Chapter Thirty-Two #2
I didn’t know Enzo much, but I knew Paine well enough, and it was disrespectful for him to not get the news from me.
I didn’t need his permission or his approval, but I did need him to know that he could trust his kid sister with me.
I imagined that, after the string of assholes she seemed to date, he wouldn’t exactly be pissed about the development.
I had a dark past, sure, but I had cleaned up my life.
I lived mostly on the right side of the law.
I made good money, not that she would want to be taken care of, but Paine had taken on not only the brotherly role but the fatherly role as well, and he would know I could provide for her.
I could keep her safer than any average Joe could.
And because the thing I liked best about her was her smart mouth, he would know I didn’t want to change all those things that made her such a unique woman.
“You ever meet Gina?” Brock asked, grinning.
“Kenzi’s mom?” I clarified. At his nod, I shrugged. “No.”
“You got to prove yourself to Paine and Enzo, but if you fuck that girl over, you should be shitting yourself over Gina, not them. You want to know where Kenz got her independent, confident streak? That is pure Gina.”
I had a lot of fucking conversations to have once the situation was finally handled.
“What did I miss? How far did everyone get last night?”
“The IP has been wall after wall, so they are focusing more on the Bitcoin angle.”
Which, though I didn’t know much about such a thing, I knew enough to know was maybe even harder to get. Especially in a twenty-four-hour window. It usually took teams of hackers days to be able to get inside a site like that, one that was dedicated to protecting the anonymity of its users.
But if there was any team that could be up for the job, it was Jstorm, Barrett, L, and Alex.
“It’s early still,” Brock said, seeming to think I needed comfort. “They have the whole day. Really, they have two. But Sawyer said that if they have nothing by nightfall, we’ll have Kenz wire the money. It’s not worth the risk.”
“Even if he gets the money, it’s still a risk.”
In fact, the money in no way lessened the risk. It just gave him means. It didn’t guarantee that Cassie would be released. But to not sending the money would only increase the chance of something happening to her.
The best bet was to have either our team or the guys the cops hired track down the guy before or directly after the transfer.
Then it would be a race between us and the cops to see who could get to her first, get her out, and get the guy.
The cops would lock the bastard up. Us? Well, that was up to Sawyer at the end of the day.
If it were up to me, he’d be turning his wasted body into something useful.
Fertilizer. I hadn’t killed someone for longer than I even knew, since before Xander stopped me on the street that night.
And it wasn’t something I took lightly anymore.
But men who took their strength and used it against women?
Yeah, those motherfuckers deserved to die.
And I knew Sawyer knew that was where my head was at, which was why he was pulling the boss card on it.
“Hey, Brock,” Kenz called, making us both start.
“Yeah, babe?”
“Set the… um… coffee table,” she demanded, not even bothering to look over her shoulder as she flipped pancakes.
Never really having had much company, I never even thought about not having a dining table.
I guess I had to add that to the list of shit I needed to pick up.
Because if I was with Kenz, I knew Reese was always around.
Where Reese was, Paine, Elsie, Gina, and maybe even the aunts I heard about would be as well.
Plus whatever squad she had going on friend-wise.
At my brow raise, he shook his head with a smile. “If you’ve ever been to Gina’s for dinner, you would understand this. Kenzi gets kitchen-bossy. I have a table to set,” he said, moving off to do just that.
“Tig?”
I turned back, a smile already in place, seeing her standing there with a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.
I got the vivid image she had put in my mind the night before, of her standing there in nothing but those red-bottomed heels of hers, the picture sending a rush of desire through my body.
“Mind out of the gutter and on telling me where the syrup is.”
“It’s in the cabinet,” I said, but walked toward her to find it.
“Maple syrup isn’t honey; it spoils. It should be in the fridge.”
“Yep,” I agreed, pulling the bottle down. “But only after it’s been opened,” I added, pulling the tab off and twisting the top back on. “Need anything else from me?” Her eyes heated and I felt my smile curve upward. “I’ll give you that as soon as we are alone.”
“I, ah.” She shook her head, clearing it. “Butter.”
So then she stacked plates, mine and Brock’s stacks of pancakes enough to feed two men each, but we weren’t complaining.
The conversation was kept light, mostly thanks to Brock and his ability to bullshit about anything.
It was why, when we had a job that involved getting some inside intel, Sawyer threw Brock at it.
Didn’t matter what the situation—interrogating the girls at a strip club to find a missing pole dancer, pretending to be a dom at a fetish club to find the guy who was targeting the female members, throwing back whiskey with Russian traffickers, trying to find the daughter of a rival cartel.
