused. “Your kid’s out roamin’ the neighborhood at two in the morning again.”

“Goddammit.” Atlas was at the door in a flash, looking slightly frantic. “I’ve done absolutely everything that I can think of, short of tying him to his bed, to keep him inside.”

“Pressure alarm,” I suggested. “Put it outside his door. That way if he crosses it, he wakes up the entire house.”

Both men looked at me curiously.

“Used to have a friend that liked to scare the shit out of me when I slept,” I lied. “Worked pretty well.”

“Might need to add that to our list.” He sighed. “I think I need to fence around the entire property at this point. I don’t think he’s aware enough to get out of a six-foot-high fence.”

“He was able to get out of a locked house with multiple alarms on it,” Quinn pointed out the obvious.

“True,” Atlas narrowed his eyes at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Walking. Can’t sleep. Found your kid in that lot over there.” I pointed to the lot beside Quinn’s place.

“Fuck,” Atlas sighed. “Thanks, man, appreciate it.”

I jerked up my chin and headed back the way I’d come.

I took the faster route back to my place, and as I did, I thought about all the things I had to do tomorrow, first of which was meeting my brother for lunch with a few of the men he called “The Seven.”

Personally, I didn’t like any of them, not even the one Shasha considered his closest friend, Cayden McCloud.

All of them struck me as arrogant pricks who thought they controlled the world.

Truthfully, my brother struck me as that sometimes.

But that was quite possibly because I didn’t like anyone, not even my own family at times.

My social battery was finite.

My family, however, didn’t care if my social battery was full or not. They’d bug the absolute shit out of me if I didn’t participate in the family the way they wanted—which was all the fuckin’ time.

There were days, however, that I craved living in a place that was far, far away from anyone and everyone. A place in the middle of the woods where the closest neighbor was twenty miles away.

I craved being able to live in a place that didn’t have the ability to have my sister in my house at three o’clock in the morning when I came home.

“Where have you been?” Nastya asked, yawning widely.

“Walking,” I said as I stared at my nephew in her arms. “What are y’all doing up?”

Nastya yawned again. “Nate has a little cold, and he needs to be vertical to sleep.” She yawned again.

I walked over and took Nate from her arms, turning the little guy to face me.

Nate had eye crusties over his eyes, and his nose had dried snot on it.

“I’ve wiped those down so much that his little nose is raw,” Nastya admitted. “I’m at the point where I’m wondering if it’d be better for him to leave them there.”

“I’ll get them cleaned,” I said. “Go home.”

Nastya raised a brow at me. “What?”

“Go home,” I repeated.

She bit her lip.

“Now,” I grumbled. “We’re gonna try to catch a couple of hours of sleep.”

“How…”

“Go,” I repeated.

I walked her out and watched as she crossed the lawns to her place.

I glanced at the other house that was between Nastya’s and mine and saw that Cutter, Milena’s new husband, was there getting ready to go for a run.

“What time are y’all leaving?” I asked.

“Dropping her off as soon as I finish this run.” His eyes gleamed. “Then I’m riding out.”

I jerked my chin up at him and he gave me one back, and I disappeared back inside.

Milena, my sister, was headed to Montana to run a marathon on a trail.

Cutter, however, was headed to the prison where his brother was located to kill the man that’d raped Milena.

I was wholly, one hundred percent on board with this morning’s activities.

I’d actually wanted to do this myself for years, but Milena had made all of us swear that we wouldn’t retaliate anymore against Lyle Pettigrew.

I was just happy that Cutter didn’t have that same pinky promise that Milena had forced out of us.

“Good,” I responded. “Let me know if you need any help.”

He jerked his chin up at me and started off at a jog.

Closing and locking the door, I headed to my bed where I set Nate down.

I came back seconds later in sleep pants and had a warm rag in my hand.

He started to twist away but I caught him by the foot and hauled him back to me. “You clean it.”

Nate took the rag and looked at it like it was going to bite him.

“It’s warm and soft. It won’t hurt that bad,” I pointed out.

He rubbed his nose on it and paused to test out how bad it hurt.

It must’ve been okay because he cleaned it better the second time.

“Use the other side to clean your eyes,” I suggested when he went to get to his eyes.

The kid twisted the rag over to the other side and I saw all the snot that was left over.

I curled my lip.

Kids were cool.

I didn’t mind them.

Until they started leaking.

Then kids weren’t my favorite things in the world.

However, I seemed to be able to handle a lot more from my nieces and nephews than kids who weren’t related to me.

After he was cleaned off as best as he could manage, I said, “Now blow your nose in it.”

The kid did, then handed it to me.

I nearly gagged as I took the rag and tossed it into the trash.

That was one rag I’d never use again.

When I came back, Nate looked just as miserable as when I’d left him.

I reached for him and pulled him into my arms before sitting on the bed, propping several pillows up behind me, and yanking the comforter over the both of us.

Nate laid his head down on my chest and went to sleep—fitfully.

Which worked for me because I slept just as fitfully.

Luckily, no nightmares plagued me this day.

Visions of a green-eyed woman did, though.

And when I woke up, snot dried to my chest, I idly wondered if our kids would have her green eyes, or my brown.

We are the granddaughters of the grandmothers you couldn’t run over last year.

—Keely to Dima

KEELY

“Hello?” I answered, belly quivering.

“Hey,” Cutter’s voice sounded…odd. “You got a minute?”

I looked at my watch.

I had to work tonight.

Which, I might add, I was reluctant to do after the night that I’d spent worrying myself to death.

The only thing that’d calmed my ass down was an email I’d finally gotten around to checking an hour ago.

I’d gotten two emails from weird email addresses that at first, I’d thought were spam.

One had been a clean bill of health with the subject line reading: I’m safe.

After reading, then rereading the email and the ‘clean bill of health,’ trying to find the name of the man that’d clearly been redacted, I’d decided that I was going to believe the man.

And, to be honest, that particular thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until I’d received the email.

The second email had been what’d really calmed me down.

Which was crazy, because the email had been a video from a security camera from the club that I’d been in last night. The security camera was pointed directly at where we’d been last night, and it had night vision.

Meaning, I got to see the entire freakin’ thing all over again.

Which had me deciding that though last night had scared me, it hadn’t been in a way that I wouldn’t do it again.

But it made me realize that I needed to be a lot more careful.

What kind of fucked up person was okay with a complete stranger fucking her? Also, what kind of person was okay with the fact that she was okay with it?

Needless to say, my head was a freakin’ wreck.

Normally, I’d head to breakfast with one of my brothers when I was feeling out of sorts but today was different.

This morning sometime I’d gotten a text from Chevy that something had happened and he was heading to Montana.

I’d called him and he’d sent it to voicemail, only to send me a long-ass text message saying that something had happened with Milena. She was okay, but Cutter needed some backup.

I’d left it at that, trusting them to tell me when they got home.

Likely, they didn’t want to tell me something bad had happened so I didn’t worry.

That was the way of my brothers, though.

Always keeping me in the dark because they thought I was too fragile to learn the truth.

“Are you there?” Cutter asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine.” He sighed. “I’m sorry for the secrecy.”

I hummed. “What was the secrecy about?”

There was a pause and then, “Can’t talk about it over the phone.”

Meaning, he’d done something illegal, and he needed to make sure he didn’t say anything over an unsecured line.

“Okie dokie, smokie,” I said. “What did you call for then? I’m not ready to go to the board meeting yet, or I would’ve called.”

The ‘board meeting’ was something that I did once a month.

The board that the meeting was for was my father’s brainchild, Castanon Enterprises.

When my mom married my dad, he’d been a Castanon, and he’d owned a multi-million dollar real estate empire in the middle of Dallas. He’d been the top of the top and had made his business into one of the world’s largest companies that bought and sold both residential and business real estate.

When he’d died, Granddad had taken over the day-to-day crap until I’d graduated college. When I was done, he’d transferred all of his shares—both his and my dad’s—to me for safe keeping.

I’d vehemently refused at first.

Should’ve kept refusing to be completely honest.

But my brothers and my granddad forced my hand.

God, I couldn’t wait until I could put that board and the Castanon empire behind me.

The day that Copper got out, that vile place was all his.

When he’d been younger, our ‘father’ had started grooming Copper to take the whole thing over one day—when he was very old and couldn’t cognitively run it anymore because God forbid he give it up earlier than he had to.

The rest of the family—Chevy, Cutter, and I—hadn’t once been asked to join him when doling out that knowledge. Which had caused us all to not want anything to do with it.

They’d—my well-meaning family—said that I deserved it. That I could either run it into the ground or make it even better.

According to them, I was going to get the money from that stupid place, and I was going to live happily ever after with it.

What they didn’t know was that I hadn’t touched that fucking money. None of it.

It felt dirty to me.

Like a consolation prize for my father’s abuse.

But, in the beginning, the reason I’d agreed was twofold.

One, I would make sure this stupid business was thriving and ready to go for when Copper got out and could take it off my hands.

Second, it was because of my father’s aide, Alexander Pettigrew.

Alexander Pettigrew would’ve taken it all over had I not taken it.

He was on the fast track to taking it right out of my grandfather’s hands because he was ‘too old’ according to the company’s by-laws.

And he’d have flourished in the position.

He was just the kind of shark that that place needed to thrive.

However, if there was one thing that I would not do, it was let that man win.

Alexander Pettigrew was just as bad as my father.

Though he hadn’t hurt me like my father had, he’d watched plenty of times. He’d turned a blind eye. He’d sat down and watched while my father had tortured me endlessly and laughed when I’d done something to protect myself and my dad had retaliated.

He’d even offered suggestions.

I’d been too fucking scared that he’d retaliate and take it out on Copper if I told the world that he was a willing participant in my childhood abuse.

As it was, he’d fought tooth and nail to make Copper pay. Then he’d fought to ensure that we got nothing after my father’s death.

Luckily, our grandfather had fought just as hard and won on our behalf, and everything had become ours that was owed to us.

My brothers got the lakefront property.

I, on the other hand, got the company that I hated, the dividends that I refused to touch, and a headache once a month because I was forced to sit in on a meeting that could’ve been an email.

The only good thing I got out of those meetings was opposing those that I hated on that board, and becoming a sometimes deciding vote to make things go the way that I wanted them.

Alexander Pettigrew had thought he’d be able to fight forever, but lady luck had finally caught up to him and taken him out of the game.

A woman had come out against him, not caring about all the money and clout he had and accused him of rape.

Things had gone to court, and Alexander Pettigrew had gone to prison because the evidence had been overwhelming.

He’d been sentenced to seven years in prison—which was a fucking joke because Copper had gotten three times that for a crime that wasn’t nearly as vile.

Luckily, at first, it hadn’t been the same prison as Copper.

But after a few years of him being in, he’d been transferred, and he’d wound up at the same prison as Copper six months ago.

That’d been why I hadn’t been visiting Copper as much.

We’d all decided that until Copper noticed, we weren’t going to tell him that Pettigrew was in there with him.

Meanwhile, Pettigrew disgusted me so much that I wasn’t willing to chance even seeing him.

He made my skin crawl, and the thought of seeing his beady little eyes again made me want to vomit.

“I know that Alexander Pettigrew being at Copper’s prison makes it uncomfortable for you to go…” Speaking of the devil. “But I have a package for you to pick up at the prison. Plus, in exchange for that package, I need you to drop off the bike I have on the trailer outside my house. You don’t have to go inside at all.”

I frowned, unease skirting through my veins. “What kind of package?”

“The kind that I can’t tell you about,” he said. “My contact will meet you there and come up to you. You’ll know who it is.”

Cutter and his cloak and dagger shit.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll call the board and tell them that we’ll need to reschedule the meeting to this afternoon. Will I be back by four?”

“That should do it,” Cutter said. “Call me when you get the package.”

“Hey, baby.”

I shivered as I waited in the parking lot for whatever it was that I needed to pick up.

Normally, I would’ve never been asked to do this particular pick up, but none of my brothers were able to do it.

So here I was.

Not that I was complaining or anything. I adored being needed.

I just wished I wasn’t needed at the prison, two hours away.

Though, it did get me out of a board meeting for a bit, which I liked.

What I didn’t like were all the creepy people here to visit their imprisoned family that might as well be in prison themselves.

“Hey, do you hear me talking to you, sweet thing?” the same man asked for a second time.

If he came over here, I was going to stab him with the knife in my back pocket.

“She heard you,” I heard my brother’s deep, dark voice. “But she didn’t respond because she doesn’t want anything to fuckin’ do with you.”

I whipped my head around and…

“Copper!” I cried out.

Copper dropped his stuff onto the concrete, uncaring that some of it might’ve been breakable, and opened his arms just in time for me to throw myself into them.

I sobbed the moment my body made contact with his.

Big, hulking sobs that shook my body.

Snot was running out of my nose, tears were all over both of us, and goddammit, my brother was free!

“What are you doing here?” I wailed.

I was officially losing it.

“I’m out.” He sounded gruff. “Pardoned by the governor.”

I squeezed him tighter, likely cutting off his air supply. Though, he didn’t seem to care.

“Fuck, but it feels good to hold you without chains around me,” he growled. “I’ve missed you too much, Tequila.”

The rumble of his voice in his chest was like music to my ears.

“I’m so happy right now, Copper Clayborne.” I paused and narrowed my eyes. “But don’t ever call me that again.”

I hated, with a passion, my actual name.

Tequila.

My brothers’ names had been bad, sure. All of them cowboy names that were clearly named exactly that because of my mother’s dislike of my father. But my name?

I hated it with every beat of my heart, and would never embrace it, no matter how ‘cool’ everyone thought it was.

Not after all the crap that I’d gotten for it growing up, from both school and my dad.

“You have no idea, baby sister,” he said, not apologizing for using the name that I hated.

I pulled away from him, and he let me go.

I brought both of my hands up to his cheeks and squeezed. “Gosh, I’ve missed the hell out of you, Copper.”

His eyes were a bit wet when he responded, “I’m so happy I could fuckin’ cry.”

I grinned. “I’m guessing that bike on the back of my 4-Runner is yours.”

His eyes moved from me to where my SUV was parked. “That’s likely true.”

“Let’s go.”

The first stop was a diner about a block down the road where Copper ate everything under the sun.

Hamburger, french fries covered with bacon and cheese, baked potato soup, a salad, and followed up with eighteen Dr Peppers.

He ordered pie to go, and stuffed it into his saddlebags when we got back outside.

“Are you going home? Or do you want to go to a board meeting with me?” I asked.

“Board meeting sounds fun.” He grinned.

A gleam entered my eyes. “How do you feel about going to them permanently?”

He tilted his head. “I’ve spent the last seventeen years learning everything I could about running that empire. You know that I’m ready for it.”

I smiled. That’d been my intention all along.

Keep humping along until Copper was ready to take it over.

“I’ll get the shares transferred over tomorrow,” I offered.

“No need,” he said. “You’ll remain with the shares that you have. I’ll get my shares another way.”

My brows rose. “I feel like you aren’t telling me everything.”

He winked. “Let’s go to the meeting.”

Imagine if we’re on the roof looking at the stars and I push you off.

—Keely’s intrusive thoughts

KEELY

The meeting was rescheduled for four, and we arrived at four oh two.

I knew that was going to piss off the board, because they were very prompt, and wanted the meeting to end on time so they could get out of the office.

That was why I always pushed to have it late in the afternoon. One, even if we only took an hour, by the time that we were done, five o’clock rush-hour traffic would be upon us, and all of them would have to drive home in the middle of chaos. Having to reschedule this meeting just made me happy.

I was petty.

What could I say?

“Oh, Ms. Clayborne,” my assistant that literally ran everything for me—the one that I paid more than anyone else in the company to do it—rushed up to me. “I have your meeting notes right here and…” she trailed off when she saw Copper.

Her mouth fell slightly open, eyes widening comically.

“What the hell?” she breathed.

I grinned and turned my head so my assistant, Millie, couldn’t see it.

Millie was a great assistant.

I didn’t think she had any idea what she was signing on for when I’d hired her, but now she ran the place like one well-oiled machine.

What she didn’t do well was people.

She was staring at Copper, blinking rapidly, and pretty much making a fool out of herself.

Unable to stand it anymore, I said, “Thanks, Millie.”

Millie’s head whipped toward me and she mouthed, “Who is this?”

I grinned. “Millie, I’d like you to meet my brother, Copper. The new CEO of Castanon Enterprises. Copper, this is Millicent McDaniel, the best assistant to the CEO anyone could ever dream of. I pay her a hefty amount of money to pretty much run the day-to-day business and be my right-hand woman. When things go wrong, they call her. When decisions need to be made, she delegates and then decides who gets to contact me. Which, thankfully, is not that many people because Millie is so great at what she does.”

Millie’s face went flushed.

I grinned and said, “Is everyone here, Millie?”

“Y-Yes,” she stuttered. “Good luck.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “This time, I don’t think I’ll need it.”

The problem with being a woman in a male dominated field, and a woman that was superior to said males, was I caught a lot of shit.

Most of the men on the board didn’t think that I should be there—and they were probably right. I shouldn’t.

I didn’t have the knowledge, the know-how, or the desire to be there.

Yet, I was there. And they had to fuckin’ deal.

“What was that supposed to mean?” he asked as he caught my arm before I could enter the boardroom.

“Wait outside for a bit and listen from the open door,” I suggested. “You’ll see.”

He hung back as I made my way inside.

Every last one of the men in the room sneered at my outfit.

All of them thought it was inappropriate for me to dress in my scrubs for the day (because most of the time I worked after these meetings) and never lost a chance to tell me how inappropriate they thought I was being.

“Ahh, Ms. Clayborne,” one of my least favorites drawled from his position at the opposite side of the room. At the head of the table, might I add. “It’s nice of you to finally join us. And dressed so well.”

The condescension dripping from his tone made me want to launch myself across the table and maim him with my fingernails.

But I was better than that.

Most of the time.

I wished I could fire his ass.

Marcellus Lynch, head of accounting, and the biggest pain in my ass that there ever was.

Copper’d heard enough after just one comment and came through the door.

The second biggest pain in my ass, Martin Palmer, stiffened in his seat.

Why?

Because they all knew what it meant when Copper came back into the fold—and they all knew him because he’d once been a staple here, even at seventeen.

He’d done a lot of growing up over the years.

Copper wasn’t the sweet teenager he’d once been.

In that teenager’s place was a man that looked frightening as hell and ate board members for breakfast.

Copper’s t-shirt stretched as he reached out and pulled a chair back for me to sit down on.

I did, not caring that it wasn’t at the head, but at the right of the head.

Once seated, Copper took the seat at the head of the table and then leaned back in the chair as if he’d done it a hundred times before.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Lynch asked, looking frantic.

He was nervous.

Good.

“I think by seeing me here, Lynch, that you can use deductive reasoning to spell it out for you,” Copper drawled. “Now, let’s get started. Who goes first?”

“You are not CEO of this company,” Martin Palmer said, sneering. “We don’t have to answer your questions.”

“Not yet, no,” Copper agreed. “In fact, I think we’ll keep Keely as the CEO for now. I’ll be the assistant CEO.”

I nearly groaned.

Just when I thought that I was getting out of this hellhole…

“That’s not how this works.” Martin Palmer’s jowls shook as he stood up, his manicured hands fisting on either side of his personalized custom leather notebook. “There is a line of checks and balances, and you have not been voted…”

“Martin, does your wife know that you liked to fuck teen girls when you go on your overseas trips?” Copper asked curiously.

Martin paled.

“And you, Scroggins.” Copper turned to the man that was clearly mad, but not willing to stand up and confront Copper. “Are you willing to vote against me when I know that your daughter is in deep with a cartel leader in Nicaragua? How would your family, the straight-laced law enforcement that they are, feel knowing that you not only condone the relationship, but helped set them up?”

Scroggins’ eyes went wide.

“Beaufort,” Copper continued. “What was it that I learned last month? That baby that your wife and you had last year. Wasn’t it with your mistress? Not your surrogate?”

Beaufort went from his usually tanned self to a much paler version. “How…”

“I’ve had a lot of years to look into all of this,” he said. “I have something on each and every one of you. I’ve made sure to have so much dirt, that even if you find a way out of what I just shared, I have just as much, if not more in the wings, ready to go. You fight me on this appointment, and I’ll ruin each and every one of you.”

“Why are you doing this?” Palmer raised his voice.

“Because you all stood by and let Pettigrew fuck us all over,” he revealed. “You forced my granddad to waste his life savings to fight y’all in court. You fought and you made our lives a living hell. Me especially.” He narrowed his eyes, leveling each and every one of them a scathing look before he went on. “I deserve this. I want this. You will sell me all of your shares, and by sell, I mean give. You will get the fuck out of our lives. You will stay so far out of our sight that we forget you exist. And god help you if you decide to fight this, because I’m angry, motherfuckers. I’m so fucking angry that I’m willing to take every one of you down with me if I have to. Don’t. Test. Me.”

I was so proud of my brother that I could scream.

This was what I’d been waiting for.

For the last six years that I’d been playing this game, I’d hoped and prayed that this day would come.

Now that it was finally here…

Euphoric.

That was how I was feeling in that moment.

My brother dropped me off at work with a promise that he would be back to pick me up in the morning once I got off.

I handed him my keys without asking why he couldn’t use his bike and said, “I know that your place is furnished and all, but there are renters in it. We can kick them out after we give them notice, but they’re good people. I would hate to kick them out without giving them ample time to move first.”

He shook his head. “Don’t kick ’em out just yet. I don’t mind staying with you until I figure it all out.”

I winced. “Don’t read my mail.”

His brows rose as I started gathering my things, and I quickly looked away.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“Just…” I hesitated, then deflated. “I’m fairly sure that I got a vacate the premises letter this morning, but I never got a chance to open it because I got a call from Cutter to come pick you up.”

He sighed.

“I thought you’d paid three years in advance?” he asked.

“I did, which locked me in with that lower price, but business is booming in downtown Dallas, and they can get three times that amount now than I originally paid. They want their apartment back and know I’m not willing to pay the extra bullshit price they’re going to set.” I gathered my belongings. “Just…don’t open it, okay?”

“I won’t,” he lied.

We both knew he’d open it.

My brothers were so damn nosy.

I might’ve had better luck not telling him about the mail at all, but they’d always been so into everything of mine that it’d been near impossible to hide anything from them.

“There’s cash in the drawer beside my microwave,” I said. “And there’s an extra card for my checking account with it. Feel free to use it.”

He pulled me in and placed a kiss on the side of my head. “I love you, kid.”

I winked at him. “Not a kid anymore, Copper.”

I immediately regretted the words because his face fell as he said, “Yeah. I know. I missed a lot.”

Feeling the lowest of low, I got out and headed inside.

Dorie met me at the door as she walked up from the side of the building where she must’ve scored a good parking spot or she walked to work again.

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “Is it completely stupid to walk around in the middle of the bad parts of Dallas and expect to make it home safely?”

I looked at her curiously as I said, “For a boy? You’d probably be just fine. For you or me? No. I’d never be that unsafe.”

She blew out a breath. “You’re killing me. This is an ongoing fight between my boyfriend and me.”

The rest of the night was spent debating whether a woman who was strong like us could stand a chance against a determined male attacker.

Me? I’d said hell no.

Her? She’d said that both of us could fight off anyone we wanted.

We agreed to disagree.

For Christmas this year, I want my back to stop hurting.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

Being the right-hand man of a Bratva pakhan should be a lot harder than it was, but it seemed my brother’s enemies were behaving themselves. Meaning, I was bored.

Which had to be why I looked into the cameras I’d set up at her place.

When I’d first seen the man in her apartment, I’d nearly lost my shit.

But, after the phone call I’d heard between him and another man, I’d realized that the man in her place was related to her.

Oh, and she was about to lose her apartment.

According to the brother, the apartment’s owner had raised rent on her to the point where it would be near impossible for her to renew her lease.

That’s when I got into my computer and started tapping away, finding her apartment’s owners—which hilariously enough was a sister company to the one that I’d found out that she was the CE-fucking-O of.

The woman was all over the place, that was for sure.

After finding the right documents, I went through a few more channels and shared the information with her brother.

Oh, and by the way, the brother was newly released from prison, according to the words that’d come out of his mouth earlier.

Another fun fact I’d found out was that this Keely wasn’t just some random woman.

She was the sister of the brother that had just married my own sister.

How I’d missed that the first time that I’d met her, I didn’t know.

What I did know was that things were about to get very interesting.

One, she knew my face.

Two, eventually she’d put two and two together and figure out who I was—who I was related to.

Three, she might or might not lose her shit on me.

I couldn’t fuckin’ wait for that day.

I switched from the camera views at her apartment to the camera view of her at work and smiled.

When I was younger, I took college courses that were all over the place.

College was boring for me. I didn’t like all the courses that they wanted you to take to get that degree. I liked to hop around and get information from everywhere. I took a language arts course and immediately dropped out because it wasn’t something that I was looking for. Now, all the criminology classes were entertaining.

I’d learned about everything under the sun, and had I cared, I could’ve graduated with a degree in criminology.

But I hadn’t cared enough to do that.

As I glided through the camera views, I thanked my lucky stars, and Lev, my brother’s tech guy, for teaching me everything that I needed to know.

When I’d met Lev, I’d been intrigued by his computer skills, and I’d all but immersed myself into his life whether he wanted me there or not.

Once he knew that I wasn’t going to just go away, he’d taken me under his wing and shown me everything he knew, teaching me how to hack with the best of them.

Sure, I wasn’t as skilled as Lev, or even the Truth Teller’s MC computer genius, Apollo, but I could get by.

With those skills, I’d hacked into everything known to man that I could to get more information on Tequila ‘Keely’ Clayborne.

I knew her birthday, her birthplace, her credit score and her social media accounts. I knew everything—even the bad stuff that made me want to dig a man up and set his bones on fire.

I also knew that there was an issue with another man in prison—the same one that her brother had just gotten out of.

Tapping my fingers along the base of the keyboard, I idly wondered how hard it would be to kill a man in prison.

Probably not all that hard.

They got to go outside in the yard for some fresh air and sunlight, didn’t they?

I could probably kill him there…

“…You are not stronger than a man, Dorie,” I heard my woman say.

My woman.

Jesus, I was fucked in the head if I saw her as my woman and we’d had no other communication other than possibly fifteen words in a back alley behind a sex club.

“I probably am!” she stated emphatically. “At least some men.”

Keely looked toward the woman who had her back to her and shook her head, as if she seriously couldn’t fathom how crazy in the head her friend actually was.

“No, but seriously. I really am,” the woman, also known as Doris Patterson, which was shortened to Dorie, maintained. “You are, too.”

I snorted.

Dorie and Keely had about six inches separating them in height, and from what I guessed, twenty-five pounds. Though it looked like Keely worked out—and her credit card statement showed that she paid for a gym membership—she was a little bit of a thing.

Short and grumpy at first sight, she reminded me of a squirrel that could go rabid and crazy in a blink of an eye.

Dorie, on the other hand, did look like she spent a lot of time in the gym. She looked like she was strong, but she wasn’t stronger than a man. Some men might think twice about trying anything with her, but they certainly would get her on the ground if they truly wanted to.

I wasn’t saying that strength and appearance didn’t deter some individuals, but there were a lot of crazy people out there, and sometimes their determination outweighed their common sense.

“Again, friend, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one,” Keely said. “Do you have the sleep results for Richard Morgan?”

Dorie rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll prove it to you.”

“You’ll prove what to me?” Keely asked.

“That you’re strong,” she said.

Keely sighed. “Okay, then.”

I narrowed my eyes, not liking the look of determination in Dorie’s eyes.

But Dorie seemed to release whatever determination that she was feeling because she started talking about sleep results, this week’s work schedule, and anything else under the sun that she could babble about.

By the end of the night I knew Keely’s next two weeks’ schedule, her favorite Thai place, and where she wanted to go on vacation next year.

Which was, apparently, something that she did every year by herself.

My phone rang in my hand as I was about to look up places to hike in Hawaii.

My brother’s name flashed across the screen, and I sighed long and loud.

I answered a few rings later and said, “Hello?”

“Hey,” Shasha said. “I need a favor.”

“The babysitting kind?” I asked hopefully.

I loved Shasha’s kids.

“No.” He didn’t say anything more on the subject. “Meet me at my office in town.”

I looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s barely after one in the morning. It can’t wait?”

“Not this time,” he said.

I sighed and grabbed my rifle case out of the safe, then loaded it up before heading out the door.

When I got to Shasha’s office, he was the only one there.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as soon as I was in his office.

“Multiple things.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You remember that bill that they’re trying to force through?”

The bill he was referencing was one on organized crime that a certain senator—the one that’d tried to kill Shasha’s wife—had introduced. Essentially, the bill that was proposed was one that would give the government free rein of our financials, businesses, and anything else they think might be related to our ‘organized crime.’

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“The bill was killed before it could get any further,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah.” His cheek twitched. “Only, now they’re saying that I blackmailed them into dropping the bill. That I paid off lobbyists and made them too scared.”

