Chapter Thirteen
OCEAN
“Again,” Coby pleaded as she writhed underneath me. “Fuck me again.”
Chuckling, I lowered my head to her shoulder and tried to catch my breath.
I had just fucked and licked her into three orgasms. My balls were fucking empty, and I was out of time.
“I got to go, sweetheart,” I said as I pulled out of her perfect pussy and kissed her soft lips.
“The streets are calling, and you’re meeting with my cousins today to finalize the wedding plans.
” Coby pouted as if she’d rather do anything else.
I couldn’t help myself when it came to her, so I kissed her one last time. “Be good.”
I left the bed to shower and dress for the day, and then stepped back into my room to find Coby gone. Needing to set eyes on her one last time before I left, I tracked her down to her library and peeked inside to find her also dressed and perusing one of the shelves on the second floor.
Day by day, they were getting fuller and fuller as Coby put my credit card to good use after getting over her initial hesitation and realizing I wasn’t one measly shopping spree away from being broke. It would take a lot more than that—generations of bad financial decisions—before that happened.
It’s been a couple of weeks since my father threw down his ultimatum.
Two weeks and no sign or word from Hunter.
Unbeknownst to Coby, I’ve been spending every waking moment that I wasn’t with her looking for her roommate.
It was as if Hunter vanished into thin air after her confrontation at the hospital with Kellan. We eventually caught up with him, but Hunter’s been hard to find ever since. I’ve been writing some pretty fat checks to keep the police off her ass.
I didn’t want anyone else getting near it before me.
I’d tried calling the burner a few times since she stole it from Kellan, but Hunter must have ditched it by now because my calls always went unanswered. Smart girl.
The phone wasn’t traceable, but she obviously knew better than to leave herself open to temptation.
Because that’s exactly what she was.
A temptress.
Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare think about it….
With some effort, the pawns on my mental chessboard scraped back into place, and I left the penthouse with Abel. We rode the elevator down in silence.
“We might need to refocus our efforts outside the city,” I said as we drove away from Glainne.
“Have we looked far enough into Hunter’s past to figure out where she might be holed up?
” Or who she might be hiding with. I let that dangerous thought pass as swiftly as it arrived.
I wasn’t foolish or arrogant enough to believe that I could somehow accomplish what no man has been able to successfully pull off in the history of time.
One was enough.
One was more than enough.
“Everything before she turned eighteen is sealed,” Abel told me. “We can get the information, but it will take time and money. A lot of it.”
“Do what you need to,” I responded with a sigh. Kellan was the one who handled this shit for me, but he was currently busy tracking down Hunter. The same as me.
Abel never complained, though, because he knew there were so few people I could trust, especially now with a regime change on the horizon—even my allies within and outside of the Fola could turn for not much more than the promise of a minor promotion.
Before Abel could get to work on it, he got a call on his phone.
“Whoa, say that shit again?” Abel screamed moments later.
It startled Paul, who swerved a little but quickly regained control of the Denali with a mumbled apology.
“Well, handle it! Nobody moves until we get there. Whoever isn’t accounted for fucking dies.
” Hanging up, he punched the ceiling before turning in his seat to meet my gaze.
“What is it?”
“Someone just raided one of our caches.”
I was already pulling out my phone to start ordering executions. “ATF?”
“No. They said whoever did it was alone. This person took out fifteen of our men, made off with some weapons, and left a message.”
“Let me guess,” I stated coldly. “For Michael Black.” That trail was also getting colder by the day, but mysteriously, the raids on our flesh dens had also stopped. Maybe they’d chosen to refocus their attention.
“No.” Abel winced. “The message was for you.”
Fury wrestled with obsession now that I was forced to choose between finding out who raided my warehouse and chasing down Hunter.
I knew what I wanted to do, but I was heir to the Fola. It was never about what I wanted.
Coby was the first slice of heaven I’d ever taken for myself, and I was determined to keep him no matter how many people I had to kill.
“Boss?” Paul questioned as he waited at the light that had already turned green.
My driver’s hand hovered uncertainly above the turn signal that would take us to the apartment of a gifted hacker whom Hunter apparently met in juvie a long time ago.
Horns behind us honked furiously as Paul waited for me to make a decision.
