Chapter 27
twenty-seven
COLE
The door to the visiting room opened and prisoners flooded in and sat down. In the years that I’d been going to visit my father in jail, it had never gotten less depressing.
I’d been coming to sit in this room for the better part of a decade, my own future staring me right in the eye. Ten fucking years. It had only gotten harder.
My father came in and sat down. He’d adjusted to jail. He seemed at home here these days, strangely.
“Cole, my boy. This is an unexpected surprise.”
“Is it?” I wondered.
He smirked. “Errol told me things went sideways. That was a big deal, Cole. You can’t afford to make errors. You don’t make your payments, then someone could pay the price.”
“I accept whatever price needs to be paid.”
“Except you won’t pay it. Someone else will. They always make someone else pay it. Someone you care about a damn sight more than yourself.”
I’d known he’d say that. Of course, it was the same fearmongering I’d lived with my entire life.
I scratched my jaw and looked up at the ceiling.
“Did you ever think there was more to life than this? Like, what life would have been like if you’d just become a plumber or something?”
My father shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve never been any good at anything other than this.”
Considering he was in jail right now and looked to be for the foreseeable future, that was a sobering thought.
I watched a man next to us, a hardened felon, wipe tears away as he watched his little girl chatter away on his knee.
Was there anything more painful in this life than regrets?
“Maybe I could have been,” I muttered.
My father frowned at me. “Been what?”
I hadn’t realized he was even listening.
“Something.”
Something humble, but honest. Something normal, boring even. Someone with a future.
“You need a vacation or something. This life gets tough if you don’t take any breaks, ever. You need to let off some steam, Cole. Don’t get all up in your head. Find a hot little piece and get her to distract you.”
The hot little piece was the problem. She’d distracted me, all right. A little too well. She’d flipped some kind of switch inside me, and it was proving harder than I’d like to switch it back. The biggest problem was that I didn’t want to.
I wanted to be a man who could call a woman like Isabelle my own. A man who could keep her safe. A man she’d be proud of.
“Things keep going south with our suppliers. Someone is undermining my authority. They’re going to make a play for Pres,” I told my father instead of confessing my darkest secret.
That I was tired of this life. I wanted out.
My father raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“I don’t know yet.” I knew I should ask to listen to Isabelle’s audio. Maybe I would recognize the voice.
He thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “You need to flush them out. A challenger doesn’t need to take you down, they just have to make you late for your obligations. The Lion doesn’t mess around. If you can’t deliver what is agreed, you’re dead to him. You and everyone you love.”
I shook my head. “It was always going to happen, it was just a matter of time. We’re never going to pay the debt, and at some point, we’ll miss the escalating payments.”
“So, what?” my father barked out. “You just give up?”
I shook my head. “So, I’m not going to anymore. I’ll make sure Marcus is safe. You look after yourself in here. If The Lion wants to take his annoyance out on someone, it can be me.”
“Be careful Cole. You could die,” my father warned, with as much worry as I’d ever heard in his voice. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
I shrugged. “Then at least I’ll die free.”
Back in my office at The Clutch, I sank into my creaking desk chair and looked over the organized piles of papers waiting for my attention.
I should really get on it. MC work was one thing, and it didn’t leave much of a paper trail.
But running The Clutch took a hell of a lot of admin, as did the auto shop.
I had invoices to pay, parts to order, and an endless list of mundane tasks.
I had tried having an assistant before, which had ended in disaster.
No, at the end of the day, I didn’t trust anyone but myself.
I leaned back, and the squeak suddenly reminded me of the night Isabelle had crept around in here. Looking for a story. Now that I knew her true agenda, it only made her more audacious in my eyes. Had she gone that far with me just to cover herself?
A flash of her humping my jean-clad cock filled my head. The flush on her cheeks and the way she’d lost herself in pleasure. No, that couldn’t be fake. No fucking way.
My cock rose disobediently as I let her fill my head for a moment.
Fuck, I wished she was here right now, so I could fuck some shame into her. So I could check she was ok, after the other night. I’d just have to trust the eyes I had on her to report back if she wasn’t.
Instead, I pulled my phone out and opened it. The auto shop had social media, a necessary evil in today’s market. Using The Clutch account, I searched for the college paper and scanned through the articles.
A few moments later, I saw it. They’d posted a new column of hers today. I scrolled through it, gobbling down the words. A smirk lifted my lips. I could just picture her saying the words in person. I could imagine her tart, witty tone.
She was funny, irreverent. Sharp as a tack.
Her gossip column might not be front page, but it should be.
The writing was a league above the rest of the articles the paper trotted out and crowned over hers.
I wondered who her editor was. I scrolled to the section containing information about the paper and frowned over a male name.
That little twerp clearly didn’t know talent when he read it.
Should someone give him a lesson?
No. No interfering in her life. Not yet, anyway.
Not until I sorted out this tangled mess of a life I’d made.
I’d called her a stalker, but that was me.
I had eyes on her wherever she went. I needed to make sure she was safe, or that’s how I rationalized it to myself.
I needed to know where she was, and who she was with at any given time.
That simple fact was a lot harder to rationalize.
I set my phone down and scrubbed a hand over my face.
It had seemed all too clear that night at Watson’s Pass.
I had to stay away from Isabelle, or her life could be in danger.
Yet, the more days that passed, the less that stone-cold terror of seeing her with a gun pressed to her temple kept her from my head.
The more days that passed, the more I understood.
It was too late. She was already inside my head.
I didn’t want to let her go. So, that left only one option…
Since Watson’s Pass, I’d read every one of her articles, I’d watched her social media like even more of a goddamn stalker, and had even found myself driving by HHU more often. Now, I knew which dorm room was hers, and the lock on her window was easy to pick.
I threw my phone down, disgusted with myself.
I had real problems to worry about, like who the hell in the MC was trying to sabotage me and put me on The Lion’s shit list. I had to work out how I was going to keep everyone safe, if I really was even considering trying to get us all out of it.
Instead, I was more distracted than I’d ever been.
A buzzing caught my attention. I snatched up my phone like a fucking fool, thinking that somehow, Isabelle was calling me.
It wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t. She was doing a much better job of staying away from me than I was from her.
Though the way she’d clung onto my hand the other night was embedded in my mind, and I’d never get it out.
It wasn’t my normal phone at all. I unlocked the drawer by my knee and pulled out the vibrating burner. I answered, like I always did. It was our dance, the one we’d been performing for a while now.
“Bailey? You there?”
Silence followed and then a sigh. “Until next time, in that case.”
“Wait,” I said. I could feel the shock reverberating over the line.
I wet my lips, pulse racing. “I’m here.”