Chapter 3
Chapter Three
RHYS
“Goddamn,” I growl, jerking my cock hard and fast. Visions of Raven play behind my eyelids.
She’s sprawled across my bed, her thick thighs spread wide, her lower lips glistening with her juices, the fingers of one hand buried in her cunt.
The other pinches one cherry nipple. Her soft moans and the sound of her fingers thrusting into her wet cunt fill the room. So does her heady scent.
“Rhys,” she moans. “Please, I need you.”
I grip my shaft tight, twisting my wrist when I reach the head.
“Please. Fuck me.” Those pretty blue eyes beg as sweetly as her lips. “I need to be yours.”
My balls draw up, cum shooting up my shaft as I lose the fight. My stomach clenches, the bundle of nerves at the base of my spine tingling. I spill into my hand, biting my lip to stifle my groan.
I’m an asshole for jerking off to thoughts of her while she’s getting dressed in the other room. There’s no doubt about that. But it had to happen. Maybe it’ll help me keep my damn hands off her while she’s here.
A flash of her ivory skin floats to the surface of my mind, her hard nipple begging for my mouth around it.
“Maybe not,” I mutter, reaching for the toilet paper to clean myself up.
For a moment, I just stand there with a wad of it in my messy hand, pondering how utterly fucked I am.
I’m in love with my dead best friend’s daughter.
She’ll be living in my house all summer.
She’ll be mine to care for, mine to protect, mine to love.
And by some miracle, I’m supposed to keep my hands to myself.
I’m not supposed to touch her. I’m not supposed to fuck my kid into her. I’m not supposed to fall harder. I’m supposed to be a consummate gentleman.
That’s what Brant would expect. That’s what any father would expect.
It’s what she deserves. Especially now. Especially from me.
She’s here to find out who killed her father, for Christ’s sake.
She can’t sleep because that question eats her alive.
And I’m the asshole who could answer it for her.
I could tell her exactly what she wants to know…
and destroy her entire life in the process.
There will be no trust fund then. No company. No graduating from Berklee next year. No financially secure future. I have a feeling she’d give it all up without hesitation to know what I know. But the rest of it?
Would she want to know if it meant destroying her father’s reputation?
His company? Watching his name be dragged through the mud?
Putting a target on the back of a baby? That’s the part that fucks me up.
If it were just his money at risk, I’d shout the truth from the fucking rooftops and not regret a second of it. But this is different.
Too much is at stake. One wrong move, and everything crumbles. I’m trying like hell to protect her here. To protect Brant and his memory. To protect his and Marnie’s kid.
You’re trying to protect yourself, you asshole.
Yeah, I guess that’s true too. I’m a fucking coward for it, but I don’t want to face a day when Raven looks at me and sees the monster I see when I look in the mirror.
If she knew the truth, that’s exactly what she’d see…
not a man trying to protect her, but one who helped cover up her father’s murder.
“Fuck,” I growl, quickly cleaning up. I tuck my cock back in my pants and zip up before heading out of the guest bathroom.
Raven’s still in my bedroom, the door firmly shut.
I breathe a sigh and head to the kitchen to clean up the case file from the old farm table before she sees it.
There are some things she never needs to know, never needs to see.
The shit in that file…well, she may want to know who killed Brant, but I guarantee she doesn’t want to see those photos.
She doesn’t want to live with those memories.
I know because I do. Raven isn’t the only one losing sleep. She isn’t the only one chasing monsters. Except I made my bed. I get to lie in it.
Fuck you very much, Marnie.
In my life, I’ve only ever considered one woman a stone-cold bitch.
My mother. Every other woman on this planet, I’ve found worthy of the utmost respect.
They pull off miracles every day while we’re standing around with our dicks in our hands, trying to figure out how the fuck they do it.
They’re brilliant, terrifying creations that should be protected at all costs.
My mother, on the other hand, is a heartless, selfish, ruthless bitch.
I’m beginning to think Marnie Calloway is right up there with her. I actually felt sorry for her at first. She found out she was pregnant and found out her husband was playing mobster on the same day.
“Our baby. Oh my god, our baby!”
“You’re pregnant?”
