Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
EMERSON
Another day of inspecting my warehouses and checking in with my suppliers meant another day away from Ava.
As annoying as it was, I missed her company.
Irritating was more like it. A woman I barely knew, who had been in my life for forty-eight hours and I couldn’t get her off my mind.
It was completely irrational. Madness. If I had known her for months, I might have been tempted to say the attraction made sense, that I liked this woman too immensely to ignore.
Enough to have her in my bed, to want to hold her each night, to see her curled up in my sheets, have her smile light the crevices of my rotted heart.
But I hadn’t known her for months, so saying those things only made me sound like a feeble-minded teenager who was smitten with the new girl in his class.
“Boss?” Pack jerked me from my thoughts, and I found him waiting for me to get out of the car.
Clearing my head, I exited, snapping the lapels of my jacket and adjusting my cuffs.
Pack flanked my right side while Vin flanked my left with two more of my men following behind.
The wharf was busy, but this end belonged strictly to me and my business endeavors.
Jimmy nervously paced in front of the warehouse door and my hackles rose.
Jimmy wasn’t a nervous man. He was smooth and calm, a viper slithering silently in the long grass, which was exactly why I had hired him.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have bad news for me, Jimmy. You know how I dislike bad news.”
He stopped, his fingers fidgeting with his collar.
“The shipment didn’t make it, boss.”
Rage raked at me for release, but I kept it in check. “And why is that?” I asked, stepping into his space and snagging his shirt in my fists. “Because I expected to have that warehouse filled with cartons of artillery.”
“I know, Cade.” He swallowed, his pupils wide with fear. Jimmy feared little, but he knew to fear me. Had seen what I did to people who disappointed me.
With a violent shove, I pushed him through the door and looked around at the empty building. Another empty fucking building. “Where are my goods, Jimmy?”
Jimmy had his own team of men, all loyal and on my payroll, as long as he delivered like he always had. Two of them watched us, the tension clear in their stiff stances.
“Rhodes, tell him what you told me,” Jimmy called to one of them.
The grinding of my teeth caused the man to flinch as he came over to us.
“The truck was here. It rounded the corner but stopped.” He swallowed loudly, the only sign of nerves the man showed.
Too bad I was one word away from blowing a hole in his head.
“Someone threw the driver out the door and the truck backed away. We ran for it, but it was too far down. By the time we got to the end of the buildings, it was gone.” The skin on my knuckles strained at the pressure. “This was on the body of the driver.”
He handed me a paper, and I snatched it from him, surprised my skin hadn’t split.
One line, three simple words. It’s over, Cade.
Rolling my neck, I shredded the note. “Next time, you shoot out the windows, the tires, everything your bullets can hit, and you don’t tell me you failed.” My gun was out before he could register my movement. “For you, there won’t be a next time, but your boss won’t fuck up again.”
I shot him between the eyes, then took out the second man in the building before turning my gun on Jimmy. To his benefit, he held his head high, awaiting his sentence.
“Clean up this mess and find my fucking shipment, or it will be your blood spilling next time.”
“Yes, Cade.”
After tucking my gun into my pants, I punched him, hearing the break of cartilage and seeing the spray of blood.
“You ever fuck up this bad again, you will beg me to use my gun and end your miserable life.”
I stormed away, trying to maintain my composure when all I wanted to do was roar in frustration. They were destroying me. Dismantling my empire stone by stone and I had found no way to stop them.
“What do you want to do, Cade?” Pack asked as we drove off.
I had called in all my favors, used every resource, but nothing I had done had flushed them out.
“Double down on security at all the sites.” I thought of Ava.
The last piece on my chessboard. The most valuable piece.
“And on the house. Run through everything again, all communication, all the videos, the itineraries. If there’s even a small letter out of place, a number smudged I need to know.
I want these fuckers and when I get my hands on them, I will spend days savoring their deaths. ”
I avoided seeing Ava until it was late. My mood was too volatile and the last thing I needed was a reminder of another weakness.
And Ava was a weakness. A vulnerability I couldn’t fortify.
Her meds were due the next day, and as much as I wanted the nightmares to stop, I disliked the idea of not having her next to me.
