Page 61 of Ricochet

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Why did timing suck?No big deal; that was the mantra for the night. Lenora gave Adelia a tip. It paid out in a huge way. Everything happened for a reason, including Hawke needing to speak with Seven. Still, it’d be much easier if Adelia’s legs didn’t feel like Jell-O shots and her stomach as if she’d spent the night before with her mouth attached to a beer tap.

No Seven,no problem.That was a better mantra than no big deal because she couldn’t fool herself. Using Mayhem’s computer wasn’t really allowed but playing with their finances was beyond that.

She threw open the heavy, tinted sliding glass door, and walked into the parlor from the asphalt court and dragged it shut behind her. The other entrance that emptied into the back hallway was easier to use, butshe liked knowing who was on other side.

It’d been that way since she was a teenager when Mayhem first brought her to the United States and stood her in the parlor. They’d had no idea what to do with her, and she thought the same thing about them. All she knew was they’d saved her from her father—though he didn’t deserve the title.

Her shoulders bunched as a cold, sick shiver cascaded overher skin. Adelia could close her eyes and smell the scent of his whores and his cologne of choice. His business.Why she thought being his daughter would make her any different from the girls he bought and sold, fucked and pimped, she didn’t know.

Ethan walked across the parlor, breaking her from the past. He made her skin itch in an unusual way. He could end her life if he ever organized himselfin a way that a CPA or auditor might want. His disorganization and personal systems kept her alive. But there was another layer of her distrust that she couldn’t pinpoint.

Or maybe there was too much marijuana in the air, and she was paranoid. Who knew, and what did she know? She had no financial background. Mayhem ran local chapters’ money through giant accounts set up to look like a corporation,and if he understood what was what, with the various accounts and sub-accounts for their chapters, more power to him.

The best Adelia could tell, the only way anyone outside the MC would ever know what moved around was if they knew that Mayhem was purchasing and selling making illegal shipments. So long as the Club looked very profitable, she didn’t think anyone would look too hard.

Adeliacrept down the hall and kicked a half-empty can. It clattered against the wall, and she nearly had a heart attack, finally laughing at herself. No one else laughed with her. She was alone, as she needed to be, and she snuck into the dimly lit office and into the chair, burying her face in her hands. “I need you, Seven.”

She split her fingers, and her best friend hadn’t magically appeared. Maybeshe’d prayed to the motorcycle gods for the wrong thing, and her hopes should have been that they all stayed far, far away.

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