Total pages in book: 33
Estimated words: 30657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 153(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 102(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30657 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 153(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 102(@300wpm)
“Hey.” Abel takes my chin, guiding me to look up at him as he steps between my thighs. “You all right?”
“Yeah.”
His brows pull together, and I don’t think he believes me.
“I have to go handle something real quick. Will you be okay for a few minutes?”
“I’ll finish breakfast.”
“It’s late afternoon.” Abel gives me a half smile that makes me forget about everything in that moment. I never get smiles. I reach up and stroke his cheek.
“You make me forget about the rest of the world.”
“I want to forget the rest of the world.” Abel presses a kiss to my forehead. “Riley and Nikolai are going to come by.”
The mention of Riley makes me wonder how much she knows about what’s going on and about Abel. I think it’s more than she told me the other day. She dodged a few of my questions, and a few of her comments are starting to make more sense. I’m not upset with her because she’s in a weird predicament. Her loyalty is to Nikolai.
“Okay.” I don’t know what to make of all of this, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions either. Each time I’ve done that before, when it came to Abel, I've been wrong. “Can I ask you something before you go?”
“You can always ask me anything, Angel.”
“My father didn’t hire you?” He’s been saying the whole time that he took me to keep me safe, but he hasn’t said under whose orders. It was because of my friendship with Riley that my family was dug into.
“No.”
“You took me because of what happened with Riley?” Had she wanted to keep me safe?
“I took you because I wanted to keep you safe.”
“It’s not the only reason?” Abel shakes his head no. “Are you going to tell me?”
“I don’t want to scare you.” Well, crap. Before I can push, an alert goes off.
“That them?”
“Yeah.” Abel pulls out his phone. “I’ll send Riley up.” He presses a kiss on my mouth before he heads out the door. I stare after him, my head a mess.
I slip off the counter and hurry into the closet to change. This time when I see all the clothes, I notice the tags on them. Abel got his home ready for me. He knew he was going to bring me back here, and from the look of things, I will be staying for a while.
I run my hands along the clothes. They’re all brands that I wear, and some are actually replicas of clothes I already own that are hanging in my closet at home.
“Hey.” I turn around to see Riley standing in the doorway of the closet.
“That day at my house. When everything happened. You didn’t ask Abel to take me and make sure I was safe, did you?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Nikolai just reassured me that you were safe.”
“Because he ordered Abel to take me?”
“I think Church had a plan already.” She motions toward the clothes.
“He was planning to take me all along.” Riley glances around, her eyes landing anywhere but mine. “Riley.”
“What?” She shrugs. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” I pull some clothes off the hanger to get dressed.
“These men are different.” She shrugs.
Her words hit the mark. She’s not wrong. Abel is a different kind of man, but isn’t it some of those differences that had me falling so hard for him?
“He tortures people,” I mutter, wiggling into a pair of joggers. I still can’t reconcile in my mind how my sweet, caring, doting Abel could be the same man these people call Church.
“Some people need torturing.” Riley shrugs again, as if this is no big deal. She goes around, opening one of the drawers with all the nail polish. “Want to do mani pedis?” Is she serious right now? She wants me to paint my toes while Abel is somewhere maybe removing someone else's? I close the drawer. She is truly part of this world. “That a no?”
“Is my father one of the men he’s tortured?”
“I don’t ask those kinds of questions.” She holds her hands up. “There are some things better left unknown.”
“If it was your father?”
“Yeah, that comparison might not work for you.” Riley actually laughs.
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s just say that Nikolai and Matteo have made it so I am the only O'Haire left, now that my sister is married. Pretty soon I won't even carry the name anymore once I get married. Then the O’Haires will all be gone.” Riley doesn’t sound beat-up about this.
“I’m over only getting details.”
“All right, you are one of us now,” she says before launching into how her sister and Matteo came to be, which also brought her and Nikolai together. When she’s done, it only makes it more clear that yes, these men are very different from others. Especially when it came to their women. But what I’m not sure of is what that means for me. “These men take what they want. They are possessive.”