CHAPTER TWO
WELLS
I vanna Kingston is a vision of perfection.
So goddamn gorgeous, standing before me, her fiery locks swept into a messy bun, wisps framing her sweet, freckled face, pink from embarrassment.
She’s a wreck, rambling and nervous. I’d like to think that’s all my doing, but it seems her day may have already knocked her off-kilter.
Regardless, she makes unhinged sexy as hell.
My cock twitches to life. I can’t get enough.
A flash of excitement crossed her big blue doe eyes a moment ago when I suggested we could help each other out, but now I see her wheels turning. I’m glad. Willingness to blindly jump with a man she just met would be both alarming and disheartening. I expect more.
“Help each other out?” She tilts her head, the free-floating ginger strands brushing against her neck and shoulder. “You’re in the market for a quickie marriage too? Perhaps antiquated nuptial requirements are more common than I realized.”
Her nose scrunches with a hint of snark. Fucking adorable. I could take great pleasure in reining in the brat in her.
She purses her pouty lips and twists toward Ty. “What about you, Ty? You looking for a wife too?”
Fuck that.
My eyes flick to Ty’s before he settles on Ivy to answer. “No. That’s all Wells.” He pats my shoulder. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Ivy. I need to step away to make a call, but I hope to see you again soon. ”
“Nice to meet you too. Take care.” She smiles so brightly at him that my molars grind before I catch myself.
He walks to my Maserati GranTurismo, and she watches him go for a moment before turning back toward me, her teeth snagging on her lower lip, begging me to tug it free.
“So,” she says, removing her phone from the side pocket of the yoga pants hugging her small, toned frame—a runner’s body. Tiny, fit, yet still plenty of mouthwatering curves. “I’m not sure what to do now … I’ve had the strangest day, and this is no exception. I wasn’t really … it was a joke.”
“So you said, but you also suggested that you do have some urgent demand for a spouse,” I point out. “Is that not the case?”
She blinks a few times while weighing her response, the cerulean blue of her eyes filtering the rays of sun so that pearly drops dot them—angelic.
And yet there’s something that rages behind them, something wild that she attempts to repress.
After a long, peaceful beat—songbirds tittering in the grand white oaks, a serene breeze enveloping us, the world itself slowing to a crawl—she lifts her chin in newfound confidence.
“I do. It’s complicated, and I’m usually not one to share my complications with a stranger, but—”
“Here.” I snatch her unlocked phone out of her hand to add my information. The illusion of transparency will build some immediate trust, and for this to work, she’ll need to trust me completely—with her life.
Her bemused eyebrows dart for the sky. She’s probably wondering why I didn’t ask her for the phone or first explain what I was doing. She’ll learn soon enough that I don’t ask.
I finish inputting what I need and return it to her. “My full name is Gavin Wells. I logged my number and my social media accounts. There isn’t much regarding socials because I’m not a fan, but if you’d like to internet stalk me, it will furnish a start. Private though, so you’ll need to request.”
Her ocean blues narrow, a stunning mix of both suspicion and intrigue. “Thanks. ”
She doesn’t offer me her information in return.
Good girl. Smart.
“Looks like it’s your call, Little Storm. After you’ve slept on it, if you’re still in need of a husband, contact me. We can have dinner so we’re no longer strangers and decide if it makes sense.”
With that, I smile, wink, and join Ty in the car. Her eyes are still on me as I shut the door. Locking on to her, I refuse to be the one to break our gaze.
“A proposal in under two minutes. That was unexpected,” Ty says with his signature chuckle.
Out of the four of us who make up my small crew, he manages to bury his demons and find amusement in life the best.
“Yes, it was.” And fucking brilliant—I wish I’d thought of it.
Not that similar notions have never been a consideration in the back of my mind, but there was never clarity in how it would work.
When the flustered suggestion flew out of her mouth, my mind latched on to the idea with stark resolution, racing with all the ways this would give me everything I wanted.
Her eyes are still fixed on mine, like she’s a prisoner to our connection and can’t turn away.
I know the feeling, Little Storm. No need to fight it.
After a cursory, dazed bob of her head, she resumes her run, and I turn the ignition.
It’s taken nearly five years to get to this point, to stand before her and soak her in. Usually, moments and people long awaited pale in comparison to the imagined. The buildup is so often the demise. But Ivy Kingston has shattered that theory. So worth the wait.
After seven months of searching, we finally got a promising lead.