You put him into a situation, the smooth fucker fit in and talked his way out of it.
“I’m going to go shower,” she announced after we had all sat sipping our coffee for a few minutes, right after declaring that cooks don’t clean and sticking that on us.
As soon as she was gone, Brock collected the plates. “Takes five minutes to load that massive dishwasher of yours. I will be out of here before I can even accidentally overhear anything,” he said, jerking his chin toward the hallway.
I waited until I knew he was on his way out before I moved into my bedroom and through to the bath where the hot air from her shower was snaking around the room.
Suddenly, I thanked my younger self for choosing the floor-to-ceiling glass shower enclosure.
Because there was nothing keeping her perfect body from view.
I pulled off my shirt, the movement catching her attention because she turned suddenly, a small smile playing on her lips as I reached to slip out of my pants. As soon as I was naked, she reached for the door and pushed it open.
“Brock gone?”
“Mhmm,” I agreed, stepping in, and reaching for her immediately.
Her nipples were hardened from the gust of cooler air when she opened the enclosure, and the feeling of them pressing into my chest sent a shot of desire to my cock.
And because she was being all soft and accommodating, her hands sliding over the scars on my chest, I went ahead and asked.
“What was on your mind this morning?”
“Hm?” she asked, looking up from where her eyes had been looking at my shoulder, seeing maybe for the first time, the faded ink there.
“Right before I left to let Brock in, you had a look. What were you thinking of?”
Maybe I didn’t know her completely yet, but I knew her enough to know she wouldn’t do some bullshit like deny she was thinking anything. That wasn’t her style. No, in fact, her MO was to deflect, change topics, be snarky, put it on you instead. She wasn’t a liar. She was an evader.
So it shocked the shit out of me when she didn’t do that, when she opened that sweet mouth of hers and gave me the truth.
“I’m not a wishy-washy type of girl,” she started, and I refrained from saying ‘no shit’ because I thought it might ruin the moment. “I date and I even feel things for guys at times, but I don’t think I have ever caught feelings before.”
It was vague, but I got it regardless.
“You caught feelings for me, did you?”
“I know it’s, ah, too soon. And I know that we haven’t even known each other all that long, let alone been involved, but I’ve always been someone who knows her mind.
And mine is inclined to follow my ah…” she trailed off there, not willing to say ‘heart,’ either because she wasn’t ready to feel that way yet or because she thought it was too soon to admit that she was.
“Feelings,” I supplied for her.
“Yeah,” she rushed to agree.
“So you aren’t going to pull the chickenshit card and try to push me away?”
“I don’t think anyone who has met me would call me chickenshit.” She smiled, looking proud of that fact, as she should be. “But no, I’m not pushing you away. I know this is new and maybe you don’t want to hear that yet. And it literally couldn’t be worse timing…”
“Alright,” I cut her off. “I’m glad you’re not pushing me away. It might be new, but that doesn’t mean we don’t both know this is going somewhere. And, I have found maybe too often in life, the most important shit almost always comes at the most inopportune times.”
I watched as that sank in, as she mulled it over, picked it apart. “Think I’m important, huh?”
“Right about now, I can’t think of anything more important.”
Then there was the smile again.
The only problem was, it didn’t last.
Because my phone rang. Then stopped. Then rang again.
Both of us knew that anything, literally any small bit of news was potentially life-changing. So, cock hard, disappointment a clawing thing, I climbed out, grabbed a towel, and made my way back into my living room. Behind me, I could hear Kenzi shutting off the water and climbing out as well.
“Tig.”
“Sawyer,” his voice met my ear. “Brock took off to shower and change. I am out front. Hate to interrupt the fuck fest but the crew has been working all night, and they want to talk to us. You have five minutes to get dressed and get down here so we can head in. I got five energy drinks for Jstorm and about a gallon of coffee for L. They’re going to be surly as fuck. ”
“Right, down in five,” I agreed, nodding my head at Kenz as she came into the hall in one of my towels, knotted to the side of her chest.
“We have to go?”
“We have to go,” I agreed as we both moved back down the hall into the bedroom, where she found her bra and slipped into it, foregoing the panties because, apparently, no force on earth would excuse wearing dirty panties.
Then she slipped into one of my dark gray dress shirts that hung low enough to be called a dress, using three, yes three, of my ties braided together as a belt.
Then she slipped into those fucking heels, and I swear to fuck you’d have thought she planned the outfit rather than pulled it out of her ass.
Then we went to the office.
Where we got some bad news.
Unfortunately, we weren’t aware at the time that the truly bad news was to come much later that night.
And it fucking broke my perfect, hardass, sweet as fucking sin Kenzi.