Total pages in book: 217
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
“So why are you mean to her?”
“What?” he snaps, impatient.
“You’re mean to her. Impatient. You give her filthy looks.” I raise my brows as Brad visibly scrambles for a reason. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed. It’s causing an atmosphere.”
“I’m causing an atmosphere?”
“Yeah, by being grumpy. People aren’t used to it.”
“Then I’ll apologize.”
“Probably best you just stay out of her way. She thinks you’re a dick.”
He flinches. “Why?”
“Well, because you fuck hookers and own a strip club.”
“How does she know that?”
“Because I told her.” I’m certain I can hear his teeth grinding. “Rose thinks she finds you repulsive.”
“Is everyone talking about this?”
I shrug, amused, taking this light relief while I can get it.
“Good,” Brad snaps. “I’m glad she finds me repulsive.”
I nod, not convinced, “So why the fuck are you a miserable fuck lately?”
“Has everyone around here amid the drama their women are creating—which, I will add at this moment in the aftermath of your interrogation, is the very fucking reason I will never take myself a woman—missed the fact I’ve been fucking shot? And my fucking apartment was fucking blown the fuck up, Danny. I don’t have a home.” He starts pedaling again, his top half jerking all over the place.
“I think it’s you who’s missed the fact you’ve been fucking shot. Doc will string you up if he sees you on that thing.”
“I’m stressed.”
I laugh. “You’re a dick.” He totally wants to fuck Pearl. It’s a good job she hates him now because that would only end in tears. Hers. And Brad’s when Rose and Beau beat him black and blue. “I’m going to get a shower.”
“Hey, your cell,” Brad calls as it starts ringing from the mat in the corner where I was stretching. I wander over and crouch, swiping it up and turning it over. I look back at Brad. His pedaling slows. “Amber?”
I connect the call and rise, walking to Brad, waiting for whoever’s on the end of the line to speak.
“Danny?”
Brad’s eyes shoot to mine, and I exhale. I’ve never been so glad to hear her voice. “Amber.” Tread carefully, but not too delicately. This woman has only ever known brutality and coldness from me. “What do you want?”
“I’m in trouble, Danny. Serious trouble.”
I figured. The gym door opens, and with the lightest of breeze comes the most incredibly pungent stench of stale alcohol. I look over my shoulder and grimace. He looks like death warmed up. And what the fuck’s happened to his head? “The kind of trouble you get in when you take the inheritance that rightly belongs to someone else?” I ask, trying to clue a comatose looking James into what he’s walked in on.
“I had no idea about the money.”
James walks over, interested, as I laugh. “Come on, Amber.”
“Danny, I swear. Tom and I split up. He called me and said he missed me. Wanted to have dinner at his place. I went and we rekindled.”
So was Amber who Tom had been dating? “You loved him? Didn’t just want his money?” We all huddle in, waiting, listening. I can’t say Amber is transparent, because I’m pretty sure she loved me, despite the fact I showed her no love, fucked her regularly, and shared her. My money and power were a bonus. But, and forgive me for bashing a dead man, I’m a fuck load better looking and a few decades younger than Tom Hayley.
“I did what I needed to do to survive after you threw me out.”
“Oh boy,” Brad murmurs, pulling back from the phone, his worried eyes on me.
“What can you tell us about Tom’s death?” I ask, knowing James is going to be jumping in any moment if I don’t get this moving.
“I need something in return.”
“What?”
“Well it ain’t money, is it?” Brad says on a sardonic laugh, earning dark looks from me and James. “Hi, Amber,” he adds.
“Brad.” She strains his name, no love lost there. Yeah, I shared Amber, but never with Brad. He despised her. Prefers to take his women as strangers, mostly in hotels. There’s never any backlash for him. No whore biting at his ankles wanting money or safety.
James nudges me, pushing me on. He looks green, like he could throw up at any moment. “Well,” I push.
“Protection.”
“My protection is expensive. It depends what I get in return for protection.”
“You get a teddy bear.”
The room becomes still and quiet, all our bodies straightening. Somehow, this offer feels more serious than any other. What I’m thinking though, is how the fuck does the lover of Beau’s father have information about The Bear? “I can give you protection.”
“How?”
“I have a place abroad. Secluded, solitary, no one knows about it.” I am saying and thinking so many things lately that could get me a divorce. “What do you know about The Bear?”
She’s quiet, for so long I wonder if she’s hung up, but a quick glance at the screen tells me she’s still there. “Not on the phone,” she eventually says.