Chapter 4
I’ve been ordering the same Subway sandwich my whole life. What makes you think I’ll cheat on you?
— Keely’s secret thoughts
DIMA
I couldn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, my mind kept going back to what I’d done the night before, and I couldn’t turn the replay off.
I found myself heading to my computer and using my rudimentary skills to find an email address for Keely Clayborne using her work’s website.
She was listed as one of the ‘top employees’ there, with all of her information right in the open for anyone that had a computer to see.
Once I had her email, I forwarded her a report that clearly showed that I had a clean bill of health.
Then , for good measure, I sent her the video of us fucking in that alley because I was a sadist.
For the finishing touches, I went to her company’s website and removed all of her information off of there, so all that was left was a generic photo of a woman that closely resembled her.
Then I did another hard search for her throughout the internet and went about deleting all of that information.
The problem was, the woman was everywhere.
Literally .
She had social media on every single fucking website that there was, and some of those websites she had multiple accounts.
I grinned when I saw that she had an account dedicated solely to the books that she read. She commented and participated a lot on that one. Moreso than any of the other accounts that she had.
What was funniest was that she had a family-friendly account, and then her book account, on nearly every platform.
Her family had no clue that she was so damn invested in her books, I’d bet.
Though she didn’t post pictures or videos, she did comment a whole hell of a lot.
After hiding her as best as I could, and deleting a few of the people that she followed because I thought it was bullshit she was following ‘masked men’ pages, I signed off and looked at the clock.
One in the morning, and I was wired.
So , I found myself walking.
I found myself doing that a lot.
Walking in the middle of the night.
Luckily , most of the street that I lived on was private and belonged to the Semyonovs .
The area I wound up didn’t belong to the Semyonovs , though. It belonged to the Carters .
The huge subdivision that looked more like a compound than a subdivision.
I vaguely wondered if they had an HOA where they policed each other’s houses, because all of them were immaculate.
Their yards were shaped perfectly.
There wasn’t a weed in sight.
Though there was something that was out of place…
I stopped and stared at the kid that was standing in the middle of the yard with eyes blank, staring at nothing.
I knew one of the Carter brothers sleepwalked—something I’d learned since my youngest sister had married into the Carter family—and I guessed that extended to their own children as well.
And , because I was such a stand-up guy, I picked the kid up and started walking toward the closest house.
I didn’t know if the kid belonged to said house.
All the fuckin’ Carter kids looked the fuckin’ same, and also, I couldn’t quite remember which house belonged to who. Nor did I remember which Carter sleepwalked.
The kid collapsed into me the moment he was in my arms and laid his head on my shoulder, not putting up a single ounce of fight.
Which I was thankful for, because I didn’t need any of the Carters coming out and thinking I was kidnapping the kid.
The moment I was at the closest front door, I pressed the button for the doorbell and waited.
The sound of the Ring Camera doing its thing sounded, and then a sleepy male voice rang out, “ What the fuck do you want?”
I grinned at the angry voice on the other end of the line.
I had no clue which brother it was, but I bent down anyway and showed him my prize.
The pissed-off man cursed. “ Be there in a minute.”
I waited and swayed, hoping the child stayed asleep—or whatever the fuck he was at this point—until the person he actually knew well was here.
I knew all of the kids.
I’d been around them enough at family gatherings.
But I didn’t know them well enough to be holding them in the dark and them knowing who it was.
The door opened after several seconds, and Quinn Carter answered the door with only underwear on and a gun in his hand.
I gave his gun a raised brow, and he shrugged.
“ Occupational hazard,” he offered. “ Plus , you look creepy with that mask pulled down over your hair like that.”
“ How do you know it’s a mask?” I wondered.
I’d put the same mask on as last night, but hadn’t pulled it over my head. I’d left it bunched up on my head because, even though it was one in the morning, it was still hot and humid as fuck.
“ Because I can see your skin through one of the eye holes.” He paused. “ Why the fuck are you wearing that, anyway?”
“ Because the feel of my hair blowing against my skin drives me insane, and it’s too long right now,” I shared with a shrug.
So I had sensory issues.
Sue me.
“ Why don’t you cut it, then?” he asked.
“ Because my sisters want to do these stupid family group photos, and they say that when I cut my hair, I look too mean,” I conceded. “ So I have to wait until these pictures next week before I can cut it.”
“ Ahh ,” he said.
“ You want this kid?” I asked. “ I don’t want him to wake up and break my eardrum with his scream when he finds himself being held by someone he doesn’t know all that well.”
He took the kid from me and then closed his door before looking around the neighborhood.
“ Where’s your car?” he asked, looking around as if by him doing so, it’d appear out of thin air.
“ Walked ,” I returned. “ Across the path that leads around the lake from my place to this one.”
He shook his head. “ That’s like five miles. And it’s two in the morning.”
I shrugged as I started walking with him across the road to where I guessed the kid lived.
“ Can’t sleep,” I admitted.
“ Thought you were gonna start taking medication for that?” he asked. “ Didn’t I hear Dad suggesting it to you?”
“ Yeah , but you must’ve not heard the part where he doesn’t take it anymore because he can’t get it up in the morning when he’s taking it. And sometimes it takes him an hour to come,” I drawled.
I have had sleeping problems since I was a kid.
I’d never slept well, and nothing had helped me.
I’d been on every medication alive—at least I’d thought I’d been.
But I wasn’t really willing to take a medication that made my dick not work like I wanted it to.
Sleep wasn’t worth that to me.
