Page 28 of R Is For Revenge: Part One
Did Harold show compassion for my mother when she was sick and dying? When we couldn’t scrape enough money together for treatment overseas? When I swallowed my pride and asked him to send us the fucking money?
My mouth hardens and I finish my drink in one gulp. It burns going down and I feel like another, but I also know I’m on a slippery slope. Booze masks shit. And I need to feel everything.
I wonder where she is now.
Is she out? Sleeping? Watching old movies with that half-tailed cat she keeps talking to when she thinks no one’s watching? Is she on a date? Does she have a man in her life I don’t know about? Someone Cade hadn’t been able to find? Someone the guy I have tailing her hasn’t rooted out?
I shake the thought off and set down the empty tumbler.
She’s fucking gorgeous. But it’s not just attraction that keeps her inside my head. It’d be easier if it was. I know what to do with lust. I know how to file it into a neat category and burn it off with someone else’s lips on my dick.
But this?
This is something different.
Something I don’t like.
She’s a Horner. Harold’s daughter. And for all I know, she’s the apple of his fucking eye. Which makes her the perfect piece in the long game I’ve been playing since I took this building and everything else from the bastard who gave me nothing but a reason to burn.
So why the hell does she feel more like a question I can’t answer than a pawn I’m ready to move?
The buzzer chimes once—someone downstairs. I check the time. Almost ten. I ignore it. Let security deal with whoever it is.
I turn from the window, my skin tight like a caged animal.
I should go out. Find a distraction. Pull someone into my bed and erase the tension curling around my spine. Nothing better than sinking my dick into hot, wet pussy to make the world disappear.
But the truth is I don’t want anyone else tonight. I think of Jules naked. Legs spread. Inner thighs glistening with her desire. Her want and need. I think of me crawling between those legs. What does she feel like? Is she tight? Then I wonder what she tastes like.
And that pisses me off more than anything. Gets me thinking of things I shouldn’t be thinking of. Options. A different way for this game to play out.
The buzzer sounds again. Sharper this time. Insistent.
I grit my teeth and stalk to the intercom.
“What,” I snap.
There’s a pause. A crackle.
And then a voice I haven’t heard in longer than I care to admit to. There was a time when I talked to Lola every day.
“Beck. It’s me. Let me up, asshole.”
I can’t help but smile and press the button. The lock buzzes, the private entrance clicks open, and I step back from the panel. I hear the elevator move, the sound so slight it’s barely discernable, and the adrenaline that’s been simmering all night shifts. It tightens. Not the kind that comes from a threat. The kind that comes from the past.
A minute later, the elevator chimes and the doors open.
Lola walks in like she owns the place. Blonde hair in a messy knot, oversized hoodie, black combat boots, and a designerduffel slung over her shoulder like she picked it up off the floor of a runway shoot.
She’s twenty-one now. Legal. Smart. Sharp. With our mother’s bone structure and her father’s blood, she has more chaos in her pinky than most people carry in their entire bodies.
“You gonna say hi?” she asks, arching a brow.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, already heading back to the bar.
Fuck sobriety, I need some help if she’s in town. “I thought you were in Barcelona.”
“I was. Then Milan. Then Mykonos. Then I got tired of chasing rich assholes who pretend to like art and decided it was time to come see myfavoriteolder brother.”
