Page 21 of Unwrapped

His sharp intake of breath doesn’t escape me. No one willingly gives out favors to Roque Salvatore because they come with a price so high sometimes the only way to pay is with a life. He might take it. You might take one for him or end up owing him yours. None of those options work for me. But it is what it is. “There’s a girl. I want her and I need your help.”

“Are you serious? I don’t have time…”

“Fuck. Not like that.” My curled fist pound the dash of the truck. “She’s twelve. In the system. She doesn’t have much time until bad people get their hooks into her. You know that. You’re outfit supplies the drugs they need.

“Careful,” he warns.

I breath through my nose hard. “I’m applying to be a foster. I forged basically everything. I never went to private schools outside of Seattle. I cheated on my SAT’s. Lied my way into the college admission process. You know my ties to the MC aren’t severed… there’s no way anyone would approve me.”

“Why do you want her?”

“Because no one else does. She’s like me. How I was. But unlike me—there’s a chance she can be saved. Besides, it’ll look good to the Board if I’m a foster parent. I’m up to be voted on as a permanent director with a lifetime vote. So far they haven’t been impressed by how many socialites have shown up with streaked mascara demanding to see me at the office.”

Truthfully, I didn’t want Freddie for any financial or work gain. But I’d be damned if Roque knew just how important it suddenly was to have the girl come live with me. All the shit I’ve stuffed down and buried was bubbling to the surface. Years of memories better off left alone won’t stop invading my to thoughts.

“Text me the details. I’ll handle it. But you’ll owe me, and you know my favors aren’t simple errands.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

A wintry mix slowly starts to fall. But I’ve driven these back-country roads a thousand times in worse conditions and in shit cars. I sigh, shit’s about to go down. Roque and I have been better off avoiding one another. But now I have no choice. Our worlds are going to collide.

On paper, I’m just a clean-cut CEO with a thick bank account and a closet full of designer suits. But underneath thousand-dollar threads are the truth: inked all over my skin and where invisible threads bind the scare tissue in my heart are all the dark deeds I’ve done. I was Creed MC’s boogie man. The member they’d send when shit needed to be handled quietly. I was an assassin. A murderer. A man who has no business fostering a child. Especially as girl. But for all things I am…one thing I’m not is a pervert. She’d be safer with me than anyone else in Chicago.

This was about Freddie, but it was also about the girl I couldn’t save. Jenny. She was pure. Sweet. Her smile lit up the darkest night. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed. She was fostered by old man Harrington and his wife back in Springdale. They took in the max amount of foster kids the state would allow. Back in the nineties that was five. Instead of using the state money for food and clothes they burned it on Newport Lights and cheap beer. Jenny…I swallow thickly. Old man Harrington was my second kill. Rog and the boys from Creed helped me hide his body. I’ve never thought of it or spoke of it since that night back in ninety-eight when I buried my switch blade in his left kidney then choked the son of a bitch with my bare hands.

I killed that sadistic, child predator in cold blood and I’d do it all again. Jenny was never the same after his filthy hands defiled what should have been her choice to give.

In Freddie’s eyes I saw the same light Jenny had even though Freddie tried to hide it with her tough tomboy act. For some reason, I want to save her more than I want anything else. It’s probably Christmas. The season of hope and all that. Hope’s lost for me. But not for her. If anyone can pull of a Christmas miracle, it’s Roque fucking Salvatore. He has every city and state official in his dirty, deep pocket.

My bunched muscles start to relax. Roque will get it done. But what will he demand in return? He could ask for anything and he knows it. I’d probably have to kill someone. A life for a life. He’d give me hers to save but I’ll probably have to end one of his enemies.

The icy mix turns to thick flakes the further the road turns into the deep woods of Oregon. My fingers press the FM radio buttons. “Fuck no.” Christmas song after Christmas song plays for an instant as I keep punishing the button by jamming the damn thing with my index finger. But nothing else comes on.

My fist punches the center of the wheel. The truck’s horn toots. Yep friggin’ toots.

I suppose the thick evergreens covered in snow causing the branches to hang low, combined with the curling woodsmoke coming from log cabins with glowing candles in their windows would be considered romantic if I was a romantic sort of man.

“What in the hell was I thinking coming back here now?” I ask the empty seat next to me.

My eyes go wide and I curse like the best of them as the truck takes the next curve.

Fuck.

Me.

It’s my fire-breathing yeti. She’s standing in a foot of snow wearing that full length-fur coat. Her tall boots are tucked into skinny white jeans. Her hair falls around her. Crystals of snow clinging to it and the tips of her long lashes as I pull up and lower my window.

She’s beautiful. At the airport, her face was hidden by dark designer sunglasses the kind that are so large they cover half a woman’s face.

But now her eyes are huge pools of worry, sucking me in. She’s a snow queen. Bewitchingly bitchy and haughty in her stunning beauty.

And my worst fucking nightmare. Dressed in designer clothes that are meant to look warm and practical but in reality, are anything but. I slow and roll down my window.

“You lost?”

She bites her lip, probably debating whether or not to tell me to “fuck off.” Instead she gestured to the SUV. “My rental went off the road. It’s stuck.”

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