Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 454(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 454(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Discipline might be the most critical quality for a man in my position to possess. I couldn’t have gotten this far without it. Nothing has ever tested me the way this girl does. I don’t know where this hold she has over me comes from.
I don’t even know for sure whether I want to break it. It’s torture to want her, but the thought of being without her is unbearable.
It’s enough to make me hate her, this hold she has over me. She exposes every weakness, even those I didn’t know existed. I hate her for that, too.
Good thing she walks away when she does, or else I might have to make her pay for what she does to me. Run, little rabbit, run while you can.
Romero turns, quirking an eyebrow. I doubt he knows anything about Bianca and me. When I asked him to check on her earlier, I phrased it casually, like it was one of his normal tasks. I’d just gotten off the phone with Tatum, too, so I played it off as a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.
I was looking forward to having her home. One more reason to stay away from Bianca, one more layer of protection. I can’t fuck around with her while my kid is here. I should never have fucked around at all.
Now, her return date is vague at best. She’s a pro at double-talk, running around in circles. I’ll have to think about her later when I’m not so close to blowing a gasket.
“What?” I demand of Romero when he stares at me.
“Nothing. She looked scared.” He glances in the direction she fled before shrugging. “Did she piss you off?”
I only shake my head. “Forget it.” My throat is so damn tight, but not as tight as my shorts. It was that scared look on her face. It does things to me.
“She’s fine, if you were still wondering.” He heaves a sigh while following me to my office. “What were you going to ask when you first came up? You wanted me to check something.”
I hardly remember saying a word before seeing her. She has a way of wiping everything else out of my mind. “I want you to check on the shipment that was due to leave from the harbor overnight,” I tell him once I remember. “I didn’t receive confirmation, and they always call.”
He sighs again, only this time, there’s an edge to it. “I already called over since I didn’t get confirmation, either.” He’s so efficient. It’s almost scary.
“And?” I demand before gulping down some water.
“It didn’t go out. They called it a mix-up with the barge schedules.”
“That shipment was going down to Miami, for fuck’s sake.” My rage grows with every word until I’m sure the top of my head’s going to blow off. That shipment means a quarter of our earnings this month, not to mention the goddamn relationship with the Florida families. “Do you know how long it took to establish those relationships?”
“I was here when you established them,” he mutters. “I know. What do you want to do about it?”
“Is the shipment still down at the warehouse?”
“Supposedly, yes, and ready to go out tonight.”
I didn’t plan on doing damage control today, but that’s the nature of the job. You can’t assume when you wake up in the morning that your day will go as planned. “Let me call down to the Miami contacts and explain this. We head for the warehouse after that.”
I’m on the phone before I’ve left my office and have completed one call by the time I reach the shower. It’s not more than another twenty minutes before I’m dressed in a fresh suit and on my way out the door. Romero’s been waiting in the car for me the entire time.
This is what I needed today. Something to distract me. It’s a momentary problem, nothing serious, and still early enough in the day to give them the impression we’re on top of things around here, that I don’t leave my partners hanging.
It’s the principle of the thing that has me boiling over, ready to shed blood.
“I offered to swallow a percentage of the payment, but they denied it,” I tell him as he drives us down to the harbor.
“We’ll swallow it anyway,” he concludes because he knows me. I’d rather lose a small percentage now than every shipment after this. I’m not about to kill the goose laying the golden eggs, and the deal I hammered out with the Florida families makes them a big fucking goose.
Even though I know we’ll work this out, I’m seething. “These lax motherfuckers,” I mutter, cracking my knuckles as the scenery outside the Mustang changes from spacious, tree-filled suburbs to the lower middle-class area between our side of town and the harbor area. “It’s been too long since I’ve cracked heads.”