Rubbing my temple, I opened her door to find her staring out the window.
She had a pair of low-cut jeans on and a shirt that left too much of her skin uncovered to avoid that uncomfortable swelling in my pants as my eyes skimmed over her curves.
She turned, and I fixated on the soft skin and the belly button piercing.
A pink rhinestone at the top, a teardrop pink stone dangling on the bottom.
I wanted to flick my tongue against it, then strip her down and tongue all the others I suspected she had.
The tip of her vine tattoo showed where the pants sat low on her hips, and an overwhelming desire to wrap my hands around those hips threatened to leave me out of control.
“You left me in here all day,” she said.
I forced my eyes from her body, skimming over her crossed arms and the way the pose drew her shirt up higher.
“I can leave you in here any time I want. In fact, I can lock that door and never let you out again.”
She cocked her head, her eyes sparkling. “Would you do that?”
“Keep giving me that attitude and I just might.”
She let out something between a sigh and a snort before skipping to the side table and picking up her book.
“Did you really just skip?” I asked, walking further into the room.
“Yup. You should do it sometimes. It’s fun.”
“I don’t skip.”
“We’ll work on that,” she said, giving me a confident smile. “I like to play hopscotch sometimes, too. There’s a board I spray painted in the alley behind the bar. We go out and play when we’re on break.”
There were too many things in that statement for me to take in at once.
The idea of her playing kids' games on her break and going into a back alley at night were two. But how she so confidently stated we would work on something together, like this wasn’t some temporary situation, like there was a future that extended past this was one I fixated on.
It left a strange sensation in my steel heart.
Rubbing my chest, I decided not to tackle any part of her admission. “I see Jill bought you some clothes.”
Her smile grew, and it seemed to throw a light all the way into the depths of my rotted soul.
“She’s great.” She pulled a drawer open and took out what looked distinctly like the T-shirt I had given her before bumping it closed with her hip.
“Did you know she still designs clothes? She’s going to bring me some pieces to see. ”
She had walked past me and stopped at the door, peeking back at me. I was still trying to determine why she was bringing my T-shirt with her and why she made it sound like she and my housekeeper were best friends.
“Do you do this a lot?” I asked.
“What?”
I scratched my head. “Make friends?”
Her head went back in a beautiful arc as she laughed. “Yes. Another thing you should try.” She gestured to the door with her neck. “Are you coming, or are we sleeping here tonight?”
Gaping was not something I did, but damn if it wasn’t becoming a habit with Ava. “You’re assuming I’m here to take you to my room?”
She batted her lashes, her mouth curving into a devious grin that I wanted to devour. “Am I wrong, Emerson?”
“Go,” I grumbled, hating how she worked me into a frenzy that I couldn’t ignore.
She skipped out the door, and I shook my head. I heard Breaker snicker. “Take the rest of the night off,” I told him before calling to Ava. “Is this skipping thing something normal for you?”
“Nah,” she said, twisting around and walking backwards. “It’s probably from being off my meds for so many days.”
“Great,” I said as I pondered which medicine it was. Catching up with her, I caught her elbow and dragged her toward the kitchen. “Come on. I could use a drink.”
She tugged her arm from my hold and stopped me. Standing on her tiptoes, she pulled my head down and for a second my heart slammed against my chest, thinking she was going to kiss me. She sniffed and said, “Another drink?”
“It’s been a long day,” I snapped.
With a laugh, she replied, “At least you weren’t locked in a room all day.”
I took her by the shoulders and studied her. Large golden-brown eyes met mine as the air thinned between us. Her lips parted and that urge to kiss her returned. I swallowed back the temptation.
“What would you do if I let you out of your room more?”
A flash of excitement in the gold. “I would sit on the deck all day and watch the waves. Maybe lay out on the beach, make sandcastles, curl up on this big couch and read a book.”
My adoration grew, and I suddenly wanted to be there with her, carrying her out into the waves, smoothing my hand over her stomach and feeling the heat of the sun on her skin, packing the sand to perfect the castle walls.
All things I had never done. I hadn’t been in the water since my younger days, work taking up any time I had to live my life like she lived hers—with wide eyes and excitement, with fervor.