We crossed the road to the house catty corner to Quinn’s , and Quinn laid on the doorbell.
The same words came out of this brother’s mouth, too, when he was woken.
“ What the fuck do you want?” an angry male voice said.
“ Atlas , you dumb fuck,” Quinn said, sounding amused. “ Your kid’s out roamin’ the neighborhood at two in the morning again.”
“ Goddammit .” Atlas was at the door in a flash, looking slightly frantic. “ I’ve done absolutely everything that I can think of, short of tying him to his bed, to keep him inside.”
“ Pressure alarm,” I suggested. “ Put it outside his door. That way if he crosses it, he wakes up the entire house.”
Both men looked at me curiously.
“ Used to have a friend that liked to scare the shit out of me when I slept,” I lied. “ Worked pretty well.”
“ Might need to add that to our list.” He sighed. “ I think I need to fence around the entire property at this point. I don’t think he’s aware enough to get out of a six-foot-high fence.”
“ He was able to get out of a locked house with multiple alarms on it,” Quinn pointed out the obvious.
“ True ,” Atlas narrowed his eyes at me. “ What are you doing here?”
“ Walking . Can’t sleep. Found your kid in that lot over there.” I pointed to the lot beside Quinn’s place.
“ Fuck ,” Atlas sighed. “ Thanks , man, appreciate it.”
I jerked up my chin and headed back the way I’d come.
I took the faster route back to my place, and as I did, I thought about all the things I had to do tomorrow, first of which was meeting my brother for lunch with a few of the men he called “ The Seven .”
Personally , I didn’t like any of them, not even the one Shasha considered his closest friend, Cayden McCloud .
All of them struck me as arrogant pricks who thought they controlled the world.
Truthfully , my brother struck me as that sometimes.
But that was quite possibly because I didn’t like anyone, not even my own family at times.
My social battery was finite.
My family, however, didn’t care if my social battery was full or not. They’d bug the absolute shit out of me if I didn’t participate in the family the way they wanted—which was all the fuckin’ time.
There were days, however, that I craved living in a place that was far, far away from anyone and everyone. A place in the middle of the woods where the closest neighbor was twenty miles away.
I craved being able to live in a place that didn’t have the ability to have my sister in my house at three o’clock in the morning when I came home.
“ Where have you been?” Nastya asked, yawning widely.
“ Walking ,” I said as I stared at my nephew in her arms. “ What are y’all doing up?”
Nastya yawned again. “ Nate has a little cold, and he needs to be vertical to sleep.” She yawned again.
I walked over and took Nate from her arms, turning the little guy to face me.
Nate had eye crusties over his eyes, and his nose had dried snot on it.
“ I’ve wiped those down so much that his little nose is raw,” Nastya admitted. “ I’m at the point where I’m wondering if it’d be better for him to leave them there.”
“ I’ll get them cleaned,” I said. “ Go home.”
Nastya raised a brow at me. “ What ?”
“ Go home,” I repeated.
She bit her lip.
“ Now ,” I grumbled. “ We’re gonna try to catch a couple of hours of sleep.”
“ How …”
“ Go ,” I repeated.
I walked her out and watched as she crossed the lawns to her place.
I glanced at the other house that was between Nastya’s and mine and saw that Cutter , Milena’s new husband, was there getting ready to go for a run.
“ What time are y’all leaving?” I asked.
“ Dropping her off as soon as I finish this run.” His eyes gleamed. “ Then I’m riding out.”
I jerked my chin up at him and he gave me one back, and I disappeared back inside.
Milena , my sister, was headed to Montana to run a marathon on a trail.
Cutter , however, was headed to the prison where his brother was located to kill the man that’d raped Milena .
I was wholly, one hundred percent on board with this morning’s activities.
I’d actually wanted to do this myself for years, but Milena had made all of us swear that we wouldn’t retaliate anymore against Lyle Pettigrew .
I was just happy that Cutter didn’t have that same pinky promise that Milena had forced out of us.
“ Good ,” I responded. “ Let me know if you need any help.”
He jerked his chin up at me and started off at a jog.
Closing and locking the door, I headed to my bed where I set Nate down.
I came back seconds later in sleep pants and had a warm rag in my hand.
He started to twist away but I caught him by the foot and hauled him back to me. “ You clean it.”
Nate took the rag and looked at it like it was going to bite him.
“ It’s warm and soft. It won’t hurt that bad,” I pointed out.
He rubbed his nose on it and paused to test out how bad it hurt.
It must’ve been okay because he cleaned it better the second time.
“ Use the other side to clean your eyes,” I suggested when he went to get to his eyes.
The kid twisted the rag over to the other side and I saw all the snot that was left over.
I curled my lip.
Kids were cool.
I didn’t mind them.
Until they started leaking.
Then kids weren’t my favorite things in the world.
However , I seemed to be able to handle a lot more from my nieces and nephews than kids who weren’t related to me.
After he was cleaned off as best as he could manage, I said, “ Now blow your nose in it.”
The kid did, then handed it to me.
I nearly gagged as I took the rag and tossed it into the trash.
That was one rag I’d never use again.
When I came back, Nate looked just as miserable as when I’d left him.
I reached for him and pulled him into my arms before sitting on the bed, propping several pillows up behind me, and yanking the comforter over the both of us.
Nate laid his head down on my chest and went to sleep—fitfully.
Which worked for me because I slept just as fitfully.
Luckily , no nightmares plagued me this day.
Visions of a green-eyed woman did, though.
And when I woke up, snot dried to my chest, I idly wondered if our kids would have her green eyes, or my brown.