Page 94 of Caught Up

Eventually, his shouts turned to a pathetic mewling, and I fought back an unwelcome wave of guilt. This was my chance to go legit, and I wasn’t going to lose it because my conscience was trying to make a reappearance after lying dormant for a decade. If everything went to plan, McKinney might be the last person I had to hurt. The last ugly memory I might ever make. And if he wasn’t stopped now, it would only get worse. He’d keep targeting Lauren and Velvet and all his other tenants who were slowly being squeezed to death because of his addictions.

What little remorse I had evaporated at the thought. I’d take every fucking one of his fingers if I had to and then start in on his toes before making good on my threat and working my way up the rest of his body, inch by bloody inch. I had to get free, would help as many other people in the process as I could. And while I knew that it didn’t make up for all the pain and heartache I’d caused in my life, it was as good a place to start as any.

“There’s still time to get the finger reattached,” I told McKinney. “If you make the right decision. Otherwise, I’m putting it in my pocket and leaving with it, and tomorrow, I’ll be back for another one.”

He nodded, and I slowly pulled my arm away.

It was late by the time I finally headed back to my apartment. McKinney might have seen reason pretty quickly, but the way he’d dragged his feet afterward, begging and pleading for mercy I didn’t have, took up so much time that day had bled into night, and I was fucking exhausted from being around that emotional leech for so long. In the end, the only thing that had gotten him to sign on the dotted line was shaking the baggie of ice I’d put his finger in and reminding him that if he waited too long, it’d be too late to get it reattached.

At one point, I’d gotten so sick of his complaining that I ended up lecturing him like he was a child instead of a man old enough to be my father, telling him to look at the bright side: His debts were cleared, and he still had income properties that hewasgoing to drop the rents on back to city standards. If he stopped losing his ass in gambling dens, he could comfortably live out the rest of his days in peace.

I could tell from the way he’d bitched and moaned about how it wasn’thisfault he’d lost so much that there was no way he’d get his shit together and do what I said, so I would definitely be paying him another visit. But for now, I had what I wanted: freedom, or at least the means to achieve it. Tomorrow, I would start the arduous process of assessing the building I’d acquired, going over the income history with afine-toothcomb, and figuring out just how many repairs and renovations were needed to turn Velvet into the safest, most profitable play club in the country, because if I was going to do this, I was going tofuckingdo it. Full send.

I called Tyler on the way back to my apartment, his voice loud in my helmet as I raced across the city’s most iconic bridge.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“I got us the building.”

He was quiet for so long that I wondered if we had a bad connection. “Already? Just like that?”

“Just like that.” He didn’t need to know the gruesome details. “Tell me we’re not going to lose our asses on it.”

“We won’t,” he said. “I looked into McKinney’s financials months ago. I do it with every high roller to make sure I can recoup their losses if they can’t pay their debts.”

Thank fuck for that. “I got him to drop the rents on all his other tenants, too.”

“How the fuck did you do that?” Tyler asked.

“You really want to know?”

He fell silent again, so I filled the gap by telling him awatered-downversion of my visit with McKinney.

“What a fucking pain in the ass,” he said when I was done. “I’m glad to be rid of him.”

“Oh, he’ll be back. He’s too stupid or sick to stay away.”

“He’s not coming back tomygames. I banned him for not paying his debts.”

“Good,” I said. When word of the ban got out, other bookies would be less likely to spot McKinney money, slowing down his debt accrual. “I’m going to start digging into everything tomorrow, and I’ll let you know if anything major crops up.”

“In that case, I hope I don’t hear from you,” he said.

Despite myself, I grinned.

We said goodbye and got off the phone, and I spent the rest of the ride trying to think about all the shit I needed to do, but my brain kept chucking thoughts of Lauren at me. How she’d felt riding my face. The evil little grin that took over her expression whenever she had a particularly diabolical thought. How happy she’d be when she found out Velvet was no longer at risk.

I was entering my neighborhood when I hit a red light. Did I even need to go home, or could I go see what Lauren was up to? I’d been careful not to get blood on me, so it wasn’t like I needed to change. But she’d mentioned that her filming schedule was all over the place in a previous sexting session, so I didn’t want to just drop in unannounced. Plus, she might not even be home.

The light was still red, so I tugged off a glove and unlocked my phone, where it sat in its holder. I went straight to the tracking software Josh had installed on her cell for me and frowned when the map popped up. Lauren wasn’t at her apartment across town. She was at mine. How? She’d never been there before, but she was smart enough that I wasn’t all that surprised she’d figured out where I lived.

Was she planning to surprise me or something? Oh, I liked that thought.

I tugged my glove back on, slapped my visor down, and took a sharp left, gunning it down a side street because I was suddenly too impatient to sit in traffic. My heart pounded as I wove through cars, lane splitting, tailgating, even swerving over the line into oncoming traffic because I hadjustenough room to pass the idiot slowing me down.

I cut the engine as I approached my apartment, not wanting to alert Lauren of my arrival. As excited as she probably was to surprise me, I was much more excited to get the drop on her instead. The thought of sneaking up on her and pouncing before she knew I was there was far too appealing to pass up, and after what she’d revealed about wanting to get hunted down, I thought she’d appreciate the turn of events just as much as I would.

Instead of parking out front, I rolled into a spot half a block away and hoofed it back on foot, careful to stay close to the buildings so she wouldn’t see me coming. I looked for her on the sidewalk and didn’t see her, so I pulled up the map again. Oh, shit. She wasinmy apartment. That sly little vixen. How the hell had she pulled this off without a key?

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