She’s so full of shit, she smells. I do owe her something though. Logan and I have been living in our own world.
“Falling? Yes. Am I there? Not yet, but it’s coming, Norah. I’m scared and excited at the same time,” I answer without hesitation.
There are many things I love about Logan. He’s playful; he’s as much intense as vulnerable. He pushes and pulls; he gives and takes. When Logan looks at me, it’s as if he steals every ounce of breath from my lungs. Every time he kisses me, I feel the world tilting. Every time he holds my face in his hands, it feels like he’s unraveling all of my knots. Holding me in his muscular arms, I’m growing accustomed to this. For so long, I’ve longed for it, and now I’m not willing to give it up.
I’m Logan’s, and regardless of what he’s hiding, Logan is mine.
“I’m happy for you, Ellie. No one deserves to find love as much as you. Let’s get out of here.”
I start to stand and halt when I catch the eye of a woman heading our way. She strides with purpose, her cruel eyes glaring at me.
She’s dressed in a short silver thin strapped dress. It hangs loosely over her tall model-like frame. Her braless breasts bounce and are practically spilling out of the sides.
The closer she gets, the more her hardened glare directed at me tells me she has a lot to say.
Well, whatever it is, she better be prepared for me to shove it back down her Botox lipped mouth. I might have ignored her at Lexi’s party, but that was because I know when and where to keep my mouth shut. I have no qualms about knocking her teeth down her throat if she jerks me the wrong way. Upscale restaurant or not, she’ll be knocked down a peg or two.
Trouble making bitches. They can be smelled from miles away.
“Mind if I sit?”
She doesn’t wait for me to tell her to march her ass back to where she came from. No, she pulls out a chair, takes a seat and leans toward me. Shoulders squared and elbows off the table. Huge diamond on her wedding finger. How lovely. A married woman who thinks she’s going to put me in my place.
What a desperate and pathetic creature she is.
The thought of Logan sleeping with a married woman makes me want to vomit my meal down the front of her. Makes the trust I was finding in Logan slide backward a little too.
I lift a brow in hopes she’ll take the hint to get on with it and then get gone before I bitch slap her to the floor.
“Let me be blunt, I have to wonder why a man like Logan would want a woman like you. Are you after his money or do you enjoy the way he fucks you? He’s good, isn’t he?”
Rage. It just ate up my shock.
“Listen, bitch; I don’t know who the hell you think you are—”
“I’ve got this, Norah,” I cut her off. She’ll get loud, and this woman might walk away, and I’d like to hear what she has to say.
“You have some nerve coming over here when it sounds to me like you’ve never gotten the chance to see how good Logan is. Are you jealous Logan is fucking me and not you? Do you have a friend hiding around the corner that sent you over here? Enlighten me please.”
I hate her. Hate the idea that Logan might have touched her.
“You don’t know the man well enough to know who I am. I have a lot more to say. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take your kind and back off.”
She’s right, I don’t and thank God for that. If I had to spend time looking at this woman, I’d carve my eyeballs out.
Steam.
It’s billowing off both Norah and me.
“My kind?” I try keeping my voice even, my expression blank, but she turns up a gleaming smirk at me.
Every muscle in my body stiffens. I feel the insult in her icy glare, one that’s bouncing right back in her direction, and pegging the bitch between the eyes.
Intimidation doesn’t work on me, not after what I’ve lived through.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. I’m Ellie Wynn, and this is my friend, Norah. Whatever brought you over here, please get it off your chest, but if you piss my kind off, you’ll be sure to know this talk you want to have will end up with you wiping it off the floor right along with your face.”
Her eyes go wide with the deliberate slip of my tongue.
“Let me rephrase. Do you have any idea who Logan is?”
My blood boils as she sits in front of me all smug and proper. Eyes are searching for a sign of weakness. She won’t find one. Knowing when to hold and release is another thing I’ve learned well.