“Well…” I hesitated. “Did you?”

“Well, yeah.” He sighed. “I just don’t want to deal with them shining a microscope on my life again. That’s partially why I encouraged Cutter to marry Milena. More connections means it’s harder for them to pinpoint where to start with their investigating.”

“What exactly do you need me to do?” I asked finally.

“Meet with someone at the prison,” he said. “The one that Copper just got out of. He suggested we talk to his buddy, Slim, who has some information we might find interesting. But I can’t go today because it’s Vivi’s dance recital.”

I didn’t bother arguing.

This worked out well seeing as now I’d have a legitimate excuse to be there. If someone happened to die while I was there, that’s even better…

“I’ll head there around eight in the morning,” I said. “Gets me there at ten for visitation time.”

“Thanks,” he said. “And if you get a feeling that he’s blowing smoke out of his ass, you don’t have to stay.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll get whatever he has, then we can sort through it when I get back later. What time will you be done today?”

“The dance recital is at two. So maybe three-thirty-ish.”

I thought about that for a long moment before saying, “I think I might stay down there. I have a buddy that got out a little bit before me that I want to check on.”

I did have a buddy near the prison, so I wasn’t exactly lying.

But I needed the excuse and was interested in having a rock-solid alibi.

Luckily, that buddy owed me a huge favor, not to say that he would care if I’d gone to kill a prisoner that’d hurt someone I knew. He was a good guy, and a solid citizen. But he wasn’t tolerant of men that abused women.

He’d cover for me.

Plus, I needed to do a little recon.

If I wasn’t super lucky that he’d be out today in the yard, I’d have to stay a few days to get his routine memorized and do what needed to be done.

But I had full trust in myself.

I’d figure out a way for that motherfucker not to exist, even if I had to sneak into the damn prison to do it myself.

I hate when I lose things at work. Like my favorite pen or my will to live.

—Keely to Cutter

KEELY

I grinned when I saw my brothers—all three of them—in my kitchen cooking.

Cutter’s wife, Milena, was absent, and I wondered if she was working today.

She’d had a soft opening for her coffee shop—a place that she’d had built that connected to her sister’s bakery—last week, and the hard opening was set for this Friday.

It was possible that she was busy getting stuff ready for that or going into work even though she wasn’t supposed to.

In the time that I’d known Milena Semyonov, I’d come to think of her as a good friend—and a great sister-in-law to have. However, she seemed a little bit hyper-fixated on work, as if her entire life, her personality, was what she’d accomplished.

That was why I thought I was crazy in the head.

I didn’t have that kind of drive—at least not when it came to work.

I wanted to experience life. I wanted to spend time at the beach every spring, and the mountains in the summer. I wanted to get married, stay at home, and raise my family. I wanted to raise chickens and ducks and have a single mini cow that danced in the morning when I brought him food.

I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom with a husband that wanted to spoil me.

Was that too freakin’ much to ask?

“Hey there, sister,” Chevy said as he backed away from the counter and saw me. “What’s your poison?”

I looked at the eggs that were being made and said, “Over hard.”

“Gross.” Chevy rolled his eyes.

“What’s gross is the thick yolk that makes a mess and doesn’t even taste good,” I countered, lying through my teeth because I liked all kinds of eggs now except scrambled.

“If you say so,” Chevy rolled his eyes. “We paid your rent for the next month. Also, you got a notice in the mail that your rent is back to what you’d expect. No more rent hike. Also, did you know that Castanon Enterprises owns this place?”

My mouth dropped. “We do?”

“We do,” Copper said, turning around with my over-hard eggs. “And it’s so well hidden, buried so deep in legal mumbo jumbo, that it would’ve been impossible to find had someone not brought the information to our attention.”

My brows rose at that.

“Actually, I don’t know. I just got an anonymous email with the information in it this morning,” he continued.

A flash of insight hit me. Another person that’d sent me an anonymous email came to mind.

But I immediately blocked off that train of thought.

It wouldn’t do for me to think about such things.

Even worse, I was so hyper-fixated on this man that thinking about him only gave him power.

And I would not condone his actions.

I would not.

Even if I wanted him to repeat his actions over and over again on me.

How sick in the head did that make me?

“What are you over there thinking about so hard?”

I glanced at Cutter and said, “Just the usual, I guess. Work. What I’m eating for lunch today.”

The lie slipped off my tongue so easily that Cutter didn’t suspect a thing.

I’d been lying to them for years, though. I’d perfected the art of lying.

They couldn’t spot a lie on me from a foot away anymore.

Cutter nodded. “Actually, I was going to ask if you had any problem with me borrowing your SUV today. All of us can’t fit in my truck comfortably, and we’re going to head to Fort Worth and spend the day doing brotherly things.”

I was already nodding my head as I said, “Sure. As long as you leave me your truck.”

Cutter rolled his eyes and said, “Of course. But please try not to hit any more curbs. Those dings on my rims aren’t attractive.”

“You let your wife drive your truck,” I pointed out.

“But she’s yet to smash it into any curbs. Plus, if she did, she’d give stellar…”

I held up my hand, unable to process him talking about his wife and dick in the same sentence.

Luckily, I was saved by the bell.

I headed to the door and found Cutter’s brother-in-law on the other side.

“Hey, Shasha,” I greeted him as I stepped back. “I’m assuming you’re here for my brothers?”

“Kind of,” he said in his deep, melodic tone.

There was something intrinsically familiar about it that hit something deep inside my chest.

Something that I’d kept buried for a week now…

I looked away from Shasha and gestured to the room beyond. “They’re in here.”

I didn’t bother to ask how he’d known they were here.

Either one of them told him, or he used his top secret spy skills to find out.

Either way, I was better off keeping my opinions to myself.

Shasha didn’t seem like the type of man that would indulge me and my smart mouth.

He was, quite frankly, scary as fuck.

Though he was nice when I’d met him at Cutter and Milena’s place, he didn’t strike me as the type of man to allow disrespect.

“What are you doing here, Shasha?” Cutter asked. “Is Milena okay?”

The worry in my brother’s tone had my heart constricting.

“She’s fine,” he promised. “At least, from what I know of. I haven’t had any reports that she wasn’t. I’m here for a different reason.”

Then his eyes focused back on me, and I felt something start to flutter in my chest.

“Is it about me?” I asked, surprised to have his entire focus on me.

It was disconcerting.

I didn’t know whether to look him in the eyes or not.

And I certainly didn’t know what more to say.

“Yes and no,” he looked away and focused on my brothers, allowing me to draw a full breath.

“What’s going on?” All three of them turned to survey Shasha.

And, showing the type of man he was, Shasha didn’t flinch when he saw he had all three’s attentions.

Nor did he back off or flinch as I’d seen so many other men do.

“Have you watched the news at all today?” he asked.

The four of us shook our heads.

“Allow me.” He gestured to the TV. “Pick a station.”

Cutter grabbed the closest remote, which happened to be the one that controlled the television in the kitchen—why I had one in the kitchen, I didn’t know. But my brothers spent a lot of time here, and they’d been the ones to install it, even though the living room wasn’t too far away, and would’ve worked just as well.

He flipped the television to a news station and froze.

“…Police and FBI are investigating the assassination. Alexander Pettigrew was a former aide for one of the top real estate companies in the country. He went to prison for raping a nineteen-year-old…”

Cutter muted the TV and turned to me.

I stood there, mouth open in surprise, and stared at the screen as the newscaster continued to talk.

I read the subtitles, and figured out that early this morning, when Alexander Pettigrew had been let out in the “yard” to get some free time, he’d been shot by a sniper.

One shot, one kill.

The guy had been dead in seconds.

Plus, from what the newscasters said, his head had exploded on impact and sprayed in a six-foot arc all around him.

The smile that grew on my face was nothing short of euphoric.

“Well, hot damn,” I breathed. “There are miracles.”

I pulled my gaze away from the TV and studied the men who remained quiet.

“What?” I asked.

“This feels too good to be true,” Copper said. “Why now? Are they trying to implicate me for the shooting?”

“Why would you think that?” I asked.

“Because we had a beef in that prison. And all of a sudden I’m out and oh, whoops. He gets shot?” Copper shook his head. “This isn’t good.”

“About that…” Shasha turned to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you know my brother, Dima, at all?” he asked. “I know that y’all weren’t there at the same time as each other when we all met as Cutter and Milena were set to be married last month, but…”

I was already shaking my head. “I can’t say that I do.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“Why do you ask?” I wondered.

Cutter’s, Copper’s, and Chevy’s eyes were also on Shasha.

“Why do you ask?” Copper asked carefully when Shasha didn’t reply fast enough for his liking.

“It’s just that…” He shook his head, his eyes going around my apartment. “How secure is this place?”

“Secure,” Cutter said at the same time Copper said, “Very. I checked it out myself when I got here.”

Shasha looked like he struggled with some thoughts for a long moment before saying, “I’m trusting you with my brother’s life here.”

“Okay…” I hesitated. “Why?”

“Because if who took that shot is who I think it is, you could incriminate him,” Shasha explained.

“Why do you think it’s your brother?” Copper asked.

“That’s the thing,” Shasha admitted. “I feel like he’d have only done that if she meant something to him.”

Shock tore through me.

“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To ask how we know each other?”

“Partially,” he admitted. “But also, I wanted to talk about some of the information I sent Dima up there to get.”

I looked at my brothers. “In that case, I’m headed to bed. I’m too tired to listen in on this one. Also, no, I’ve never met your brother. But if he did kill Alexander Pettigrew, I’m eternally grateful. And I’ll also name my first kid after him.”

Shasha’s lips twitched. “There are very few people in the world that could’ve taken that kind of shot. Even less that would’ve been in the area. If my brother didn’t do it, it would be too coincidental that he’s there at the same time as another trained sniper. Anyway, his name is Dima Semyonov. You’ll know him when you see him.”

With that cryptic comment, I left the men alone to do what they would, forgoing the breakfast that they were cooking.

I’d eat later…when my excitement at the thought of Alexander Pettigrew being dead wasn’t riding me so hard.

I used to be sorry for everything, but not anymore. I wish I acted worse.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

I listened to my brother and Keely’s brothers talk for an hour as I drove back home.

I’d intended to stay in the area a little bit longer to sell the lie I’d given to Shasha, but found myself unable to concentrate being that far away from Keely.

When I arrived home an hour later, the brothers had left the apartment, Shasha had gone to work, and Keely was sound asleep in bed, a small smile on her face.

I replayed her excitement from earlier at hearing that Pettigrew was dead.

Excitement would be too small of a word, really.

She was euphoric.

Overjoyed.

Which made me feel like I was on top of the world.

Not that she would ever know that it was me.

Sure, Shasha had told them that the coincidences were there, but they didn’t have confirmation.

I wasn’t sure that I’d ever give her confirmation.

The less she knew, the better.

And not because I didn’t want her to know, but because it’d keep her safer in the end.

My house was dark and quiet by the time that I pulled into my garage and shut the door behind me.

It was always dark and quiet, but there was something off by the time I made it inside and shut the door.

Someone had been in my home and…cooked.

I rolled my eyes at the cinnamon rolls on my counter.

I moved closer so I could read the note that was set beside them.

Dima,

Vivi wanted to make these for you, and she forced me to make them in your oven so your house would smell good. Hope I didn’t overstep.

Brecken

I sighed.

Milena, Nastya, Vivi and now Brecken.

I really needed to get a better system.

Or, possibly, lock my doors.

Not that that would matter, seeing as they all had keys.

Taking one of the middle cinnamon rolls, I shoved half of it in my mouth while I headed for the shower.

I hadn’t stayed with my friend.

I’d moved positions and watched the drama unfold.

Cops and FBI agents had swarmed the location, locking everything down and pretty much forcing their way into businesses and homes to ask who’d seen anything.

None of them had, according to the news and police bands.

Once I was sure that I’d been careful enough, I headed out and hadn’t found a place to stop for a shower in twenty-four hours.

I needed a shower and sleep, fast.

After shoving the last of the roll in my mouth, I took a quick, scalding hot shower at the temperature that I noticed my girl liked to keep her water on—yes, I’d tested the temperature of her apartment’s shower when she turned the water on exactly where she liked it.

Though the water burned my skin off, I quickly acclimated enough to speed through my shower.

I did feel a lot cleaner at the temperature of hell than I did at my usual temperature, though.

I had to laugh at the scald marks on my chest and back and went to bed completely naked a couple of minutes later.

When I next opened my eyes, it was twilight, and I reached for my phone to check out the cameras.

Keely didn’t work today, but she did have plans with her friend, Dorie, again at her apartment.

I’d scoped out the place by asking Lev to get me access to the traffic cams on that street and found that the apartment Dorie and her boyfriend lived in was in the less desirable part of town.

Last night when I was reviewing the footage, I decided that I agreed with Dorie’s boyfriend.

Her walking alone at night in that seedy part of town worried even me, and I had nothing to do with her. I’d seen no less than five crackheads follow her movements the entire way home. I was sure that her boyfriend freaked out when he found out that she walked alone to work through those dangerous streets.

He had a reason to be worried, and if Dorie couldn’t see that, she was dumb. Inconsiderate and dumb.

After an hour playing on my phone and computer, I was able to access the cameras that were set up outside the apartment’s main doors.

Sure, it would’ve taken less time if I’d asked Lev to do it, but I had to be careful what I asked of him because he would certainly ask questions. And eventually, those questions would make their way back to my brother, who would in turn have more questions.

I watched for her to show up for what felt like forever, going from camera angle to camera angle, until finally I spotted her parking her car a couple blocks away from Dorie’s place.

I followed her movements until she made it to her friend’s place and disappeared inside.

Then the waiting game began, and I had to sit on my hands and wait to see her again.

Except…something was telling me that I should go there and observe in person…just in case.

An hour later I climbed up the fire escapes until I reached the one for Dorie and her boyfriend.

When I got there, I took a seat on the padded bench outside and looked in, making sure to keep myself in the shadows.

There she was, flesh and blood, laughing at a joke that another one of her friends—two that I hadn’t known would be there and didn’t know their names—had just told.

I shifted in my seat and Keely’s head snapped up to look out the sliding door.

I knew she couldn’t see me.

But she was staring at me like she knew that I was there.

Her eyes narrowed, as if she was trying to see through the darkness.

But she gave up when her friend touched her arm and started to talk to her about work.

The only reason that I heard half of what was being discussed was due to the kitchen window over the sink being open.

“Did you hear about Dr. McCinnish?”

I saw the moment that the friend had her full attention. “What about him?”

“Well, from what I understand, he had a heart attack at work the other day. How have you not heard that?” she asked.

“Kara,” Keely said, getting me her friend’s name. “Seriously. They never mentioned it once at work. Wouldn’t you think the other doctors would have?”

Kara shrugged. “He was unliked. He also lay there for hours until one of the patients woke up from their sleep study since he wasn’t there to wake them.”

“Are you saying it happened on the day that we left early, because he told us to, and no one told us?” Dorie asked in a slightly raised voice.

“I guess.” Kara snorted. “I say good riddance. That guy was a creep and an asshole. Two very awful combinations when it comes to personalities. I hated working with him.”

“You’re not lying.” Keely gave an exaggerated shiver. “There was this one time that I was in the middle of working with this kid, and I felt like he was super, duper asleep. To the point where it was unnatural. When I went in there to check to make sure his monitors were all connected correctly, he pretty much cornered me in the hall outside their room and told me to butt out. But the way he did it,” she sighed. “I’ve never been alone with him since.”

“There was this one time I caught him taking some pills that looked an awful lot like pain medication. I asked him if he was hurt, and he got this really weird look and said that he’d ‘sprained his ankle.’ But he definitely wasn’t limping,” Dorie said, then elbowed her boyfriend. “Hey, maybe we should cook those hot dogs.”

“I don’t really feel like cooking them on the grill,” he muttered. “How about I make them inside?”

“That’s fine, but they definitely taste better on the grill,” Dorie said, making her point known.

She wanted them grilled, and she wasn’t going to be happy with anything less.

I turned all the burners on high and didn’t bother to start it, listening as the gas escaped the propane tank.

I then got up and unscrewed the lightbulb.

When I was finished, I sat back down and twisted slightly to the side so that when he came out he wouldn’t see me unless he was looking.

And he did come out about ten minutes later, a pack of hot dogs in his hand.

The door opened, and he flipped a switch inside only to curse.

“Hey, Dorie. Do we have any lightbulbs?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said. “That was on our list of things to get the next time we went to a home improvement store.”

“Shit,” he said. “Light’s out.”

“Use your phone.”

He did, shining the phone on the grill in front of him.

He started to twist the knob to turn it on, then cursed. “Hey, Dorie. We’re out of propane.”

“How?” she cried. “We just got some like two weeks ago.”

“The knobs were left on.” He tried to light the grill and nothing happened.

I smirked as he went back inside and shut the door.

For the next two hours I listened to them talk and Keely pretty much add in her two cents every once in a while.

After observing her over the last two weeks or so, I’d realized that she was a pretty quiet and reserved person. When she felt passionately about something, she was quite a bit more animated. But mostly, she stayed to herself and didn’t say all that much.

But when she did speak, what she said held substance.

I liked that she didn’t feel the need to add a lot of mindless commentary like her friends.

Every once in a while, I’d find her staring out into the darkness at me, but she never made a move toward me, always pulled back into conversations by her work friends.

By the time that the night had ended, I was more than ready to go home.

Dorie had worn on my last nerve, and I’d realized about two minutes into the night that Cutter had done a good job leaving her ass behind.

It was good to know that my brother-in-law had a brain in that thick skull of his.

“I’ll walk Kara down,” Dorie’s boyfriend, Michel, said as he got up.

A look passed between Dorie and Michel that had my eyes narrowing.

“Oh, I’m gonna go ahead and go…” Keely trailed off when Dorie said, “Wait. Could you come look at this in my room?”

I frowned and waited for Michel and Kara to leave before heading into the kitchen to get a better listen.

“…Wanted you to look at my new scrubs. They’re fantastic. Feel the fabric,” Dorie said.

“They are very nice,” Keely agreed. “Did you get them online?”

“Yeah,” she said. “These are a size too small for me, and they’re going to charge me fifteen dollars to send them back, so I was wondering if you wanted to keep them.”

“Sure, I’d love to,” Keely said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dorie said as she came out of her room, Keely on her heels with a pair of what had to be the scrubs in her hands.

I disappeared back outside, closing the sliding glass door almost soundlessly behind me, and started making my way down the fire escape.

It must’ve taken me a bit longer than I’d thought because by the time I’d gotten to the other side of the building, Keely was already downstairs and walking to her car.

Anger rose up inside of me that Michel would walk Kara to her car, but not do the same for Keely.

I’d just taken a step in Keely’s direction when she passed an alley two away from the one I’d just come out of.

I watched in horror as a man came out of the shadows and wrapped Keely up in his arms and lifted her off of her feet.

Keely didn’t have time to even scream as she was pulled into a dark alley with the man’s hand wrapped around her mouth.

Keely fought hard, but like she’d been telling Dorie, she was no match for a man that wanted to take her and hurt her.

I started running before I realized I was even moving, making it to the alley in time to hear a scuffle.

I pulled out my gun, took aim at the only thing that was available, and fired.

The man holding Keely fell to the ground in pain, clutching his leg. Meanwhile, I walked right up to Keely and pulled her into my arms.

She was shaking like a leaf and frozen in fright.

“Oh my god!” Dorie cried out. “Michel!”

I backed away as Dorie came around the corner and screamed when she saw…

Yep, that was Michel on the fucking ground.

What in the actual fuck?

“What did you do?” she screeched, dropping to her knees next to her bleeding man.

“What did I do?” I laughed. “I saved a woman that was getting kidnapped. What any normal, run-of-the-mill, red-blooded man would do.”

“He was just playing a joke!” she cried out.

“Fuck!” Michel cried. “What the fuck, man?”

“What the fuck?” I asked, anger starting to take root in my soul. “What, exactly, did y’all think was going to happen?”

“I didn’t think he’d get shot!” Dorie cried as she put pressure on the wound in her boyfriend’s lower leg.

I snorted. “Well, now you know.”

“You are going to jail, buddy!” She pointed at me.

“No.” I laughed darkly. “I’m not.”

“You are!” she cried.

And since she couldn’t see me clearly due to the darkness and shadows, I disappeared with Keely in my arms.

Once I had her safely ensconced in my truck, the heater running despite it being fuckin’ eighty out, I went back to the scene of the crime.

I could hear sirens blaring in the distance as I walked back into the alley.

When I saw the phone lit up beside her bleeding man, I stomped on it and then bent down so that my face was inches from hers.

Before she could react, I wrapped my arms around her and allowed her to struggle.

I allowed this for several long seconds until her man started to realize what was happening.

When he began to crawl toward me, I said, “You’ll say that this was a random accident and you don’t know who did it. You’d just walked your friend to her car and got shot. You don’t tell them why or how. You don’t tell them anything about the girl that I saved. In the meantime, I don’t fuck your life up so spectacularly that you won’t know how to live.”

There was silence as Dorie kept struggling.

When I’d finally proven my point, I let her go, allowing her to drop to the ground. She hit hard since her knees were in the air, her ass hitting concrete with a crack.

“What the fuck!” Dorie cried out, lunging for me.

I lifted my boot, placing it square on her chest, and pushed her back down to the ground.

“Let’s get something clear,” I asserted. “You’re not stronger than a man. There are only a few very specific women in this world that are, and whatever stunt you pulled tonight to prove that you were one of them backfired. Learn from your mistakes and stop making your boyfriend worry about you because you’re a dumbass.”

With that, I left, not looking back.

The sirens got closer, and I passed a cop that was hauling ass toward the two idiots before I got to my truck.

Getting inside, I glanced over at Keely and saw her still withdrawn into herself.

So I did the smart thing and took her to my place.

Yep, definitely the smart thing.

Not only do I dance like nobody is watching, but I also drink like I don’t work in the morning.

—Text from Keely to Cutter

KEELY

I was lost in my own thoughts, concentrating on what I was going to do when I got home, when two arms wrapped around me.

I tried to struggle at first, but I knew it was no use.

The conversation that I’d had with Dorie literally a couple of hours ago sprang to my mind as I continued to struggle and failed.

“I’m just as strong as a man,” Dorie argued with her boyfriend, Michel.

Michel looked at her like she was crazy. “Baby, you’re not. You lift. You’re five-foot-nine, and you’re a hundred and seventy-five pounds. But you’re not stronger than me.”

“I am stronger than you,” she disagreed. “Walking home by myself, I can definitely protect myself.”

“Want to bet?” Michel asked her.

I rolled my eyes.

This was a constant fight with them.

Dorie felt like she was a badass and could protect herself if push came to shove.

Michel, however, didn’t feel that Dorie was capable of doing anything, let alone protecting herself.

I’d tried, and failed, to add in my two cents with Dorie.

She was dangerous, but not against other people, against herself.

She always walked home from the sleep center, which was in the middle of Dallas. We had homeless camping on every underpass within a ten-mile radius. We had criminals and gangs around every corner. And she had absolutely no care in the world.

She thought that she would be safe, no matter what, and she fought with Michel all the time about it, who just wanted to protect her and keep her safe.

Once I realized that I wasn’t going to break free, I started to freak out.

I cried and sobbed.

I couldn’t think straight.

All the shit from my childhood, from when my dad used to pin me down…

I just curled into a ball and cried.

My attacker let me go at some point.

A loud bang that would usually shock me back to reality only caused me to hiccup.

I was once again in someone’s arms, but these arms felt different.

Stronger. More firm.

But not intimidating.

I still cried—sobbed—but some innate sense of relief hit me as I was moved.

Warmth.

That’s what I felt as the overwhelming cold feeling started to thaw.

I don’t know how long that it lasted.

I did know that I was moved multiple times.

Softness encompassed my body as I was wrapped in something warm.

Then the soothing tones of someone speaking to me filled my senses.

The man’s voice was perfect.

Deep and raspy.

He talked to me about everything and nothing at the same time.

At one point, I guess my mind finally allowed me to come back online, and I came to wrapped in a blanket sitting in someone’s lap.

I froze, all crying ceased, and in a very careful voice, I said to the blanket that I was practically smothered in, “Who are you?”

“I’m guessing you already know,” he imparted.

I swallowed hard. “You’re Shasha’s brother.”

I heard him hum his approval. “Say my name.”

I swallowed hard. “Dima.”

“Good girl,” he crooned.

I shuddered in his arms and said, “How did you know?”

There was a long pause and then, “Do you want to know the safe answer, the one that won’t freak you out? Or do you want to know the real one?”

I thought about that long and hard for a few minutes before I said, “I don’t know.”

He slid his fingers up my back and asked, “How did you know it was me?”

I worried my lips for a few long seconds before I said, “Your brother. He came over after Pettigrew was assassinated and asked me if I knew you. When I said that I had never met you, and didn’t know anything about you, he let it go. But he did say that you were in the area on another errand for him. That day before I went to bed, I went to the email you sent with your health report and found your name in small print at the top.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide my identity from you…not really,” he admitted.

I stayed silent for so long that he must’ve thought I was asleep, because he stood up with me in his arms and walked on silent feet into his bedroom.

He laid me down on the bed, and went to move away, but I caught his hand, quickly clutching onto his wrist before saying, “Stay.”

He crawled into the bed with me, fully clothed, and curled himself around my body.

The next thing I remembered, I was waking up still wrapped up in the warm blanket, in a completely empty house.

I got up and used the restroom, then cursed when I saw the time.

It was well past noon, and I only had a few hours until my shift.

But the thought of going to work…it sounded awful.

Like the worst idea ever.

Which was why I called in sick.

The thought of working with Dorie right now…no.

I couldn’t do it today.

I was so freakin’ mad at her.

Her and her inability to see anything outside of her little bubble of delusion had wrecked me last night.

Maybe my brother had the right idea.

To cut her off.

But she was really one of my only friends.

To say that I wasn’t the most open of people would be an understatement.

But Dorie had proven, time and time again, that she wasn’t a very good friend. Last night had only cemented that fact.

I called my immediate boss and requested the night off. Then, I sent an email to the man that did scheduling and asked to be taken off all shifts with Dorie. If they couldn’t accommodate me, I’d be putting in my two weeks’ notice.

I received an email before I’d even finished in the bathroom that the request was granted, and from then on, no shifts would be given with Dorie. Nor would any of our shifts align in a way that we would have to see each other at all.

Once I was finished with my phone calls and snooping through Dima’s medicine cabinet in the bathroom—the man was a minimalist. He had deodorant, a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap in his medicine cabinet—I went in search of him in the rest of the house.

But, like I’d expected, I was completely alone.

There was, however, a note on the kitchen cabinet that said, “Had to watch my sister’s brats for a bit. I’m at Nastya’s if you want to come over.”

I contemplated heading over there, but felt like that would raise too many questions I didn’t have answers to at the moment.

So instead, I stole his truck and headed home.

Though, I wasn’t sure if you could call it stealing if the keys were on the hook.

If he didn’t want me to drive it, he wouldn’t have left the keys, right?

I pulled into my parking spot at my place, then called my brother for a ride before he headed into his shift at the hospital.

Chevy was an anesthesiologist that usually worked twelve-hour overnight shifts at the hospital.

Today was no different as he pulled up on his bike and came to a stop in front of my complex’s front doors.

“Why did you leave your car at Dorie’s place?” he asked.

“I caught a ride home from a friend,” I evaded.

It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough of one that he didn’t call me on a lie.

He zipped through the downtown streets of Dallas and arrived on Dorie’s block about fifteen minutes later.

We pulled to a stop in front of my car, and I got off the bike.

Kissing Chevy on the cheek, I said, “Thanks for the ride, brother bear.”

He rolled his eyes at the familiar nickname.

“Get in,” he grumbled.

I did, starting my car up and pulling out once he gave me enough room.

He followed me for a bit, then took the turn-off that would lead to the hospital, while I kept going straight. I pulled into the parking lot for Costco, then got out once I found a spot near the back of the lot.

I was showing the woman my membership card when I felt a presence beside me. As in, right up in my space.

And, let’s just say, this being Costco, I was used to my personal space being invaded.

But after yesterday, there was no way in hell I could deal with that invasion.

I opened my mouth, ready to get pissed the fuck off at someone invading my personal space but looked up to spot Dima with his hat pulled down low over his eyes.

I promptly closed my mouth tight and kept walking.

He didn’t say anything as he walked beside me, but he did add a few things to my cart when I looked at them but didn’t get them.

The first of which was a chocolate cake that was the size of Jesus’s love.

The second was a platter of sushi that I had no hope of getting through in a week, let alone the three days it said it was good until.

I didn’t say anything because I wanted them, and I had a feeling he’d be sharing them with me.

But when he pulled out a brisket the size of Texas itself, I said, “I have no clue how you think we’re going to be able to eat that, but I don’t have a stomach big enough for all of this.”

“The brisket is for tomorrow. I’ll cook it at my place and you can come over for dinner,” he suggested.

