Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
The guy who owed her a favor?
Someone she got along with better.
I didn’t owe her shit.
Maybe it was as simple as… she was a woman in need of help. And I’d been raised by my Ma, by every aunt and cousin, and every single man in my life to step in when a woman needed assistance.
Christ, my mom would beat me with a spatula if she found out I didn’t hold open a door, or pull out a chair, or pull over when a woman needed a tire change.
If she knew I got a call begging to be rescued from a dangerous situation and I didn’t do something, she’d have me digging my own fucking grave in the backyard.
I was going to catch never-ending shit from my older brothers—Massimo and Nino—about rushing over to help without first at least telling Luca I was going to do so.
But this definitely seemed like one of those “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” sort of situations.
A woman’s life could very well be in the balance. So fuck protocol.
Traveler’s shop was located in, well, a shitty area of town, a place overrun with different criminal organizations of varying degrees of worrisome.
You know how it is.
Some people just mind their own business. You weren’t going to find pimps who were having wars in the streets with the drug dealers or shit like that.
But I imagined the last time my brothers and I were in the area to help free Cammie from the grips of a crime lord, which resulted in his death, had also created a vacuum of power.
If there was one thing I knew about lower-level criminal organizations, it was that they were often hungry for more power.
So who the fuck knew what had been going down in the neighborhood since we’d packed up and headed back to Navesink Bank.
Maybe, for once, Traveler’s connections didn’t protect her from some of these guys.
Why else would she be so scared if she had a break-in? Normally, she could just remind them who she was and why they couldn’t fuck with her, and it would be all over.
Something had changed.
“Huh,” I said aloud as I drove down the street that would lead to her shop.
When we’d visited last, Traveler said that she thought the place was going to start to gentrify eventually. And there were signs of that already.
There was construction on new luxury apartments. And the first few shops on the street had been sold, gutted, and changed into higher-end establishments.
A gym.
A spa.
You didn’t have to go far down the road, though, to see the old neighborhood still had a stronghold on the area.
Chained windows on closed businesses residing in half-crumbling buildings lined both sides of the street. And far down at the end, a plain-as-day drug deal was going on at the corner.
There were no cars parked out front of Traveler’s store, but as my headlights shined on it, I could tell that the front window was shattered, all of Traveler’s hanging crystals that created a rainbow of color inside the store in the daytime had been pulled down.
It was dark inside, but it looked as if tables and chairs had been tipped over.
“Fuck,” I hissed, cutting my engine, and reaching in the locked glovebox for my gun, checking the clip, then grabbing an extra two to shove in my pockets as I climbed out of the car.
I grabbed my phone too, in case shit really went south and I actually needed to do the unthinkable. Involve the law.
I made my way toward the building.
There was an eerie silence as I reached for the door, finding it opening easily in my hand. Like they’d gone in through the window, then left through the door.
My pulse was pounding in my ears as my foot crunched on something a few steps inside.
Scanning my lit phone screen down, I saw one of Traveler’s many colorful plant pots shattered, the green plant lying on its side with its dirt ball still attached.
If this was still the Traveler I knew, after she got over the fear, she was going to be fucking furious about the damage.
This was a woman who recycled everything and hated waste.
Trying to do my part in this capitalist hellscape to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
She’d actually said that to me once when I’d questioned why she was bagging up her spent coffee grounds to give away for free to anyone who wanted them for their garden.
So much waste, that’s what she was going to say.
But if it was her planters or her bones being crushed to dust, I was pretty sure we could both agree that the plants’ sacrifice was the better option.
I moved swiftly, but carefully through the store, checking under the counters and any nooks and crannies big enough to hide a human. Traveler was slim, but long-legged. It wouldn’t be easy for her to fold herself into most of the small areas in the front of the store.