Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
I undid mine as well as I gazed out the car window at the building. “You’re not staying here. I’ll escort you in to pack a few things. Then we’re leaving.”
She got out of the car on the driver’s side, ignoring me as I held the door open for her on mine. “Even as my boss, you don’t have the power to dictate where I live.”
I stepped close. “I thought I’d already established the amount of power I have over you?”
It was a dangerous game I was playing.
I had already crossed the line with her, a subordinate member of my staff, twice.
To go any further would be risking my career, yet despite barely knowing her, there was something about Eddie that pushed my buttons. She had an intriguing mixture of vulnerability and strength about her. It was obvious she was intelligent and strong-willed, yet when I touched her, it was almost as if she were begging me to force her to her knees.
The whole package was intoxicating and a temptation I was finding hard to ignore.
She tried to back away a few steps, her eyes wide again. “You are not coming upstairs with me.”
I wrapped my hand around her upper arm. “This is not up for debate.”
The men behind her started catcalling but a quick look from me silenced them.
With a huff, she said, “We need to get inside.”
The because it’s not safe on the sidewalk outside my building remained unsaid.
She led me up the steps and then into the building.
Her apartment was a three story walk-up, reached via a stairwell that reeked of cigarette smoke and other things I did not want to think about.
I ignored the garbage on the landings—empty cigarette containers, beer bottles—and the roaches that crawled over them. I even ignored the dirty metal spoon that was bent at a ninety-degree angle and got her to her door, at the end of another long, filthy hallway with a torn-up rug. I didn’t even want to think about what had caused the myriad stains on it.
“Fuck your things. I’ll buy you new clothes. We’re leaving.”
CHAPTER 10
EDDIE
I swallowed my embarrassment and pushed back tears. “You can leave but I’m staying. This is my home.”
I wrenched out of his grasp and marched down the hall to my door.
It was bad enough he had found out which neighborhood I lived in. It was worse when he saw my building. But to have him walk me to my door?
There was no way I could say it only looked run-down in the dark.
No, he had seen where I was living and now knew exactly the kind of person I was and the kind of life I came from. There was no pretending that I was from some stable, middle-class family in the suburbs somewhere or that I came from people having anything of value.
That was the problem with trying to pull yourself from the gutter.
It meant you started in the gutter, and most people would never see past that once they knew.
The funny part was that this place, this absolute shit hole, was so much better than where I grew up. At least here, I got to sleep in my own bed. Even if the mattress was on the floor, it was mine. I didn’t have to share my shower. Sure, the water was usually cold, some of the tiles were broken, and the pipes made horrendous sounds, but it was my own place.
With as much formality as I could muster, I kept my back to him as I faced my apartment door. “Thank you for the escort, but I can handle it from here.”
He grabbed my shoulders and spun me around, pinning me to the door. “I’m serious. This isn’t the place for you. It’s disgusting and beneath you. Five Points is safer.”
His words cut me deep. He had no idea how bad this really was or how much worse off I could have been, how much worse off I had been.
When I moved here, I was proud of the find. No, it wasn’t ideal, but it was mine.
He may have had a point about the supermax prison being safer, but this was still my home, and I had some pride left.
“Of course it is. Five Points has a full staff of guards and thicker walls.” I smiled. “If you don’t mind, it has been a long day.”
I needed him to leave before I opened the door. I didn’t want him to see my threadbare couch next to my old mattress on the floor in a corner. No TV, no lamp, just the couch, mattress, and the sad little kitchenette in my sad little studio that was barely three hundred square feet including the bathroom.
“Do you enjoy living here? Is that it? The drug paraphernalia on the ground, the dried blood splatter on the walls, half the roach population of the city living on the carpet and in the walls?”