I dig my nails into my palms as I try to calm myself. Violence and I don’t get along, but this woman is making me question just how good it would feel to thump her off the chair and I will without giving it a second thought.
“I know who he was, and my guess is you’d like to steer me clear of him. Are you here to speak for a friend, for yourself or for all of you who aren’t good enough to hold Logan’s attention?”
There is no stopping the tremor of discomfort that slides down my spine. My brain is struggling to understand why this phony woman seems to think she needs to warn me. I shove the thought of Logan being intimate with this woman away. I do care about the women he’s slept with before me, but not in the way she’s hoping. I care because it was one of them who sent someone after me. It could easily have been her. Makes me wonder how many more are going to crawl out of the woodwork and come at me.
I’m not about to bring it up. I might not trust Logan completely, but I do trust it won’t be long until he finds out who it was. And I believe him when he said he hasn’t been with anyone since we met. Makes me curious as to why she’s here.
I lean forward, hiding the fear she might tell me something that will crush me. I cover it with anger and hope she picks up the scent coming out of every pore in my body.
She stiffens.
“I didn’t come over to argue with you. I came to warn you. It’s your choice if you want it or not.”
She’s lying.
My body pulsates with a compelling forcefulness to lunge across the table and strangle her. I never knew I had this much pent up anger in me. It’s a laughing shock to my system. I squeeze my lungs to hold it in. To not dig her judgmental eyeballs out of their sockets that are looking at my dress as if I’d picked it out of a garbage can.
“I don’t. So Logan has a past. All of us do. Unlike you, appearances mean nothing to me, but Logan does, and I will not let you warn me away. It was you, wasn’t it? You sent someone to hurt me and you didn’t do it for yourself, did you?”
The woman studies me. Lips are curling as she drags her gaze up and down my body. Once again, I feel disappointment crashing over me, little pins and needles poking at my skin, trying to puncture through in hopes of drugging me with a reminder that I’m not meant to be in Logan’s world. But I won’t let her take that away from me. Logan has spent the better part of our time together proving he isn’t the typical millionaire. He’s a lot like my father. He is giving and caring of his time. Loves his family fiercely and the way he is with Lexi makes the man sexier than anything else.
Regardless of what he’s hiding from me, he makes me feel special and wanted, and no matter what Logan told me about him not being a good man, he is with me, and this woman can take her warning and shove it right up her ass.
“You might know parts of Logan, but you don’t know them all. He isn’t at all who you think. He’s calculating, cunning, and he is hiding something big from you. If you don’t believe me, go to his house and check it out for yourself.”
“Get up, you filthy fucking bitch. How could you do this? Go home and wait for Logan, Ellie. Norah, don’t you dare leave her alone. I promise this woman will never bother the two of you again.”
I jolt at the dark figure leaning over the table. Muscles in his face twitching, hands balling into fists and his upper body moving slowly to crowd this woman’s space. Shock rocks me back in my chair from what she said. More worriedly, it’s what Lane said as he stares her down with so much hat
red she flinches.
Somehow I believe the only one speaking the truth here is her.
Chapter 20
Logan
“Where are you, Ellie?” I drop my phone on the floor next to me and bow my head, barking out a grunt of disgust as I do.
It’s ironic, how I’m on my knees when that’s what I told Ellie I wanted from her.
I slam my eyes closed. Wrath sweltering in my blood. Simmering rage that blisters at my guts.
Revulsion and agony and a pang of guilt busting me open.
All of me spinning.
I hate this city. Hate every damn thing about it. It’s offbeat, loud, and proud. It’s made up of more cultures uniquely their own. And even though it’s below sea level, it's resting on a swamp of scavengers.
The Big Easy, they say. It’s easy, alright. Easy to get lost in a world that screws with people’s minds.
It’s the city of colorful sex from Bourbon Street to the Bayou. It’s a pleasurable activity in which any willing person can learn and participate. But it also can come with a price if you’re the master and those you fuck take what you give them and turn it into something ugly.
