Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 54283 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54283 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
With one phone call, he sent them flying back into place. And I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to tumble them again this time. That's how shaken she was by whatever he said.
I know it wasn't just the call that rattled her. It was the fact that he called while I still had my fingers buried in her tight little body. She was still dripping around me, that perfect pussy gripping me like it never wanted to let go. Her sweet little pleas still rang around the shop.
He snatched away what should have been a moment of bliss for her and turned it into one of regret. I want to kill him for that.
But I fucking can't. Because if I do, I lose her for good. The little prick deserves to suffer, but if I make him pay, the only one I really hurt is the one least deserving of the pain. It's a moral quandary to end all moral quandaries.
Because I can almost fucking guarantee the prick is up to something. I knew it as soon as I saw her face. She may have been born in this world the same as I was, but she didn't come equipped for war. Her eyes don't lie. They're expressive windows right to her innocent little soul. And whatever her brother told her had to do with me.
Be safe.
Was she trying to warn me? Telling me the only way she knows how that her fucking family is up to something?
"It can't wait, Nazario."
I pause midstep, glancing over at Nicolas. His lips are compressed in a thin line, his jaw clenched with anger.
Dread washes through me.
"What happened?"
He cuts his eyes at the employees milling at the end of the hall, secretaries and whoever the fuck else works in this building, people we employ because running an empire requires more than cocaine. "We should talk in your office."
Whatever the fuck he has to say is bound to piss me off if he wants privacy to deliver the news. Fucking wonderful.
I jerk my chin in a nod, storming that way.
Thirty seconds later, I shove my way through the door into my office, Nicolas on my heels. The door slams shut behind him as I stalk to my desk. I don't sit. I'm too keyed up, too on edge.
If Nolan snatched another fucking business out from underneath me…
I need to move, or I'm going to fucking explode.
I wheel around to face Nicolas. "What the fuck is the problem this time?"
"The shipment that was supposed to arrive this morning never made it," he says, his tone clipped. He meets my gaze, unflinching, one of few men capable of doing it. Most are too goddamn afraid it'll end with a bullet between their eyes. Not Nicolas. He fears nothing.
"What did you just say?" I ask, my voice deadly calm.
"The shipment from San Diego never made it. We lost everything." He pauses. "Including Javier and Anton."
"Goddammit!" I roar, slamming my fist into the wall as rage courses through me in a roiling black cloud. Pain radiates up my arm from my split knuckles, but I welcome it, embracing the way it fucking burns as I shake off the drops of blood.
That stupid fucking prick. Does he have any idea what he's done? Anton has a fucking daughter at home, a little girl barely old enough to walk on her own. And Javier has a mother who relies on him.
"That shipment was over two million dollars, Nicolas," I say instead of saying any of that. What purpose would it serve? Nicolas knew them better than I.
"I know, Naz," he says, striding forward to grab the first aid kit from my desk drawer. He works silently, pouring alcohol over my bleeding knuckles and then dabbing it away. The cuts aren't deep, but they burn like a motherfucker.
"The fucking cops?" I growl when he's finished, but even as I ask the question, I know the answer. It wasn't the fucking Feds who killed my men and seized my drugs. The guilty, ashamed look on Brynna's face, her conversation with her brother…well, it doesn't take a goddamn rocket scientist to put the pieces together.
I put my hands on Nolan's pretty little daughter at the gala. I challenged him in front of everyone in that fucking room. And he swiped my goddamn shipment and killed my men to remind me that he bites back.
"No, it wasn't los pitufos." Nicolas stares at me levelly. "I believe it was Sullivan."
As if there was any doubt.
I close my eyes, fighting the rising tide of red-hot rage threatening to swallow me. He just killed my men and stole two million dollars worth of product from me. Two. Million. Dollars.
I grip the edge of my desk until the wood creaks beneath my fingers. I welcome the pain that shoots through my still-bleeding knuckles, embracing it, letting it ground me.