“Why not just go out to eat at a barbeque place and save the forty dollars?” I asked.

“Because brisket that I cook will be a hundred times better than anything you can get at any barbeque place in town,” he said. “How do you feel about naan?”

That was how our Costco trip went.

We got a lot of stuff that we didn’t need, and by the time that we were pulling up at the checkout line, the cashier asked if we were having a party.

It was me that said, “He has zero control.”

She eyed the man at my side and said, “I hate to tell you this, but that man looks like he has more control than the president.”

I snorted.

Dima said nothing.

And when the lady at the door checked our receipts, Dima placed himself behind me so that the asshole pushing his cart up to my ass couldn’t get any closer.

There were some whispered words, and when next I looked back, that guy had put about eight feet between us.

“People need to learn personal space,” he murmured quietly.

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “I’ve been saying that for years. I liked the time when social distancing was a thing because it allowed me to have six feet of space and no one complained at all.”

But I noticed as we walked that generally, everyone kept their distance.

So the key to people giving you space was obviously to have an intimidating man that looked like he could kill you with a flick of his finger at your side.

He helped me put my groceries into my trunk, then walked to his motorcycle that he’d squeezed between my parking space and the one next to me.

It wasn’t a Harley like my brothers’ bikes. It was a sleek, black, fast-looking number that looked like it could easily go two hundred miles an hour.

I backed out, and he followed suit, following me all the way home.

And let me tell you another benefit of having a tall, capable man at your side.

He could carry in a shit ton of groceries without breaking a sweat and didn’t complain when you took too long checking your mail.

After I had the mail in my hands, we took the stairs up three flights—another thing that he knew about me—him leading the way like he knew I was going to go that way.

Another little niggle at the back of my brain that said that I was being very carefully watched without my knowledge.

But there was a part of me that liked that he knew so much about me.

I liked that I didn’t have to tell him something.

I liked that he already knew that I was a little bit eccentric.

We put everything away except for the sushi, which he brought to the coffee table in my living room.

It was there that he queued up my favorite show and even went to the correct season I’d left off at the last time I’d been able to watch.

He pressed play, pointed at the chair directly in front of the television and said, “Sit. I’ll grab our drinks.”

He came back moments later with two sets of chopsticks, a water for him, and a glass of tea for me.

I took a sip and knew before the brew had hit my tongue that it would be the perfect way that I liked it.

And it was.

The blend of lemon and sweet tea was just how I would’ve made it myself.

I licked my lips when I was done, setting the glass down beside his water, and said, “How long have you been watching me?”

I hit pause on my show as he said, “Want it all?”

I licked my lips, then nodded.

“If I tell you, there’s no going back for me. Once you know…”

Once I knew, I’d have to be quiet about what I heard.

I kind of had an idea of what I would hear—IE him killing a man to protect me.

But what I got was so much more.

“I’ve been watching you for months,” he began. “Way before your brother and my sister met.”

I nodded.

“Shasha had an issue with the doctor that worked with you. McCinnish,” he continued. “He was drugging his patients…”

He then went on to explain all the bad things that the doctor had done in his time at our sleep center. From assault, to rape, to stealing. He’d done it all.

When he’d explained that he’d finished him off by making him look like he’d had a heart attack, I couldn’t find a single ounce of pity for McCinnish.

That part of me was broken—the one that felt sympathy for others when they’d experienced something horrendous.

I mean, sure, logically, I could sympathize with actual victims. But with men that hurt innocent people all for his own personal gain? No, I wasn’t ever going to feel bad about a man like that no longer living on this earth.

I hoped there was a special place in hell that he went and reaped what he’d sown.

While he’d spoken, Dima hadn’t once taken his eyes off of me.

“…and then I saw you,” he explained. “And I became…obsessed.”

I turned my full attention toward him. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?”

“You mean, you and me?” he asked.

I licked my lips and nodded.

“I’m not one hundred percent sure that I’m altogether sane anymore,” he admitted. “There’s something fundamentally broken inside of me. The United States government made sure of that. My gut says I got out too late.”

I leaned back in my seat and said, “Whatever is broken inside of me is drawn to that broken part in you.”

He picked up a piece of sushi with his chopsticks and said, “I have cameras in your place.”

I nodded. “I figured.”

“I followed you home multiple times,” he continued.

“I figured that, too.”

“I shot your friend’s boyfriend last night,” he confessed.

I blinked at him. “Really?”

“Really,” he replied. “He doesn’t know who I am or anything, but I’m sure it won’t take them very much to connect all the pieces if they see us together.”

“I’m done with her,” I admitted. “I can’t deal with that kind of stupidity anymore.”

He picked up another piece of sushi—my favorite—and handed it to me.

I took the whole piece into my mouth and chewed.

His eyes sparkled as he said, “I killed that man that hurt you when you were younger, too.”

I smiled then.

It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”

His eyes gleamed then. “I have it recorded.”

I barked out a laugh around another bite of sushi.

Food went everywhere.

He didn’t seem to care, only grabbing a piece of paper towel and wiping it all up into his palm before depositing it into the towel and folding it in quarters.

Once he was done, he said, “I don’t know that I should have kids. I’m violent, Keely.”

“I haven’t gotten that far into my thought process on us,” I told him honestly. “I’m just getting comfortable with an idea that there is an us, let alone an us and more.”

He nodded once. “Fair.”

“So what next?” I asked.

He held out another bite of sushi for me before saying, “Now we dance.”

I always offer to cook, not because I’m nice, but because I want the food to taste good.

—Keely to Dima

DIMA

Her eyes were confused for a bit before I stood up, hauled her off the couch, and made my way to her bedroom with her over my shoulder.

Her cute squeak of ‘eeeep!’ was enough to have me smiling as I made my way down her hall toward her bedroom.

I knew exactly how to get there, following the steps that I knew to take after I’d placed the cameras in her bedroom a few weeks ago.

She didn’t comment on the way I’d known where to go, nor did she say a word when I threw her down onto the bed and followed her onto the plush comforter.

When I went to a plank over her, my dog tags slipped out of my shirt and fell against her torso, the metal pooling on the middle of her chest right beneath her collar bones.

Her eyes were an intense shade of green as she stared up at me with anticipation.

“You know who I am,” I said as I leaned closer, my lips skimming a line along the apple of her cheek. “You should probably be telling me no right now.”

She snorted. “We both know that I’m not going to react normally, Dima,” she whispered. “I’m nervous, sure. I’m excited, absolutely yes. But I’m also a little bit crazy. So no, you won’t be getting a ‘no’ from me anytime soon.”

I leaned even closer, inhaling the scent of her between her throat and chin.

“This is about to get complicated,” I admitted. “Your brother’s married to my sister.”

“Maybe we just don’t tell them for a bit,” she teased.

“They’re going to know that something’s going on with us the first time they see us in the same room together, but I might be able to make it look like I hate you.” I chuckled.

She shivered as she leaned her head back, giving me more access to her throat.

I skimmed my tongue along the center, not stopping until I reached her lips, which I then devoured.

Only when we were both breathless did she say, “Let’s just be clear about one thing, though.”

Before I could pull back, she wrapped her hand around my dog tags and yanked.

I had no other choice but to move forward with them or risk them breaking.

She opened her mouth, and once again, I was kissing her silly.

When I pulled away, it was only far enough that I could rip her clothes off.

Her leggings hit the floor, followed shortly by her shirt, bra, panties and hair tie.

My pants, shirt, and underwear followed.

Only when she was completely naked did I roll us and pull her off the bed again.

Her naked body was plastered to mine as I moved us to the chair in front of the wall of windows in her bedroom.

“What do you do in this chair right here?” I asked as I sat us down, her plastered against me in my lap.

“I read,” she said.

“I haven’t seen you do that yet,” I mused. “Only throw clothes in it.”

She studied my face before saying, “I should be really freaked out that you have cameras in here.”

I tucked a lock of her brown hair behind her ear, and the curl popped right back out in front of her face.

“You should,” I agreed. “This is crazy behavior.”

“Crazy is my middle name,” she teased.

I pulled her naked body into my own, lifted her up just far enough that I could notch my cock at her entrance, and pulled her down using my grip around her waist.

She cried out, her eyes wild, as I filled her.

“Dima!”

My eyes closed as I savored her sweet heat around my cock.

“You are so tight,” I croaked.

She pulled away from me, leaning back by using her hands on my knees to circle her hips.

A smile lit her lips as she pulled a groan from my mouth.

“You are just big,” she breathed as she threw her head back and started to do a slow back and forth in my lap.

Movement out of the corner of my eye had me catching her hips and stilling them.

She groaned and righted herself, her eyes heavy, as she followed my gaze.

“Oh.” She paused as she caught sight of the window washers that’d appeared at the glass above us. “I forgot they were going to be here today.”

“They inform you when they’re coming?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She licked her lips. “So we don’t get caught having sex while they’re here.”

I grinned wickedly at her as I said, “They’ll get the show of their life today, then.”

“What…”

The window washer’s legs started to lower, and the ropes started to come down, and I caught the blanket off the end of the bed and yanked it to me.

I didn’t mind him knowing what we were doing, but I didn’t want him getting a perfect view of it, either.

The small blanket I tossed around our hips was practically see through, but she started to move before I could search for another one.

I tightened my hands around her hips and let my head fall back on the chair’s back, unable to stop myself from fucking her.

My hips drove up as my hands pulled her down.

The sound of our hips slapping filled the silent room just before the sound of rubber hitting glass followed.

My eyes snapped open as I looked through Keely’s crazy, curly hair to see the window washers on her room’s windows.

I knew they knew we were there, too.

Neither one of them tried at all to act like they weren’t watching, and some irrational urge goaded me to pull my gun out and shoot them both for seeing.

I didn’t, though I did pull her in closer and allowed my hand to slip down the crack of her ass to cover her from sight.

I glared hard, and all of a sudden both men found something else to focus on as they continued to clean the window.

“I’m gonna come,” she whispered into my ear.

“Then come,” I urged.

She keened against my neck and her pussy locked down on my cock.

The rhythmic pull of her pussy drawing on my cock was enough to send me over the ledge myself.

Hot spurts of my come filled her tight pussy, and I momentarily went blind as I chased the last dregs of my orgasm.

“Holy fuckin’ shit,” Keely breathed.

There was a harsh thump, and we both turned to look at the window.

“Oh my god. Did he just fall?”

“I hope so,” I grumbled.

She slapped me on the shoulder and started laughing. “That wouldn’t be funny!”

“Actually, it would,” I said. “What’s the point of this blanket if it has so many goddamn holes in it?”

“It’s a knit blanket. They’re supposed to have holes,” she pointed out. “And it’s decorative. I don’t actually use it as a blanket.”

“What, exactly, would one need a decorative blanket for?” I wondered. “Seems like a waste.”

“Aesthetics,” she answered. “Now, how am I going to get to that bathroom without the one that’s still there seeing me?”

I picked her up and walked with her to the bathroom, using my hand as a shield once again as I deposited her onto the floor of her bathroom and slamming the door closed with my toes.

I grinned as I pulled out of her and watched my release slide down the length of her thigh.

“I really am on birth control,” she said. “I have the implant right here.”

I ran my fingers along the spot on her arm where a birth control implant resided just underneath her skin.

I couldn’t stop myself from glaring at it. “I don’t like it.”

“You may not like it, but having babies isn’t on my Bingo card for the year.”

“Technically, if you got pregnant now, you wouldn’t have it until next year,” I pointed out.

She reached into the shower and turned it on before dropping the blanket.

I grinned as she stepped into the shower and reached for the showerhead.

After I cleaned myself up, I went to gather our clothes, then came back just as she was stepping out.

Her wild curly hair was now slightly damp, and some of the curls had straightened out and pasted themselves against her skin.

“I…”

The doorbell rang, and she frowned.

My brows rose as I said, “Get dressed and go answer it.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll hang out right here,” I said. “I could use a nap if it’s one of your siblings.”

“It’s likely Copper,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “I heard Copper, Chevy, and Cutter talking and they said your brother had something to do with getting him out.”

That had actually been me, but Shasha could take the credit for all I cared.

As long as she was happy, that’s all that mattered.

I jerked my chin up and said, “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

Her eyes warmed as she said, “No, he shouldn’t have.”

I took the bed, glanced out the windows, and could do nothing but shake my head.

“They did a really shitty job,” I muttered as I heard Copper’s voice say, “Did you see that some man was unconscious from hitting the side of the building as he cleaned one of the windows?”

I fell asleep to her giggling reply, and didn’t wake up again for hours.

I’m not a ten. I’m more like two 5s being held together by mashed potatoes.

—Keely’s secret thoughts

KEELY

The last thing I wanted to do three nights later was go to work, but luckily I wouldn’t be doing it with Dorie.

I was working with one of the new hires, who hopefully wasn’t as overwhelming as Dorie had been.

Dima was at my side as we walked toward the sleep center, his eyes taking everything in while simultaneously looking like he wasn’t scanning at all.

The knife I usually carried with me was in my bag instead of my hand, because I had something infinitely more dangerous standing next to me.

“Have you happened to have seen me walk to work before this?” I asked worriedly.

Dima didn’t look down at me, but he did flash a small grin before his face smoothed out again.

“The hunting knife is a nice touch,” he admitted. “But you look too confident when you’re walking around with it, like you’re not crazy enough. You should add a little head twitch to maybe act like you’re high as fuck or something.”

I snorted.

“I’ll try that next time that you’re not with me,” I teased.

His eyes did turn to meet mine then. “There won’t be a time when I’m not with you.”

My brows rose at that as we came to a stop in front of the sleep center’s door. “You’re not going to be able to be with me twenty-four-seven,” I pointed out. “One day, I’ll need to put your new theory to the test because you’re out offing a man in Plano.”

He tucked a curl behind my ear, and it immediately sprang back into place.

“We’ll see.” He chuckled.

“Will you…” I hesitated, unsure how to ask if he’d be there when I got done with work.

“Be here to walk you back to your car when you’re done with work?” he asked. “Yes.”

I flashed him a relieved smile. “Good.”

He touched the tip of my nose with one finger, then opened the door to the sleep center for me.

No kisses or overt displays of affection, but enough to let me know that I was going to be on his mind.

“Oh, excuse me. Thank you.”

I jumped, but Dima didn’t seem surprised to find a man walking up to us.

“You’re welcome,” came Dima’s smooth, dangerously soft voice.

I looked from the man to Dima and said quietly, “Do you have my number?”

His eyes flicked down to me, then right back up to the man that’d gone to the desk to check in with the receptionist. “Yeah.”

“Text me tonight,” I said. “I don’t have anything but your email.”

“Will do,” he said. “Watch out for that one.”

I frowned. “Do you know him?”

“Not yet,” he said, like he was about to do a deep dive into the man’s personal life.

I winked at him. “There are several other people here besides me. I’ll be okay.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Call me if you need me.”

IE, call him before I go calling 911.

The scary part was, I was fairly sure he’d get here before the authorities ever could, and I’d be way safer because of it.

I went up onto my tippy toes, and still, he was too tall.

Staring up at him expectantly, his eyes warmed and he met me more than halfway.

Jeez, the man was tall.

“Be safe tonight, whatever you’re doing,” I urged.

His eyes gleamed at that. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

I didn’t like my new coworker, and I especially didn’t like the patient that’d come in for his sleep study tonight.

The good thing was, I was very much never going to see this man again.

The second good thing was, despite my coworker being useless, the doctor that was helping today wasn’t completely useless.

Luckily, he was one of the ones that didn’t go to the back break room and go to sleep during the shifts. Unluckily, my new coworker, Melody Edams, had a crush on him and flirted with him to the point where I knew that if they were alone, they’d totally be doing it in the break room.

It was like I wasn’t even there.

For hours now, they’d been flirting and acting like they were two seconds away from ripping clothes off and fucking each other.

And I was done.

So overly done.

I hated this job.

Even worse, I hated my other job more.

A job that I refused to get any compensation for, and now had to go visit when I was done here.

If I was lucky, I’d be able to catch some drive through McDonald’s before I headed that way.

If Copper was smart, though, he’d have it ready for me.

Speaking of Copper…

“Hello?” I answered his fourth phone call of the night.

“A couple of weeks ago, there was a board meeting discussing a merger between Real Estate Ark-La-Tex and Castanon,” he started out without a greeting. “In the board meeting notes, it specifically said that you were opposed to the merger, and that you didn’t agree, and were the deciding vote for it. Yet, a contract is on my desk right now for the merger.”

I frowned, trying to go back to the day we’d talked about a merger, and came up empty.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I can’t remember anything about it.”

“In the board meeting notes, it specifically says that you were appraised, and opposed.” He paused. “But, as I’m looking at it, I don’t see anything else said by you at all.”

I was too tired for this. “I don’t remember anything about it, Copper. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “You’ll still be coming in after work? I have a few more things I want to go over with you.”

“Yeah,” I yawned. “Why are you there so late?”

“Well,” he paused. “There’s a lot to catch up on. And about ten years of neglected paperwork and quality control issues. Which coincide with you taking over CE.”

I grinned. “I did the best I could.”

“I know.” I could tell he was smiling. “It’s still here. And fully functional, if not a little…problematic. Once I get the board members straightened out, and the weak links out of the building, I’ll get it straightened out.”

“Are you getting me food, or will I be responsible for getting my own?” I yawned again.

“I’ll have it delivered,” he said. “Chevy and Cutter will be here, too.”

“Okay.” I yawned for a third time. “Have coffee.”

“I’ll do that,” he teased and hung up.

I yawned for a fourth time and then got up to get some paperwork done.

I was very tired today.

When I had days off, I tended to flip back to my normal sleep cycle of night sleeping. When I had to make the flip only for a night like I did this time, I tended to be extremely tired, like I was right then.

My new coworker, Melody, made a particularly disgusting comment about how hot the doctor was, and I inwardly groaned.

Would it be that hard to take the talk into the damn break room, at least?

Rolling my eyes, I got up and headed to the break room myself for a small break.

I made it to the kitchen and was just reaching for the cupboard above the sink to pull the coffee can down when I felt two hands go to my hips.

I twisted, raised an elbow, and reared it backward so hard that I heard and felt the air leaving a man’s lungs.

When that man stepped back and gave me space, mostly because he was hunched over and trying to breathe, I whirled around and palmed the closest thing I could use as a weapon. A can of baked beans.

“What are you doing?” I barked.

The patient, Cornelius Stone, said, “Sorry for startling you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Startling me would be clearing your throat from the other side of the room. What you did was assault.”

His brows rose. “That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?”

“No,” I snarled. “What’s excessive is thinking you can go up to a woman and put your hands on her hips while she’s pressed against a counter and think it’s all right.”

He grinned at me, and I wanted to smash the can of beans into his face.

“What’s going on here?” Dr. Adams asked as he came into the room.

“Just a misunderstanding,” the patient lied.

“Why are you out of the bed?” Dr. Adams asked.

“Because I was thirsty,” Stone lied.

“You went through the water we provided you already?” he asked.

“Yes?” Stone lied yet again.

“I’ll bring you more,” Dr. Adams said. “Please return to your room, and the next time you wish to leave, you need to use the intercom system and inform us. Also, the staff break room is off limits.”

I clenched my hand on the can of beans while I watched them walk away.

When I was finally able to control my heart, I placed the beans on the counter, then leaned my butt against it as I tried to breathe through my anger.

The text that came through moments after that didn’t surprise me at all.

Unknown:

I trusted you when you said you’d be safe.

Me:

I am. Now.

I resaved the number into my phone, then memorized it for good measure.

Me:

I was about to bash him upside the head with some baked beans.

Me:

I wish I would have.

Me:

I was only going to make coffee. Also, this guy creeped me out all night. Cornelius Stone. That’s his name. Luckily, he’s not my patient.

I knew damn well and good what Dima was going to do with the man’s information.

I also knew that I didn’t really care what happened to him.

What I did care about was that he understood what respect was, and that actions had consequences.

Dima never replied, which completely bummed me out.

I was about ten hours into my shift when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I turned, fully expecting to see one of my coworkers when I realized that it’d been rather quiet for the last fifteen minutes.

They’d both disappeared and left me in the observation room all by myself.

I was sipping on my cup of black coffee—which I hated but someone drank all my damn creamer I’d left in the fridge—when I heard it.

The creek of a patient room door being opened.

The way the sleep center was set up was kind of like a star. The patient rooms were all set up in the points of the star, and the observation room was in between all of the rooms, able to keep an eye on everything that was happening in all of the rooms.

I turned and fully checked every room that was being used today and saw all the figures where they were supposed to be.

And because I was crazy, I pulled out the can of baked beans that’d followed me the rest of the night and started into the hall.

I was fully unsurprised when I made it into the hallway to hear a rhythmic banging coming from the break room.

The least they could’ve done was taken it outside.

Now I had to go in there and get my belongings later, and I wasn’t sure that they hadn’t infected it with their sex cooties.

Gross.

The hall was mostly silent besides the sex happening, and all the rooms were closed—except for the last door on the right. The room that wasn’t ever occupied because there were issues with equipment in that particular room.

But still, it was open and…

A black figure poked his head out of the space between the door and the doorjamb, and I couldn’t help the smile that stretched over my face.

“Dima.” I smiled. “What are you doing here?”

He jerked his head toward himself, and I hurried toward him.

He closed the door once I was through and then kissed me.

His hand closed around the baked beans, and I relinquished it to him.

His chuckle was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

“You’re safe now, killer,” he teased.

“Thanks,” I said. “It makes me happy to know that you are here.”

He pulled back, then gestured toward the table behind him.

My heart literally melted as I saw the McDonald’s and coffee.

“You went to my favorite coffee shop,” I said.

“Vanilla latte, single shot, decaf because you’re about to go to bed.” He recited the order. “You order that a lot.”

I did.

“It’s my favorite,” I admitted as I moved to look into the bag of food. “How did you know that I wanted McDonald’s?”

“Because you mentioned it to your brother half a dozen times,” he explained, looking confused that I would ask that when it was clearly the obvious answer. “I was going to let you eat there, but I saw that Copper called in food from a diner down the street. And he got you scrambled eggs which I know you don’t eat.”

I winced.

Once upon a time, Copper had known everything there was to know about me.

But I wasn’t that little girl anymore that loved scrambled eggs.

I actually hated them now.

They smelled like wet dog, and I couldn’t ever get over the smell.

But it only made me feel even worse because, once upon a time, Copper was a happy, carefree seventeen-year-old with the world ahead of him. Then he’d walked into the kitchen after school and seen me being assaulted by my father.

If I could erase time and keep him from seeing that, I would. If I could make it to where that had happened before he’d gotten home, I would.

I never, ever wanted my brother to go to prison. At least, not for my safety.

I was nothing in this world.

My brother had been everything.

Even now, with my years of therapy under my belt, I couldn’t turn off that little voice inside of my head that said that I didn’t deserve to be happy. Not at Copper’s expense.

Later, I’d choke those eggs down.

Later, I’d give my brother a hug and endure the stupid bullshit that I would have to endure with Castanon Enterprises, and I’d be happy while doing it. All because my brother had given the ultimate sacrifice to save me from a life worse than hell.

Soft fingertips touched my cheek, and I glanced up into beautiful brown eyes.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You’re okay.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m broken inside, Dima.”

His lips twitched. “Maybe together, we can make a whole.”

Maybe together, we can make a whole.

As the shift wound to an end, and Dima waited outside for me to get off, I repeated those words in my head over and over.

Dima knew me well.

Sure, he only knew me well because he’d been watching my every move for weeks without my knowledge, but for some reason, that didn’t bother me too badly.

“It was great working with you today,” Melody cooed as she walked out the door with me.

I nearly rolled my eyes, but stopped myself before letting her know how much I disliked her.

If she didn’t suspect me, when she found herself without a job tomorrow, she wouldn’t point any fingers my way.

“Sure, I had fun as well,” I lied.

I spotted Dima across the road and waved.

He’d give me a ride back to my car on his bike.

Where my brothers rode Harleys, Dima’s motorcycle was black, sleek, and fast.

Not saying that my brothers’ couldn’t haul ass as well, but Dima’s looked and sounded like it would go faster than the speed of light.

I idly wondered how many cops he’d outrun on that vehicle.

“Have a good day,” Melody called out as she started walking in the opposite direction.

I waved at her, not replying.

She smiled and scooted off down the street, and I stopped on the curb and looked both ways before crossing the street.

When I got to the alley in which Dima was parked, I walked right up to him and threaded my arms around his neck—which, might I add, he allowed by bending down for me.

“Ready to ride, doll face?” he asked.

I grinned.

“Killer earlier, and doll face now,” I teased. “Those two don’t even go together.”

He shrugged, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “I call it like I see it.”

I turned toward his bike and said, “I’ve been on my brothers’ bikes a bunch of times. But I have yet to be on one of these. Where do I put my feet to get on?”

He mounted the bike, then held out his hand before telling me where to place my feet.

The bike was quite a bit less comfortable to be on the back of, but I figured the trade out of being pressed completely against Dima’s back might make up for it.

And let me tell you something, the thought of being pressed up against him, and being actually pressed up against him, were two completely different things.

The moment my body pressed against his, and he started his bike, my entire being just went…calm.

Like I was exactly where I was always meant to be.

I knew without a doubt that this man would protect me with his life. I knew that he’d take on the world for me. I knew that he was it for me.

That’s when my unhealthy obsession began.

Or maybe, joined his.

Whatever happened, as he drove me the six blocks to my car, I knew that my life would never be the same.

I felt like I was losing my soul’s connection when I got off his bike.

“Are you going to come to CE after this?” I asked hopefully.

Castanon Enterprises was my least favorite place in the world, and the thought of having Dima there felt like a balm on my antsy heart.

“I’ll be there.” He paused. “Do you want me to come in with you?”

I smiled then. “Yes.”

“If I come in with you, I can’t be a ghost to spy, though,” he pointed out.

I opened my mouth to say “I don’t care” but closed it.

Copper might need a ghost…

“Um…” I hesitated. “I guess just head to the conference room, and I’ll introduce you to Copper. Then we can see if he might want to use you there.”

I didn’t bother to ask him why he thought I might need a ghost there.

I knew that CE was fucked up.

I’d been working in that CEO position for years, and I’d been ignoring all the signs because I hadn’t wanted to deal with it.

I was thankful that Copper was finally going to do something about the issues that had surfaced, though.

Maybe I should’ve been a better sister and dug the rot out for him, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t do it as concisely as Copper could.

But with Dima’s help, he might get it done a hell of a lot faster…

With our plans made, I started heading to my car, heading between two large trucks that’d parked on either side of me.

I’d just reached my door when a screech came from out of nowhere.

That screech was followed by Dorie jumping out from behind the truck to my left and throwing herself at Dima.

She threw her arms around him and banded herself around him like a barnacle, determined to prove the point that she can take any man, no matter what.

Or, maybe she’d figured out that Dima had been the reason that her boyfriend had gotten hurt a few nights ago.

I didn’t really know what went through her head in that moment, but if I’d seen a man like Dima, I would’ve run the other way rather than coming toward him. Let alone jumping on his back to prove a point.

Dima reacted before she could even get her legs all the way around him.

With one swift flick of his wrist, she was flying.

She hit the wall behind us with a solid thud, and Dima had to stop himself from going after her a second time.

Dorie stared up at him in stunned silence, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.

I stared at her long enough to realize that she was having a hard time breathing, and not finding it in me to care.

“That was dumb.” I attempted not to snicker as I got into my car. “I’ll see you at CE.”

Dima winked at me, and I knew I’d find him there way before me.

The smile on my face stayed the entire drive there.

It quickly fell off when I was met with the bullshit at the door, though.

Do beavers even know what they’re doing, or do they just see water flow and think, “absolutely not?”

—Text from Dima to Keely

DIMA

Getting down onto my haunches, I stared at the stupid woman.

“Do you need to die to finally understand that you’re not as strong as you think you are?” I asked her. “That was quite dumb, like she said.”

Dorie blinked.

“Don’t come around anymore,” I emphasized. “I don’t want you here.”

With that, I walked back to my bike and hopped on it.

I considered following behind her the entire way, but I wanted to get into the building before she got there to ensure that I could get a good feel for how she was treated there.

I passed her on the hell that was 635, then took a cut-off and zipped through side streets and between traffic before parking in the back lot next to what I knew to be Copper’s truck.

At some point in the last few days, he’d gone and bought it at the first Ford dealership he could find.

It wasn’t fancy.

In fact, it looked more like a basic, non-descript truck that would blend in with everything.

Which was likely his goal.

Moving the bike into the parking spot beside the truck, I maneuvered it so that Keely could get in behind me mostly all the way, then headed into the building.

I went in through the back door that employees used and didn’t have to swipe a badge or anything to get in, which was slightly concerning.

If Keely was going to spend any amount of time here, she would need to get better security in place. I wouldn’t be comfortable with her working in such a high-profile position without even basic security.

I tracked her phone to make sure she arrived safely as I simultaneously entered the main building to take the lay of the land.

