Page 39 of Jett

RAINE

IKNOCK ON THE DOORto Prez’s office. There’s no answer, so I gingerly open it and head into the dark. He hasn’t come out in days. He hasn’t moved from this room since he killed the Russian mob boss and the police were called to remove Mia’s head. Chills crawl down my spine when I think of her like that, and her perfect face—so still and alien inside the box—is all I can see when I close my eyes.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” Jett murmurs.

In the quiet dark, the cock of a gun is deafening. It’s as loud as a bomb going off. I whimper. “It’s Raine. Please don’t shoot.”

He doesn’t say anything, but something thuds against the carpet and I breathe a sigh of relief. I switch on the light and the room is cast in a soft yellow glow. Jett squints and presses his fingertips against his closed eyes.

The floor is littered with bottles. I don’t know who’s been bringing them to him, but there are several discarded beers, two empty scotches, and a tequila bottle—minus the worm—resting on the coffee table.

“Oh, Jett. What have you done?”

He smells like a brewery. The whole room needs sanitising. There’s overturned furniture and clothing scattered on the floor, papers thrown about, and a couple of empty food containers. At least he hasn’t been existing on alcohol alone.

“Come on. You need a cold shower.”

“I don’t need shit,” he slurs. I tug on his arm, but he pulls me on top of him. I shriek. His breath is overwhelming—not the sweet whiskey I’d tasted in the clubhouse kitchen before Mia found us. He tastes of desperation and heartbreak.

I squirm in his arms. “Let me go.”

“Kiss me, babe. I need to feel something other than this.”

I shake my head and push up, sliding off him and sitting my butt on the edge of the sofa. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to feel your grief. You need to mourn your wife, and I deserve better than to be a cheap fuck because you don’t know how to deal with your pain.”

“I wanted her dead,” he whispers, and the words are too cutting, too close to Mia’s fate that I still.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I had no way out of this marriage. I hated my wife, and I wanted to fuckin’ kill her myself—on a number of occasions.”

I consider the bottles, the mess of this room and the ruined man beside me. Everything he just said may be true, but he also cared for her deeply. Anyone could see that. “You loved her once.”

“Yeah, once. But I ruined our marriage, and I wanted her gone. I wanted her off my back. What kind of man does that make me?”

“Did you have her killed?”

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