“I just got home from the doctor when I heard him in his office,” she says through sobs, her arms wrapped around her body.
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I was just waiting until he was finished so I could share the news.
But then I heard him…” She sobs bitterly.
“He’s been laundering dirty money through the company for years. ”
“Jesus Christ.” I pace away from the couch. “You’re sure?”
“He admitted it. He admitted e-everything.” She sobs again. “I don’t know what to do! If anyone finds out, they’ll destroy him, Rhys. Jack will take everything.”
She’s not wrong. Jack Hale, his business partner, will dismantle Brant’s empire brick by brick and the courts won’t lift a finger to stop him.
Hell, they’ll help him do it. Brant will lose everything down to his freedom.
Raven and the baby will be left with nothing.
So will Marnie. Her fortune is tied up in Brant’s company too.
Jesus Christ.
What the fuck are you into, Brant?
“What am I going to do, Rhys?” she whispers.
“Don’t say anything to anyone about what you heard,” I say, making a split-second decision. “Just go home and wait for me to figure this shit out.”
I should never have sent her back there. I should have gone myself, confronted Brant, and demanded answers. If I had, maybe he’d still be alive. Instead, Marnie went home. Twenty-four hours later, Brant was dead. And she officially had me by the balls.
“What the fuck did you do, Marnie?” I yell, staring in shock at Brant’s body on the security camera. Brant’s body. Fucking Christ. He’s dead. That’s his blood spread across the floor. His blood splattered across the wall.
I spin away from the camera, my stomach heaving.
Fifteen years in law enforcement, and I’ve never puked on my shoes.
Never shoved anything up my nose to mask the smell or shied away from the sights either.
Figured if the victims could live those horrors, I owed them the respect of looking without throwing up on my goddamn shoes. I want to throw up now.
“I was just trying to get away from him!” Marnie cries.
“He was yelling and acting crazy. I thought he was going to hurt me or the baby. I didn’t mean to hurt him.
” Tears pour down her face, her mascara running in rivulets down her cheeks.
“I didn’t know we were so close to the table or the fireplace. Now, what are we going to do, Rhys?”
“We? This is on you, Marnie.”
“No, it’s on us! I came to you for help.
You’re a cop, and you sent me back there!
How do you think the world is going to feel when they hear that?
” She dashes tears from her face, her expression twisting into something cold…
ugly. She’s not the same vain, self-absorbed woman I’ve known for the last four years.
She’s someone else. Someone desperate, on the edge.
Someone dangerous. “How do you think Raven will feel when she finds out that you’re partially responsible for this? ”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell everyone,” she says, her shrill voice inching toward hysterical. “I’ll tell the world that you sent me back there. I’ll tell the world who he really was. I’ll tell them everything. Will he still be a hero to his precious little Raven then, Rhys? Will you?”
When she came to me, did she already plan to kill him, or was it an accident like she said? I don’t know. I wish to hell I did. His blood might not be on my hands, but everything that happened after, well, that certainly is. Marnie’s still walking free because of me. If she goes down, we all do.
Tick, tick, boom, motherfucker.
I don’t give a shit if I go. They can lock me up and throw away the key.
At this point, it’s less than I deserve.
Marnie figured out long ago what Brant never realized.
She saw the way I looked at Raven the day we met.
She knew why I’ve avoided her for so long.
She thought using that knowledge against me would muzzle me.
She’s wrong.
Holding Raven’s future over my head may have bought her a little time, but I’m not tame.
I’ve let her run the show and pull the strings because she’s pregnant and I won’t let her go to prison while she’s carrying Brant’s kid.
But she fucked up the minute she lashed out at Raven.
When it comes to protecting what belongs to me, I bite.
While I may not be able to take Raven to my bed, that doesn’t make her any less mine.
I’ll be on the first plane leaving the island as soon as the last raindrop falls.
Marnie will be having a change of heart about cutting her off.
My songbird will be finishing school on time.
If Marnie intends to hold onto Brant’s fortune by keeping Raven from graduating, that won’t be happening.
She’ll play by my rules where Raven is concerned, or the only place we’re going after Brant’s kid is born is to prison.
I’ll destroy my own future to fuck her over without hesitation.