Chapter 15
Jules
Flint wakes me up with a kiss, breakfast in bed, and a gift wrapped in brown paper.
I’m eager to spend some time with him before the men from their LA chapter get here with the vehicle I saw on the beltline.
He puts the breakfast tray down on the bed between us, and I make a grab for the orange juice. Taking a drink, I close my eyes and enjoy the cold liquid sliding down my parched throat.
“My God, that’s good.”
“I knew you’d like that. I got your favorite croissants as well, the kind with cream cheese inside.”
“If this is a thank you for all the great sex, I should be the one thanking you,” I tell him teasingly.
He grins, and I can’t get over how a full-on smile transforms his face from handsome to a stunning heartthrob. “It’s not a reward. More like me being worried that I wore you out so thoroughly last night that you might not be able to crawl out of bed and feed yourself.”
I chuckle, pleased at how at ease he is with the idea of being together. I know that last night he said I was his, but I half expected him to wake up with regrets and things would get awkward again.
“I’m not only able to move, I’m also ready for more.”
“Liar,” he shoots back. “Wait until you are up and moving before saying that.”
I grab a croissant and nibble on the end. “I love it when you’re like this.”
“What, relaxed?”
I nod, smothering back a smile. “Yeah, it beats aloof and grumpy.”
“Since I’m making such a good impression this morning, I’m gonna go ahead and give you your gift. Maybe you’ll wear it for me.”
I eagerly reach out for the package he’s offering. “What is it, lingerie?”
“Something better. Open it and see.”
Dropping my pastry back onto the plate, I tear through the brown paper wrapping to find a property cut with his name on the back.
Clutching it to my chest, I tell him, “It’s beautiful. And you’re absolutely right about it being better than lingerie.”
“After everything that happened, I need people to know that you’re officially under Sons’ protection,” Flint says.
I should have known it was too good to be true. It’s not that he wants me to be his woman, it’s just practical.
My face must have dropped because he asks, “Don’t you like it? I thought you’d be happy?”
I force a smile. “I love it. Don’t worry, I know it doesn’t mean anything and I’m not really yours, but—”
“Hey! Where’s this coming from? Of course I want you to be mine. I guess we never really had that conversation,” he says.
“Really? So last night wasn’t just a one-off?”
“Hell, the fuck, no! I don’t know how we’re gonna break the news to Tommy, but I want you to be my woman.”
I stroke my fingers over the part that reads, ‘Property of Flint’.
“Then you’ll wear it?”
“Every single day. Thank you. Wearing your property cut makes me feel like I finally belong in your life.”
“I would have thought that living in at my place, working side by side, and riding my cock might have done that already. But if the property cut seals the deal for you, so much the better.”
I let the sheet slide down my torso and struggle into the cut, snapping it up the front. “How does it look?”
“Fuckin’ amazin’. It makes me wish I’d gone easy on you last night, so I could fuck you while you wear it.”
I shove the tray aside and start to climb into his lap when someone pounds loudly on the door.
“Flint, are you up in there? Jasper sent me to tell you that sedan you sent for is thirty minutes out. He said get your ass downstairs, pronto.”
“Yeah, we’re up. Tell him we’ll be down in a few,” Flint shouts back.
Looking at Flint’s hair, I can see it’s damp from the shower he took before waking me up. I ask quietly, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to grab a quick shower. I don’t want to hold you up.”
He gives me a casual chin jerk. “Yeah, make it quick if you want to be there when that fuckin’ vehicle arrives.”
He knows that I do because we’ve talked about it.
I scramble out of bed, pulling on my pants from yesterday so I can get to the shower across the hall without humiliating myself.
At the door, I glance over my shoulder to find Flint staring down at the sketch I started of him.
The door to the room shuts as I turn on the shower.
I manage to get myself together in record time and head upstairs to join Flint. He’s nowhere to be found in the main room, but I eventually find him out front, waiting for the delivery.
Flint is sitting in a chair with one boot propped on the railing. He hands me a fresh cup of coffee. I take it and sit down beside him.
“Are you sure you’re up to this, seeing the vehicle again?” he asks, more serious than he was earlier.
“Of course. I thought you wanted me to be here to verify this is the one I saw.”
“Only if you’re sure that you’re up to it,” he replies mildly.
