Page 22 of All Tied Up
He shook his head. “I’ll call and handle it later. They’re busy at the moment.”
Thankfully, I would need to turn left at the next intersection, and we could part ways. My bookstore trip wasn’t going to happen today. I didn’t want to chance him deciding to come along. Staying inside alone might have been better for my mental health after all.
Ten
Ransom
Her apartment was dark and silent. I checked each camera while drinking straight from a bottle of our special label whiskey. If I didn’t drink myself to sleep, I wasn’t going to get any. Today had been shit, and it had nothing to do with the shipment that had gotten destroyed in a trucker accident or the wrong labels that had been ordered. Nope. All that I could handle. I’d done it before.
For the first time in my life, I was drinking over a woman. An ironic chuckle passed my lips, and I felt the buzz from the alcohol seeping through me. Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
I couldn’t even get annoyed with my brother being up his girl’s ass. Fuck, I wished Noa were in my bed. That I had the ability to see her all I wanted. Another first for me. I was jealous of Than. He was so damn high on life right now that I could hardly stand to be around him. I’d been ready to pick him up and throw himthrough the window in my office today to shut him up. He’d been going on and on about my coming over to see their Christmas decorations.
He was loving every moment of the holidays while I hated opening my eyes every morning, knowing it would be another day that I had to go without contacting Noa. One more day that she’d think I had tossed her aside. Today, I’d almost snapped. Walked out of this house, got on a plane, and said fuck it to all of them. Let Blaise hunt me down and put a bullet in my head. But I would thankfully live to see another day. I’d thought it through and handled things when I realized she’d gone to motherfucking brunch with that douchebag.
Having another man disappear would only make my situation worse. So, I was smart. Even if, for a brief second, slicing the Ken Doll up into small pieces had crossed my mind when the girl who had answered the phone at the restaurant, where the tracker said Noa was at, described the jackass at the table with her.
I might not be the best at mind games like Bane was, but I could manipulate people. Use their weaknesses and needs against them. It hadn’t been hard to get what I wanted from the restaurant owner when I called him. Like most people, money was the bargaining chip I needed, and it worked beautifully. He did exactly as I’d instructed him to. I’d not been sure he would at first. Asking someone to set fire to their own business wasn’t normal, but it was the best solution. The other being me disobeying orders and hauling my ass to Manhattan to kill a man.
Yep. That was where I was. Ready to murder a guy for getting too close to what was mine.
“What’s got you so enthralled? Porn?”
I glanced up at the sound of Bane’s voice, expecting to see him with Hawkins in his arms. Instead, he was alone with a glass of water.
“Why are you up?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Got thirsty. And although Hawks has started sleeping again all night, I’m now on some fucked-up schedule where I wake up anyway.”
I grunted, not really interested and wanting him to leave me to my live video feed of Noa sleeping and my whiskey. He continued into the room, and I clicked off the screen, not wanting him to see what I had been watching. Let him think it was porn. That was better than him knowing the truth.
“It’s not porn then,” he drawled with a smirk and sank down on the leather chair across from me. With a tilt of his head in the direction of my phone, he added, “You wouldn’t have shut that down because I walked in.”
Shut up, Bane. Go away. Let me drink and stalk my girl in private.
My girl.
Was she? Yeah, she fucking was. She had been for years. I’d just not realized it.
“Your girl?” he asked, his brows drawing together.
Shit. I’d said that out loud. Maybe I was more than buzzed.
“Go to bed,” I mumbled, then took another drink from the bottle.
“Oh, hell no. Not after that comment. Who are you calling your girl? And please, for Christ’s sake, tell me it’s not the writer. I’m not up for trying to keep your ass alive if Blaise finds out you’re still in contact with her.”
I stared at him as I took a long pull. Blaise could suck my dick, along with Linc. Both of them had their women. They’d not been ordered to stay away from them. Assholes.
“I’m here. I’ve not talked to her in twenty days, and she went on a motherfucking date this morning. Had brunch with some asswipe,” I snarled.
Bane winced. “I’d ask how you know she went on a date, butI’m guessing you’ve still got trackers on her,” he said, and then his eyes went to my phone, which I still clutched tightly in my hand. “Ah fuck. Are you watching her? You’ve got video cameras on her? Tell me you’re not pulling Oz’s fucked-up shit.”
I said nothing. Fact was, my stalking might be worse than Oz’s had been. He’d never put a camera in Winslet’s bedroom. And he’d not paid a man to set a fire in the kitchen of his restaurant so that it had to be evacuated to end a date that she was on. I bit back a grin. That had been rather brilliant of me.
“What?” Bane asked, his eyes widening. “Did you fucking say what I think you did?”
Dammit, I was still talking out loud.