She arrived five minutes after me, and didn’t waste time getting into the building.

Her first stop was a security desk that would stop most honest people but hadn’t stopped me.

Hell, the man hadn’t even seen me slip past him because he’d been busy on his phone.

“Ahh, if it isn’t Tequila Clayborne,” a greasy looking man said from beside the security desk.

Keely didn’t bother to acknowledge him as she kept walking past security to the elevator.

Before the man could follow her onto the elevator, I stepped into his path on ‘accident’ and stayed there until the doors of the elevator closed.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” the greasy fuck asked.

I ignored him and kept walking, heading to the stairs.

“Inbred degenerate,” the grease stain grumbled as he pressed the button for the elevator.

I took the eight flights of stairs to the top floor, then headed past multiple people milling in the hallways to head for the conference room.

I passed Keely talking to her secretary, rubbing my hand against her ass as I did, and continued on into the conference room.

Chevy, Copper, and Cutter were already there.

They stopped talking when I entered.

“What are you doing here?” Cutter asked.

Before he could reply, Keely entered and shut the door.

She stared down the three men that were eyeing me, then answered with a small smile on her face, “I’m seeing him.”

“What?” Cutter looked adorably confused for such a big guy.

“Seeing,” she repeated slower. “As in, dating him? Do you know what that is? Oh, wait. You just skip from meeting to marrying.”

Chevy snorted.

Cutter bared his teeth at her but didn’t look mad at her words.

Copper leaned back in his chair and studied me.

Out of them all, Copper was the most dangerous.

I knew that before I’d even walked into the room.

I’d spied him at the table from the back of the hallway, and even though he hadn’t acted like he’d seen me, I knew he’d clocked me from the moment he had line of sight.

That was prison life for you, though. You always had to watch your back.

“You need to do something about security.” I diverted away from the dating thing. “She won’t be coming back until you can make it safe for her to be in the building.”

Copper’s brows rose. “What makes you think she wasn’t safe?”

“The fact that I just walked past multiple people and wasn’t asked who I was?” I shrugged.

“I’m working on it.” He sighed. “This is a huge shit pile, and it’s taking a lot of time to sort through everything.”

“Security first, then other matters later,” I offered. “You were locked up a long time, so I know you know the importance of surprise attacks.”

Something shuttered in Copper’s eyes.

Keely put her crap onto the seat next to the one I assumed she was taking and said, “Copper, I know that you love me, but I just want to tell you that I hate scrambled eggs now.”

Copper’s eyes narrowed and focused on her.

“Since when?” he asked carefully. “They used to be your favorite.”

“Since I was fifteen and decided that they smelled like wet dog.” She shrugged. “I really like over-hard eggs, but I also like anything that’s not scrambled as long as it has salt and pepper.”

“You can have mine,” he offered.

She waved her hand in the air. “I had McDonald’s about two and a half hours ago, so I’m good.”

“Okay.” He looked a little bit hurt that she wasn’t going to eat the food he ordered.

“Dima’s going to eat it, though,” she blurted.

My brows rose and I glanced over at Keely to see her staring at me pleadingly.

She’d seen the look on Copper’s face, too.

I eyed the food.

I didn’t usually eat poorly for any meal of the day.

My body was a temple, and all that jazz.

In reality, I just didn’t like sweets all that much.

I also didn’t like anything that was greasy.

And by the looks of the bags on the tabletop, everything there was greasy.

But if she wanted me to eat her food, I’d eat it.

“Yep, starving,” I lied.

“How did you two meet?” Chevy asked curiously.

“That’ll have to wait for later,” Copper said. “We can catch up after. There’s a reason I asked you to be here today.”

Chevy leaned back and crossed his hands over his chest, eyes on his brother.

I took the seat directly across from Keely and next to Cutter.

“We’re going to talk about this after we’re done,” Cutter grumbled under his breath.

I grunted in answer.

“What’s going on?” Keely asked as she took her seat.

Copper started pushing food toward us and I reluctantly opened the bag that had grease stains in the wake of the bag sliding.

Pancakes, biscuits, scrambled eggs, bacon, and a shit ton of jelly and syrup.

I pulled out the bacon and eggs and started eating.

Mostly, they were about as good as you could ask for.

I preferred egg whites and turkey bacon, but I’d live.

As I ate, I listened to Keely and the three brothers discussing the business and found it thoroughly boring.

Basically what I got from it was that the top shareholders had been embezzling money for years, and Copper was discussing what was next.

Next being cops, lawyers, and a whole lot of shit that I didn’t want to deal with.

Luckily, the only reason Copper needed the three of the siblings there was that with them all, they owned the majority share of the business. And even with the top three shareholders not selling their shares, they still owned the majority and could take the business any which way they wanted.

Cutter and Chevy immediately offered to sell their shares.

Keely looked at her brother a little longer and said, “Do you need me here, Copper?”

Copper looked at her.

“Long term, if you don’t want to be here, then no. I don’t need you here. But short term, until we can transition everyone over to me, yes.” He looked from her to the brothers and back. “The money you saved for me over the last fifteen years was very generous, and I can easily buy the three of you out of your shares.” He looked ravaged. “I can never thank you enough for all that you’ve done.”

I started tuning in at that.

In my sleuthing, I’d seen that they all three had accounts that they used to save money each month. Though Keely’s was quite a bit smaller than the ones that her brothers had managed.

However, the money that Keely had drawn from the Castanon Enterprises had gone untouched since she’d started drawing a salary.

I’d noticed yesterday when I’d gotten an alert about the account that it was now empty and had all been transferred into a separate account that also had Copper as the main account holder, with Keely as a signer on the account.

“Copper,” Keely whispered. “All of that money would’ve been yours anyway had you been able to work.”

“You’re wrong,” he disagreed. “Y’all wouldn’t have had to give up part of your salaries each month, or work quite as hard, if I’d also been here. But I’m not going to get into an argument with you about it. I’m going to just say thank you, buy out your shares, build up this business, then spend the rest of my life thanking you in any way that I can.”

“Copper…” Cutter said.

“You’ll have babies,” Copper interrupted.

“Yeah…” Cutter hesitated.

“And if you won’t take the money for yourself, you’ll take the money for them.” He looked at me then. “Not saying that Milena and you won’t already be set for life thanks to other extracurriculars, but at least when it comes from me, you won’t be worried about a government investigator questioning how you got it.”

I flashed my teeth at him.

We cleaned our money very fuckin’ well, thank you very much!

There was nobody that would find any hint of illegal wrongdoing in our money.

Cutter sighed. “Just as long as you don’t start helping us until you’ve fully gotten yourself situated.”

“That’s a promise I can make,” Copper agreed. “Keely, I estimate that I’ll need you about six more months.” He paused. “Full-time.”

Keely opened her mouth and then closed it.

“You want me to quit my job?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, waiting to hear her reply.

I knew she didn’t much like her job at the sleep center, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t find a better job somewhere else in the nursing field.

“You hate nursing,” Copper said. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“And what happens after six months?” I asked.

“She can stay on in any capacity that she would like, with the knowledge that all she’ll have to do is what she wants to do, and nothing more. Or she can pull a salary and take time off until she figures out what she wants.” He shrugged. “In six months, we can revisit.”

Keely looked intrigued. “I know you think that I know this place well, and that everyone will listen to me, but Copper…I did the absolute bare minimum here to keep it running. I kept all the stupid things from getting done when all the losers on the board wanted to take it in a different direction than what you wanted. But Copper…they don’t really know me.”

“They do, and they’ll need a familiar face when I take the board and dismantle it,” he elaborated.

For some reason, I didn’t feel like the dismantling of the board would be as easy as he thought it was.

I’d kill them all if I thought it would help Keely in the long run, but I had a feeling that anything that happened to those six men would garner quite a bit of media attention.

Copper would likely have to do this all by the book to avoid the cops coming after him.

And he would be the first person that they looked at.

Ex-con coming into a business of his father’s—a father that he killed—and all of the board members get taken out?

I wasn’t even a cop and that would be the first place I’d look, too.

“I’ll do it under one condition,” she finally said.

“Anything.”

“You let me work my own hours,” she said, her eyes coming to me. “If you need me at a certain time, I’ll be here. But I don’t want to be a slave to this place.”

“Done.”

“And you also have to quit my job for me. I don’t like doing that.”

Copper chuckled. “Does it have to be a phone call, or will an email work?”

She shrugged. “Email should be fine.”

“I’ll get it sent to you ASAP, and all you have to do is copy and paste it.”

Copper’s grin was boyish in that moment, as if he loved the idea of working with Keely.

I wondered, idly, what made her hate the nursing job that she’d gone to school for and made a mental note to ask her why when we were at home by ourselves later.

I polished off the bacon and eggs, and then discreetly pushed the rest back into the middle of the table so it didn’t look like I wasn’t eating it.

When the meeting wrapped up, Copper turned to me and said, “What do you think about tightening up the security here?”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “I could do it. But I’m not an expert. I think you’d need an expert, and I have a suggestion if you don’t mind spending the money.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Brecken, Shasha’s wife, has some brothers that their whole job is to build and fortify businesses and homes that can withstand a siege. I think that if they can do it, they’d be great options. And if they don’t have the immediate availability, they’d know someone who does.” I pulled out my phone and sent the contact to his phone. “I’m good at protecting people or killing them. But not in a security mindset.”

“Dima,” Keely scolded me. “This place isn’t secure.”

I flashed an impish look at her and said, “This room is. I checked it.”

Her brows rose. “You did?”

I pulled out the small device from my pocket that I’d turned on when I’d walked in the room and said, “It blocks radio frequencies. Nothing that we say will make it out of this room. Not even our phones would’ve worked until I turned it off.”

“Oh,” she frowned. “Do you think that we should be worried about what’s here?”

“I think that the board members are feeling the squeeze, and they’ll do just about anything to make sure that they stay where they want to be,” I said. “From what you shared about Copper’s last meeting with them and you, I think they might be really feeling that squeeze.”

“That’s why I’m not in an office, or Keely’s office yet.” Copper sighed. “I’m still pretty far behind the technology curve. I have Apollo coming out soon to hook up our entire building with cyber security, but until then, this is the only room he assured me was safe. And he also told me not to use anything of the company’s equipment until he could get a look at it.”

Keely sighed. “It sounds like this is going to be a long six months.”

Copper grinned. “I can’t wait.”

I giggle before I argue. Gotta start my engine.

—Keely to Dima

KEELY

I couldn’t believe I’d just forwarded that email.

Copper had eloquently laid out my resignation with the sleep center, giving all the information that I’d penned to him over the years as to why, and I’d signed my name to it, copied it verbatim, and then sent it off.

I was…freaking out.

I hadn’t been without a job since I was fifteen and realized that nothing was ever going to be handed to me the way that my father had always predicted it would be.

Closing my laptop with a pounding heart, I got up and went in search of Dima.

We were at his place for the night…not that I’d gotten much choice.

He’d told me he had to watch his nieces and that I would have to stay at his place tonight because he didn’t think my place was baby-proof enough.

I had honestly not questioned him and packed an overnight bag, but I might as well have left it at home.

Because, when I’d gotten into Dima’s place, I found that he’d fully stocked his entire place with me in mind.

He had my deodorant in his drawers next to his.

He had my favorite brand of hairbrush—one that I’d gotten from Tractor Supply that was actually made for horses.

He even had my free and clear laundry detergent that I shopped specifically for from Target right next to his Tide.

It was…great.

I loved that he knew what I preferred.

All of my other exes would’ve gone to the grave before putting that much thought into me, my likes and dislikes.

Yet, here Dima was, paying attention and giving me everything.

It was…a really great feeling.

Sure, he might’ve gotten all this information by stalking me instead of asking me, or observing these things by spending time with me, but I wasn’t going to complain about his means.

I actually quite enjoyed the thought of him liking me so much that he wanted to know my every like and dislike.

Sure, this should’ve been a huge red flag waving through the air, but I was pretty good at putting blinders on.

Kind of like I was right then as he discussed business with Shasha with me lying on his bed able to hear it all.

Shasha didn’t know that I was there, or likely he would’ve been a lot more careful with his words.

That showed how much trust Dima had in me, to let me in on his innermost thoughts.

Funny enough, I didn’t think Shasha would be too happy about me hearing all that I’d heard tonight.

They’d started talking about Dima watching Shasha’s girls so Brecken and Shasha could go out to eat just them.

Then they’d moved on to other matters.

Matters that involved torture, mayhem, and espionage.

It was rather interesting to listen to, and I wondered if some of their practices could be enacted in Castanon Enterprises.

Life would be a whole lot more simple if we could just dispose of the board members that I knew would put up the biggest fight to what Copper was wanting to do.

And what did it say about me that I was thinking about that instead of doing this the correct way?

Probably because you know that they’ll make yours and Copper’s life a living hell for the next however long it takes.

I got up from the bed, trying to be as quiet as possible, and headed for the shower.

I had a couple of hours until Dima was expected to start babysitting, and I wanted to be clean after the long night that I’d had.

I should really catch a few hours of shut-eye, too.

I knew from experience that sleep deprivation and me didn’t mingle well.

If they were still talking after I got done with my shower, I’d take a nap until Dima woke me up.

I was halfway through my shower with shampoo and conditioner that I had to special order because of its clean ingredients, when I felt the air shift behind me.

I opened my eyes after the suds finally rinsed free of my face and glanced over my shoulder to see Dima, naked, coming into the shower room behind me.

Dima’s entire place was extravagant, albeit quite empty.

The bathroom was no different.

The door to the bathroom looked innocuous enough, but that’s where the normalness ended. The moment you breached the doorway, you were met with a wall-to-ceiling marble slab. The entryway fed you right into a recessed room that had a pedestal sink to your right with a large mirrored wall behind it decorated in lights.

To the right of the sink was an elevated cabinet where there was a freakin’ towel warmer built into the cabinets, along with every single product from hair to skin to feet right under the towel warming shelf.

To the left was the clawfoot tub, and directly in front of the door was a shower that took up the whole back half of the space.

It was easily twelve feet wide, had six showerheads, and even more smaller water sprayers down lower to make sure that you never missed a spot.

There was a long-ass bench that stretched the entire length of the shower stall, and I decided the moment that I stepped into it that I was going to make it my new home.

I’d never thought that a bathtub could be beat, but that was before I’d stepped into this oasis…

“I see you figured out how to use the shower,” Dima mused as he moved in behind me and pulled me into his painfully hard body.

I’d seen the man naked, of course.

But seeing him naked in glimpses, and seeing him naked in an unencumbered view were two very different things.

Dima was…built.

He wasn’t bulky. He wasn’t small.

He was just the right size, and all muscle.

There wasn’t a single ounce of fat on him, not even at his armpits or his chin.

I’d never thought to consider armpits muscular before, but Dima’s were.

I allowed my eyes to trail down the length of his body, taking everything in as I let the rest of the suds wash free of my hair.

I was to his lower region, particularly his cock, when it started to swell at my obvious attention.

“Are you done looking yet?” he asked. “I’m ready to hold you.”

I smiled and nodded, thinking I’d get the lay of the land of his lower half later when I wasn’t in desperate need of feeling his arms around me.

He came toward me, his hands going down to scoop me right up into his arms.

I gasped when he took a seat on the shower bench with me on top of him.

“How much did you hear?” he asked.

I bit my lip. “How much was I supposed to hear?”

His lips twitched, but he quickly sobered. “I’d like to say that I’m a good man.”

I blinked at him, and he reached for the bar of soap that I’d left on the ledge, ready to use later.

Proving that he’d been watching me for a while, he slowly started to work the bar of soap into the places that I’d yet to reach.

He started with my hand, then my arm. My neck, then down the other arm to my right hand.

My chest.

My breasts.

My belly.

My thighs and knees.

“I let you listen because I don’t want to hide who I am from you,” he said, his earnest brown eyes taking me in from the soul forward. “I don’t want to pretend that I’m this normal guy with you when I’m not. I want to be me, and sometimes, I’m not that great of a person.”

I smoothed my fingers over a couple of stray locks of his hair and voiced softly, “Would you ever hurt someone innocent?”

“No.” He paused. “But I have in the past. I think.”

“Was that you wanting to go after them, or someone sending you after them?” I asked.

I only knew what I’d heard from Dima’s family members when I’d met them the few times that I had.

And all of them were so freakin’ proud of Dima and what he’d accomplished in his military career. But the man in front of me wasn’t the same man that they said was all gung-ho about flying planes.

You didn’t get that kind of look in your eyes from being a pilot.

At least, I didn’t think you did.

“I’d like to say that I was very confident that every single man and woman that I killed for Uncle Sam was bad, but they literally pointed me at them, and I took care of business. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t start to question until too late,” he confessed.

I reached for the bottle of shampoo on the shelf above me, which put my nipple perilously close to his mouth, and pulled it down.

He latched onto my nipple with a grin and smiled at me with it between his teeth.

I squirted some shampoo into my hand—way too much for the small amount of hair that he had—and worked it into his scalp.

He closed his eyes and I massaged him with my fingers as I said, “I think you’re thinking that I’m this great person, Dima.”

His eyes slowly opened.

When they did, I grabbed his face with soapy hands and said, “I’m not.”

His lips went flat. “You’re a good person.”

“A good person wouldn’t be insanely happy that you murdered someone for me,” I persisted.

“No,” he agreed. “Maybe not. But let’s just say, I think anyone in your shoes would’ve been in that same frame of mind.”

“I don’t care that my dad’s dead. I don’t care that Pettigrew is dead. I don’t care that anyone’s dead as long as it’s not someone I care about.” I shrugged. “If they did something bad, good riddance.”

I reached for the closest showerhead and pulled it off its hanger, then said, “Close your eyes.”

He did, and I sprayed him down.

I followed the shampoo up with conditioner, then started on the body parts of his that I could reach with my soap.

When I was done, and we were both as clean as we were going to get, I said, “I’m not sure how I feel about having kids. I used to have my life all figured out, and I’m just not sure anymore.”

He curled a lock of my hair around his finger and said, “Could take ’em or leave ’em.”

My lips twitched. “I thought you loved your nieces and nephews.”

“I do.” He shrugged. “But I’m not all that gung-ho about bringing a kid into the world when I’m taking people out of it.”

I loved this man.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was my one.

“Mine’s the opposite,” I admitted. “I’m not all that excited to bring a kid into this world knowing what could happen to him or her, especially her. It doesn’t matter that you’re really good at protecting people. If trouble is going to find us, it will happen. There won’t be anything that you or I can do about it, either.”

His eyes went intense for a long second before his hand wrapped around my wet hair and tightened. He didn’t pull my head back, but it was tight enough to sting.

“I would never, ever let anything happen to our child.”

And in that moment, I knew that to be irrevocably true, at least, to things that he could control.

“You can’t control everything, Dima.”

His eyes were laser fire as he said, “Watch me.”

My winter fat is finally gone, and now I have spring rolls.

—Text from Keely to Dima

DIMA

A fire was lit in my soul when she’d told me why she wasn’t sure she wanted kids, but only because she didn’t think they could be protected.

Just the idea of a child of ours being susceptible to anything dangerous—especially some of the things that she’d gone through—was enough to send me reeling.

I wasn’t lying when I shared that I’d never wanted kids before.

What kind of father could I be?

A terrible one?

I mean, talk about setting a bad example.

But the thought of her denying an urge so innate to her being because she wasn’t sure she could protect them felt like sandpaper against my heart.

It rubbed the wrong way, and I didn’t want her to ever feel like she couldn’t have something she wanted.

And if I had to go against my own fears and give her a dream, I’d do it. If only to see her happy.

That was literally all it took to change my entire outlook on life.

“When I say that nothing will ever happen to our child, I mean it,” I promised, sincerity staining my gravelly voice. “Other than medically, which I have no control over, I’d never allow any harm to come to him or her. As long as there is breath inside of my body, there’s literally nothing that I wouldn’t protect our child from.”

Her green eyes studied mine for so long that I worried that she wasn’t getting the message.

But then she smashed her mouth down onto mine and said, “I love you, Dima.”

Four words that had enough power to knock me off my feet.

Love.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure that I ever would know that kind of feeling, but in that moment, I realized that I’d been feeling it all along.

I loved her with a ferocity that likely should’ve scared her.

“I hate to tell you this, because I know it’ll unlock something inside of me that you’ll never get put back inside of its box again, but I love you, too,” I said as I curled my hands around her neck and pulled her in close. “God help you.”

She snickered and said, “God and me have been on the outs since my dad started abusing me. I don’t think there’s any help for me now.”

My eyes closed as I took her mouth in a desperate kiss.

Her body moved forward, and my cock that’d been nestled between us, hard as a rock but contained, slipped free of its confines.

Neither her hands nor mine moved as she angled her hips and took me inside.

There wasn’t a single hitch as her pussy sheathed my cock in one maddening glide.

The water started to drown me for a long second as my head fell back directly into the spray of the shower, but before I could see my life flash behind my eyes, her hand was in my hair, and she was yanking my mouth back to hers.

Her teeth caught my lip and bit down, causing me to buck beneath her.

The giggle she let out as she was sprayed in the face by the showerhead had me twisting us until the water was at her back, and my back and side were now against the wall.

“I can’t believe you have a bench big enough to do this in your shower,” she said as she gyrated her hips.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I’ll have to thank Brecken’s brothers for it,” I teased as I smoothed my hand over her backside to the seam of her ass.

Her eyes widened when my fingers brushed her back entrance.

But what I noticed was that she didn’t balk.

She licked her lips, though.

Oh, and her pupils dilated.

I brushed it again as I bucked my hips underneath her and watched her reaction.

Want.

Need.

Anticipation.

Oh, she wanted my finger there all right.

I didn’t need her to say a word as I pressed a bit harder on her entrance and the tip of my finger popped inside.

She drew in a deep breath and pushed back against my finger, urging me in deeper.

I worked her with that finger for a long minute, making sure to monitor her every move as I did, making sure that she was completely okay with what I was doing.

Only when I was sure she was ready did I go from one finger to two.

And that was when she detonated.

Falling apart in my arms, she buried her face into my neck and cried out with her release.

I left my fingers inside of her until she was done shaking and clenching on me.

When she pulled herself back up, her eyes partially glazed in pleasure, I said, “I want to bury my cock into your ass so bad.”

She opened her mouth and closed it.

I knew what she wanted to say, but there was a block that was keeping her from saying it.

“Would you like my cock in your ass, baby?” I asked carefully.

She nodded her head.

That one act nearly sent me over the edge, and only my absolute lockdown on my control had me regaining it.

I wanted to come in her ass.

I wanted to come everywhere and claim every single orifice she had as mine.

“I, um, have coconut oil right there,” she whispered.

I glanced up to the bottle of oil I’d bought for her for my shower, one identical to the one she had in her own shower at home, and said, “Grab it.”

She lifted off of me only minutely to reach for the coconut oil on the ledge above our heads and then sank back down.

Again, I had to yank on my control and force it to listen to me as she settled back into place, my cock buried deep.

“I’ll have to buy you a new tub of it,” I said as I pulled my fingers from her ass then dipped them into the oil.

She watched, wide-eyed, as I returned my oil-slick fingers from the jar to behind her.

Her fingers focused on a single drop of the oil that’d fallen onto my chest and began to leak down into the crease of my armpit, and she started to work it in with tiny circles of her index finger.

She closed her eyes when my fingers once again met her back entrance, and I followed the same pattern that her finger was making on my chest.

I studied her face as I started with one finger.

When she moved to two, I moved to two.

I followed her lead, only moving to three when she bit her lip and slipped the third finger into the crease of my arm.

“Get my cock slick with it,” I urged when she finally came to a stop, panting and quivering.

She lifted off of me and reached for the oil with her own fingers, getting just enough not to be wasteful as she brought her slick fingers to my cock and oiled me down.

I kept my fingers where they were but kept them completely still.

It didn’t need much at all, thanks to her come already coating my cock, and it took her no time at all to lather me up and get me ready.

“You hold the reins, ma’am,” I teased as I slowly pulled my fingers out.

She hovered over my erect cock, and I held it there, waiting for her to ease herself down onto it.

She locked eyes with mine, and started to lower herself, eyes holding mine.

When the fat head of my cock met her entrance, I said, “My cock head is wider than the base.” “Once you get past…”

I lost my train of thought when she started to push me inside of her.

My eyes threatened to close, and only the excitement of seeing her face when I finally breached her fully kept them open.

“There you go, baby girl,” I replied hoarsely. “You’re almost there.”

I could feel her getting closer onto my hand, and knew I could let go now, but it felt intimate having my hand that close to her pussy.

I wasn’t going to waste her nearness.

“Almost there,” I gritted out. “Just a little bit more.”

Her breaths were coming in pants, her chest rising and falling like she was running a marathon.

“It’s really full,” she paused, her thighs quivering. “Are you sure…”

I used my clean hand to move around her hip. Resting my palm on her hip, I stretched my thumb out to catch her clit, and slowly started to draw circles around the bundle of nerves.

“Oh,” she breathed, her body going down despite her earlier reluctance not to ease any lower.

The head of my cock popped in, and I saw stars.

Hot.

Tight.

“Fuuuuckkkk,” I groaned, unable to help myself.

“Oh.” Her “oh” was altogether different this time when she started to go lower and lower and lower.

When her ass met my thighs, her face was filled with wonder.

And anticipation.

“There.” She breathed. “This feels good.”

I was happy, because I was ten seconds away from coming, and that was only if she stayed still.

If she moved…

She moved.

Up and down.

Just the smallest of amounts.

And I started coming.

It wasn’t my finest moment.

Eyes closing, my abs contracted as I released my come deep inside her.

Hot pulses of it splashed inside of her, and I could do nothing but feel as I gave it all to her.

“Did you just…” she asked, eyes wide when I finally opened mine.

I laughed and pulled her to me, her tits pressing against my face as I said, “Can’t say that I have the most control with you.”

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed, like she was fully expecting me to pull out of her and not finish her off.

But like it was abnormal for me to come so fast, it was also abnormal in the way I didn’t go down. Not even a little bit.

I was still just as hard now as I was when we’d started this.

“Not so fast,” I said when she went to pull away.

“What are you…” she gasped when I flipped us and deposited her onto her back, her legs high in the air over my shoulder. “Dima!”

Goddamn, I really needed to thank those brothers for designing this bathroom with such a wide bench in the shower.

“You ready to move yet, pretty girl?” I asked.

She licked her lips, then nodded, her excitement finding its way back.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Your command is my…” I pulled out and thrust back in deep. “Pleasure.”

I fucked her hard, not holding anything back, keeping my eyes on her face for any signs of discomfort, or even the slightest twinge of unease.

My balls started to grow heavy again, but this time, I was able to hold it at bay.

Lifting her up off the bench, her ass in the air with her knees locked between my chest and forearm, I gloried in the sound of our skin slapping.

We were both sweaty and crying out by the time that she came—all without my finger on her clit.

She screamed out, and I knew had I not had excellent soundproofing, her brother who was next door would’ve heard and come running.

It sounded like she was dying, like I was killing her.

And maybe I was.

Because I was certainly killing myself.

“Fuck!” I roared, bending her in half with my need to get deeper.

When I finally got my wits about me, I reversed us so that she was on top again and allowed my arms to flop to encircle her as I tried and failed to catch my breath.

“Wow,” she breathed. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

I swallowed hard as I opened my eyes and studied the crown molding above my head. Why the shower had crown molding, I didn’t know.

I also didn’t know I had crown molding…

“I didn’t, either,” I admitted.

She leaned up onto a forearm in my chest and said, “Have you ever…”

Have I ever had anal sex before?

“No…” I hesitated. “I’ve done other things…but never that.”

Never wanted to.

It seemed like too much work.

“Good,” she breathed. “I’m glad that I could get that with you alone for the first time.”

I grinned. “I’ve never in my life come so hard twice in a row like that. I think you might have to just sit there before I clean you up.”

She giggled and got off of me, my wet cock flopping pitifully to my belly, still hard and wet.

“This shower is amazing. And the water is still hot!” she said as she backed away.

I watched the sway of her hips, and wondered if I was defective.

It wasn’t normal not to go down for an hour…right?

I fucked her again five minutes later.

And again in the bed when we were still completely wet, causing us to have to change the sheets after.

Finally, my cock went down once she fell asleep, and I told myself I’d never survive if we didn’t get this under control…

I didn’t mean to push all your buttons. I was looking for mute.

—Keely’s secret thoughts

KEELY

“Marrying a man that holds you accountable is amazing,” Nastya grumbled as she picked at her food.

I looked at Nastya’s food, which just so happened to be steak, broccoli and mashed potatoes.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I told him after our child was born that I wanted to get back in shape, and I made him promise me to help me help myself. And now he won’t let me cheat on my diet,” she grumbled. “Like my pregnancy wasn’t hard enough because I had to watch my blood sugars constantly, and then it doesn’t bounce back. I mean, I ate freakin’ good, for Christ’s sake! How is that fair that I still look like I’m four months pregnant?”

