Page 31 of His Fury

Is she okay?

Quiet. It’s a better side of her.

I smirked at his dickishness.

Don’t text and drive.

Don’t fucking text me then.

All good with you?

I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I could say to make any of this go away. I didn’t know how to fix the fact I’d put Isla Wells on the radar because she meant something to me and wasn’t just some woman.

But she would never be a pawn in this game. She wasn’t aplayer in this fucked-up world. She was mine. And now, I needed everyone to know it.

Including her. She just didn’t understand what that meant.

I showered quickly, my mind racing with scenarios of how to make this problem disappear. I dressed in simple black jeans and a black T-shirt. It was too early for me to be awake; usually, I had just gone to bed. But unlike my usual, I had slept through the night, only waking once or twice to pull Isla closer to me when she grumbled in her sleep. I thought that holding her closer would let her know she was safe.

We’re here. She looks…underwhelmed.

I smiled at that. I had a large house set back from the roads, situated between here and Chicago. I’d had it built a few years ago and used it as a quiet retreat. It was registered under a fake company’s name, which couldn’t be traced back to me. Only Rye and I used it. Julian had designed it. It was a spacious house, admittedly too big for just me. But it had everything I needed, and I enjoyed going there when I wanted to step back from the world.

I thumbed off a text to tell him to stop being a prick, and then I texted Julian, letting him know his time was up.

He’d had time to stew in his guilt and let his pulse settle. Just enough time to hope he was walking away clean.

Debt had a weight, and Julian Turner was drowning.

I was making coffee when the elevator doors slid open. He walked into the loft slower this time, shoulders drawn tight, looking every bit the man who was waiting for the axe to fall.

Good. He deserved that.

When he approached me, he took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and laid it on the table as if it might explode.

I opened it, saw the shaky handwriting, and looked up at him. “This is for two hundred and fifty grand.”

He nodded.

“That’s the original debt?” I asked, knowing it was. He didn’t say anything. I turned to face him. “Julian.”

He swallowed hard. “That was how much I lost.”

“And how much did you borrow to lose that?”

Julian hesitated. “Seventy-five.”

My hands curled into fists. “So, you played, you lost. You borrowed more, and you lost that too?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you owe two fifty including the seventy-five or as well as the seventy-five?”

“I thought I could win it back,” he said, his voice tight, defensive, like he knew how fucking pathetic he sounded.

“You’re not a gambler,” I snapped at him. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“I know.”

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