Silas (Billionaire Bad Boys & Blue Collar Men #3)

Chapter 1

Terran

Smoke wafted into my face, carried over in my direction from the slight breeze that had been drifting through Ellington Heights ever since the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon hours ago.

A shiver worked its way up my spine, my shoulders tensing while I tried to bury myself deeper into my double-layered jacket.

For it being just after the first of November, it was too fucking cold to be standing out in the damp and rainy weather like this and not huddled inside the cruiser’s heated cab.

Summer had come and gone way too quickly this year, giving me no time to enjoy the hot sun like I’d wanted to outside of my shifts. Soon enough, another holiday season would pass and this town would, once again, be ankle fucking deep in snow before I knew it.

What I hated most about winter approaching were the weeks leading up to that first snowfall.

Days spent in the mid to high 50’s chased away as soon as the sun set.

The rapid drops at night always had my toes tingling no matter how many socks I layered inside my steel-toe boots, or how pure the wool blend I bought was.

I’d always been meant for sunnier weather. The kind that allowed for the luxuries of lounging next to a pool side with a margarita in hand and a pool boy coming around every half hour asking for another drink order.

Swatting the air to disperse the cloud engulfing me, a cough crawled up my throat. “You mind?”

My partner, TJ, took another long drag of his cigarette, puffing it up real good in his mouth while tilting his head back until it brushed along the brick wall we were both leaning against. His mouth yawned open lazily, letting the smoke unfurl from his lips while his expression began to grow lax the second the nicotine started to hit his system.

“Yeah, yeah,” was all he replied with.

I rolled my eyes. “I thought you were quitting? What happened to those patches Trisha finally talked you into buying?”

The scar running along his bottom lip puckered with his frown. “Tossed ‘em.”

Of course he did.

“Why am I not surprised?”

He threw me a look, sucking back another puff before letting it go in a short huff. “Ya know, kid. I don’t need the judgment. You been on the job as long as I have and you’ll pick up a few vices along the way. Mark my words.”

As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right.

So far, since joining Palmerston Police Department, I’d had plenty of cases that had me contemplating going home with a twelve pack and tossing them back one after the other while using whatever late night talk show that happened to be on as ambient lighting.

It’d certainly fit the image of a seasoned cop. Quite nicely, in fact.

The only thing stopping me so far was my house being occupied by other guests I definitely didn’t want exposed to bad habits like that.

“Think I’ll stick to the energy drinks.”

TJ shook his head at me. “Those’ll kill you faster than this can.” As he said the words, he flicked the butt from between his fingers, stomping it out with his shoe the moment it hit the pavement. “Keep at it and I’ll be peeling you off the sidewalk like we just did with Walker.”

I grimaced at the reminder of our last call—a drunk and disorderly that ended with us throwing the perp into the back of Jensen’s car, the other responding officer at the scene, while he tried to fist fight his way out of handcuffs.

After giving himself a nice little semi-concussion from slamming his head against the window a few times, he’d been whisked away to spend the night in holding to sober up and hopefully knock some sense into him before his court hearing come Monday morning.

With our PD as the go-between for three different towns, Ellington Heights, Edgewood and Palmerston, there was hardly ever a dull week that didn’t end with some kind of outrageous call coming over our radios, ushering my partner and I into some weird as fuck situation that would no doubt have me driving home in silence once 6 a.m. hit and I clocked out for the day.

As a native to the city only an hour’s drive from here, I’d had my fair share of running into the ‘full moon phenomena’ from time to time, as cursed as the witching hour during October as my sister would say.

The time between midnight and 5 a.m. when people threw out all inhibitions and let their preternatural impulses overdrive their regular instincts to keep up their otherwise pristine reputations.

The ironic part about relocating to a small town like Edgewood or Ellington Heights, was apparently my very naive belief that this would be some boring, run-of-the-mill desk job that mainly had me pushing papers all day.

Not chasing down rich elites who didn’t know when to take a bartender’s refusal to serve as final word and return home to their families and ritzy gated communities with whatever dignity they had left.

Though, maybe this was a small insight into how rigid those communities could truly be.

How often those that were a part of them longed to be ‘wild and free’ like the rest of us working class.

People like TJ and I had a certain image to uphold because of our job, sure, but nothing that demanded perfection in the eyes of a social class hell-bent on ostracizing whoever didn’t fit the status quo.

I could almost feel bad for them.

“I’m gonna grab a few snacks from inside. You want anything?” TJ nodded back toward the convenience store where our cruiser was parked.

“Your treat? Wow, how rare. Does this mean I passed your evaluation earlier?”

Almost twenty years my senior, my partner had a knack for taking my ribbing with a good amount of stride, despite the exasperated sigh that usually left him the moment I spoke.

As the newest rookie of our PD, he’d had the pleasure of taking me under his wing and trying to mold the ‘City-iot’ out of me, per our captain’s request. A monumental task, according to half of our precinct, apparently.

