Chapter 10
Paper towels are just napkins on the cob.
— Milena’s secret thoughts
MILENA
I should’ve probably questioned where we were going.
If I had, I might’ve figured out that where we were going was a good two hours away from where we’d started. I guess I thought it would be a two-hour trip altogether.
I also might’ve figured out that he was visiting a prison, and he expected me to stay at a diner for an hour while I waited for him to visit with his brother.
His brother that was in prison.
But I didn’t question him.
And now I was standing in front of a diner, staring at the man as he explained what was going to happen next.
He grabbed my hand, then walked us inside.
I was already on the fence about being here at a diner alone for an hour, but the moment we walked through the doors, the man who greeted us solidified the fact that I was most certainly not staying here alone.
The man at the front waiting area, sitting in a seat next to the door, was the first thing that caught my attention.
Why did he catch my attention?
Because the moment we walked inside, upon seeing me, he licked his lips and started stroking his junk.
“ And who is this with you, my friend?” The repulsive man’s beady eyes went from me to Cutter and back.
Cutter looked at the man and dismissed him. “ I’ll be an hour, tops. You can order us food in about forty minutes, and then we can eat before we get on the road again.”
I was shaking my head. “ Why would I want to stay here?”
I moved to his other side when the beady-eyed man started to lick his lips.
He moved to the side so that he could see me better, and I continued to circle around Cutter’s body, feeling so uncomfortable that I was practically leaning into him.
“ I know I probably should’ve mentioned—” he started, but I interrupted with, “ Probably ?”
“ Okay , so I definitely should’ve said. But you looked like you needed a break, and I might’ve needed some incentive to get me here.”
“ Why ?” I asked suspiciously.
He licked his lips. “ My brother is going to ask about why Keely isn’t here, and I’m going to have to explain that she refuses to come.”
“ What ?” I asked.
“ There’s a story,” he admitted. “ Pretty much, some things happened to Keely …”
He hesitated as if he wasn’t sure how much to share.
“ My dad was hurting my sister when my brother, Copper , caught him. Copper killed my dad, who was rich and important. My brother went away, and he’s been there for fifteen of his seventeen-year sentence,” he blurted. “ About three years ago, one of my dad’s top aides was convicted of rape, and he’s also in prison. Which just so happened to be at the same prison that my brother’s at. My sister hasn’t confirmed it, but I have my suspicions that the reason that my sister refuses to come anymore is because of the aide.”
My stomach sank.
My dad was hurting my sister…
A dad hurting a daughter in any way was reprehensible. But I had a feeling the way he was hurting her went beyond that…
Disgust .
Pure disgust.
“ Copper went down for your dad’s murder?” I asked, focusing on the major player, seeing as I was about to meet him.
“ Yes ,” he said, his eyes studying mine.
“ Y’all should’ve gotten a better lawyer,” I grumbled. “ Because I’m reading between the lines here but sounds like he maybe deserved it.”
He snorted. “ We tried. My dad was just really…big.”
“ Who was he?” I questioned.
“ We don’t share the same last name,” I said. “ When my dad died, we took my mom’s name. You’d know him as Castanon .”
“ Castanon as in Castanon Industries , the biggest real estate mogul in the South ?” I asked.
“ That’s him.” He lifted his lip in disgust.
“ I’ve heard a lot about him,” I said. “ But I thought he was still alive seeing as his company is still thriving.”
That’s when Cutter’s eyes gleamed. “ My sister is the one running it now…in her spare time. She owns the majority share of it, sits in as the head of the board of directors, and takes a pretty healthy dividend of their profits—or would if she agreed to take some of the shares. She won’t, because she feels like they’re Copper’s .”
“ You don’t?” I asked.
He was already shaking his head before I could finish the question. “ I want nothing of my dad’s. The only reason that Keely took it was because she was owed.”
I didn’t ask how she was owed.
But if Cutter felt like she was, then she was.
“ Let’s go meet your brother first,” I urged.
“ You want to go meet some random man in prison?”
I looked at the man that was still playing with his dick and said, “ Most certainly.”
