Page 24 of Sugar Baby
“What?” he barks out, sitting on the floor, like the rest of us, but a bit further away from me.
“You,” I hiss. “I’m sick of your fucking face today.”
“Huh? Have we met?”
He looks genuinely confused for a moment before he shakes his head and glares at my uncle.
“Trent,” Lorenzo says. “This is Sophia. My niece.”
Trent’s glare comes back to me. “Oooh,” he drawls before he looks back at Lorenzo. “So, did you get it?”
Lorenzo nods and pulls something out of this pocket, giving it to this Trent guy. I see it’s the cameo from my lockbox.
“Hey,” I snap. “That’s mine.”
“This was never yours,” Trent says coldly, turning it over and, with a nod, pockets it himself.
Well, he has me there. I’ve never seen it before today.
I wonder if Cain knows aboutthisbrother. Three peas in a pod, they are. It’s annoying. I ignore him and focus on my uncle instead.
“What do you want from my mother? Maybe I can help?” I say, shelving all of this new knowledge until a more appropriate time to process it.
“You are helping by being here,” he growls.
“No. I’m being held hostage. That’s not helping. That’s just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He chuckles. “We used to be very close, she and I,” he says wistfully, leaning back against the passenger seat and stretching out one leg, bending the other. He rests his wrist on the knee, the gun dangling down, but no less dangerous than if it were pointed at me. “When you were a baby, I’d come over and play with you for hours. You loved my keys.”
“Oh, really?” I say softly, warming slightly to him even though he is a thug who shot Nico and snatched me off the street.
“You were the sweetest thing. I loved you like a daughter. I swore to always protect you, but then your bitch mother betrayed me. Stabbed me in the back, and I was forced to leave this country. Forced to leaveyou.” His low growl sends the hairs on my arms on end. “But things have changed now,caraand I intend to get back what’s mine.” He prods the barrel of the gun on the floor of the van.
“What’s that then?” I’m wildly curious about this man now. I know he and mum were close. She has an old photo of the two of them in the locket she keeps in her jewellery box. It’s how I knew who he was.
“Not your concern.” He is back to being a dick now, so I glare at him to let him know he can’t intimidate me anymore. He won’t hurt me. I know it.
“Well, this has been fun,” Trent interrupts from his side of the van. “But your head is bleeding.”
I clench my teeth. “I know.”
“So am I,” the other alpha growls, pissed off.
“Here.” He leans over and grabs a small first aid box out of the netting on the inside panel of the van. He knees his way over to me, and I watch him curiously as he takes out an antiseptic wipe, gauze and some tape. He chucks the first aid box to the bleeding alpha. Turning back to me, he dabs at the wound while I sit like a statue, frozen by the kind act of this stranger, who looks like Cain. I want to ask, but I don’t.
Suddenly, that frightful feeling of getting sweaty and nesty drops over me again. Beads of perspiration form on my forehead and my armpits. I jerk my head back when the scent of Trent, similar to Cain’s but more earthy, hits my nostrils hard. Inhaling deeply, I let out a soft purr which startles the bejesus out of him. His eyes shoot to mine, and he skitters back to the other side of the van, leaving me to attend to my wound by myself.
Lorenzo, glares first at Trent, then at me. His gaze hardens. “What are you doing out gallivanting when you are about to have your heat?” He snaps at me, much like my dad would.
I snort and shake my head, even though the motion makes me go slightly dizzy. “I didn’t know. I’ve never had a heat before.”
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters and then sits forward as one of the other silent alphas, the sour milk one, lunges towards me, making me scream with surprise.
Lorenzo smashes him in the face with the side of the gun, and he drops like a rock, slumping over. “Touch her, and you die,” he snarls. “And that goes for you too.” He faces off with the other alphas in turn until they all agree.
Turning back to me, he says kindly, “We are nearly where we are going. I’ll provide you with things to make a nest once we get there, okay,cara?”
I nod dumbly, thunderstruck, until my stupid mouth opens, and I joke, “Nest? Shouldn’t you be chaining me up in the basement or something?”