“What kind of diet is it?” Brecken asked, looking at her plate. “To be honest, that steak looks pretty amazing.”

Nastya leaned back and threw up her hands. “It is amazing! He made it, so of course it’s going to be amazing! He even cut it up into pieces and grilled all the little tiny pieces in ghee and garlic for me because he knows I like all the bites to have a little bit of a crust to them. Even the broccoli tastes really, really good. I don’t even like broccoli, and he somehow made it taste really good.”

“But…” I drawled.

“But, he made steak! Dammit, I’m tired of steak,” she grumbled. “We’re eating in a calorie deficit. I’m trying to eat under twenty-three hundred calories a day, so I chose to eat two thousand calories a day.”

“Aren’t you still breastfeeding, though?” Brecken took a large bite of her steak, which she’d just massacred with her steak knife. “That should give you a few extra calories to play with.”

“Yeah,” she grumbled. “But I was pretty much done anyway. Making milk is hard,” she glared at Brecken. “Not everyone is making as much as you are.”

Brecken raised her hands. “I was just asking.”

I sensed that the milk production thing was a sore subject, so I gently steered it in a different direction.

“Back to the diet,” I said. “Aren’t you still training for a marathon?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Because Milena is making me. I hate running. But since I’m doing it, and I never do anything half-ass, I set a lofty goal. My ultimate goal is to make it to Boston. I have to shave forty minutes off my time to make that happen.”

“She wants to go to Boston with me, so that means that I have to run faster, too.” Milena snickered. “Glad she set a goal for both of us…”

“Then you need fuel to feed that,” I pointed out. “You can’t just be in a calorie deficit and expect to put up times that’ll get you qualified for Boston.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I hate looking at myself in a mirror.”

That made my stomach clench.

That was part of why I’d hated nursing.

Sure, you got to help people, but you saw people at their lowest. And I didn’t like seeing people at their most vulnerable. It felt like an invasion of privacy.

“You had a baby,” I pointed out. “That’s the biggest accomplishment in life for most women. I mean, you grew an entire person inside of your body. One that was created with love. That’s worth every single wrinkle, stretch mark and fat roll.”

She sighed again. “When you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“I mean, getting healthy will help you with your goals of Boston,” I pointed out. “But doing it in a way that you are happy will be the best for you and your family.”

“I have to stick to this for at least two more weeks because I bet Haze that I could make it a month,” she grumbled.

The table erupted in laughter.

“What, exactly, were the terms?” I asked as my phone buzzed, feeling no guilt for pulling my phone out despite no one else having theirs out.

I glanced at the picture Dima had just sent me and giggled.

“I have to be able to stay away from sugar for at least thirty days,” Nastya answered.

“Like, sugar as in sugar that is white or brown? Or sugar that’s honey? Or sugar that’s in tortillas?” I asked curiously as I swiped to the next picture.

“At the time, it was only sugar in its raw form, and sugar that’s in cookies, cakes, and pies,” she reported. “But I can see you splitting hairs over there. But first, tell us what has that huge smile on your face.”

I showed them the photo of Dima, decked out in all black, with a fluffy white kitten on his back.

Nastya smiled. “Tell him to bring the cat home.”

I did.

Me:

Nastya wants you to bring the cat home to her.

Dima:

She wants me to steal someone’s cat?

Me:

I guess.

Dima:

It has a collar.

Me:

Okay, well maybe leave it.

Dima:

No takebacks now.

I rolled my eyes and sent him another text, but he didn’t reply, so I went back to our previous conversation.

“Back to what we were talking about,” I said. “When you say in the form of cookies and candy and the like, that’s completely different from having, say, Taco Bell. Sure, there are sugars in the tortillas and things, but as long as you stay away from the churro bite things, you should be very fine.”

“I like the way you think,” she said. “Tell him to stop by and get Taco Bell on his way home.”

I laughed and reached for my phone again.

Me:

Is there any way that you could possibly stop by Taco Bell on the way home?

Dima:

Yes

I smiled.

No questions.

Just yes.

Me:

I’ll place the order at the closest Taco Bell to your place. What time are you thinking?

Dima:

Probably another couple of hours. I’ll text you when I’m about done.

We went back to wine night.

It’d been Milena’s suggestion because she wanted to know everything there was to know about Dima and me.

It’d all started out this morning when I’d been in the backyard checking out a swarm of bees on the fence.

Apparently, one of the sisters had bees, and Dima had been explaining to me about them when Milena had popped her head over the fence and seen us.

“It’s true!” she’d exclaimed, and from that point she’d demanded that we have dinner tonight.

When Dima had explained that he had something to do, Milena had turned it into girls’ night.

No bad food or snacks, just healthy food and wine.

Which I’d been totally okay with, even though Brecken hadn’t been able to drink because she was pregnant, right along with Milena.

The two of them were two months apart and would have kids very close in age.

Which reminded me of my own vow of never having children.

“How do you make sure that they stay safe?” I asked.

It was Nastya who answered. “You’ve met their fathers, right?”

When she put it like that…

“Cutter would literally kill anyone and everyone if it kept our child safe,” Milena said softly, her eyes meeting mine.

Something passed between us, a knowledge that we’d both suffered the unthinkable.

Honestly, we were both doing very well considering, but she seemed to be handling the kid part better than me.

And nothing against my brother, but Dima was the way scarier of the two.

I knew that Cutter wouldn’t hesitate to harm or even kill someone if he had to, but Dima just had this, I guess you could say, air about him. Like he could and would kill you even if you breathed wrong. And god help them if they breathed wrong around me.

If we had a child…whew.

“Okay,” I said. “He’d said as much…and I’d been thinking as much…but when you put it like that, I guess it makes me realize that it’s not just Dima and me that would be watching out for a child if it came down to it.”

“Are you already at that point in your relationship that you are thinking about children?” Milena asked, her eyes sparkling.

“I can’t say that what we’re doing is making any sort of sense, but I do know that he means the world to me, and I don’t see this going anywhere but in the right direction,” I admitted.

I wasn’t sure how I knew that.

I just did, down deep in my heart.

I knew that this was it for me. That he was it for me.

That…

My phone chimed, indicating an incoming message.

Dima:

Spoke too soon. This is gonna take longer than three hours. Place the order, baby girl. Shasha’s going to pick it up. He’s close.

I placed the order.

And when Shasha arrived with it, I was only slightly disappointed.

Brecken moved to take the bags from him and give him a solid kiss on the cheek.

“Can’t stay long because the babysitter we hired for the night says that one of our kids is puking.” Shasha sighed.

“Hope it’s not mine.” Maven groaned, but made no move to get up, fully trusting her brother to handle it.

Maven was the quietest of the bunch, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t participating like her sisters.

I adored them all, and I was glad that they were all so nice and welcoming.

“Oh,” I said. “I have some Zofran that you can give them.”

I hopped up from my chair and went into the bathroom where I kept my meds bag.

Even though I hated being a nurse, I did always come prepared.

I had Zofran always on hand, just in case.

There was no worse feeling than being sick and not being able to control it.

I pulled the meds out of my bag and said, “This dissolves under the tongue.”

“It’s safe for kids?” he asked.

“More than,” I said. “My good stuff that you would rub on the belly is at home. I’d suggest that over this, but it’ll still work in a pinch as long as you can get them to hold their liquid down long enough.”

He took the tablet from me and fisted it into his hand.

When I expected him to say thank you, he surprised me by going off on a tangent.

“I know that you’re a good person,” Shasha said quietly. “But Dima is broken, Keely. Don’t hurt him.”

I blinked, surprised by the words. “Like you just said, I’m a good person.”

“Good people can still do bad things to people that aren’t expecting it,” Shasha pointed out. He looked beyond me to the women in the kitchen laughing at something. “I had to pull all kinds of strings to get him out of the military and back here in one piece.”

My brows rose.

“He was one job away from losing himself,” he said honestly. “I’d like to say that he was going to be able to pull himself free, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think that he would’ve given and given until he had nothing left, then gone and died quietly by himself with none of us the wiser.”

My heart seized inside of my chest.

“I won’t hurt him, Shasha,” I promised him. “I won’t.”

Shasha turned back to me and said, “You better hope not.”

As Shasha walked away, I knew that I’d met the pakhan of the Russian Bratva right then, and not Dima’s brother.

Shasha would keep his promises, even if that meant heartache for his brother later on down the road.

But I promised myself right then that no matter what, I would not be the one to hurt Dima.

I didn’t care what I had to do to make that a reality, but I’d do it if it meant that Dima would never have to feel a void ever again.

I’d also point out Shasha’s hypocrisy next time I saw him.

If he wanted Dima to be able to live with himself, maybe he should stop sending him out on jobs he could be doing himself…

Cockwomble — noun — A male directed insult. A completely useless person that spouts constant bullshit.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

I was on my belly, eye to my scope, scope aimed at my target—or Shasha’s target—and there was a kitten on my back.

One that was wearing a jingling collar that was driving me insane.

The worst part was, if this was a fuckin’ pet, whomever owned the pet was allowing the cat to be really far off from anyone’s home.

I was in the middle of a field, on the edge of a city, about to take a shot that most snipers couldn’t take.

Oh, and the target was a woman.

A congresswoman.

Shasha hadn’t specifically asked me to take this shot, truth be told. He’d asked me to keep an eye on the woman, and I had.

I’d watched her ‘pretend’ for hours at a party in the middle of the city on the rooftop of her home as she celebrated her win back in November.

Only, when she wasn’t celebrating, she was going to her penthouse apartment, into a bedroom, and beating the absolute dog shit out of a little boy that was clearly not hers.

When she was done, she’d kiss him, and the kid would cringe, and definitely not because he’d just been beaten. Because he’d been hurt in other ways.

How did I know this?

Because he was chained naked to a bed.

My stomach was in knots as I watched the kid take one more beating before she headed back upstairs.

I would’ve taken the shot way before now had the kid not been in the way the entire time.

I was confident in my abilities to take a shot, but not confident enough to take the shot when a little boy, probably around the age of seven or eight, was taking up most of the scope.

The moment she got back upstairs after getting her fix, I turned my scope back to the window below, looking as the kid curled into a ball and cried, big, hulking sobs.

And I knew right then and there that the shot was going to be taken.

In the middle of her party, in the middle of Dallas, because I would not let her go down there and do anything else to that poor child.

When she was by herself, standing on a raised platform and waving and laughing, I stilled my trigger finger and listened to the speech she gave.

I’d tapped into the DJ’s setup after he’d gotten there, and heard everything that he had to say, the music he played, and anything that someone uttered that came close enough.

But now everyone and everything was quiet except for her, allowing me to hear everything that she had to say over her speech.

“I want to thank you for your patience,” she smiled. “It’s been a few months since I’ve been voted into office, and I just want to say how thankful I am. How happy that I am to be here and make a difference.” She smiled and raised a glass in the hand that she’d just used to beat the shit out of a little boy. “I want to make a change in this world. In our great state of Texas. I want to…”

I took the shot, not wanting to hear another lie come out of her mouth.

In the months that she’d been in office, she’d accomplished nothing. She’d signed on for numerous bills that hurt this country, the men and women that would defend this country, and anything and everything that she could put her name to that would be touted in the media for all to hear.

Oh, and she’d signed onto the bill that would affect Shasha and me and would give the government the ability to go digging into our lives, in any way they needed, giving them blanket permission across the board to do whatever they wanted, when they wanted, and how they wanted.

Our constitutional rights?

Forgotten if we were suspected of being a part of an organized crime family.

My almost college degree in criminology was screaming as I read that particular bill.

That’d been the reason that I’d gotten the degree in the first place, so I knew my rights.

But apparently, the men and women that wrote that bill, and agreed with it, wanted nothing more than to strip those rights.

The shot was true, and her head exploded like a pumpkin being dropped from a three-story building.

Blood, bone, and brain matter went everywhere as her head was pretty much annihilated.

After the shot took place, I didn’t waste time.

The kitten didn’t react when I took the shot—it was quiet, and truthfully, unless you knew what you were listening for, you wouldn’t know that I’d just shot a rifle—and I took that as a sign that the cat needed to come home with me.

Only, when I finally got the cat free of my back, I turned to see that the cat wasn’t alone.

The cat distribution system had finally found me, and with it came four kittens in varying shades of brown, white and orange. All with collars, indicating that they were someone’s pet.

Though, I felt like it was more likely that someone was selling them, based on how fuckin’ cute and fluffy they were.

“These are ragdoll kittens.” Nastya’s eyes went wide. “You realize these are like two grand a pop, right?”

“Four,” Milena said. “Look.”

I didn’t bother to look, because I didn’t care.

But Keely took the phone from Milena’s hand and started to read.

“Plano woman begging for the return of her kittens. According to the KRMW News reporter that met with both the wife and the husband, after an argument about the smell of ammonia from the amount of cats in the house, the husband, Jack Leo, decided to take the cats and give them to good homes instead of selling any more of her ‘puppy mill’ kittens. Jack Leo, a local window business owner of Bright Windows, says that he and his wife are getting a divorce. According to Leo, Natasha Leo, his wife, has been breeding cats since they met. But it’s gotten out of hand to the point where she has hundreds of cats inside and out, and it’s ruining his life. He sold off over a hundred cats and kittens in the past month while Natasha Leo was visiting Russia to acquire more cats to breed.” Keely looked over at the cats in question. “Doesn’t look like he found them a good home. Sounds like he might’ve dumped them. Do you think there could be more?”

“Maybe he found a home for all of them but the ones that I found,” I shrugged. “I can go back and look in a few more days.”

“Not now?” Shasha joked.

He’d seen the news.

He knew what I did.

He also knew why it was a little too hot right now to go back and search for any other kittens.

“We can all go,” Maven said. “Say we were driving by and saw a couple of cats if anyone asks questions.”

Maven didn’t outright know that I’d done anything tonight, but if she had a working brain—which she did—she’d know I’d done something.

But before I could say anything more, Keely sucked in a breath.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” I asked, startled with how hard my heart jumped inside of my chest at her gasp of outrage.

“Look at this!” she cried as she started a video back up. “This is the congresswoman that was killed tonight. Look what they found locked up in her bedroom!”

Shasha’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the video.

“Screen share that with the television,” I suggested.

She did, and we all watched as a little boy was carted out of the building wrapped up in a cozy looking blanket.

The video buffered right at a specific moment in time, and my being froze inside.

“Um,” I said carefully. “That looks like…”

“Apollo.” She inhaled swiftly, her head whipping around as she stared at Cutter. “That looks like Apollo.”

A look of complete horror crossed over Cutter’s face.

Then, “It fits.”

The raspy “it fits” had my heart literally jolting inside of my chest again.

“What’s going on?” Shasha asked.

“Two years ago, Apollo’s son, Tavi, otherwise known as Octavius Abram Reins, went missing. Apollo’s wife at the time took off and went back to her home country. Or so she said. He’s spent the last two years looking for them and found nothing.”

“You’re sure that it’s Apollo’s son?” I asked curiously.

“There’s no doubt in my mind. Because all of them have that little birthmark right there.” She got up and pointed at the screen, which was still frozen and buffering. “That one right there on the side of his neck. It’s a heart. Every last first-born boy has had it for eight generations now. Plus, they have the bluest eyes. Like the sky in the middle of a sunny day.”

Now that she pointed it out, I had seen the eyes and the birthmark on Apollo before.

“Fuck,” I said. “Call him.”

Cutter pulled out his phone and left the room.

Hours later, when we were lying in bed, Keely had her head resting on my chest. Neither one of us was asleep, and both of us were thinking.

The last couple of hours were crazy.

Apollo had literally stormed the hospital looking for his son, and it’d been on every available news outlet that was broadcasting.

The congresswoman dying, and then the little boy they’d found chained up in her bedroom, had been on every news outlet that was known to man.

And Apollo trying to get to the little boy? That’d made national news.

But he was there now, and the little boy was safe.

“Do you think that she was hurting him?” Keely asked.

I swallowed hard. “She was.”

“How?” she asked.

“From what I saw? She was beating the shit out of him,” I said.

Hopefully my other suspicion was wrong.

Hopefully, he’d only been with her for a short time.

The setup in her place, from what I could tell, didn’t say long-term.

But…

“I’m glad you killed her,” she whispered into my chest.

I pulled her in deeper. “I wasn’t going to until I saw.”

She ran her fingers between my pectoral muscles.

Which, of course, caught the attention of all the fuckin’ cats we still had.

Two of them pounced, causing Keely to giggle.

I, on the other hand, winced.

“Their claws are very sharp, darling,” I teased.

“Whoops.” She laughed, then sobered. “She’s why I don’t want children.”

I squeezed her to me and turned, displacing the cats that’d tried to take up residence on my chest.

The cats fell behind me and curled close, uncaring that they’d been moved.

I pulled her in close and said, “You don’t have to have children, baby. But know that if you do, if you decide you want them with me, I’ll fight with my last breath to keep them safe.”

“Apollo is a strong man. He’s military. He’s a badass. And he wasn’t able to protect his child,” she pointed out.

“Apollo trusted the wrong girl,” I countered. “I would never betray you like that. You know that in your heart.”

She sighed. “Apollo is heartbroken.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I’ll keep thinking about children.” She pressed a kiss to my throat.

I squeezed her tight. “Good.”

Because why the hell did the idea of Keely being pregnant with my children make me want it so badly?

Because you love her, you dumbass.

My inner voice had never steered me wrong before.

I would make this woman mine forever, and eventually I’d give her babies.

Lots of them.

So many that she had no choice but to stay home and take care of them with me, and never think about working, or the ugliness of the world ever again.

Sounded a lot like heaven.

The trick to getting through the week is always having a package on the way.

—Keely’s secret thoughts

KEELY

“Ohhh!” I heard called from somewhere behind me. “I have all of this to take over to Apollo, too!”

I looked at the massive amounts of stuff that Nastya had run out of her house with and blinked.

“What is all that?” I asked curiously.

“That is everything that I’ve been given to test in the age range of seven to ten in the last few months. There are tons of clothes, toys, games and room essentials. I’m not going to be able to do anything with it past giving my general thoughts on it. So I figure, why not donate to the little boy that hasn’t had much in a while?” Nastya explained.

Nastya was an Amazon reviewer when she first met her husband, Haze. Then Haze’s adult daughter, Desi, and Nastya had turned it into something much more with the power of social media.

She’d gifted me quite a bit of her ‘testers’ in the short time that I’d known her, and I was loving it.

Getting new gadgets and things that I didn’t have to pay for sounded like a grand plan for me.

“Are you going there after or before?” Nastya asked both Milena and me.

Tonight there would be a celebration at the Truth Tellers MC clubhouse celebrating Tavi’s return. Though Apollo hadn’t offered up much hope that he’d be staying for more than a few minutes. Tavi was still very much wary of everything, and he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to handle a huge, rowdy party.

“We’re definitely going to go look for the kitties first, then run by the clubhouse,” I responded. “Milena went to buy out the Pet House of their animal carriers.”

“Then I’ll ride with you,” she confirmed. “And take your car back since Dima’s meeting you there.” Nastya smiled.

“That sounds perfect,” I admitted. “Have you ever driven a standard, though?”

Nastya snorted. “Shasha has this thing about the females in his family knowing how to escape in any situation. He taught us all self-defense and advanced defensive driving before we were fifteen. I could drive a tank if I needed to.”

I grinned and started heading down the road, and Nastya started to mess with my radio stations.

“I’ll bet you anything, though, that you won’t be driving this for long.” Nastya hummed along to a tune by Cody Johnson when she got to the station she wanted.

I frowned as we took the turn that would lead us out of the lake subdivision that the Semyonovs lived in. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that this is an older, unsafe car, and he’s going to have you driving a new one as soon as he can.” She rolled her eyes. “Not that I think it’s a bad car or anything. It’s great from what I can tell. It looks like you just rolled off the lot with it thirty years ago.”

I laughed. “It was my grandmother’s newest car. When she died, my grandad kept it in tip-top shape. Still keeps it in tip-top shape, really. Or my brothers do. I don’t think I’ve had to do anything but fill it up with gas in my entire life.”

“What is it about guys and cars? Dima, Shasha, and my husband all know how to keep them running. How is it that you can talk to almost any guy, and they know exactly what needs to be done? Even if it’s only a cursory knowledge of it? If something went wrong besides the battery on my car, I wouldn’t have a single clue what it was.” She shook her head. “I was driving my car the other day when I went to pick up Haze from work, and felt nothing wrong with it the entire drive. When Haze started driving home, he immediately noticed something was wrong. When he got back home, he fixed it. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out what it was that he was feeling that I wasn’t.”

We chatted for another fifteen minutes as we drove to the parking lot that would lead to the trail that would then lead to the field that Dima had found our four hellion cats.

When we got there, Milena, Maven, and two of Maven’s sisters-in-law, Athena and Bindi, were already waiting on us.

“Hey!” we all chirped as we waved and caught up.

“So are we thinking they’re gonna be here?” Maven asked as she carried a package of cat treats under her arm.

We walked and chatted, all of us having a great time catching up and making new friends.

Bindi, who was blind, walked slowly, her K9 companion at her side guiding her way.

Though she couldn’t actually look for the cats, she was here as moral support.

I absolutely adored Bindi and Athena, and only then realized that maybe if I met friends outside of work every once in a while, I might find that I have more women friends.

We made it to the field and started looking around.

“Oh, hey, Officer Assman!” Athena called. “What are you doing here?”

This Officer Assman smiled at Athena and said, “Looking for the congresswoman’s shooter’s location.”

I kept my mouth shut, smiling faintly while simultaneously trying not to freak out.

“What are you doing here?” Officer Assman asked.

“Oh, we heard a kitten when we were walking by here last, and we came with reinforcements,” Maven said, talking to the officer like she knew him just as well as Athena. “We want to catch the kitty.”

Officer Assman nodded and said, “What kind of cat?”

“The kind that is skittish and I only saw the tail end of.” Maven shrugged. “We’re gonna try to catch him. The thought of him being out here without food and water is breaking my heart.”

Officer Assman nodded and said, “Good luck to you all. I have to keep looking around.”

Then he was gone, leaving me with a racing heart and a nervous belly.

“Shew,” Maven said. “I didn’t want to have to return these cats to that woman that was breeding them. I would’ve had to had he been here when we found the kitties.” She looked around. “That’s probably why none of the cats have been found yet. This trail is deserted.”

It was.

Which was super sad.

The man that’d dropped the kittens off knew what he was doing when he dumped those cats here. He knew they wouldn’t be found.

“Shake your treat box,” I suggested.

Maven did, and we all started walking out into the field, calling “here kitty, kitty” in an upbeat voice.

The first one popped up near Brecken.

The second and third popped up near Maven.

“Whoa,” Maven cried when more and more poured out of the tall grass. “They’re everywhere.”

Three of us went back to the cars for the cat carriers.

When we got back, we stuffed them all into eight cat carriers.

They weren’t happy, but they would all find a better home than the fields they were found in.

As we all went back to the cars, I asked, “Do you think we found them all?”

“Probably not,” Brecken admitted. “But we can keep coming back with food and water. Eventually we might get them all.”

Luckily, being in the middle of Dallas, there really weren’t many predators that would take any of the cats out.

After parting in the parking lot and handing off my keys to Nastya, Milena and I climbed into her mom-mobile, a brand new Ford Expedition with huge tires and all sorts of fun features, and headed to the clubhouse.

The cats sang to us the entire way.

“This place still gives me butterflies,” Milena said as we pulled into the closest parking spot we could find.

I smiled at my new sister-in-law. “They love you. They’ve all told me so plenty of times.”

She smiled, and a little bit of the nervousness slid out of her shoulders.

“Let’s get these cats inside and get them some food and water,” I suggested.

Instead of going through the main door, I had her walk with me to the kitchen door that was on the side of the clubhouse.

Mainly, the clubhouse was an open concept place.

But there was a storage room and dirty kitchen off the back of the main kitchen that allowed me to keep the door shut to the main part of the clubhouse. Containing them seemed like it would be a problem if I wasn’t careful.

“Plus, I can set up a couple of litter boxes in here. The club members work on cars and bikes a lot in the back barn, and there are a lot of oil spills. They have kitty litter in there for such occasions. I’ll steal some of that,” I said as we started carting them inside.

When she started letting them out of their cages, I went for the kitty litter and some spare boxes.

When I got inside, it was cat chaos.

“We’re gonna have to find something to do with these cats,” I said as I took them all in. “That one especially can’t be outside anymore.”

It was a Sphynx, and had looked like it’d been put through the ringer over the last few days. The poor little thing had cuts all over her little body from the woods she’d been in.

“I’ll take that one home with me.” Milena smiled. “Cutter will love it.”

“Cutter will love what?” I heard Dima ask.

I smiled when I saw him filling up the door to the kitchen.

“This cat,” I pointed at the naked black cat.

Dima curled his lip up in disgust. “Sure, he’ll definitely love that.”

He took in all the cats, and then cursed when one slipped past him and dashed into the main room.

“That one was a Serval. We could’ve left it behind and it would’ve been able to defend itself and feed itself no problem,” I said. “Don’t let any kids play with it.”

Dima left and forgot to shut the door, so all of the cats started pouring out of the kitchen and into the main room of the clubhouse.

Squeals of excitement from the few kids that were there filled the air, and I sighed.

“Holy shit,” someone said from behind me.

I smiled and stood up, looking from Apollo to his son, Tavi.

I waved. “Hi, Tavi.”

Tavi’s eyes lit up and he said, “Hi, Kee.”

Kee.

From a young age, Tavi had trouble saying Keely, so I’d been shortened to Kee.

I was so happy he remembered me.

“Tavi.” I dropped down to my haunches. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He smiled and his cheeks turned pink. “I’ve missed you, too. Is that a cat?”

I stepped back so he could see the chaos Dima had just unleashed. “A lot of cats. My friend, Milena,” I pointed at Milena who was watching on with a small smile. “She married Cutter. She and I went to a place where my old man, Dima, found some kittens last night. And we found over seventy cats!”

“Wow,” Tavi said quietly. “That’s a whole lot of cats. What are you going to do with them all?”

I grinned conspiratorially. “I think I could probably talk your dad into a few.”

Apollo cursed. “Cats and computer equipment don’t pair well together.”

“Please, Dad?” Tavi begged, turning his sweet gaze up to his father’s.

I grinned wickedly at Apollo.

“Yeah, Apollo. Just one itty, bitty kitty,” I teased.

That’s when the Serval came back into the kitchen, and Tavi gasped. “That one!”

I left to go find Dima, laughing the entire way as Apollo explained why he couldn’t have that particular cat.

I want my phone to notify when I block them. Like: Blocked at 3:26 pm.

—Text from Keely to Dima

KEELY

The cats got a clean bill of health, and thanks to Shasha’s computer guru, since Apollo was currently very busy with his son, we got all their microchips changed over to match me as their original owner.

Four of them were a handful, but since I wasn’t working anymore, I saw no reason to not keep them.

And Dima hadn’t complained once.

He’d only given the four of them in bed with me a quick glance before he’d pushed them all to the side and climbed into the bed.

When I’d woken this morning, all of them were locked out of the room, and Dima’s mouth was doing amazing things to my clit.

My first stop of the day was the pet store where I would be grabbing some cat food—apparently cats, especially male cats, needed wet food in their diet to prevent them from getting ureter crystals, who knew?—and then to Dima’s place where I would be dropping them off for the day.

That morning as Dima was showering, he’d called out to me and told me that we were staying at his place.

He’d also told me to move in as he was leaving, with a quick “because I’m fuckin’ in love with you” before slamming the door behind him and hauling ass to his bike so he didn’t have to hear my reply.

I sent him a text after he’d left that read: coward.

He hadn’t responded, but I hadn’t needed him to.

Instead, I’d called some movers and then pulled Dima’s credit card out of the kitchen drawer and used it to pay for them.

All of my shit would be packed up and moved for me by the end of the week.

All in all, by the time I hit the pet store, I was feeling accomplished.

I left the cats in the car with it running as I headed inside, my gaze instantly finding all the cat toys and collars.

I thought about getting them a collar, but then decided against it since I’d watched a video on social media last week on cats that pretty much pronounced that cats hated to be ‘heard’ when they were going places. And it was annoying to them to have bells and jingling collars around their throats.

Skipping the collars, I headed for the wet food and found a huge box of it on sale for an “Easter special.”

I grabbed one in each hand and headed for the checkout, startling slightly when I saw the same man from the sleep center that’d given me the creeps not too long ago.

I dropped my gaze and kept walking, heading straight for the checkout.

When I got there, I placed both boxes on the counter and called out, “Hello.”

The bored looking teen smiled at me, but didn’t otherwise comment as she checked me out.

I used my phone to pay, then surreptitiously glanced behind me to see if the weirdo from the sleep center was still there.

He was.

Right behind me, looking at the engraving machine.

I got a weird sense of unease and asked, “Hey, do you mind if I leave these boxes here? I want to keep looking.”

The teen nodded and pulled both boxes behind the counter and stacked them on the ground by her feet.

I headed back to the cat aisle and pulled out my phone.