At the moment, I’m not sure which I hate more, this city, myself, or the choices I made.
That’s the thing about choices; you can never go back and erase them. Never undo what’s done.
There were many times I kept wondering the same thing over again. Kept berating myself, always asking why I’d take apart my life a piece at a time. Never got an answer. Suppose that’s par for the course when you’ve lived a life trying to protect someone and get back what was rightfully theirs when all along, all I’d had to do was knock on Ellie Wynn’s door.
But no. I had to twist the knife. Had to make someone pay. A lot of fucking good it did when it’s about to destroy.
I can’t imagine what would’ve happened years ago if I would’ve gone to Ellie instead of seeking out revenge. Maybe it would’ve been the only push I needed to claim what’s mine. But this is my torment. My hell on earth. My old goddamn fault.
Torturer.
Sinner.
The deceiver who feels the gaping hole of losing the best thing that happened in my life in my chest, it nearly caves thinking about what Ellie knows and where she is.
Karma and fate.
They make a deadly combination, both coming into my life at the same time.
The first is a cold-hearted slap to the face.
The second I never believed in, not until I saw Ellie perched up on a bar stool looking like some kind of wet dream. Her laugh contagious. Her innocent eyes searching for something only someone seeking out the same would find.
To be needed.
To be loved.
Yeah, karma. She’s always the one who twists up fate.
Crushing it beneath her heeled boot.
What a fucking cunt she is.
There is much more at stake in this deadly game than losing Ellie.
Lexi and Lane will be hurt in irreparable ways if I don’t play my hand right.
I’ve derailed Ellie’s life, and I’ll live with it, but disrupting the life of an innocent little girl who could be dragged through hell, I’d rather be shoved back through the burning gates.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always protected my brothers. I didn’t do it because I was the oldest and felt it was my duty. I did it out of love, and regardless of how fucked up our lives are, how deep into guilt Seth is, how shallow the well is that makes up the life Lane worries about day and night. I’ll protect them for the rest of my life.
There were times when our dad would tell me to let them fight their own battles with the neighborhood kids. He’d say “Son, your intentions are good, I get why you don’t want anyone to hurt your brothers, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but you protect a little too fiercely.”
I didn’t listen to him then, wouldn’t if he were still alive. Tonight is one of those nights where Lane has to protect himself from a woman who done lost her mind; it’ll be my fault if things don’t go his way.
Should have said fuck it all and had Gabe end the woman who must have approached Ellie because she found out some of the things I’ve done.
Mainly? Murder.
I was almost done digging someone’s grave when my phone kept repeatedly vibrating in my back pocket. I answered when I saw it was Lane.
I made him aware this morning. Told him to stay out of it and to keep Lexi by his side. He didn’t listen. He dropped Lexi off with Gabe, searched all over town for the woman who is out for his blood, and when he found her, it was too late. She’d approached Ellie.
Lane made her leave, and when he walked her to her car, she laughed in his face when he asked what she told Ellie. Frustrated and angry, I’m sure when he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere.
Lexi’s aunt, Sadie Ferguson. Her mother’s sister is the one who hired someone to hurt Ellie. Also, the one who picked up Whitney from Ramon’s. She’s a conniving woman just like her sister who walked out of the hospital after giving birth to Lexi before her discharge papers were even dry.
Stephanie, Lexi’s mom, not once held that precious baby. She blindsided my brother and left Lexi without a mother. Better off, but it left Lane filled with worry about when the day comes where Lexi starts asking about her mom, the repercussions of abandonment it could have on that little girl’s mind.
I’ve told him dozens of times he’s the best father I know, and he’ll figure it out the same way he’s managed to raise her on his own, but I don’t walk in his shoes. I don’t tuck that angel in bed every night. Don’t sit around wondering if it’s Stephanie every time someone knocks on my door.
And now, I sit here waiting on Lane’s call before I make my next move.
“There you are. Your security is gone. Were you expecting me or were you hoping your little bitch might show up? Me, I was looking forward to the latter.”
