Violence shouldnotbe the answer to any problem…except sometimes it was theonlyanswer.
Getting Evie away from William had only been possible through violence.Which was why he was dead now.Attacking a total stranger for calling my sister and me names was not the same thing.
But damn, it felt good.
I wasn’t sorry that I’d grabbed her hair.It was the mess I had to clean up now that I regretted.My never-ending to-do list just got longer, with more and more priorities taking over the top of the damn thing.
Potentially being arrested for assault on a customer was low on the list of things I was worried about at the moment.Number one was how I was going to tell Evie how awful her boyfriend’s mother was without causing her to panic or lose any of the peace she’d recently found.
What the fuck was it about the bloodhound and his mother that made me prone to violence?They pulled at the darker parts of my inner self, the parts that wanted to spill blood.I blamed William for the rage that lived within me, but it was both nature and nurture since my mother had cultivated it—primarily toward her ex-husband.
Number two was how I was going to deal with Reid never wanting to see me again after I’d gotten into a physical altercation with his aunt.Maybe he wasn’t close with her and wouldn’t care too much.Or maybe he adored her as much as he did his mom and would never want to see me again.
That thought caused an earthquake of pain to rattle through my chest.I’d just found Reid, and I wasn’t ready to lose him.It was too soon to consider us a permanent thing, but I hoped we could have a future together.
Number three was definitely finding out what was going on with my freaking burning cooch.Jesus Christ, it was even more intense now that I was self-aware again.
Two and three kinda went hand in hand.Cause and effect, that sounded reasonable in my head.Reid was the cause of the situation.He’d deflowered me, and whether this was an allergic reaction or something else, it was all his fault.
His stupid-handsome face and his big dick and his annoying aunt were the reasons I was having the worst morning of my life.
Although his stupid-handsome face and his big dick were also the reasons I’d woken up thinking it was the best day of my life.Along with all those other delicious, lickable parts of his amazing body.
Damn it.
And double damn his stupid-handsome face and his big dick.
The door to the store opened, and I felt the world shift beneath my feet.
No.
Scratch numbers one through three off that motherfucking list.
Priority number one had just walked in, ice-cold rage flaring high in his dark eyes as he took everyone in, barely skimming over me and the other women in the room before zeroing in and staying glued to Abi.
Ah, fuck.
This couldn’t be happening.
How was I going to deal with coming face-to-face with the hit man I’d hired to extract my sister from William?
Everly
Abi side-eyed Sammy.“He’s been stalking me since we left this morning, hasn’t he?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you call him?”she huffed, not moving as the dark-eyed killer stormed toward her.
“Of course not.He probably hacked the security feed and was watching everything live.”Sammy glared at the man I had sold a piece of my soul to.“Why are you interrupting our girl time?We haven’t even tried on a single outfit yet.”
“You should have left the moment the fighting started.She was in danger,” he growled, his Russian accent thickening as he wrapped his arms around Abi so carefully, I felt like I’d stepped into some weird alternate universe.It was hard to comprehend that the same man I’d hired to kill my father was the one before me now, snuggling the pregnant redhead against him.
His name was Ghost, and he was an online vigilante, a cybergenius, and a deadly assassin.I’d found him by chance.Or rather, he’d found me.My search for solutions had been running thin, and one night back in June, I’d typed in a few keywords that would probably cause whoever was monitoring national security to take notice.Fortunately, they hadn’t.At least, as far as I was aware.It wasn’t like the Feds had busted down my door or anything.
Ghost had been alerted by those keywords, though, which told me that maybe he was the reason the Feds hadn’t come looking for me.Oddly enough, he offered to help.For a price and having to sit through a lecture on being safe on the dark web—and in real life.The man I’d been about to hire to off my sperm donor gave me a stern talking-to about stranger danger in the cyberverse.
All I’d wanted was Evie.I hadn’t cared how that happened, or how much it would cost, as long as she was safe.Some piece of me, buried deeper than I ever wanted to look at, realized William had had the same intentions.All he’d wanted was to protect Evie.Only, his way of protecting her came at the price of destroying her mental health.