Me:

Hey, where are you?

Dima:

<sends location.>

I clicked on it and it pulled up my Find My app on my phone.

It went straight to Dima’s location and I breathed a sigh of relief.

He was close.

Me:

Will you come to the pet store on Newton? I see that you’re about ten minutes away.

Dima:

I’m in a meeting…but yeah. You’re gonna have to tell Shasha why I left, though. He’s glaring hard at me right now.

I grinned and switched text messages to the thread that I’ d been added to just this morning between Maven, Nastya, Dima, Shasha and all of their significant others.

Me:

Strange man is following me around the store and making me feel uncomfortable. I’m sorry that I made Dima leave.

My phone immediately started to vibrate and I answered Dima’s call.

“What’s going on?” he questioned in a deathly calm voice.

I explained quietly, knowing the man wasn’t far from earshot.

Dima’s growl was ferocious as he said, “I’ll be there in five.”

“I thought you said that you were ten minutes away?” I asked.

“I’ll be there in five,” he promised as his engine revved. “It’s gonna switch to my helmet and may sound weird, but don’t hang up.”

I didn’t, and then I heard the sound of his bike going full throttle.

My phone continued to vibrate the five minutes it took Dima to get there.

“Where are you?” he asked.

I swallowed hard and said, “I’m gonna meet you in the parking lot.”

Before he could reply, I stuffed my phone, still connected, into my purse and headed to the counter.

I smiled at the teen and said, “Thanks!”

She didn’t reply, already checking out another customer.

I glanced over my shoulder to see the man following me, but the nerves didn’t hit me as they did earlier because I could hear the whine of the bike heading toward me.

It was coming fast, and the smile couldn’t be helped as I started into the parking lot.

The bike came up from my left and then pulled in directly behind me.

I kept walking, even though I knew that the bike had stopped.

I put the cans of food into the trunk and only then looked over my shoulder to see Dima off his bike, helmet still in place, poking the man in the chest.

I got into my car to wait.

It took ten whole minutes, but then Dima joined me at my car.

I got out and looked around, then practically buried my face into Dima’s chest.

His very hard, very broad, very yummy chest.

He wrapped his arms around me and said, “You know who that guy was?”

“Actually, I have no idea,” I admitted. “Other than I know that he was a patient at the sleep center a few weeks ago.”

He stilled. “What?”

I explained everything, ending with, “That’s the first time I’ve seen him outside of the sleep center, though.”

“That’s the same guy that cleaned your windows that one time we…” he hesitated, but he didn’t need to say. “You told me his name was Cornelius Stone, though.”

I understood without him needing to go into detail.

“Oh,” I breathed. “Do you think that he knows that was me?”

“Probably not all that hard to figure out. He counted the windows. Knew the floor. Probably looked at your mailbox in the foyer,” he explained. “It’s right by the office where he would’ve gone to get paid.”

I shivered. “I hope it’s all just a coincidence.”

“Him seeing you practically naked, then you seeing him out and about? Maybe. But him coming to your place of work? I don’t believe in that many coincidences,” he growled.

I shivered at the way his words made excitement dance across my skin.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now,” he said, “I figure out where that fucker lives and see what he knows.”

I nodded, deciding it was best not to question him and his methods. I might find out something that I didn’t like.

“Think maybe we should get married,” I teased. “That way I can’t be forced to be a tattletale against you.”

His eyes gleamed and he pulled me in close using the top of his helmet.

“That can be arranged.”

I smiled. “I have to get to CE.”

“Then go,” he said. “But don’t forget to drop the cats off first.”

I looked back at the cats that were practically begging to be let out of their carrier.

“The entire drive to the vet,” I sighed. “They cried. It was awful.”

“I’ll bet,” he agreed.

He went to step back, but I caught him by the t-shirt and pulled him toward me. “About what you said earlier…”

His eyes flashed with excitement, but his face remained bored. “Yeah?”

“I might be even more head over heels for you than I thought.”

He laughed and then opened my door for me. “It’s not too soon?”

“No,” I dropped down into my car seat and blew him a kiss. “It’s not.”

He eyed me, then checked out my car. “I think we need to get you something newer.”

I rolled my eyes and slammed the door.

He watched me go, and only when I was well on my way did he head back to his bike that was still parked in the middle of the parking lot.

I didn’t see the man, Cornelius Stone, but I had a feeling that I didn’t want to.

“Come on, Copper,” I moaned. “I’m starving, and we’re accomplishing nothing here right now.”

Copper groaned, scrubbing his hands down his face. “This place is a mess. I can’t believe you didn’t catch any of the stuff they were doing.”

The ‘stuff’ they were doing was embezzling money, and lots of it.

“I can’t say that accounting is my best subject,” I admitted as we gathered our trash and headed for the door.

I dropped my load into the trash in the hall, and he followed suit, before heading back to lock the office door.

“You’re going to have to get a forensic accountant in here to figure out what all was done,” I said. “And then we’re going to have to file charges.”

“I have a slightly better idea,” he said. “Though probably not better for them.”

The way he said it made me think that he was about to do something highly illegal.

“This could all be figured out legally,” I pointed out.

“The time for that has passed,” he said. “If we want to see that money again, we’re going to have to get it by other means.”

I nodded and headed for the elevator. “Hey, I was going to ask, do you want to move into my apartment?”

He frowned. “The one we just got for you for the next year?”

I shrugged. “Dima asked me to move in, and I said yes.”

He studied me for a long moment before he said, “You know he’s very dangerous, right?”

I smiled and got into the elevator. “I know.”

“You know that he’s slightly crazy, too?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I know that a little bit crazy is okay, as long as it’s the crazy protecting you.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Do you love him?”

He wasn’t asking me this because he was questioning me. He was asking me because he genuinely wanted to know.

“I’m so in love with him that I don’t even know how to begin to explain it,” I admitted.

He was silent for a while, and the floors ticked by on the elevator before he said, “I want that one day.”

My brows rose. “You had that, brother.”

He remained silent, and I knew that we wouldn’t be having the discussion on his ‘once’ love.

I smiled, though, because I knew a secret.

The girl that I’d suggested we hire was none other than his ‘one true love.’

The woman that he pushed away when he’d gone into prison and hadn’t called since.

He might hate me after he figured it out, but only a little bit.

A secret smile stayed on my lips as I headed through the lobby and out the employee entrance.

In the last few days, a lot had changed with the security.

Now we had a guard all the time, and there were multiple of them.

The nightshift guard greeted us as we exited the building.

He’d been making a round of the building, and had his flashlight out.

“Hey, Horace.” I smiled. “Have a nice night.”

He dipped his chin and kept walking.

“He’s so talkative,” I teased.

Copper threw his arm around me and said, “I’ll take your apartment.”

I grinned. “Awesome.”

But secretly, I had another reason for grinning.

Because Reign Lee Lake lived in my building, two floors beneath me.

Copper would have no choice but to face his past, whether he liked it or not.

Dima came out of the shadows, and Copper tensed before releasing a relieved breath. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Wanted to see if your night guard would notice me.” He shrugged, uncaring that he’d scared my brother. “He did. Good guy. Made me show him my ID and everything and called in to the security office to verify that I should be here.”

“Good,” Copper said. “He came highly recommended by a friend.”

“I like him.” Dima nodded. “You ready to go home?”

“What about my car?”

Dima curled his lip. “I’m sure it’ll be fine in the parking lot. Horace is very good at his job.”

I smiled. “You just want it to be stolen.”

“It’s in desperate need of an upgrade.” He chuckled.

“I’ll take that, too,” Copper said. “Runs great. I’ve kept that thing running since I was a kid along with my grandfather. Buy her a good SUV. Cars nowadays are useless.”

Dima and him talked shop for a few more minutes, then they parted.

I gave Copper my keys before he left, both to the house and the car.

“I’m moving out Sunday completely. But I’ll probably not be back. Can you let them in? Oh, and keep whatever you want. You can tell them what they can take,” I suggested.

Copper rolled his eyes. “You just don’t want to deal with the movers.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

Dima snaked his arm around my waist and didn’t interrupt, even though I could practically feel his excitement.

The moment Copper was on his Harley, Dima pulled me completely into his chest, then placed both of his large palms on my face before saying, “You’re moving in?”

“I love you, Dima. Of course I’m moving in.”

“You don’t think it’s too soon?” he teased.

“I know what I want.” I shrugged. “And what I want is you.”

Sometimes you win, sometimes you show them it was beneficial to let you win.

—Dima’s secret thoughts

DIMA

I hadn’t planned on going to jail today, but there I was, doing it.

Hours prior

My first stop was to the sleep center.

Breaking into places during the middle of the day was slightly harder than at night due to the potential of being seen easier, but this was the part of Dallas that didn’t snitch on anyone.

So, instead of going through the back, I went through the front.

Though, I did have a ski mask on to protect my identity.

Once there, I hacked into their computer systems with hilarious ease and found the address for one Cornelius Stone, thirty-nine.

He lived in Irving with his wife, Jacinda Stone, who was also thirty-nine.

His emergency contact, however, wasn’t his wife at all, but a woman named Natasha Leo.

Interesting.

I wondered if this was a family member or an affair partner.

Either way, I was thinking Stone had his fingers in too many pots.

I’d spent the day trying to find information on him and had come up incredibly empty.

Like, no joke, there was no Stone anywhere on the internet. His name wasn’t even listed on the damn business page on their window cleaning business.

Though, I did notice that he had quite a few less than stellar reviews.

Apparently, it wasn’t only me that thought he’d done a horrible job cleaning windows. Who knew?

Yesterday, when I’d spoken to him in the parking lot, I hadn’t outright said that I was going to kill the man if he kept following my woman, but I’d made him think that there was a possibility.

I’d gotten very good at saying my words in such a way that I could never be incriminated in case there was a camera recording me.

But after what I’d heard last night from Keely, about how he’d been following her more than just at the pet store, I’d decided that a more in depth warning was necessary.

Hence me being at a doctor’s office in the middle of the day looking for the address of the man.

After acquiring that address, I locked back up and headed to Irving on my bike, making sure to go the speed limit so I wouldn’t be stopped before I accomplished what I’d set out to accomplish this morning.

The address took me to a place on the outskirts of Irving, closer to Plano.

The house was in a subdivision that was filled with people. Each house had a lot of decorations, signifying that they were well lived in, except for the creep’s house.

Stone’s place was barren.

It didn’t look like anyone lived there, let alone a married couple with cats.

Parking my bike across the street, I pulled off my helmet because it was well over ninety degrees out today, and then got off the bike.

Placing the helmet on the seat, I leaned up against the bike and crossed my legs out in front of me, doing nothing but watching for now.

I did pull my phone out and look up the property records, though.

After coming up empty on the name “Cornelius Stone and Jacinda Stone” I looked up the property address. Which netted me a completely different set of names. Natasha Leo and Jack Leo. Though ‘Jack Leo’ hadn’t been added to the property taxes until this year.

Interesting.

Were they newly married?

I kept snooping on my phone while also keeping an eye out on the house—there were no cars in the driveway, but that didn’t mean that no one was home—and found that ‘Jack’s’ business wasn’t created until this year, too.

Specifically two months ago.

More interesting.

A person running caught my attention, and I narrowed my eyes, realizing quickly that it was Jack/Cornelius.

He was shirtless, wearing nothing but running shorts and tennis shoes, and staring directly at me.

I narrowed my eyes.

Most normal people didn’t notice small details so far away.

Yet this man had noticed me.

He’d noticed the man in his yard behind me. He’d also noticed the dog that was coming out of the side yard to his right.

Yet his eyes stayed on the most dangerous threat to him—me.

Military, I decided.

He had to be ex-military.

But there was something else about him.

The two times I’d seen him previously, he’d been wearing dumpy clothes to hide his physique.

Why?

What was the reason he was hiding that?

He certainly wasn’t hiding it now.

“Hey, Jack,” the neighbor behind me yelled as he came closer. “How many miles did you put in today?”

Jack/Cornelius said, “Oh, only a couple.”

He was lying.

I could tell by the way the man’s eyebrows shot up. “Only a couple? You sick? You told me last week you usually do five to nine every day before you get your garage workout in.”

Yep, definitely lying.

He didn’t want me knowing how much he worked out.

“Plus, you left at like o’dark-thirty. There’s no way you only did two if you’re just now getting back. That was an hour and a half ago.” The helpful neighbor kept talking.

My brows rose as a small smile lit my lips.

More than interesting at this point.

This guy had to be a cop.

It was good that I’d found that out.

I would’ve hated to have killed a cop and not known it.

Assaulting him was probably off the table now, too.

“Thanks, Jim,” Jack/Cornelius said.

When he got closer to me, he slipped his t-shirt on over his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here?”

“Why are you stalking my woman?” I asked bluntly. “She told me last night that you showed up at her job and tried to corner her multiple times. And then yesterday you were following her at the pet store to the point where she felt threatened and had to call me because she was so scared. Oh, and let’s not forget you watched us have sex while you half-assed cleaned her apartment windows. And what’s your real name, anyway? I can’t keep calling you Jack/Cornelius in my head.”

“Oh, I thought you weren’t actually cleaning windows?” helpful Jim cut in. “Your partner told me last week that y’all were investigating an organized crime family. And, just for your information, it’s Jack right now. His wife’s name is Natasha.”

Oh, shit.

Mic drop.

I could see that ol’ Jack wanted to curse.

“But your partner got really mad and left you because you got rid of all her cats,” he drawled. “I saw her leaving two nights ago angry as hell. She threw you under the bus, partner.”

My lips twitched.

Obviously, Jack hadn’t made any friends, while the partner, Natasha Leo, did.

“How about you tell me what it is you’re investigating,” I suggested.

Instead of doing that, Jack left, heading toward his house.

Jim came up to me as soon as Jack was all the way inside.

“Natasha’s been an FBI agent for as long as I can remember her living here. That’s why her house is so bare. She lives here, but she’s gone a lot. The neighbors all take turns mowing her lawn in the summer. She’s a good neighbor to have, always makes sure to take care of us. And those cats that she had, they’re all really well taken care of. Her friend takes care of them when she’s gone, practically lives there. Not saying that I agree with breeding cats or anything when there are so many cats at the animal shelters, but I can’t really comment on someone’s way of making money, you know?” Helpful Jim supplied as he came to stand next to me. “She was so mad. Those cats were her livelihood. She said that she didn’t want to be in the FBI anymore and wanted to permanently take care of the cats. I don’t blame her. World’s a pretty bad place.”

“What else do you know, Jim?” I asked, amused.

“I know that when she left, it was a spectacle. She was threatening her new ‘husband,’ which really isn’t a husband. Apparently they were working a job together here, and Jack, whose real name is Chester Brown, needed a cover. They came up with Jack Leo,” he said. “Natasha’s real name is Natasha Leo. Jack’s real name is Chester Brown. Though, he has about a hundred aliases that he uses.”

I nodded, hoping he’d keep going.

“They were coming here to help with an organized crime case that local agents couldn’t crack. Chester Brown moved into Natasha Leo’s place, and everything went south. They fought loudly every day about those cats. Apparently, Chester is allergic to them. Then one day Natasha gets home and they’re all just gone. That’s when World War Three happened. She went off. Threatened to kick him out and do all kinds of things. Then more official looking people showed up, and Natasha marched out with a packed bag and a mean scowl on her face. She looked so damn mad. Haven’t seen her since,” Jim supplied.

Goddamn, I’d be pissed as hell, too.

Natasha had a real good reason to be mad.

“How’d the news article come out?” I wondered.

“Our neighbor down the street,” he pointed two houses down. “Works for the Dallas Mirror. She heard everything and wrote it, leaving out the bit about them being FBI agents so she couldn’t be sued.”

“Well, I officially think that he’s an asshole,” I admitted.

And I did.

But I also found that I felt a whole lot more.

Why was Keely being targeted, though?

Were other agents following around Brecken, and my sisters?

My mind was reeling when I said, “Hey, Jim. I have to make a few phone calls. I’ll be right back.”

Jim went back to watering his plants, and I walked a little farther down the road to stand near a couple of trees that were offering up shade.

My call went to Shasha first, and to say that he was pissed would be an understatement.

“Everyone else has bodyguards,” he said. “Keely is the only one that doesn’t.”

He was right.

“Fuck,” I sighed. “I’ll get her one ASAP. She’s gonna fuckin’ love that.”

“See if one of the Truth Tellers wants to do it. She’s friends with them…” I missed what else he was saying because there were multiple cars rolling up the road. “Fuck.”

“What?” Shasha asked.

“I’m gonna need you to put a Truth Teller on Keely. And keep an eye on her,” I said. “She’s at the office today with Copper, so you can probably just give him a call.”

“What are you saying?” Shasha asked. “Are there cops there?”

“Yep,” I confirmed.

“I’ll pull your location and get you a lawyer out there in a bit. Don’t say anything,” Shasha ordered.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not stupid, Shasha.”

“No, you’re not. But you also get a little defensive when your girl is brought into the mix,” he explained.

He did have a point.

“Well,” I sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

I walked back over to Jim after I hung up and said, “Hey, Jim.”

Jim looked up.

“Could you possibly hold my phone and keys for a bit? Until I can come pick them up a little later?” I asked, getting the feeling that I could trust this man with just about anything.

Especially if he didn’t like ol’ Jack/not Jack.

“Sure,” he frowned, then saw all the cars barreling down the street. “I’ll put your bike in the garage.”

“Thanks, Jim,” I said as I handed him my phone and keys. “If my girl calls, tell her that she needs to call Shasha.”

“What’s your girl’s name?” he asked.

“Keely,” I answered.

“Okay.” He took the phone and the keys and put them into his pocket.

No questions.

Yeah, I needed to tell Shasha about this old man.

Maybe he could be useful.

With my pockets a lot lighter, I went back to my lean against the bike, knowing what was about to come.

It didn’t take long.

As soon as his backup had arrived, Cheesy Chester came back out of his place, clothed in his ridiculously oversized getup, and watched the show.

“Dima Semyonov?” the first man to reach me asked.

He was clothed in a FBI windbreaker, and looked like the quintessential FBI guy off of every movie ever.

“Are you Dima Semyonov?” he asked again, clearly impatient with me.

I didn’t say a thing.

“You’re under arrest,” he stated.

My brows rose.

“For what?” Jim asked for me.

Damn, I knew that I’d liked the guy.

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to go inside,” the FBI guy’s partner, this one at least dressed a little bit more professionally, said.

“I think the fuck not,” Jim disagreed. “I’m not done watering my plants. I have a routine. And this is a free country. I can be outside if I want to be outside.”

“You’re interrupting a federal investigation,” FBI guy number three barked as he came out from behind his car, as if he’d been worried that I was going to attack him at any moment.

FBI guys number four, five, and six all stayed back and watched, ready to lend a hand if needed.

“Actually, I’m watering my plants, not interrupting an investigation.” He paused. “But, just sayin’, investigation doesn’t mean arrest. You have to have probable cause for an arrest.”

“There was,” FBI number one disagreed. “This man was harassing a federal agent.”

“When?” Jim asked. “Because, just sayin’, if you say it happened here, it didn’t. Because I have cameras all around this house and in my yard since that motherfucker,” he pointed across the road, “moved in. I think if anyone is going to get arrested, it should be that man for dumping cats. It’s a class A misdemeanor in Texas. For a man that calls himself the ‘law’ he should really be following it.”

Ol’ Jim was right.

It was illegal in Texas and was considered animal cruelty.

Since I’d joined the military, I’d spent a lot of my spare time studying up on the laws, knowing that eventually I’d get out and need to know them if I was going to work with Shasha full-time.

Plus, having a really good memory, I could remember most if not all of them.

Hell, if I really wanted to, I could probably go pass the bar right now.

Speaking of bar…

“And how do you know that?” FBI guy number two asked.

“I’m a lawyer,” Jim said, rolling his eyes. “Retired, but still. I could get this one out of a murder charge right now if he decided to fuck you up.”

Again, had I said how much I liked Jim?

“Sir…”

“You’re under arrest,” Chester Brown growled. “Let me see your hands.”

I gave them to him, and he roughly yanked my arms behind my back.

I allowed it, of course, because if ol’ Jim really did have cameras, I wanted to make sure that it looked really good if this went any further.

“Oh, boy,” Jim cooed. “I’m going to represent this man, and when I do, I’m going to have that badge you’ve abused for the last few months.”

FBI agent number one shifted on his feet. “Um, Chester. I don’t know if you know this or not, but you can’t hurt him.”

I rolled my eyes as Chester tightened the cuffs so tight that it started digging into my skin.

I allowed it, though, because I knew I’d be getting some good photos of his abuse later.

Another car pulled up, and Shasha’s lawyer got out of the car, heading toward us with an authoritative stride that demanded attention.

She walked right in between all the FBI agents and stopped with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Hey, Daddy.” She smiled at Jim.

Jim grinned. “Hey, baby girl.”

“Oh, fuck,” I heard one of the mutters start. “That’s Jim Canadew if that’s actually his daughter.”

“Let me introduce myself,” my super scary lawyer said. “My name is Malone Canadew. I’m Jim Canadew’s”—she dipped her chin toward her old man—“daughter. What are the terms of Mr. Semyonov’s arrest?”

“Harassment of a federal agent,” Chester declared, his eyes hard.

“And you have proof of this harassment?” she asked.

“He was at my house, lady,” Chester argued.

“Actually,” Jim interrupted, “he was at my house. He’s parked in front of my house, are you blind?”

Chester’s chest puffed up. “That’s not what was happening and you know it.”

“Prove it, cat hater,” Jim refuted.

Chester rolled his eyes and yanked me forward.

“Did you see what I just did, Daddy?” Malone sounded so pleased.

“Sure did, baby girl.” Jim went back to watering his plants. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

Malone walked back to her car, a fancy sporty number that fit her well.

“What precinct are you taking him to, fellas?” she asked the group of FBI agents.

“None of your business,” Chester muttered.

“Oh, boy.” Jim laughed softly to himself. “This’ll be fun.”

I was driven around a lot, in what I thought might be an attempt to shake my lawyer.

In the end, it didn’t happen, and we ended up in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

My wrists were aching, but I didn’t let on that I was hurting.

This wasn’t a marked vehicle, so I doubted that there would be any cameras in here.

The FBI agent driving me, number two in particular, hastily got off at an exit when he became impatient in the traffic.

“I hate Dallas,” he muttered to his partner.

“Can’t wait until I get to go back to Colorado,” number one admitted.

The agent came to a stop at the light behind a few other cars, then started doing something on his phone.

The light turned green, and traffic started moving again, but the dumbass breaking the law on his phone didn’t notice.

“The light is green. You can go,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

The cop from the front seat didn’t like that.

“I didn’t ask you for your input, Semyonov.”

I smiled as I saw my lawyer pull up beside us and snapped a few photos of the imbecile on his phone, breaking the law. “No, you sure didn’t.”

When in doubt, look intelligent.

—Keely to Copper

KEELY

I was tired of sitting on my ass.

Or my ass was tired of me sitting on it.

Either way, I got up and stretched, hating the way that my power suit felt like it was suffocating me.

“Where are you going?” Copper asked in amusement.

I looked over at him and elaborated, “I was going to see if there was anything to eat in the breakroom.”

“The only food in the breakroom is other people’s,” he pointed out.

“So…” I trailed off.

He grinned and stood up. “Come on, let’s go to the hospital.”

“What?” I asked.

He threw his arm around my shoulder and replied, “Chevy’s at work today, and I know there’s a pretty good little coffee shop in there that has excellent pastries. And it’s only a few blocks away.”

It was true.

Castanon Enterprises was fairly centrally located.

It was fifteen minutes away from the lake where my brothers lived. A five-minute walk from the hospital. A ten-minute walk to my—now Copper’s—apartment. And a two-minute walk to the Krispy Kreme on the corner.

Originally, they’d found this building because I was supposed to be working at the hospital with Chevy, and it was closer to everyone. But then I’d quit and went to work at the sleep center that was well over twenty-five minutes away.

“You just want to see the cute patient care tech that Chevy was talking about yesterday.” I laughed.

“I want to see her because she intrigues him,” Copper pointed out. “Chevy doesn’t get intrigued often, you know.”

That was true.

It took a lot to get Chevy’s attention.

But that was likely his genius coming out.

Chevy was the hardest brother I had.

Not because he was a bad brother, but because he was just so smart that it was hard to relate to him sometimes. Plus, he couldn’t understand when you didn’t get something that he could. It was highly frustrating to him that we weren’t on his level, and sometimes he couldn’t see past the gap in our intelligences.

Chevy was a great brother.

Truly, he was.

But Chevy was also socially challenged on top of everything else.

Needless to say, Chevy even mentioning this girl was enough to intrigue all of us.

I couldn’t blame Copper for wanting to go visit.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said as I grabbed my purse and phone.

I glanced at the phone, frowning slightly when I realized that it’d been a while since I’d gotten a text from Dima.

He’d said he wasn’t too busy today and would catch up with me around lunch.

Granted, it was only ten, but I would’ve thought I’d hear from him by now…

“You’re a little bit obsessed,” Copper teased as we got into the elevator.

I shrugged. “Is that a bad thing?”

He shook his head. “No.”

We rode down the elevator in silence, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling my phone out and sending a text.

Me:

Hey, what are you doing?

Since I wasn’t expecting an immediate reply, I shoved my phone back into my purse.

When we rounded the building, I asked, “How are you doing really, Copper?”

He looked down at me, then back ahead before saying, “Are you asking me how I’m coping not being in a prison?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Though, I wasn’t trying to announce to the whole world you were in prison.”

He shrugged. “I was.”

“Copper…” I grumbled.

His lips tipped up. “Surprisingly well.”

I bumped him, which caused him to laugh.

“I’m doing good, sister,” he said softly. “I thought it would be harder than it was, but I think that it’s because I have y’all as a support system.” He hesitated. “I don’t think that I ever expected to get out and have money, though.”

I rolled my eyes. “What, you thought we’d all spend our money while you were in there and not have your back?”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” he admitted.

I pulled him to a stop with a hand to his sleeve and yanked his shirt at the collar, causing him to bend toward me.

“I don’t blame you for anything,” I whispered harshly. “I blame myself.”

His eyes widened. “What? Why?”

“Because what he was doing to me was the reason you had to go to prison in the first place,” I pointed out. “If he hadn’t been hurting me, you wouldn’t have reacted like you did. And I wouldn’t have stolen fifteen years of your life!”

He wrapped me up in his arms so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and lifted me off my feet.

“I would go to prison for life to stop him from hurting you ever again,” he whispered fiercely. “I love you.”

Tears burned my eyes and I closed them to keep them from falling.

I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat and said, “I never wanted you to go, though. I needed you with me.”

He smoothed a hand over my hair and said, “It’s okay now.”

It wasn’t, but if he wanted to pretend, I would, too.

I let my head fall onto his solid shoulder and said, “I’m sorry I wouldn’t visit you for the last few years.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t take that guy out with a shiv so that you could visit me again,” he drawled.

I snickered into his neck. “I’m glad you’re home, Copper.”

He set me on my feet and curled a crazy curl around his finger. “I’m glad that I am, too. Even more glad that you’re helping me whip CE into shape.”

I grimaced, which caused him to laugh.

He threw his arm over my shoulder and started guiding me toward the hospital.

“What do you think about Cutter’s wife?” he asked conversationally. “She seems solid.”

Gah, my brother the protector. Oh, how I’d missed him.

I caught his arm with mine, something I used to do all the time when I was younger, and practically hugged it to my body. It forced him to move closer to me, but he didn’t ask me to stop. Which I was grateful for, because I’d missed being affectionate with Copper.

Hugging him in prison was a no-no, and though I’d tried almost every time I’d gone to see him, a guard always stopped me.

“She’s a good woman,” I admitted. “I like her a whole lot.”

We talked about nothing and everything as we made our way up to the hospital floor that we knew Chevy to be on, based on the location of his phone.

When we arrived on the surgical floor, I turned the phone that had his location pulled up and said, “That way.”

We walked until the ping location ran into a closed and locked door that said ‘physician sleeping quarters.’

I sighed and turned around, looking for a friendly face.

I found her at the back of the nurses’ station that was almost directly across from where we were standing.

“Be right back,” I said as I crossed to the woman.

Val, one of my friends I’d made while a student nurse, was studying a computer screen in front of her.

Her husband was also a doctor at this hospital, and both of them were so nice that I adored them.

Years ago, Val’s husband, Felix, had been stabbed in the hospital corridor right outside the emergency room, and a shit storm of epic proportions had ensued.

I’d been a nursing student at the time and had been scared out of my mind that day because Val had asked me to help her save a man’s life that’d just been complicit in stabbing her husband in the chest. An injured man that was later found out to be one of Maven’s brothers-in-law, an undercover cop.

Needless to say, Val and I had formed a trauma bond together.

That day was also the day that I’d decided that I didn’t want to ever be a nurse.

I’d been six months out from my graduation to get my bachelor’s degree in nursing when I’d made the decision.