He’s not wrong to be worried. I can already feel anxiety churning. I quickly take a sip of coffee, hoping it will calm my stomach. Before I can answer, there’s a commotion at the gate. When they swing open, a flatbed rolls into the compound and pulls up lengthwise in front of the clubhouse.
We come to our feet, setting our coffee aside on the porch railing. My knees feel weak, so I reach out and grasp his arm for support.
“You don’t have to be out here for this,” he reminds me again.
“I need to see it one more time to be sure it’s the one. If I don’t, I’ll keep having bad dreams about it.”
He slides my hand down and laces his fingers through mine. We move forward together, him in his Sons cut and me wearing his property cut in public for the first time. We walk to the end, and I look long and hard at the back of the sedan.
It’s the same car, alright.
Images come flooding back of how the suits had the man surrounded, how battered he looked, and his hand reaching for me.
I’d kind of hoped it wasn’t the same vehicle, in the same way I’d hoped that the events hadn’t really happened.
But I know what I saw, and the fact that the men had been questioning my old landlord told me that they were dangerous.
Anything could be in the trunk.
I sway on my feet, and Flint is there, wrapping one arm around me. “I’ve got you, darlin’.”
“It’s the car.”
“I could tell from your reaction it was. Just breathe, Jules.”
I do as he says, and he doesn’t take his arm off my waist.
The flatbed’s air brakes hiss. The driver climbs down and walks back to talk to Jasper, who is standing around with a dozen or so other brothers. Jasper says something to the driver that I can’t hear, and he starts unstrapping the car.
“Detective Morgan should be here any minute,” Flint whispers against my hair. “Do you want to sit back down until he gets here?”
“No. I’m fine now. The first look was the worst look. I want to see what’s in the trunk.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he says, “Okay. Fair enough. I’d be curious about that if I were you as well. We need to wait for Morgan though.”
The car comes off the flatbed slowly and slides onto the flat pavement. There are ugly scratches down one side. When I realize there are no bad smells coming off it to indicate a dead body might be in the trunk, a wave of relief sweeps over me.
Jasper walks over to us. He tips his chin at Flint. “Morgan’s pulling in. You sure you want Jules along for the inspection? She can wait inside with Tessa.”
Snatching up all my courage, I tell him, “I’m staying until we get to the bottom of this.”
Jasper looks at me for a second before saying, “All right. If that’s what you want.”
Morgan jumps out of his SUV and rushes over with a black case in his hands. “Is this the vehicle?”
“It looks exactly like the car I saw. It has paint that matches my car along the side where they tried to run me off the road.”
Morgan pats the case in his hand with his free hand. “That’s great. I’ll take samples and match them to your vehicle to be sure.”
Jasper gestures to the trunk. “We haven’t opened it. We waited like you requested.”
“That’s good. It means whatever evidence we find inside should be fresh.”
“First, I’ll collect whatever I can in the way of fingerprints and take samples of the paint. But my chain of command refused to let me use the crime lab to analyze evidence because the crime didn’t take place in our jurisdiction.”
I frown because this is just another example of how the police can’t be relied on.
“What I can do is process this car the way it would have been processed forty years ago, before any of us had labs to send things to. I have a print kit in my case. I have lifting tape. I have a camera. I can pull what’s on the surfaces of this car, photograph the trunk and its contents, and bag what I find.
None of that will be much use legally because there’s no chain of evidence. ”
Jasper interjects, “We get it. Whatever answers you find for us won’t be admissible in a court of law.”
“That’s about the size of it.” He looks up at Jasper. “I can run fingerprints through the system and match paint samples myself, but not much more than that.”
Jasper’s expression turns hard. “Let’s pop the trunk.”
Morgan came prepared. Opening his case, he pulls out a slim jim and slides it down the driver’s side door. He works it through the window seal for about thirty seconds, then the lock pops. In one quick movement, he opens the door with one hand and pulls the trunk release with the other.
I see the trunk pop open slightly. Morgan pulls a pair of gloves from his bag, snaps them on, and he lifts the lid the rest of the way slowly, one hand under the edge, the other hand braced on the bumper. We all gather around and have a look.
There’s nothing inside, just the carpeted floor that came with the car. Though the outside of the car is jet black, the interior is gray.