Abel was noticeably quiet since he likely already knew my dilemma.
There was no reason to believe that Hunter still had contact with Destiny Arehart, but I wasn’t about to leave any stones unturned.
I could say my dedication to finding her was solely for Coby’s sake, but why lie to myself?
For now, my curiosity about Hunter Parrish was just that.
A curiosity. She was a puzzle I couldn’t resist solving, and the hold she had on Coby would need to be severed sooner or later.
Coby’s little speech about Hunter made that very clear to me.
I wasn’t about to share my wife’s heart with anyone.
“It’s probably just another dead end,” I whispered to myself.
“What’s that, boss?” Paul asked.
“The warehouse,” I answered tightly. “Take me to the warehouse.” It was where my gut was steering me, and it had never led me wrong before.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of a message written in blood with bodies strewn all around me.
Abel was busy cross-checking the inventory to see exactly what was taken.
There weren’t any cameras because the risk outweighed the reward.
Whoever did this was quick and efficient.
They’d use the Fola’s own hubris against us.
In truth, the culprit did me a favor by taking out most of the crew because letting this happen in the first place had earned them a bullet.
One.
One person was all it took.
One reckless girl hellbent on reclaiming something that was never hers.
I studied the three words written on the wall and grinned.
The threat behind it was just as clear as the angry letters on the wall: Give my wife back, or the next person’s blood on the wall would be mine. Swiping my finger through the pool of blood under my feet, I wrote my response on the wall.
She’d never see it, but that was okay. I planned to deliver my answer in person. Done with this shit and ready to hunt, I turned away and gave the dead men no more than a cursory glance. I’d make sure their families were taken care of before erasing them from my mind completely.
“Fuil a-steach, fuil a-mach1,” I uttered like a prayer on my way out.
And whether Hunter liked it or not, after this stunt, she was in. You don’t destroy potential like that for something as petty as dick measuring. You nurture it.
Hunter Parrish was mine.
The first stop I made after leaving the warehouse was Glamis to inform my father of what happened.
Of course, he wanted to know who was responsible, and I told him, with great pleasure, that it must have been the same person hunting Michael Black, and stressed what a shame it was that we couldn’t interrogate him.
I wasn’t stupid.
I knew that my father knew exactly where Black was. What I didn’t know was why he was going to great lengths to keep the man hidden.
After leaving Glamis, I popped up on my baby at the restaurant where she was having lunch with Chiara and Priscilla. They were going over the very exclusive guest list since our wedding was a forbidden secret that could end like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones if we weren’t careful.
“Oceeeean!” Coby’s eyes widened when she saw me, and then she greeted me with a drunken smile. “Whassup, my brotha?” She and Chiara started snickering at the former’s imagined joke while Priscilla rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Too many Bloody Marys,” she explained. “They’ve been like this for an hour.”
I nodded at my cousin before regarding my wife. “Having fun?”
“Sooo much fun.” Leaning over, Coby wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. I could taste the tomato juice and vodka on her lips. “I missed you.”
“Missed you too.” I pecked her cold lips a second time while she rubbed the side of my face.
“You’re so handsome.”
“And you’re so drunk.”
“I am not.” She hiccuped. “You were supposed to say I’m handsome too.” Pinching my bottom lip, she started moving it up and down before I could say a word. “Coby…mo aingeal,” she mocked in a deep voice. “You’re so handsome. Marry me, woman. Give me lots of babies.”
Across the table, Chiara clapped and cackled. “Oh my God, cuz! She sounds just like youuuu!” She squealed that last part.
“All right.” I batted Coby’s hand away from my face. “Time to go home.”
“Can Chiara and Pri come?”
“Uh, no. Chiara has to go home too, and so do I,” Priscilla said. “If I wanted my nerves worked, I would have stayed at home with my kids, hell.”
Coby blew kisses at Priscilla.
“Y’all gon’ head and go. I got her,” I told my cousins.
Priscilla sighed with relief before standing and helping Chiara’s drunk ass up. Priscilla kissed Coby on her forehead and then waved her fingers at me as they left the restaurant.
“Are you mad at me?” Coby asked the moment we were alone.
“No. Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You feel mad.”
“I feel mad?”
“Yes. It’s a feeling,” she explained needlessly.