But unlearning the street smarts I’d been forced to adopt since I was a kid was harder than most people gave me credit for.

Trying not to read into every call, forcing myself to keep from jumping the gun that every person who had a shifty demeanor had something to hide, was a long and tough process to work through. Even two years out of the academy.

No matter how many times I was brought into my captain’s office and reminded that Brenda from the hot yoga studio down on Elm Street did not, in fact, have a coke problem and was trying to secretly sell her son’s ADHD meds out of their garage to finance her drug habit, and was really just that weird and normally twitchy after having one too many espressos in the morning.

One of these days, I was going to be right, though. And the satisfaction of rubbing it in all of their faces would make up for whatever docked points I’d be getting on my quarterly review.

“You want a snack or what, Bishop?”

Smiling a little, I responded. “I’m good. I am going to warm up in the car, though.”

This fucking chill was making my teeth close to chattering.

He tossed me the keys. “Don’t crank it. I hate when it gets stuffy in there.”

“Roger that.”

Parting ways from him, I headed over to the cruiser and tapped the key fob to unlock the doors.

Once I was in the cab and with the door wretched close behind me, I shoved the key into the ignition to start it, blasting the air immediately.

The cool burst pulled a sharp hiss out of me, thankfully bleeding into that delicious heat my body was dying for within a minute or two after the engine got going.

My utility belt dug into my hip as I leaned over to flick the temp up to the highest setting, steam fogging the front windshield damn near immediately.

Oops. Oh, well.

Pulling off my gloves, I pressed both hands against the vent to warm up my poor fingers and flex my stiff joints, cringing when the pain radiated up to my elbow.

Normally, living snugly between a mountain range and a small lake was a thing most city-slickers envied, paying top dollar to bus out here for a weekend stay at the local bed and breakfast spots closer to the water’s edge.

This close to the changing seasons, coupled with the rainy weather from the lake effects sweeping over all three towns it touched, made it less ideal in my book. But I figured I was in the minority on that one, given how easily the people of this area seemed to adapt.

On the one hand, it was sort of my fault for letting my sister, Amelia, talk me into moving us all the way out here a few months back, freshly graduated from her GED program and her three year old still bouncing on her hip.

She’d been all about how nice it would be to raise my niece, Ainsley, in a quiet suburb in some small town far away from the city streets both her and I had grown up on.

A nice enough idea, given how unpredictable life could be at times.

Raising a child in a fast-paced world wasn’t for the weak-hearted, and even less so with a little girl who was as curious and extroverted as my niece was.

Ellington Heights was a fine place to settle down in and an even finer one to raise a family.

Well, outside of the clear difference in generational wealth we were surrounded by. But that was beside the point.

My radio let out a few tones, pulling me out of my thoughts, indicating an incoming call from dispatch.

“Unit 12, respond to possible domestic disturbance at 92 Bay Road in Edgewood. Suspect is reportedly armed. 10-4?”

Dragging my hand away from the vent, I cupped it around the receiver and pressed the button. “Unit 12, 10-4. Description of the weapon?”

There was a moment of pause. “Caller states a possible knife on suspect. No visual confirmation.”

Least it wasn’t a firearm. “10-4. Responding now.”

Leaning back over the console, I stabbed the defrost button with my finger right as the driver’s side door popped open, a soft curse tumbling past TJ’s lips. “Like a fucking sauna in here, Bishop.”

“Sorry.” I wasn’t. Not when I finally could move my fingers away. “Got a call.”

“I heard.” Swinging one leg inside the cab, he tossed the plastic bag of goodies at me, landing it right in my lap. “Got you a damn water since you insist on dehydrating yourself to death with caffeine.”

“Taurine, actually.” Peeling back the plastic knot holding the bag together, a 20 ounce water bottle sat on top of the handful of snacks he’d gotten, two of them my favorite. A bit excessive, but then he wouldn’t be the precinct’s unofficial ‘mother hen’ if he was simply handing out 12 ounce-ers.

“Whatever. You need to quit drinking that battery acid before I have to resuscitate you in the middle of a goddamn shift because you’re too busy having a heart attack to hold a gun properly.”

Smirking, I uncapped the bottle. “Good practice to maintain your CPR certification, wouldn’t you say?”

The judgmental look thrown at me was only half acknowledged as I tipped the bottle back and downed half of it in one go. The cold water stung as it raced down my throat, cooling me from the inside and hitting my empty stomach in an unpleasant way.

The cruiser peeled out of the parking lot, lights flaring once we were on the main drag heading to Edgewood.

Adrenaline was already working its way through my veins, a calm washing over me as the engine roared from the acceleration. Streetlights blurred past us, flashes of red and green stoplights following.

“Should we request backup?” I asked.

“We’ll see when we get there. Pray it’s just a couple slapping each other around and we’re not walking into some fucked up slasher film set.”

One could only hope. “Roger that.”