Page 22 of Alive and Kicking
Enzo scowls at me. “I really wish you wouldn’t trust those boys.”
My eyes will probably fall out of my head with the amount of times I’ve rolled them today. “They’re good men. I trust them. Honestly, doing business with the twins is a big part of my plan to expand our family.”
Enzo’s eyes practically bug out of his head. “What?!”
I shrug. “They run a tight ship of legitimate businesses to hide their criminal activity. Since Vin took over the daily running of business, they’ve had way less arrests of their lower members. I think doing business with them will help us strengthen our own legitimate businesses. Plus they’re my family. They’re your family too, if you would just let them be.”
Enzo scoffs, “I doubt it kid. That family forgot about me a long time ago.”
I frown at that. It’s true, they did. Enzo was being horribly abused at home, and they all knew about it. Nobody tried to protect him. That’s why he followed my mom when she married my dad. I think that’s part of the reason he’s so protective of me. I lean into his side. “Sometimes you have to accept things as they are and not rely on how you feel about a situation.”
Enzo laughs. “Who the fuck told you something so stupid?”
I shrug once more. “A psychotic maniac.”
He throws his head back and laughs. At this moment, I really can see the family resemblance between Enzo, Vin, and Nic, and I have hope that one day they will get along. If my future plans work, they will need to.
Lennox
We’re just about to pull up to the house and it has never felt so good to be back home. We ended up leaving the night of the party. Viv didn’t want to stay in the city too long because of the danger. On the bright side, we have a few days to emotionally prepare for Enzo to make his way here to help us protect Viv. The scary guy is actually starting to grow on me, and I make a mental note to add French toast to our normal weekly meal plan.
Viv’s dad was not happy that we left so soon. He’d expected us to stay a full week, and it didn’t help that Viv had just winked at him and said, “Exactly. Anyone watching you knows that you plan to have increased security for the next week, and if anyone has your house bugged they will not be expecting us to leave so soon.”
I had also thought we were staying a few extra days. We had discussed it for weeks. Cain, who usually hates last minute changes of plans, looked impressed by her logic.
The sun is just coming out when we pull up to the house. The second he put the car into park, we all hurry out to stretch our sore muscles. A high-pitched squeak meets my ears, and I whip around to find Cain, with Viv over his shoulder, heading towardthe front door. “We’ll be seeing you all in twenty-four hours,” he says, waving over his shoulder.
A smile slips across Viv’s face, so I turn back to start unpacking the car. Sloane is holding Zane by the elbow, and he looks like he is ready to march into the house and tear Cain apart. “She was happy about it. Calm down,” I tell him firmly.
His eyes snap to me. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “She was grinning.”
Zane relaxes and Sloane slowly lets go of his arm. When Zane doesn’t try to run off into the house immediately, he steps back. We start grabbing our bags and head inside when my phone buzzes in my pocket. When I pull it out, I see a motion detection notification from one of the cameras in Viv’s apartment. I open the link to find Cain and Viv sitting at the little table in her kitchen. They’re discussing limits and boundaries, so I close out the camera and let them be.
I go back out to the car and grab Cain and Viv’s bags. I leave Cain’s inside his room by the door and place Viv’s right outside the door to her apartment. Walking away, I shoot a text to Cain, letting him know her bag’s there. Last thing we need is for one of them to not notice and trip over it and down the stairs. I receive a thumbs up emoji in return and blink at it. Cain is not an emoji kind of guy. He sends texts using full grammar and punctuation.
When I walk back into the living room, I find Zane pouting on the couch. Sighing, I lean against the door frame and stare at him. Looking up, he frowns at me. “Aren’t you upset?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Why would I be? I went into this knowing that she wouldn’t be just mine.”
Zane’s brows furrow. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t care if she has sex with him. I just haven’t gone a full twenty-four hours without seeing her. Even when I was really busy I made time to catch a glimpse or two of her throughout the day. What am I supposed to do now?”
Pinching my lips together with my teeth, I manage not to laugh. I mean, I know he is obsessed with her, has been since that first day he told me he was going to marry her. I just didn’t realize how often he really stalks her. Then again, I now have open access to see her whenever I want with the cameras that are installed in her room and throughout the small apartment upstairs. “Maybe try distracting yourself. You could paint or take an extra job. You know you like the bloodshed,” I offer, hopefully. As long as he doesn’t break down any doors in my house, everything else is fair game.
His head nods before I even finish talking. “I do need to finish Sloane’s birthday present.” and then he’s up and off the couch before I can even respond to that.
“What about me?” Sloane asks, walking into the room.
I shrug my shoulders, not sure what to say to him. Footsteps on the creaky stairs make us both turn toward them. Cain walks through the door, barely even acknowledging our existence before he steps into the kitchen. Sloane looks at me with one brow quirked when Cain walks back through to the stairs carrying a large glass full of ice, a can of whipped cream, and the jar of maraschino cherries I just bought. My own brows raise in response.
Swallowing hard, I pull out my phone and look down at the notification I just received for Viv’s room. “Well, I have some stuff I’ve got to get done. I’ll see you later.”
Before he can even object, I hurry from the living room and head down the hall to my room, locking the door behind me. Pausing for a moment, I make sure that Sloane hasn’t tried to follow me before I make my way over to my computer. After typing my long and complicated password in, I pull up the camera feeds for the house. The little thumbnail shows Sloane stalking toward his bedroom, and I grin at the small images of Viv and Cain in her room.
Opening the live feed, I sit back in my chair as I slip my headphones over my ears. My teeth bite into my bottom lip as I watch Cain stand over her at the foot of the bed. She’s currently tied to her bed frame in nothing but her bra and panties, her arms and legs both spread. The soft waves of her dark hair are fanned out across her pillow. “You remember your safe word?” Cain asks.
She nods her head. “We decided on the traffic light system. Green for go. Yellow for slow down. Red for stop.”
