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I stilled, wondering if they would tell the Mayor something. They grinned, trading a look between them, and winked beforewalking in front of the Mayor, getting into her car. Lance stood by Ally as the Mayor left, allowing us to see her smile. My heart clenched to see her happy. It wasn’t an expression I was used to seeing on her face and while it was odd, I think I liked it. I was proud of her.
We waited a moment before getting out of the car. Ally saw us immediately and ran to us. She threw herself at King and he caught her as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“I’m on a six-month probation,” she said, before kissing him deeply. “It’s mine and she will come back, but she was impressed I wasn’t dead.”
She kissed King again who kissed her back with equal fervor.
“You ready?” King asked against her lips. “Running a town is?—”
I pinched his ass before he said something stupid.
“Exhausting.” He glared at me.
“I… I think I'm ready for it, it's going to be hard, but I know I can do it,” she said as she looked over her shoulder at me with a smile. “I practically ran the show when Nic was fucking around.”
King and I locked eyes for a moment. He didn’t have to say anything for me to know what he was thinking. The mayor was giving Ally a false sense of hope. Running a town wasn’t easy, running a town as a woman was going to be hard, and I didn’t want to say it, but I didn't know if Ally was going to be able to do it.
I worried about her because if people found out Kris was no longer running Christmas town before she was ready, she might have war on her doorstep. If that happened, she would be in danger. The Mayor should have known better than to give her false hope. Did she want her to succeed or was she punishing us?
Ally threw her arms around me as I plastered a smile on my face. I drew her in for a kiss and made a silent promise. Nomatter what, she had us and we were going to support her, even if that meant killing everyone that threatened her.
Chapter 5
Ally
My office was slowly becoming my own. It was weird to think of it as mine and that Christmas town was now run by me. The excitement had worn off as I thought about how this was now my responsibility and fear had replaced it. Boogie and King were excited for me a few days ago, but they couldn’t disguise their worry.
The heads of the town were always in danger. This was a high-profile job and with that, people always thought they could take what they wanted, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. If the Mayor thought I could do this, then I was going to do this.
I went through the files that the Mayor had left for me detailing a few men that could potentially do well here. A few would be stopping by in about thirty minutes and I wanted to reread their files. As I poured over them they all looked great at first glance, but I needed men who weren’t going to be afraid of a woman in charge. It seemed that was going to be my biggest problem.
Pulling them out, I stumbled upon the last set of files I had been ignoring. One that haunted my dreams and the other one that I was too afraid to tell the guys about. I hadn’t opened it yet, afraid of what I would find, afraid of what it would make me feel.
My hand shook as I opened the folder, right at the top was the photo the year I had been taken. The happy child looking back at me was a stranger, someone I didn’t recognize. The memories of my childhood were cloudy and fuzzy. The more I tried to remember them, the more my head hurt. I hated that I couldn’t remember.
The police report wasn’t very detailed and my brother’s name wason it, along with my mother’s. The report included where I was taken and what I had been wearing. My lip trembled as I read how long they looked for me, and where they looked. My case went cold after two weeks.
Tears fell down my cheeks as I turned the page to see another police report. My parents had been at the wrong place in an aggravated robbery and died with one of my brothers three years after my disappearance. My aunt had taken in my two other brothers.
I flipped the page to look at pictures of them now. It seemed one of them had done well and one of them had fallen in with the wrong crowd. I turned the page, and I gasped. Gray eyes stared back at me as I looked at a picture of Boogie when he was little. He was so damn beautiful even at a young age. He was smiling in this photo, looking carefree, just like a child should. Behind the photo sat his police report and just as I was about to read it, footsteps made me close the file. No one should read this except Boogie. I grabbed the files I was originally looking at and opened them before the knock on my door.
“Come in,” I said, attempting to look like I hadn’t been caught doing something bad.
Lance walked in and sat in the chair in front of my desk, still looking like a college student. Sometimes, I wondered if he could really protect me.
“Are those the people she’s recommending?” he asked as he leaned forward.
I nodded, giving him the first file. “I like this one.”
“We need at least two more for the drop off,” he stated, as I gave him another one. “It would be great if there could be more, but?—”
“But quality over quantity.” I finished his sentence.
“Yes, but quantity might not be bad especially for our first drop,” he said, flipping through a file.
“We could always get rid of them afterwards,” I said, passing him another file.
“Exactly, I just don’t trust the men we are meeting,” he said, laying the files on my desk.
