Page 101 of Brutal Collateral

God, she’s so beautiful and innocent. Caught in this war she had no hand in.

I strip off my clothes until I’m standing there completely naked. Fuck. I wish she’d wake up and crawl to me. Get on her hands and knees again, but this time to suck my cock.

Instead, she snores and coughs.Adorable.

Naked, I go into the bathroom. I take a shower to rinse myself of sweat coating my skin from our intense car fuck. In the bathroom, I floss, brush my teeth, and trim my beard, plucking unwanted gray hairs. I end the routine with a good skin moisturizing.

My heartrate came down after I climaxed, but I’m still on edge. After a few breaths and stretches, I return to the bedroom.

With a towel low on my hips, my chest rises and falls with effort, seeing Ava sleeping under the covers next to the clown. Her dress is a discarded puddle on the floor. She’s curled into a ball, her head practically buried in the clown’s armpit like she’s...ashamed of what she did.

But why? We fucked so good, even if in my mind I was fucking Hadleigh. Maybe she knew that.

Anger bubbles through me. After what we did, she won’t get rid of that thing. I drop the towel and get into bed on my side.

I turn off the light, fighting the kind of anger that will get me into even more trouble.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Griffin

For two more weeks, Ava leaves the house every day with her aunt to go shopping. Every night I check my credit card to see the insane charges she’s incurred.

She must be on a mission to make my bank decline her spree. So far, she’s bought a Porsche that she doesn’t drive because she doesn’t have a license, I think Bourne drove it to the garage. She had a fifty-thousand-dollar pair of diamond hoop earrings custom-made and her ears aren’t pierced.

I only didn’t approve a charge when I got an alarming call from a realtor who asked for my social security number to finance a forty-million-dollar beach house in the Hamptons. I wouldn’t mind a beach house, but I shut that one down. I worried she’d buy it to live separately from me.

Not. Happening.

She’s buying this stuff to annoy me. I won’t give her the satisfaction of proving how furious I am at the childish, attention-seeking behavior. I sleep next to her every night and she doesn’t say a fucking word to me about all these things she’s buying.

Suited up, I’m meeting with the Zervas brothers this morning as we go through the two locations we’ve narrowed down for the development project. We have to get a final report to the city and the UN liaison group who are analyzing the budget.

For this meeting, I agreed to meet on Zervas turf, a high-rise glass building on Wall Street. The receptionist has us on a list. Connor, Shane, and I, plus our guards, take a private elevator that goes right to that floor.

A woman greets us and offers us coffee, tea, or juice.

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