He followed my gaze and said, “ Get the fuck out of here, perv.”
The man jolted, surprised that he was being addressed. Almost as if he was thinking he was invisible or something.
“ Uh , I’m waiting for my lunch.”
“ Then go wait in the fuckin’ car,” Cutter ordered. “ Someone’ll bring it out to you.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. “ My mom said that I had to wait.”
“ Does your mom know you’re a creep?” Cutter asked.
“ Uh ,” he said.
“ Go ,” Cutter snapped.
The man, which I now realized was a very young, likely not-all-there, early twenties ‘man,’ got up and bolted out the door.
“ I’m still coming with you,” I asserted.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “ Okay .”
The ride to the prison was less than a mile.
“ That is the women’s prison,” he pointed it out. “ I have a friend that was in there. Her name is Sawyer . She’s married to a man that’s head of a motorcycle club in Louisiana .”
“ Oh ,” I said. “ That’s …interesting.”
He grinned at me. “ She’s good people. Though , she was unjustly punished for something that wasn’t her fault.”
“ I’m sensing a theme,” I said as he pulled to a stop in front of a building that looked intimidating as fuck. “ I wonder how many men and women are doing time for a crime that was necessary.”
“ Probably way more than you think,” he said as he got off.
I followed suit, grabbing the hand that he held out to me for balance.
I also held on to it for a bit too long, only realizing when we started walking that I was still holding onto it like a lifeline.
Did I let it go?
No .
I held onto it because I could.
When we got inside, a man’s gaze zeroed in on me.
“ Rome ,” Cutter nodded his head at the very large, very intimidating looking man. “ How are the kids?”
I stepped behind my own very large, very intimidating man to block me from the other man’s view.
I wasn’t necessarily scared of him, per se, but the way he was looking at me like I was coming in here to do harm was making my heart race.
My watched vibrated, and I glanced down to see Shasha’s name on the screen with a ‘wtf are you doing at a prison?’
I ignored it, silenced my watch, and peeked out from behind Cutter’s muscular shoulder.
“ They’re doing good.” He glanced at me, assessing. “ How ya been? Haven’t seen your sister in a while.”
“ She was busy. So , I brought Milena here,” Cutter said. “ Go Go , drop your shit on the belt so he can scan it. They keep it while we’re visiting.”
I did as he instructed, only throwing one arm out to put my things on the belt before stepping back behind Cutter’s bulk.
There was a chuckle, and I wondered if he thought I was being weird or suspicious.
Probably suspicious.
I didn’t necessarily do well at prisons.
Not that I’d had any really bad experiences with them, just that they scared me.
There were a lot of bad men here…
And I had a very submissive personality, which automatically had me reacting weirdly anyway.
“ Come on,” Cutter said as he caught my hand in his. “ Just gotta have him use his wand on us to make sure we’re not concealing anything.”
I swallowed and moved to where there were footprints on the floor.
The big man, Rome , who I’d admit was sexy as hell later, came up to me with his wand. Now’s where I admit that being approached by a man with a wand with my legs spread wide should’ve been intimidating as hell, but when a man that looked like the guard named Rome did it, it was admittedly exciting.
“ And who is Cutter to you, Milena ?”
That’s when my mouth disconnected from my brain.
I mean, with a man like Rome so close, running a wand over your inner thighs, you tend to…disassociate.
A thousand thoughts went through it at once, and before I could stop myself, I was blurting out, “ He’s my husband!”
There was a long pause, and then Rome the badass security guard looked from me to Cutter and back. “ Huh . Didn’t see that coming.”
I was flushing beet red when I got through.
Cutter’s eyes were dancing, and I realized quickly that he knew I was nervous.
He hadn’t corrected me, either, likely to save me from embarrassment.
Cutter got the same treatment, and I realized that Rome didn’t treat me any differently, which had my anxiety level lowering.
A niggle of a memory, one that I kept shoved down deep with so many iron bars and walls around it, tried to peek through a crack. But I quickly slammed down every defense I had and tuned into the conversation that Rome and Cutter were having.