I’d practically forced myself to finish school, and Val had helped me cope along the way.

“Val!” I called out happily.

I didn’t see her very often because she was so dang busy. She had a plethora of kids all in sports, and worked full-time as a doctor. She didn’t have the time to hang out, and I hated coming to the hospital. So we barely ever saw each other.

But we’d never forget that particular day that I’d helped her save a police officer’s life.

Val turned and a smile lit up her face. “Rose!”

I giggled.

When I’d first gone to nursing school, I’d been determined to never, ever let anyone know my real name. Announcing that it was ‘Tequila’ always raised questions and I detested my name.

When my parents had decided on a name for all of us, I had no clue what they’d been thinking.

Mom had a love for the rodeo, and when she’d been pregnant, she’d watched 8 Seconds on repeat because she adored Lane Frost and everything he represented. That’d led her down a rabbit hole. Per my parents’ agreement, Mom named all the boys, and Dad got to name the girl.

Mom gave all the boys pretty cool names, albeit a little bit odd since we were so far removed from anything resembling a rodeo life. Meanwhile, when Dad got to name me, Mom and Dad had been in a very bad place.

According to my brothers, Dad had hated Mom by that point, and the only reason he still ‘tolerated’ her was because if they divorced, half the company would go to her.

Needless to say, when I came along, Dad had named me after something that he felt would be a big ‘fuck you’ to our mother.

Mom had rolled with it, and she’d been the one to start calling me Keely.

“Keely,” I reminded her.

She winked. “I know. But to me, you’ll always be my Rose.”

I’d gone by the name Rose for four years, so I’d still answer to it, even though I’d grown up a little bit since that day we’d trauma bonded together.

From then on, I’d never gone by Rose again, and my nursing friends had gone with it.

Val, however, was the lone holdout.

“I was wondering if you could open the doctor’s sleeping lounge for me. I wanted to go scare the shit out of my brother,” I teased.

Her eyes twinkled as she got up and walked to the door.

Val smiled at Copper, who nodded back at her in greeting.

“Just don’t tell him I’m the one that let y’all in,” she whispered as she ran her badge to open the door.

Copper caught the door and quietly pushed it open.

And, as if we were on the same page like we were when we were teens, Copper and I both took a running start toward the bed that was in the corner of the room.

A masculine curse, followed by a panicked squeak of surprise from a female throat, had both Copper and I pulling back.

A light switched on, and suddenly I was losing all the color in my face.

“Chevy,” I breathed. “What the fuck are you thinking?”

Copper didn’t say anything to the woman that he was straddling, most likely because he couldn’t form words.

“Shit,” Chevy said. “Copper…”

But Copper was up and moving out of the room in the next breath.

Chevy cursed and pulled away, practically throwing me to the floor in his haste to get to our brother.

I stood up on shaky legs when I saw Reign Lake staring at me with shocked eyes.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was ashen.

“Was that Copper?” she asked breathily.

I swallowed hard. “Yep.”

“Fuck,” she breathed as she scrambled up.

I noticed that she was in hospital scrubs that were two sizes too small for her, as she made her way to her shoes in the corner of the room.

Her shoes, however, were what caught my attention.

They were covered in what looked like rusty red…

“Is that blood?” I asked.

Reign’s shoulders drooped. “Yeah.”

“What’s going on, Reign?” I pushed.

She swallowed hard and stared at her shoes for a long moment before she said, “I was in a car accident.”

“What happened?” I asked just as the door to the lounge opened back up and Chevy came back inside.

I looked from Chevy to Reign, back to Chevy.

“Explain,” I snapped at the two of them.

I didn’t care that Reign was in an accident. What I cared about was how my brother was looking at the woman that I would’ve sworn on my life would’ve ended up with Copper.

“Shit.” Chevy ran his hands over his face. “It’s…”

“Complicated,” Reign finished.

I looked from her to Chevy and said, “We just got him back, Chevy.”

Chevy looked sick. “I know.”

“Fix it,” I said. Then I turned to Reign and said, “Copper officially just moved into your building.”

Oh, and you’re about to start working for us…

She deflated. “Fuck.”

I turned to Chevy.

“Don’t be stupid, Chevy. If this is what you want, fine. But don’t be fuckin’ stupid.” I gathered my shoe that’d fallen off, slipped it onto my foot, and walked out.

I walked straight to the place we’d been intending to go eat at and purchased some pastries, then I made my way back to the office.

I found Copper in his office, staring at the wall.

“I loved her with my whole heart,” he said. “Still do…”

I placed the pastries on the desk in front of him and said, “You need to talk to Chevy.”

“If I talk to Chevy right now, I might hurt him, and he doesn’t deserve that,” he confessed.

“Then what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I left him alone after that, reaching for my phone the minute I left his office.

I called Dima since I still hadn’t heard from him, and a strange man answered the phone.

“Hello?” the older man answered.

I frowned, then immediately got defensive. “Um, what’s going on? This is my husband’s phone.”

“Do you mean boyfriend?” He chuckled. “So it went like this…”

If you don’t tell your woman that she’s beautiful, a random artificial intelligence guy on social media will.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

“Sir,” I heard said carefully. “Semyonov’s wife is here, and she’s mad.”

My brows rose.

Wife.

I liked that word.

“I don’t really care,” Chester said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “And she’s not his wife. She’s his girlfriend.”

“Regardless of her name and title, she’s very mad. And the lawyer not being allowed in the room isn’t helping that,” the young FBI agent stated.

I was fairly sure that he was new, or he wouldn’t have questioned ‘Special Agent Chester Brown.’

The special agent narrowed his eyes and said, “Get out, Crew.”

Crew shook his head and said, “I’m not going down for this. You come out here and deal with this, or I’m going above your head.”

Wow, the balls on young Crew.

I liked him already.

Chester cursed and pushed away from the table.

We’d been sitting here for two hours now. He’d been asking questions, and I’d been declining to answer without my lawyer present.

It was a vicious cycle that was spiraling down into the toilet the longer that I sat there.

I knew that it was getting about the time that Keely was about to start worrying about me, and I didn’t like the idea of her worrying.

I liked even less that she was here and losing her shit when I couldn’t comfort her because I was being illegally detained.

Crew allowed Chester to pass, then he walked up to me and got rid of the cuffs that were locking me to the table.

I nodded at him in thanks and said, “I could really use a restroom.”

Crew jerked his head to follow him, and I did.

He allowed me to use the restroom, and politely waited outside for me to finish.

When I was done, I said, “Can I go now?”

Crew looked torn.

“I’m really not interested in getting in trouble for this fucking shit storm,” he replied. “Go find your lawyer and girlfriend. Or whatever she is. I’m calling my boss’s boss.”

Before I could move away from him, he pulled out his phone, dialed a number, then placed it to his ear.

“Yeah, Hawkins,” he said. “We have a situation here.”

I left, heading for the screaming that was happening.

Crew was right. Keely was losing her shit.

“Ma’am,” Chester snarled.

“You were following me around like a goddamn creep, asshole!” she cried out. “What did you expect him to do? Be okay with it? Have you not heard about that woman that was just abducted and killed? I’m sorry for being scared and allowing him to feed off my fear. But you should’ve known better. Women are scared, asshole! We can’t defend ourselves against y’all. Of course we’re going to freak out. It was my goddamn right to call my man and tell him to come help me! And excuse the fuck out of him for telling you that you’re a creep!”

Chester started to talk again, but she saw me over his shoulder and started running my way.

I caught her and pulled her into my arms, inhaling deeply, all the while narrowing my eyes on Chester.

“What are you doing out of that room?”

“Is he arrested, Special Agent Brown?” my lawyer asked.

“I…”

“No.” A man came around the back hallway where I’d just come from and said, “You are free to go, Mr. Semyonov.”

“But Evador…” Chester started, but the Evador dude held up his hand and said, “You are hereby removed from this case.”

“What?” he snapped.

“Removed. From. This. Case,” he repeated himself. “We do not condone your actions of today, or even the last couple of weeks. Furthermore, you are being put on leave for your actions with all those animals. Jesus, you’ve really created a huge mess that we now have to clean up. Just because you have a badge, doesn’t give you the right to treat US citizens like this. Especially war heroes, Brown,” Evador said. “Oh, and by the way, seventy-two of the cats have been found dumped in a field according to local law enforcement.” He narrowed his eyes. “Even worse, that was the same field that a shot was taken that killed a senator on that same night. Do you happen to have any information about that, since you were there?”

An inward smirk lit my chest.

“What?” Chester gasped. “No!”

The big boss looked at me and said, “You’re free to go. I sincerely apologize for the actions taken by this agent today. He is being put on administrative leave effective immediately and won’t be working any cases anytime soon.”

I nodded and caught Keely’s hand in mine.

When she passed Chester, she said, “I hope you die.”

“That was a threat!” Chester said. “Against an officer of the law!”

“Fuck you,” she returned. “It wasn’t a threat, it was a hopeful thought. There’s a big difference, since I’m not going to be doing any murdering anytime soon.”

“Ma’am.” Malone Canadew snickered. “As your lawyer as well, I’m going to have to say that you can’t make comments like that. Even if they’re warranted.”

Keely huffed and squeezed into my side.

I looped an arm around her and we had to do an awkward shimmy through the door since she’d refused to let go of me when we got there.

When we got outside, far enough away from the FBI offices, Malone turned to me and said, “As much as I’d like to say that is finished, I don’t think it is. Special Agent Brown has a lot of commendations under his belt, and he’ll probably only receive a slap on the wrist and get sent back into the field. Maybe not on your case, but he’ll be paying attention to it, I’m sure. Just be careful, because he’ll be vengeful and retaliate. I know his type, and let’s just say that he’s not going to give this one up easily.”

I agreed.

“What do you suggest that we do?” Keely asked. “Lay low for a bit?”

“Actually, I’d suggest getting out of town for a while,” she said. “Let this die down a little bit. Shasha’s got his ear to the ground regarding this anyway, and we really need to figure out why they’re targeting you in particular when this is really about Shasha anyway.”

“He sees me as the weak link,” I replied. “And Keely, when he first started watching her, was another link that he guessed to be weak. Keely was connected to my sister at first, and Milena, Brecken, Maven and Nastya are his weak links. If anything happened to them, Shasha would lose his shit.”

“Same for you, Dima.” Malone rolled her eyes. “You should’ve seen the fit he threw on the phone with me when he called after you’d told him you were being arrested.”

I grinned. “My brother’s a little overprotective.”

“Your brother is protecting a psycho.” She looked at me. “I don’t want to know anything you do from here on. If it’s illegal, don’t get caught.”

With that, she left, leaving me with Keely.

I grinned and turned, pulling her to the front of my body and saying, “What are you wearing?”

She sighed. “This is my power suit. I look like a badass at the office.”

“You’d look like a badass.” I paused. “If you were about six inches taller. You look like you went to play dress up in your mother’s closet.”

I snickered at her expression.

“Hey!”

“I’m not trying to burst your bubble, but you look ridiculous.” I laughed.

She sighed. “I know. But it’s expected.”

“You’re the boss, darling,” I teased as I bent down and pressed a kiss to the side of her throat. “Wear what you want.”

“Right now,” she batted her eyes at me. “I’m not really interested in wearing anything.”

I grinned and pulled away, my jeans suddenly very snug.

“You know one of the benefits of a power suit?” she asked.

“No, what?” I asked.

“They slide up your legs really easily.” She bit her lip, her green eyes shimmering. “And there’s an alley right there that…”

I lifted her up into my arms and went deeper into the alley that was to our back.

It was small, only large enough to fit a couple of trash cans on the sides of multiple doors.

I moved until we were at the back of the alley, the farthest away from the opening as I could be, and twisted until my body was to the opening, and her back was to the chain link that separated one alley from the next.

“What are you…” she gasped when I dropped down to my knees in front of her.

“The ground is so gross…” She trailed off again when I shoved her ugly skirt up her hips.

The womanly flare of them was enough to hold the skirt in place as I caught her panties on either side of her hips and yanked.

The panties practically disintegrated, and I had to laugh at her outraged gasp. “Dima! Those are thirty-dollar panties!”

“I’ll buy you more,” I growled as I caught one of her legs behind her knee and slowly bent it.

She went with it, and then groaned when I threw that leg over my shoulder.

“This is insane,” she laughed.

“This is exactly what you wanted, and you know it,” I teased as I took my first lick of her cunt.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, her fingers going to my hair and digging in.

I raised one hand, the other one on her hip to help keep her steady since she was wearing heels, and spread her pussy lips wide, allowing me unencumbered access to her clit and entrance.

“Fuck,” she said when I circled her clit with my tongue. “You always know just how to get me going, Dima.”

“That’s because I was made for you,” I breathed against her pussy, blowing on it. “I…”

I stopped abruptly and had my gun in my hand in the next second, aiming it at the door that’d just opened.

The warehouse he’d come out of must’ve been abandoned because the man was homeless and looked it.

“Find another exit,” I snarled, glad that Keely’s leg was over my shoulder, blocking the man’s view.

Keely’s fingers dug into my hair hard.

“I…there’s not another exit,” he stuttered.

“Then give me twenty minutes.” I narrowed my eyes.

The man backed into the building and closed the door, and I knew that he’d be waiting on the other side to listen to every single sound we made in the next twenty minutes.

“Jesus, I’m insane for wanting this, and thinking this is hot as hell.” She pulled my face back against her. “Get back to work, Dima.”

I got back to work, sucking, licking, and teasing.

Eventually I added two fingers into her tight pussy, then three.

And just when she was on the verge of coming, and letting me know that she was close by practically crying it out over and over, I stopped and stood.

“What?” she cried out in outrage.

I lowered my zipper, managed to wrestle my dick out of the opening, and picked her up.

Then I lowered her down on my cock and started to fuck her, hard and fast.

She came within three strokes.

I didn’t give her time to recover as I continued to fuck her endlessly.

Since I was doing this with my strength alone, freestanding in the middle of the alley, I was able to turn my back to the door that I’d noticed peek back open.

The homeless man looking for a free show.

I allowed it, but kept my gun in my hand, and my awareness split between the door, the mouth of the alley, and my woman.

That was what got me.

I wasn’t aware of how close I was until I felt my balls draw up in response to my impending orgasm.

“Fuck,” I breathed. “I hope you’re close, because I’m about to come.”

“I’m right there,” she bent forward and bit my lip.

I don’t know what she was thinking, but my ‘close’ went to ‘fuckin’ gone’ before she’d pulled away.

A little pain with my pleasure was exactly what I’d needed to send me over the edge.

A droplet of blood ran down my chin from the bite at my lip, and I slammed my mouth down on hers and pulled her into me tight.

She cried out moments later, her cunt seizing my cock like it wanted to absorb it into her body forever.

She pulled away with a gasp, my blood smeared onto her chin and lips, and threw her head back.

I poured my seed into her in hard, fast pulses, my eyes crossing.

But I kept them open to keep an eye on everything despite the almost desperate need to allow them to close.

“God,” she breathed. “What the hell was that?”

We came to a standstill, our hearts hammering and our lungs pulling in gulps of air like we’d just sprinted for our life.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m down for it.”

Using the torn panties that were still in my hand, I wrapped it around my cock and pulled out of her, replacing my cock with her panties as I did to keep the majority of my come from leaking out of her.

We had to catch a ride to my bike, and that meant public transportation.

Where I wouldn’t mind our juices soaking my own bike seat, no way I would want them soaking some random stranger’s.

Pulling her skirt down after she’d trapped the cloth between her pussy lips, she said, “Your bike’s parked in another alley just down the road. Copper drove it over for me. Hope that’s okay.”

“It’s more than okay,” I said, grinning. “Now I don’t think you need this.”

She squeaked when I gently removed the panties from between her thighs that she was squeezing together.

Our combined juices soaked the lace, but I shoved it into my pocket anyway.

“Let’s go.”

When we peeled out of the alley, I’d tucked my gun back into my holster at my back.

The one thing that the FBI agents hadn’t done in their haste to get me to the station was check me for weapons since they’d seen me hand off my cell phone, keys and wallet to the lawyer’s dad. Amateur mistake on their end. Like, what kind of law enforcement official wouldn’t check that?

I hadn’t enlightened them, either.

When we got to the bike, I straddled it, then held out my hand for her.

“You ready to ride?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” She grinned as she threw her leg over the bike.

I didn’t miss the way her pussy shined with our releases as she threw her leg over, either.

“You should really burn this suit,” I said as I handed her my helmet.

She put it on without complaint, then wrapped herself around me like a backpack.

I started the bike and headed out, slowly because I just knew the FBI agents were itching for a reason to have me there legitimately.

I didn’t miss the way Cheesy Chester stomped out of the building, either, as I passed.

He narrowed his eyes, and I noticed that he no longer had a badge or a gun on his hip.

Grinning at him, and knowing it was going to piss him off, I blew him a kiss.

The woman that now owned every tainted piece of me flipped him off as she passed.

I was laughing my ass off as we finally sped out of the area and to 635.

I was a patient rider with the woman of my dreams on the back of my bike, but when she tapped me on the shoulder and yelled in my ear to ‘go!’ I grinned and went, weaving in and out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

It was fast and quick, and Keely tightened her arms and legs around me so tight that it was hard to breathe.

When we finally made it to the express lane, I gunned it, causing her to squeal into my ear.

I didn’t go too fast.

Just fast enough that she felt like she was flying.

I wouldn’t endanger her in that way.

What I did do was overcome three slow ass drivers that were going sixty-five in a seventy-five on the goddamn express lane, though.

Jesus, what was the fuckin’ point of getting on the express lane if you weren’t even going to go the recommended speed limit?

Keely flipped those motherfuckers off, too.

Seriously, go the goddamn speed limit.

Was it that hard of an ask?

By the time we made it back to my place, my heart was exhilarated and that familiar pang of need was once again coursing through my blood.

I hit the garage door opener I kept in my saddle bags, then waited impatiently while Keely’s hands roved over the length of my chest.

When they made their way underneath my shirt as I pulled inside and shut the bike off, I hit the garage door opener again to close it, then reached around and pulled my little backpack to the front.

She squealed with the move, then threw her head back and laughed as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

I reached down and pulled her helmet off her head, then felt another zap of anticipation course through me at the sight of her shaking her hair out.

“Here?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

“Now,” I confirmed.

Then I fucked her on my bike, using the power in my thighs to keep both the bike and us aloft.

It was probably the third hottest place we’d ever had sex, and I knew that I’d never look at my bike the same again.

When you thought something would be easy, peasy lemon squeezy. But it’s actually been stress depressy lemon zesty.

—Keely’s secret thoughts

KEELY

Well and truly used, and used well, I headed with Dima into his place.

The kittens met us at the door, and Dima bent down and picked up the first one that made its way over to us.

The next three literally clawed their way up his leg, and he looked at them like they were bugs.

I grinned and took out my phone, switching over to the camera and recording a video that I then sent to the family group chat—both with my brothers, and with Dima’s family.

Dima felt his phone buzz and reached into his pocket, despite his handful of kittens, and pulled it out.

He leveled me with a ‘really?’ look, then shoved it back into his pocket.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down to see that only Cutter had replied in our group chat, where Chevy and Copper had been super-fast as of late.

Not anymore…

“What’s with that look on your face?” Dima asked.

I sighed and started stripping out of my clothes.

“Long story short, Copper had a girl in high school that he loved. His best friend, though neither one of them made a move. Then he killed Dad, and Copper refused to talk to her or allow her visitation. She told him she’d wait for him until he was out. And honestly, I thought she had. Not that I’d really blame her if she didn’t, you know? But then today, we went to the hospital to go surprise Chevy for some brunch, and we both go jump on him in the breakroom where he’s sleeping, and there’s a woman sleeping in his bed.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Reign.”

“Fuck.” Dima looked startled. “And what happened after that?”

“Reign looked devastated. Chevy looked gutted. Copper left looking awfully blank.” I sighed and held my clothes in my hands, wondering what to do with them.

Dima took them, then immediately tossed them into the kitchen trash.

I giggled and walked through his house in my bra, heading for the shower.

He followed me, but didn’t get inside.

He waited outside the glass doors as I cleaned off, taking much longer than I’d intended thanks to the way his shower was so magical.

“So that’ll be fun,” Dima finally returned. “There was this one girl in high school that I really liked. Thought she was fuckin’ gorgeous and felt like maybe I could get her to go out with me, even though she was two years ahead of me in school. One day I head to her place to ask her out, and I see Shasha leaving her house, tucking his shirt in.”

“Aren’t you and Shasha like five years apart? Wasn’t she underage?” I asked, turning to face him.

“Yes.” He nodded. “But at the time, she was eighteen, and I was only sixteen.” He shook his head. “At the time, I’d been so fuckin’ mad. But then I’d realized that two years when you’re eighteen and twenty isn’t that big of a deal. But two years when you’re sixteen and eighteen is.” He laughed then. “Funny enough, it wasn’t even what it looked like. Shasha went there because the girl’s dad owed him money. Beat the shit out of the dad and had to make himself presentable afterward. Hence the tucking in the shirt. So for two years I was mad at him because he’d stolen the girl I liked, when in reality he’d just been beating up her dad.”

His eyes went warm as he watched me giggle.

“Teenage heartache at its finest,” she sobered then. “That’s not what this is, I don’t think.”

“I’m just going to say now, you should probably keep yourself out of it.” He pulled a cat off his leg that was trying to climb it again and dropped it to the floor. “It’ll get ugly, and you need to let that play out between the players, not the sideline.”

I grumbled under my breath, then turned off the shower and got out.

He held out a towel for me, and I willingly went into his arms as he wrapped it around my body.

It was huge and hung down to almost my ankles.

“This thing is really large,” I pointed out the obvious.

“It’s a bath sheet that Nastya insisted that I have. All of this décor is hers and Milena’s designs. If you want to change anything, you’re more than welcome,” he offered.

I shrugged. “Let’s see what I can make happen with my things when they get delivered.”

“Deal,” he drawled. “Now, let’s talk about kittens, and boundaries.”

I snickered. “I’m not sure that cats know what boundaries are.”

“Well, I’m not sleeping with them, so you’re going to have to figure them out.”

The next morning I woke before him.

It was the first time in all of our time together that I’d been the first one awake.

Last night after I’d gone to bed, he’d stayed up to work with Shasha.

I wasn’t sure what time he’d come to bed, but what I did know was that I was nice and snuggly now.

Except, I had to pee like a motherfucker, and the nice and snuggly would have to go.

I carefully peeled myself out of Dima’s arms, my eyes going to the dog tags that he kept on twenty-four seven.

They were nestled between his bicep, which was half curled underneath his pillow and his neck.

The chain was curled around his neck and ran along his muscular shoulder and collarbone.

It was such a great view that I pulled my phone out and snapped a photo.

I cursed when the shutter sounded, but Dima didn’t wake.

Carefully tiptoeing out of the room, I did my business and got ready for the day.

I had to be with Copper in an hour and a half, and I needed to find something to wear before then, meaning I’d have to run by my apartment.

I had some clothes, but not nearly enough.

Since I didn’t have an alternate ride, I called an Uber, then wrote a note and left it on the kitchen counter.

I fed the cats and left, disarming and rearming the alarm after I shut the door behind me.

“Where you goin’?” my brother, Cutter, asked.

I looked up to find him stopped at the end of the walkway that led to the street.

He eyed the Uber that was waiting for me, then raised his brow.

“Copper’s taking my car, and I’m apparently carless for the time being. So I need a ride back to my apartment,” I explained.

“Thought you moved in with Dima?” He raised a brow.

“I did,” I said. “Kind of. I just said I would, not that I’ve moved a single thing other than a few sets of clothes. I have to go back to my apartment and get a few things before I have to meet Copper at the office. The rest is scheduled to be packed up this weekend.”

His eyes went hard. “Chevy told me what y’all walked in on.”

I shrugged as I went to the Uber and said, “Hi.”

The woman smiled in greeting, and I looked over the hood of the car and said, “We’ll talk about it when I get home.”

“We’re going to have to figure something out, because Copper’s gone from his place.” I sighed. “There’s more to that than him being angry. But I’ll talk to you later. Gotta go.”

I dropped into the SUV, thankful that there was a woman driving and not a man.

Men always made me uncomfortable.

“The drive should take about fifteen minutes,” the woman said.

But there was something about her voice that had me frowning.

“Are you okay?” I asked as she pulled out of the street the Semyonovs lived on.

She looked up at me in the rearview mirror, and when our eyes met, I knew that something was wrong.

Then I saw the head pop up over the back seat, and a thick arm came around my neck and pulled. “Nothing’s wrong. Not anymore.”

We drove what felt like all the way through Dallas, ending up in Irving at a big white building in the middle of nowhere.

Chester gestured for me to get out on his side, and I had no other choice but to do so.

I only had to delay for a little bit.

It’d been plenty long enough for Copper to wonder where I was, and he would’ve called Dima already.

I had to give myself another half hour or so, and he’d be here.

I knew it.

That meant I had to cooperate. At least for now.

We made it inside and Chester gestured at a table with a computer.

I sat down, my eyes wary.

“Sign into your bank,” he ordered.

“No, thank you.” I smiled serenely.

His eyes narrowed, and his hand fisted, as if he was about to really fuck me up. But then he shifted, and all of the anger drained out of his face.

“If you don’t do what I’m asking, I’m going to make you wish you did,” he warned, his eyes narrowed and blank.

That fear never came.

Because he wasn’t very scary.

He had no clue what scary was.

Honestly, as I stared at him, I wondered if he would even be able to hurt me.

He didn’t look like it.

Then again, people surprised you sometimes…

“You stupid motherfucker!” I heard roared as a woman barreled into the building, hands waving in the air. “We had a fucking plan!”

“Natasha, that plan was taking too long.” He turned his angry eyes to me. “I’ve waited years for this chance. I’m done waiting. I got let go yesterday, and I want to move.”

I frowned, wondering what the hell they were talking about.

“And now I have to take all those goddamn cats back because you didn’t do a good enough job getting rid of them!” she snarled.

Whoa.

What in the hell was going on here?

But with her saying cats, I knew exactly who she was.

Natasha Leo.

Her angry eyes turned to me then, and I nearly gasped.

Those eyes.

I knew those eyes.

I stared at those eyes in the mirror every morning.

I looked back to Chester, and looked at him harder.

Was I related to them?

Proving that she was well adept at reading expressions, she pointed at me.

“Yes, you should know me.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m your sister after all.”

If I wasn’t in a chair with sides, I would’ve fallen straight out of it at her words.

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“Oh, that’s rich. Acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” She turned to Chester. “We should just kill her now.”

Now, where I believed that Chester wouldn’t hurt me, the same couldn’t be said for the woman.

She looked unhinged.

My sister.

Oh my god.

“We can’t kill her without getting access to her money first,” Chester said. “We deserve that much.”

Both of them turned to me then, and I had a sinking feeling in my gut. “What money?”

“The money in the trust that you got from daddy dearest.” Natasha crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s just as much mine as it is yours.”

I scoffed.

That was long gone.

Had been since our grandfather had used it to fight lawyers to keep what little was left.

“And you owe some to me for having to deal with all this,” Chester said. “I’ve spent years and countless hours of my life getting to this point. Worked my ass off to become an FBI agent. Solved cases that were definitely a waste of my time. I deserved the money that her stepfather was going to leave to me. Then your boyfriend went and killed him, though I can’t fuckin’ prove it, before I could make him put me into his will, and now all that money goes to Natasha’s mother, who won’t share it.”

I shook my head. “I’m not tracking. I don’t know what either of y’all are talking about.”

Natasha sat down and leveled her gaze on me. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“No, I really don’t,” I admitted. “Please enlighten me before you kill me, or I’ll have to die being confused.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to kill you. We’re going to take all of your money, and then we’re going to make you have an accident. Probably involving a head or spinal injury.”

I think I might rather die…

“We have the same father,” Natasha said, gesturing from her to me.

I frowned, though I was able to get that much.

“My mother was married to Alexander Pettigrew.” She smiled, though it was a sour smile, as if her life had been tough and she didn’t want to admit it. “Alexander Pettigrew was my stepfather. Before you were born, my mother and your father had a one-night stand that ended with me.”

I blinked. “What?”

I hadn’t even realized that man had a child in his life.

Though, let’s be honest, I’d done everything that I could not to know anything about that man ever.

“Long story short, your father and mine refused to acknowledge me because I was a bastard. He paid Alexander to take care of me and keep me the hell away from y’all.” She laughed harshly. “Alexander abused me from the time that I can first remember. And this one.” She jerked her chin at Chester. “Well, he just likes my pussy and will do anything that I ask of him.”

I waited for Chester to deny it, and he didn’t.

I didn’t think anyone’s vagina could be that good, but apparently I was wrong.

Then again, Dima had killed someone for me.

Maybe it wasn’t ‘pussy’ as much as he loved her. She was just crude about it.

“Why, exactly, would you ruin your life to get money that I don’t even have?” I asked, aiming that question at Chester.

