Forty-Nine
Linc
The silence on the other end of the line I understood. I waited while Garrett processed what I’d learned this evening. Nothing had prepared me for the sheer hate that had come over me. It surpassed that of the dentist who had thought he was going to take what was mine. This was another level of loathing that I’d never experienced.
“I’ll have her location and all her financial records pulled,” he said, his voice the hard, unyielding one I’d not heard in a while. This was the sound of the boss. “Once it’s all together, I’ll call you with details.”
“Okay.”
“I failed Demeter,” he said. “I should have watched her closer. Trusting some bitch I didn’t know was a mistake that she’ll pay for. But, Linc, I won’t fail him again. If you don’t love her, then you’d better set her free.”
The underlying threat took me by surprise. I stared at the bookshelf in my office, letting it sink in.
“The family takes care of our own. She’s ours.”
My body went rigid, and I gripped the phone tightly. Like hell she was ours. She wasn’t fucking ours.
“She’s mine.” The words came out like an animalistic snarl.
Silence.
He wasn’t the boss anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a Hughes. Right now, I didn’t care. He’d said something I wouldn’t allow. No one got to claim her. She was already claimed.
“Good,” he finally said with a sigh. “Fawn assured me as much when you left here. I had my doubts, seeing as how you treated her, but my wife reminded me of my treatment of her in the beginning, so I was giving it time. Having Luther update me on how things were going with the two of you.”
I narrowed my eyes as I let that process. Luther had been telling him shit? That motherfucker!
“And what has he said?” I asked between clenched teeth, ready to go break another bone in his goddamn body.
Garrett sighed and then laughed. “That you’re so fucking messed up in the head over her that you’re showing signs of insanity.”
I sank back into my chair, feeling most of my rage fade. I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it. What the fuck was I going to say? That it wasn’t true? Because the fact was, Luther’s words had described the way I was feeling so damn accurately that I was tempted to laugh.
But I didn’t.
Because he was an asshole.