It was about our…marriage.
I flushed a deeper red.
“…married and not tell your brother?” Rome asked. “ I haven’t heard a fuckin’ word about it, and I know that y’all write back and forth a lot. Since I’m one of the unlucky motherfuckers that gets to read the outgoing and incoming mail.”
“ I don’t tell my brother everything,” Cutter admitted, not lying, but not exactly telling the truth, either.
When we were done, Rome gestured toward a room off to the side where a ton of other people had already taken seats at round, bolted to the floor tables with fixed bench seating surrounding them.
Cutter caught my hand and murmured down to me, “ Married ?”
I couldn’t stop the heat from hitting my cheeks. Again .
“ I was flustered, okay?” I threw my hands up. “ I was trying to decide whether to call you my dad, or my boyfriend. Then I started thinking that you look too scary to be my boyfriend. You’d have to be my man. And then, all of a sudden, my brain just shut down for like a half a second, and my husband came out.”
Cutter’s eyes shined with mirth for a few long seconds before he said, “ Well , how, exactly, do you think this is going to work? You think we’re just going to be able to stop being ‘husband and wife’ after we leave here?”
I hadn’t thought that far.
“ I …”
An obnoxious bell that sounded like it’d given up a few years ago sounded and I watched as everyone turned toward the door that was in the very far left corner.
Inmates started to come in wearing ugly brown jumpsuits, and our marriage was forgotten.
I knew the tenth person that came into the room was Cutter’s brother with one hundred percent certainty.
He was taller, bulkier—which shouldn’t have been possible—and looked a whole lot meaner.
However , you couldn’t deny the Clayborne family gene pool.
They had the same black hair, brown eyes, and height.
Oh , and the smile.
The moment that they saw each other, Copper’s smile was swift and lit up his entire face.
Wow .
Okay , so he’d gone from unapproachable to ‘ I want to give you a hug’ in a half a second.
His eyes swept the tables as he went, and he glared at a few as he passed.
It was only when he got closer that he realized that Cutter wasn’t alone.
I sank down a little, curling my shoulders in on themselves, when the smile was wiped off his face.
“ Who are you?” Copper barked.
I flinched.
“ This is my wife,” Cutter drawled.
Copper’s brow furrowed.
He sat down opposite me and glared daggers.
“ What ?” Copper barked.
Cutter leaned in and explained everything.
Why I was there, who I was to him, and everything in between.
“ Refused to stay at the diner, eh?” Copper turned to me. “ I’d fuckin’ kill for a burger.”
I tilted my head. “ There was a weird man making comments about my body there, and the only other two people that were there was a woman smaller than me making burgers in the back, and a woman behind the counter that looked old enough to be my grandmother’s age. Do you honestly think that I’m going to be sitting there, unprotected, with no one to help me? I didn’t make it to my age by being stupid.”
Copper’s lips twitched.
“ So now that you’re married,” Copper said a little louder than was necessary. “ When are you having kids?”
I blanched. “ Let me enjoy my honeymoon period first!”
Copper laughed.
Cutter did, too, but a lot more contained.
“ I like you, girl,” Copper said, then lowered his voice so that only Cutter and I could hear. “ Don’t look now, but the douche that’s trying to singlehandedly add to my sentence is sitting behind you. Not sure how the fuck he got out here on good enough behavior to get visitors, but there he is.”
Whenever someone tells you not to look, it’s your honest to God reaction to look.
I tried to stop myself but couldn’t.
I turned my head, and that’s when I saw the man that was directly behind me.
I froze, my entire being going solid.
My vision tunneled, and the only person I could see was him.
“ I bet you thought that you were safe,” he mouthed the moment my eyes met his.
He smiled a lecherous smile, and the walls around my greatest shame started to shake.
I was frozen.
Well and truly frozen.
I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
My vision was blackening around the edges, and I knew the panic attack was coming.
I couldn’t feel my fingers.
The last thing I remembered before I passed out was strong hands wrapping around my waist and pulling me to a muscular body.