Cloaked in the shadows of a corner curio cabinet, I stare at our mark.
Her body slumps, inching toward the edge of the couch and dropping with a thud a moment later.
The creaking floor has all my attention.
Well, that and the deafening sound of blood flow rushing in my ears.
But I live for that. The roar of life, of adrenaline .
The melody of the chase.
The two bastards creeping through the Colonial Revival mansion’s parlor room don’t know it yet, but they’ve killed my target, pissing me the fuck off. My orders are to hand her over. Alive. Unharmed. Theirs were obviously shoot to kill. Who the hell do they work for?
The fuckers leisurely stroll through the house, oblivious that a team of four awaits them, right under their noses.
The taller of the two, donning a tarantula tattoo crawling up a throbbing vein in his neck, bends over the girl, tipping her blood-soaked chin up to him with the end of his gun. “This isn’t her. Poor bitch isn’t even the right one.”
“How do you know?” The other guy asks, hood pulled up over half of his greasy blond mop, dragging his black combat boot along her matted, fanned-out chestnut hair.
“Nothing like Eleanor or Daniel. I don’t fucking see it.”
The hooded one wanders aimlessly, scratching his head with the barrel of his pistol. “This is getting old. Three years we’ve been looking for this cunt.”
“Payday will be worth it. Highest-priced body on the market. She’s out there,” says the tarantula-inked jackass, poking through her things, “and we’ll be the ones to deliver.”
“I’m tired of collecting scraps for worthless kills.” Hood makes a valid point. You’d think verifying the mark prior to execution would make sense.
“Not worthless. This one was involved in some messed-up shit. Rich bitch was an addict. Would’ve been dead soon, even without us.
And her parents are loaded.” Tarantula Tattoo pulls out a rolled-up wad of hundred-dollar bills that was stuck behind a false drawer in a roll-top desk, flaunting it to the other guy.
“She won’t be needing this. Let’s raid the parents’ room and head out. ”
Their conversation infuriates me more. They won’t be leaving.
I announce our presence by shooting the hooded asshole between the eyes.
His accomplice briefly considers retaliation, whipping around with his pistol raised, but wisely thinks better of it.
There’s three of us with guns on him. He knows it will result in death.
And while that is most certainly his fate, he’s in that deceitful bubble where false hope is dictating his actions.
So much can be accomplished in that space. False hope is a productive dome of delusion.
Productive for us.
While collecting his partner’s weapon, I state in a stone-cold tone, “You killed my mark,” so he grasps the gravity of our situation. Wrong girl or not, he dared to take what’s mine. That is unacceptable.
“We can work together, man. No need to flip the fuck out and pick us off,” he protests, wisely lowering his gun to the floor and kicking it toward me as I eye it. “You looking for the O’Reilly girl?”
I nod, which he seems to take as a relieving sign. He shouldn’t.
“This ain’t even her,” he says.
I circle him, itching to light a cigarette. It calms me after a kill. Although this guy shaking and ready to piss himself will have its own relaxing appeal. “We don’t play well with others,” I tell him honestly. “Who do you work for?”
He spits, panic contorting his face. “I don’t know.”
I shoot him in the foot. He grunts and drops to the antique hardwood floor, attempting poorly to stifle his whimpers. Time to clarify things. Killing his friend apparently didn’t do the trick.
“Every lie, you lose a body part,” I explain. “So, let’s try this again. Who. Do you. Work for?”
“Fuck off, man! I don’t know!” he shrieks, and I shoot him in the thigh on the opposite leg, careful not to hit his femoral artery.
Wouldn’t want him bleeding out before I get my information.
His shrill, high-pitched screaming, amplified by an echo due to the twenty-foot ceiling, is already a migraine-inducing annoyance.
My cell pings with a text. Glancing at it, I exhale, frustrated, and flip my focus to Liam. “I don’t have time to interrogate this douche. Where’s Gage?”
Ty huffs a menacing chuckle. “I’ll get him. He’s been aching for some fun. ”
Less than a minute later, Ty returns with Gage, whose beefy, formidable stature and bald head frightens even the most seasoned thugs.
I turn back to our whiny, spider-tatted bitch, bleeding all over the floor. “Meet my good friend, Gage. Unlike my hurried approach, he has nothing but time on his hands. Speaking of hands, he’s particularly fond of digits and appendages—fingers, toes, dicks.”
Gage cracks his knuckles and slides a machete off his belt. “Let’s get acquainted.”