“Money,” Chester replied harshly. “You don’t know what it’s like to be so damn poor that you’re living on the streets of Dallas like a rat. Then she found me one night, and I finally saw what it was to be happy. We’ve been together ever since.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “When we were old enough, we went into law enforcement to try to find a way to get Pettigrew out of prison in hopes that he would be thankful. Instead, he saw it as a personal affront, and refused to ever speak to us again, despite the fact that we were trying to help him.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I stayed silent.

“For my entire life, I’ve watched y’all live the good life. With your happy brothers, and your great grandfather.” Natasha leaned forward in her chair. “But I think that should end. I think it’ll be the perfect little ending to see their perfect baby sister no longer whole.”

I blinked.

“I’d spent years trying to beg for any scrap of attention from our father. Every time he’d come over, I’d bat my big green eyes at him and beg him to notice me. But he acted like I wasn’t there. Then one time he brought you over, and I realized that I’d never get what I wanted. I had to get it some other way.” She leaned forward. “So I started planting seeds of doubt. When I was fifteen, I began my campaign to make your life a living hell.”

“Why?” I asked. “My life wasn’t good already. He was controlling as hell, and…” I didn’t want to tell her what else he did.

She smiled, though, as if she knew without me saying the words aloud.

“I started sending Alexander nudes of you.” She grinned. “I got really great at Photoshop.”

My stomach sank.

“Then I planted the seed of doubt in our dad’s mind. That you weren’t his.” She grinned. “Sent him evidence of his wife cheating years and years ago. Made him question everything.”

“He fell for it, too.” Chester shrugged. “I remember Alexander and him talking about it multiple times.”

I was sick to my stomach.

I’d always wondered what changed.

Dad had been controlling when I was younger, yes. But he hadn’t been what he’d been at the end.

I’d thought it was because I’d hit puberty, but maybe all along it was them.

“That was our first operation together.” She narrowed her eyes. “Truthfully, I was kind of happy to see him gone. Thought he went too quickly, though.”

My face felt like it was numb.

“That was our mistake. Your father died too quickly, and he wasn’t able to leave any of his fortune to Alexander like we’d intended for him to,” Chester explained. “But it was okay, because Alexander found a way to funnel money from Castanon Enterprises on his own. Until that one indiscretion that sent him to jail.”

Indiscretion.

Raping a girl was an indiscretion?

What the hell was wrong with these two?

If what they were saying was true, they were the reason that my own father had assaulted me!

“Alexander was set to get out in months, and he was going to give us everything,” Chester said, sounding delusional. “Then your boyfriend took him out, and all of his money went to Natasha’s mother.”

I looked at Natasha, who was rolling her eyes.

“Why not just wait for her to give it to you?” I wondered, my brain feeling a little bit too full as I tried to comprehend everything that they’d told me.

I was so confused.

I had no clue what the hell was going on.

It was like I’d come in the middle of a story, and was trying to play catch up.

“Because my mother would rather donate it all to charity than ever share it with me.” She shrugged. “My mom doesn’t like me too much.”

I couldn’t imagine why…

I can’t explain my music type. It’s just every song but the ones I don’t like.

—Dima to Keely

DIMA

I woke up to an empty bed.

I groaned and rolled over, burying my face into the pillow that her head had been resting on for the majority of the night.

The scent of passionfruit and apples filled my nostrils, and I inhaled and exhaled a few times before pushing myself out of bed.

I shook my head when there were several meows of anger.

Three of the four fell off my body when I got up from the bed, the fourth one only looking up from her slumber from my pillow.

I gave them a disgusted look and said, “Y’all aren’t sleeping in here ever again.”

The cats curled their little tiny bodies into the bed and went back to sleep.

I got ready for the day, dressing in jeans, a black t-shirt, and my boots.

I headed into the kitchen for coffee and found Keely’s note just as my phone rang.

D

Went to CE.

LY.

<3 K

I answered it without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Dima,” one of Keely’s brothers said. “It’s Copper.”

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“I’ve been waiting at my place for over an hour for Keely to get here, and she’s nowhere in sight. Is she still asleep or something?” he asked.

I froze.

“She’s been gone for a while,” I said.

I pulled up the security app on my phone and looked at the time stamp for when the alarm was turned off.

“Over an hour ago,” I said. “She should’ve easily been there by now.”

I looked at her location next and saw that she was somewhere near downtown.

“It looks like she’s downtown, near her old work,” I said. “Like four or five blocks away.”

“She’s not answering her phone,” he said, sounding worried now. “Why would she go there?”

Why indeed.

“Let me call you back,” I said.

I called Keely and got her voicemail.

I called her again and the same thing happened.

On the fourth try, with her non-answer, I called my brother. “I need your help. You’re at your office, right?”

He was the closest, at just under ten minutes away.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

I sent him there, then started gathering my things.

I’d need my wallet, keys, and computer.

Only when I got the call from my brother to say that her phone was there, and nothing else, did I call Lev and Apollo.

Something was very, very wrong.

And the feeling in my stomach told me I didn’t have much time.

“I followed the movements from here.” He pointed at our house where the cameras had caught her getting into the car. “To here,” he said. “She gets out of the car, and there’s a man with her. The man pulls her with him to the driver’s side window, he hands the woman a stack of cash and the woman takes off.”

“I’m already looking that up,” Apollo said as he started typing away at his computer.

Lev was doing the same thing from the other end of the table, but he was focused on watching the movement of the car through traffic.

The two of them had gone from the Uber to the black SUV with paper plates, and then Chester had taken off heading toward Irving.

“Got her,” Apollo said. “Look.”

He pointed to the screen at the head of the table and we all watched as the Uber driver had picked up Chester earlier. They’d talked for a long time in front of his house, and then they’d taken off.

“Chester,” I said.

“That’s the FBI agent, right?” Chevy asked.

There were a ton of us in the conference room of Castanon Enterprises.

Chevy, Copper, Cutter, Shasha, Apollo, and several other Truth Tellers, along with a few of Shasha’s guys.

“Fast forward to now,” Apollo said as he switched to another screen.

“Is she going to a police station?” I asked.

“Sure is,” Apollo grumbled.

Shasha pulled his phone out and placed it to his ear.

He said a few words in it, and then Haze was outside as he met the terrified Uber driver.

They spoke for long moments, and all the while, Shasha listened on, his brows furrowed.

Haze brought the Uber driver inside, and then Shasha hung up his phone. “He’s taking her to his office.”

Meaning we could do what we needed to do without the cops getting in our way.

“Got them!” Lev cried out in excitement. “They’re here.”

He shot the feed to the screen that Apollo had just taken over, and side by side we watched the Fort Worth police department parking lot, and the quick shift of street cameras as we followed the SUV that Chester had led Keely to.

Keely who looked out the window and took every single thing in that she could about her location.

“Let’s go,” I said to no one and everyone.

“We’ll stay and feed you information,” Apollo said, indicating Lev and himself.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Thanks.”

The rest of us poured out of the building, heading to our vehicles that were all parked right out front.

I took off first, heading toward where I guessed they might be.

I received text updates on my watch, telling me which roads to take and when to wait.

It appeared that Chester was trying to make sure he didn’t have a tail.

I spotted the SUV in my peripheral vision and pulled off to a side building to keep him from seeing me.

The next update came moments later.

Lev:

Just pulled into a parking lot off Commerce. Big white building. Looks empty.

I parked my bike in the closest parking garage then set off on foot.

The rest of the misfit crew went to their own locations, and all of us converged on the building from different locations.

Shasha met up with me first, followed by Cutter, Copper and Chevy.

The rest stayed back, ready to lend a hand, but staying at their bikes and vehicles just in case they needed to move.

The five of us spread around the building and checked it out.

Lev called moments after we’d arrived.

“I killed the feed and looped it,” Lev said. “I also unlocked the back door.”

I headed for the back door.

“The fire department has the blueprints on the building at city hall. I sent the schematics to your phone. Copper and Cutter are coming in behind you. I sent Shasha and Chevy in through a service entrance.”

Copper and Cutter arrived, and I was waiting for them with the blueprints open on my phone.

“There’s a hallway that leads off of this one. One goes to the security hub in the front of the building, and the other goes to the service entrance,” I said.

“There’s no one besides Chester and Keely in the building,” Lev said. “But there is a woman coming in hot through the front door.”

“Natasha Leo,” Apollo said. “The FBI agent.”

Curious where this was headed, but so anxious that I needed Keely in my arms now, I headed into the huge, empty building.

We didn’t have to go far.

The security entrance led straight to the main room, and that’s where Chester and Keely were. Along with the woman FBI agent.

I listened to her tirade go on and on and on, more and more puzzle pieces fitting into place.

I watched as Cutter and Copper’s face mottled with anger as they listened to all the things this woman and man did to fuck their lives up—fuck Keely’s life up in particular—and knew they felt the same rage that I was feeling.

Keely looked calm, though.

“So let me get this straight,” Keely said. “You weren’t recognized by your father, and instead of funneling your anger at the man in constructive ways, you took your anger out on an innocent child? Do I have that correct?”

Natasha Leo narrowed her eyes. “This is some joke to you, isn’t it?”

“What’s a joke is thinking that I have this perfect life, while you don’t!” Keely raged, standing up. “I was tortured for a year, you dumb, fucking bitch! I was beaten and berated. I was touched in a way that no woman, let alone child, should be touched! I was assaulted by two adult men, one of which should’ve been protecting me with everything he has. My own brother went to jail for fifteen years because of y’all’s selfishness. When the motherfuckers that hurt me are finally all dead and gone, now y’all are going to kidnap me and take my inheritance that, might I add, I don’t have? Are you seriously kidding me right now?”

Chester rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“All feed is killed to the building,” Lev said, sensing my rage. “Building is registered to a corporation out of China. It’s been empty for over a year, and there’s no lease in sight. Feel free to take care of business. I’ll keep everything else off of you.”

I stepped out of the side entrance and raised my gun.

Chester saw the movement and tried to follow suit, but I was too good. Too fast.

I shot him in the hand, and the gun fell from his fingertips.

Natasha gasped and stood, but Keely reared back and punched her directly in the throat.

She turned to me and smiled her sweet little smile. “Hey, baby. I knew you’d come. What took you so long?”

“Traffic,” I teased.

She moved toward me and wrapped her arms around my gut.

Chevy and Shasha came from the other side of the large room and removed the weapons from the two ‘FBI’ agents.

“No sister that I’ll ever acknowledge, either,” Chevy said as he stood back up with Natasha Leo’s gun in his hand.

“Neither one of them have phones,” Lev said. “Both pinging from outside the building in their cars.”

“Precautionary, I’d assume,” I muttered.

“Who is that?” Keely asked curiously.

“Lev and Apollo,” I answered.

“Hi, Keely,” Apollo called out.

“Hi, Apollo. How’s Tavi?” she asked.

“He’s great,” Apollo answered. “So you have a sister?”

I’ll sell a fuck before I’d give one.

—Keely’s secret thoughts

KEELY

“Natasha Leo, daughter of Kay Leo. Father listed on the birth certificate is Alexander Pettigrew. Though DNA results show a direct relation to four Clayborne siblings,” Lev intoned as he gestured toward the screen that was mirroring his own.

We were at CE, and we were gathered around the conference table as we talked about the day.

“And Chester?” I asked.

“Chester Brown, ward of the state, both parents deceased.” Apollo answered this time. “Changed his name five years ago when he entered the FBI. Used to be known as Cade Cantal.”

Jesus, how many damn names did that man have? Cornelius. Jack. Cade. Chester.

“From what I’ve been able to gather, all her chaotic mumblings are true,” Lev offered. “I’ve searched through her files on her computer, and it’s all there. She was a full-time stalker, part-time cat breeder as a cover, and barely-time FBI agent.”

“How does that work?” Dima asked from his stance behind me.

He wasn’t holding on to me, but he was protecting me all the same from behind.

“She took a leave of absence. She was ‘breeding cats’ and establishing a life here. Chester conveniently found an FBI agent willing to ‘fake’ marry him. Gave him a place to be. FBI created the rest of his ‘life’ here. Window washer. Allowed him to follow and investigate the way he saw fit,” Lev said. “Correspondence between the two is on her computer. You can read it all through their text messages.” He laughed. “When he got rid of the cats, he was supposed to do it in a way that they couldn’t be found. He didn’t, and the neighbor, Jim, found out and she had to create this elaborate story to keep the lie going. At that point, Chester was beyond caring and kept his obsession going. Meanwhile, Natasha is pissed because he’s not sticking to the plan.”

“What was the plan?” Cutter asked, scrubbing his hand over his face in exhaustion.

“According to the messages, pretty much the plan was to isolate Keely, get her to hand over the cash they felt was theirs, and then hurt her in such a way that she couldn’t point a finger at them. They were going to stage it as an accident, make it look like she fell down the stairs at a park in town that she frequents,” Apollo answered.

I heard the leather of my chair creak, and I looked up to see Dima staring down at me.

He was angry.

I could see the fire in his eyes.

I reached up and caught his hand with mine, squeezing it lightly.

“Good ol’ FBI agent finds her when he comes to ask her a couple of questions. He’s the hero that saves her life. Natasha and him take that money and live the rest of their lives happy in the knowledge that Natasha’s ‘sister’ got what was coming to her,” Lev finished.

“Jesus Christ,” Shasha said. “That’s convoluted and messy. Did they actually think any of that was going to work?”

“They had been getting lucky for years,” Cutter interjected. “Why would they think that this plan wouldn’t work? I mean, they got Pettigrew to be interested in her with shitty photoshop photos. They got my dad to question her legitimacy and start treating her like a threat. They got Copper sent to prison because of it. Every one of their half-planned, harebrained schemes has worked. Why not this one?”

When he said it like that…

“What are you going to do with them?” I finally asked the burning question.

Shasha looked over to me, but it was Dima who responded, “Maybe y’all should not worry about it.”

I mean, the woman was my sister.

Shouldn’t I care?

But, no.

I didn’t.

She’d been responsible for a lot of my issues growing up.

Why would I care what happened to her now?

She may be blood, but she wasn’t a piece of my heart.

What did I care?

Had I cared when my father died?

No.

Why should I care if she died, too?

“I think you should shoot her in the forehead,” I muttered as I stood up. “Y’all want to go grab dinner together?”

“We can go to your place and help you pack,” Cutter suggested.

Giving the Semyonov brothers permission to do what they wanted and clean up the mess afterward.

Not that my own brothers wouldn’t be willing, but they didn’t need that on their conscience.

“Let’s go,” Copper said as he headed toward the door.

Cutter followed, with Chevy in the back.

I stood up and went up to Dima, my eyes on his expressive brown ones.

“See you at home,” I said against his lips.

He caught my hair and tipped my head toward him. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I promised. “I never doubted that you’d come.”

His smile was small, and the mustache above his lip tickled my skin as he dropped the softest of kisses to my lips.

“See you at home.”

You know what? I’m just gonna say it. Sharks just aren’t eating enough people.

—Dima to Shasha

DIMA

“There are ways,” I said. “To make this hurt.”

Natasha looked scared, but Chester looked resigned.

“But I’m not going to do that,” I continued. “I’ve found that the best way is to just get it over quickly, that way you don’t dwell on the anger.”

Natasha’s teeth started to clatter.

I snapped the chains to her feet and dropped the heavy concrete block over the edge of the water.

Her body jerked when it came to a halt, the only thing holding her in place was my hand around her shirt.

“Don’t do…”

I let go.

“Your turn…” I smiled.

Chester jumped off himself, not making me push him.

I left the lake after that. This area was in the deep black water of Caddo Lake.

It was the middle of the night, and I had a long row back to the shore where I’d parked my bike and stolen the boat.

But the entire time, I had a small smile on my face.

And hours later, as I crawled into bed pushing cats out of my way as I did, I pulled her sleeping body to me and slept like a baby.

Don’t cry at home, cry at work and get paid for it.

—Keely to Brecken

KEELY

There were cats everywhere.

“So what the hell are we going to do with them all?” I asked the group of women.

Milena, Nastya, Brecken, and I stared at the cats that’d all been separated into crates.

“There are fifty left,” I stated. “And all of them are mostly kittens.”

“I can’t believe that your brother took the Serval.” Brecken laughed.

Copper had taken the Serval.

Their personalities right now suited each other well.

Both of them were cranky and angry at the world.

And neither one of them got along with Chevy right now.

Shit.

“They suited each other well,” I echoed my thoughts. “We can take them to the club again. See who wants one from there.”

“I have a friend that I think might take one or two,” Brecken offered. “I met her at the school this year. She’s a brand new first year teacher, and she’s looking for a new furry friend.”

“Oh, I have a few I can ask, too,” Desi, Nastya’s stepdaughter, cried out. “Let me make a few calls!”

I loved Desi.

She was so peppy and excited all the time, unharmed by the dark part of life.

It took us two hours, but between our social media posts, our friends, and family, all of the cats but seven were adopted.

We delivered them all, until we were left with a random smorgasbord of kittens.

“Hey, didn’t you say that Natasha’s friend took care of the cats when she was busy?” Desi looked over to me.

My mouth opened slightly, and a dawning sense of horror washed over me. “I forgot all about her.”

I immediately called Dima, who muttered a few choice words under his breath.

“He’s on it,” I added.

We’d just met up for a quick drink at Milena’s coffee shop when a woman charged out of her car, heading toward the bakery.

“What is that about?” I wondered.

“Maven’s not there,” Nastya called out. “The bakery is closed for the day!”

The woman looked over at me and her eyes widened.

Dorie.

Oh, boy.

“Oh, boy.” Milena echoed my thoughts, having recognized her.

“I was supposed to pick up a cake for my engagement party an hour ago, and I forgot!” she cried out, then her eyes narrowed. “New friends, Keely?”

I rolled my eyes. “Family.”

Her mouth curled into a sneer as she realized Milena was the one speaking to her now.

“What’s the name of the order, and I’ll go see if it’s there,” she offered.

“I’d rather not.” She turned on her heels, but stopped when she got to her car. “I know it was your boyfriend that shot mine.”

My brows rose. “And?”

“And I’m not going to forget it,” she grumbled. “Have a nice life.”

“What was that about?” Milena asked curiously.

I explained, which had Milena rolling her eyes. “Cutter always implied that she was a little out there.”

“She’s more than out there,” I returned. “But she’s not a threat.”

That didn’t stop me from texting my man about her anyway, just in case.

And later that night, when I showed up with what was left of the seven cats, he didn’t bat an eye.

Only helped me let them out of their cages.

“This is only for tonight, right?” he asked, his eyes slightly pleading.

I grinned. “We have a foster home set up for them tomorrow. She’s driving in from out of town.”

He blew out a relieved breath. “Thank God.”

I didn’t bother to ask about the texts I’d sent him today.

I knew he’d handle it.

That would be the way that it always was for us.

Me trusting him to protect me always.

No matter what he had to do to accomplish that.

Should I have probably cared that my man was capable of cold-blooded murder?

Probably.

But did I?

No.

Maybe we were both just a little bit wrong in the head…

I always see adults pour glasses of wine and only fill it halfway. And I’m like okay, one of us is doing it wrong, and I think it’s you.

—Keely to Dima

DIMA

I woke to a mouthful of cat hair.

I grumbled and shoved the cat that was closest to my face away, then rolled over to see if Keely was still in bed.

She wasn’t.

Though, I could hear the slight strains of her off-tune singing coming from somewhere beyond the master bedroom.

When I got up, I displaced three more cats, all of which let their displeasure be known.

“Y’all are never sleeping in here again,” I grumbled.

Both the cats and I knew it was a lie.

Every night I locked them out, and every morning, they made their way into our room after Keely walked out.

Keely didn’t try to stop them because she thought it was cute.

But it wasn’t her waking up with cat ass fur in her mouth from a very fuckin’ fluffy cat sleeping on her pillow.

Dressing in shorts, a t-shirt and socks after I got ready for the day, I made my way into the kitchen and stopped dead when I saw Keely rocking my niece in her arms, singing to her.

Milena’s youngest.

Though Keely loved all of her nieces and nephews, she had a soft spot in her heart for Catalina.

Catalina was giggling her one-year-old little heart out as Keely sang “My Girl” by The Temptations.

Catalina saw me over Keely’s shoulder and squealed. “Ima!”

I walked over and pulled Catalina into my arms, snuggling her close.

Catalina was one of the youngest of the Semyonov/Clayborne clan for now, but she would have even more young cousins soon.

One of which would be my very own.

I pulled Keely in close and pressed my hand to her barely-there swell of her belly and breathed, “Morning. Sleep okay?”

“I slept meh,” she admitted. “This nausea thing is really making me rethink any more pregnancies.”

I pressed a kiss to her mouth and inquired, “How did we end up with only Catalina?”

“Cutter went for a run. I was outside watering my plants when he was about to start. He had her stroller out and everything, but Catalina escaped and ran for me. I waved him off when he went to come for her and sent him on his run alone,” she explained.

“And none of the other kids saw you do that?” I laughed.

“It was still pretty early. Plus, I saw Nastya heading out with a back seat loaded down with kids and packages.” She smiled.

Shasha’s place was a little too far away from ours to allow for easy traversing for their kids, but Milena’s and Nastya’s kids acted like it was a competition when they saw one of them heading to our house. Then all of them had to head over.

“When’s Cutter supposed to be back?” I asked.

Keely grinned lecherously then. “I told him to take the morning. Milena’s off because it’s a holiday.”

I made a gagging face and walked to the fridge, pulling out bacon and six eggs.

The front door of our house opened and shut, and then I heard, “Aunt Kee! I want eggs, too!”

I pulled out the rest of the package and set them on the counter, turning just in time to see Nathaniel and Rosie coming into the room, with Desi hot on their heels.

“I met Nastya at the post office and volunteered to bring them here because they saw Catalina going into your house.” Desi grinned. “What’s for breakfast?”

I started to brown the bacon, and held Catalina the entire time, being sure to keep her away from the popping grease.

When it was time to cook eggs, I sat her down on the ground and she started toddling her way around our baby-proofed kitchen.

I was flipping my eighteenth egg over when the door slammed for a third time and Vivi ran in.

“Me, me!” Vivi stopped at my side. “I want sunny side up, though.”

Keely brought the other package of eggs out of the fridge and then opened another pack of bacon.

The only ones we were missing at this point were Lola, Brando and Redford.

But I felt like the cousins had this sixth sense that predicted they were all at Uncle Dima’s place, because I somehow knew they’d be over soon.

I was right, too, when the door opened just as I was plating every single kid a dish, even the littlest, Shasha and Brecken’s youngest, who was about nine months old now.

“Uncle Dima!” Brando came barreling in. “Mom dropped us off. She said thanks.”

I rolled my eyes and set the kids up at the long table in the dining room that got a lot of use now that I kept having random kids dropped off with no notice.

Some might be mad.

But I wasn’t.

Not when I saw Keely beam every time she was called Aunt Keely.

Half a year ago, at the courthouse in downtown Dallas, I’d made Keely my wife.

She was now Mrs. Keely Rose Semyonov.

And the last six months had been everything I could’ve ever asked for.

We’d talked relentlessly about children and had finally decided to take the plunge two months into our marriage.

She got pregnant six weeks later, and had suffered terrible morning sickness ever since, letting me know that we were one and done.

But that was okay with me.

I was happy with whatever she wanted to give me.

“Hey, Uncle Dima.” Vivi’s eyes went wide. “Can we go to the park?”

“Actually,” Keely said. “We’re going to all go to your place and go swimming. I’m dying to get a little sun on my skin today.”

“Aces!” Vivi cried.

So that was exactly what we did.

We hung out at the pool, slathered on so much sunscreen that we’d gone through an entire bottle before the end of the day, and ate so much junk food that Shasha would have to make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow.

And later on, when it was just us again, exhausted from the day and vegging out on the couch watching American Sniper together, I thanked my lucky stars for the life I now had.

“You are awfully quiet over there,” Keely said as she turned toward me.

I grinned. “Just enjoying my life, baby.”

She smiled and snuggled deeper, then fell asleep halfway through the most badass fight scene there was.

My hand went to her belly, and the smallest of kicks followed.

Life was good.

Five months later, our daughter Elisabetta Carolina Semyonov was born at eleven fifty-three in the morning.

When I saw my wife with our daughter, I knew right then and there, that nothing would ever hurt her.

Nothing.

What’s next?

Look for GRUMPY SUNSHINE, the first book in the Content Advisory series!

To find out when new books release

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www.lanilynnvale.com/newsletter

Acknowledgments

Golden Czermak—Photographer

My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing—My editors

Frauke Spanuth—my everything lady. Formatter, cover designer, teaser maker, website designer. You name it, she does it for me!

My mom—Thank you for reading this book eight million seven hundred and one times.

My betas. Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without you.

Other Titles by Lani Lynn Vale

THE FREEBIRDS

Boomtown

Highway Don’t Care

Another One Bites the Dust

Last Day of My Life

Texas Tornado

I Don’t Dance

THE HEROES OF THE DIXIE WARDENS MC®

Lights to My Siren

Halligan to My Axe

Kevlar to My Vest

Keys to My Cuffs

Life to My Flight

Charge to My Line

Counter to My Intelligence

Right to My Wrong

Ask Your Mom If I’m Real

CODE 11- KPD SWAT

Center Mass

Double Tap

Bang Switch

Execution Style

Charlie Foxtrot

Kill Shot

Coup De Grace

THE UNCERTAIN SAINTS

Whiskey Neat

Jack & Coke

Vodka on the Rocks

Bad Apple

Dirty Mother

Rusty Nail

THE KILGORE FIRE SERIES

Shock Advised

Flash Point

Oxygen Deprived

Controlled Burn

Put Out

I LIKE BIG DRAGONS SERIES

I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

Dragons Need Love, Too

Oh, My Dragon

THE DIXIE WARDEN REJECTS

Beard Mode

Fear the Beard

Son of a Beard

I’m Only Here for the Beard

The Beard Made Me Do It

Beard Up

For the Love of Beard

Law & Beard

THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL

Pitch Please

Quit Your Pitchin’

Listen, Pitch

THE HAIL RAISERS

Hail No

Go to Hail

Burn in Hail

What the Hail

The Hail You Say

Hail Mary

THE SIMPLE MAN SERIES

Kinda Don’t Care

Maybe Don’t Wanna

Get You Some

Ain’t Doin’ It

Too Bad So Sad

BEAR BOTTOM GUARDIANS MC

Mess Me Up

Talkin’ Trash

How About No

My Bad

One Chance, Fancy

It Happens

Keep It Classy

Snitches Get Stitches

F-Bomb

THE SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN SERIES

Hissy Fit

Lord Have Mercy

Quit Bein’ Ugly

KPD MOTORCYCLE PATROL

Hide Your Crazy

It Wasn’t Me

I’d Rather Not

Make Me

Sinners are Winners

If You Say So

SWAT 2.0

Just Kidding

Fries Before Guys

Maybe Swearing Will Help

Ask Me If I Care

May Contain Wine

Joke’s on You

Join the Club

Any Day Now

Say it Ain’t So

Officially Over It

Nobody Knows

Depends Who’s Asking

VALENTINE BOYS

Herd That

Crazy Heifer

Chute Yeah

Get Bucked

SOULS CHAPEL REVENANTS

Repeat Offender

Conjugal Visits

Jailbait

Doin’ A Dime

Kitty, Kitty

Gen Pop

Inmate of the Month

Shakedown

MADD FIT SERIES

No Rep

Jerk It

Chalk Dirty to Me

BATTLE CROWS MC

Always Someone’s Monster

Make Me Your Villain

Rattle Some Cages

Not a Role Model

Get Tragic

Strange and Unusual

Never Trust The Living

GATOR BAIT MC

Nobody Cares Unless You’re Pretty

Good Trouble

Cute But Psycho

Annoyed At First Sight

The Voices Are Back

Special Kind of Twisted

I’ll Just Date Myself

CLOWN WORLD

Fun House

Freak Show

Show Off

Clown Motel

Sold To The Circus

Killing Booth

The Fool

CARTER BROTHERS

No Cap

I Can’t Even

Thirst Trap

Clap Back

Rent Free

Time To Bounce

YOLO

SEMYONOV BRATVA

Stay Toxic

Hey, Daddy

Walking Red Flag

Always Salty

CONTENT ADVISORY

Grumpy Sunshine

Look at Her and Die

Enemies to Lovers

Other Woman Drama

Mistaken Identity

Ugly Duckling

Forced Proximity

He’s a Mean One

SINGLE TITLES

Big Nick Energy

Suck This

Somethin’ About That Boy

About the Author

Lani Lynn Vale is an American author of humorous romantic suspense novels. Born in the Great State of Texas, she has lived the majority of her adult life in East Texas where most of her novels are based. She's married to her high school sweetheart whom her readers refer to as "LLV's Bearded Half." She published her first novel, Boomtown. in the summer of 2013 after the birth of her third child. She's gone on to publish over 100 novels, with most of them going on to become USA Today Bestsellers.

For more about Lani and her books visit www.lanilynnvale.com.

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