My head kicks up, and I shoot Whitney right between the eyes with my frosty glare.
She’s a dead bitch for double-crossing me.
“You bought furniture, or did Ellie buy it for you? We have many topics to discuss, Logan. There’s Lexi; there’s Maggie, Stephanie and Sadie, and Ellie. Oh, more importantly, there’s me. Which one would you like to chat about first?”
Whitney sends me one of those twisted smiles I’ve seen plenty of times over the years as she waltzes in and kneels in front of me, her short skirt riding up her thighs. The bitch wants more from me than talk; she wants something she isn’t ever going to get again.
My cock and my safety.
I rough a hand down my face, trying to stay calm.
“What did you do to Maggie, darling. Did you kill her yourself? God, you’re tense. Do you need me to help you out with that?” She rubs her hands up my thighs.
Nausea whirls. My hands shoot out and I grip her by the throat.
A riot starts in my body. Fighting and dueling in my skull. The reminder of what I was, what Whitney and I used to do and what could have been if she wouldn’t have done what she did.
Christ, I can’t even imagine it. Being with this bitch, thinking she was my world once upon a time.
Need.
It trumps and squashes.
This woman or any other isn’t what I need. Not by a long shot. Replaceable. They all are.
Ellie is not.
“You’ll never know what I did, you’re good as fucking dead.” I know better than to confess to Whitney about killing someone. I haven’t trusted her since I found out she conspired with Shadow.
Maggie is out of the picture. She was someone I trusted with everything, and she betrayed me. She might have been a possessive one, but I never thought she’d be this desperate to have me, and by doing so, she’d fed Whitney information about Ellie. It wasn’t until Rocco and I went to see Maggie that she confessed while I put a gun to her head. She’s the one who let Whitney into the club and handed over my laptop. She’s the one who did a lot of things, and she’s
no longer breathing.
Bitch was like all the rest of the women who want me. Not one of them looks at me like they’d run off into the sunset with me with nothing but a pot to piss in. Not one of them can stand on their own two feet like Ellie. They don’t feel like her, taste like her. Dress like her. They aren’t her.
Even the one in front of me. A woman I once loved. A woman I pretended to still care about long after her brother went to jail, and now she’s here to try and stake her claim.
To fuck Ellie all over again.
Because of me.
Right.
That’ll never happen. Not while I’m breathing.
“What the hell did Sadie say to Ellie?”
“She tried warning her, and you know why?” Tilting her head to the side, she pins me with a glare. Deep satisfaction is written all over her face. “Tell Lane to let Stephanie and Sadie see Lexi. Give me back what you took from me and I’ll prepare you for when you see Ellie next. I’ll see to it she forgives you.”
She may as well have kicked me in the balls. My entire body winds tightly with worry.
But I mask it the same way I’ve done for years with Whitney. She might be good at manipulation, I’m a hundred times better. Only problem? I won’t jeopardize my niece. I can’t do a damn thing until I hear from Lane.
“Lane will never agree to that. I’m not playing around with you anymore. Told you that years ago when I found out you were the one who snitched on Shadow. Guess my proof will be in your brother’s hands by tomorrow.” I squeeze tighter, crawling up her skanky body until I’m in her face.
Cold laughter pours out of her mouth, covering her with the poisonous woman she is. “I’d think twice before you start throwing demands my way.”
Bitch doesn’t have a leg to stand on with me.
“And I’d start thinking about just how much you want to live if I were you.”
My head spins and my heart pounds, bile climbing up my throat, revulsion crawling across my flesh.
“What I took from you wasn’t yours to begin with, Whitney. You should know better than to try and get a dime from me.”
“I’m here to do what should have been done a long time ago. Make you pay, Logan. I have the upper hand this time. I have proof to get Lexi taken from her daddy. I have proof to make Ellie run. I have proof, you have nothing.”
Unravel (Unbound Trilogy Book 1) Page 20