My fingers drifted to my lips, and I could have sworn I felt Ford’s gentle caress against them. As a kid, I’d imagined so many times what that would feel like, but nothing compared to when it actually happened. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach just thinking about it, and—
Crap. The cell.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Belle.” Her sigh rang out over the line. “I thought you were never going to answer.”
I chuckled, the sound uneasy. “Sorry, I was…” I stared around the room and swallowed. Neither Mom nor Dad knew I volunteered at the shelter, and they certainly didn’t know I worked a couple of shifts at the coffee house each week. I had a scholarship, and they were paying for my off-campus apartment, so they assumed that I was all set, but I wanted to have freedom. I wanted to be independent, explore everything I could, and that included working for actual money but also giving back to the community.
“Studying.”
Mom made a sound in the back of her throat. “So, you can’t talk?”
“I…I can talk a little. Why? What’s up?”
“I just needed to ask your opinion.”
I leaned back in the office chair and stared up at the ceiling. Mom and I had a close relationship. She was my best friend. The one person I knew I could go to about almost anything. Almost. There were some things I’d never tell her, like the job, the volunteering, and the kiss.
God, the kiss.
“Want to know how to punish Asher for leaving his training gear in your car again?” I chuckled, thinking about the last time he’d done that. Mom hadn’t realized until she was blasted in the face with the smell a couple of days later as she got into her car.
“No, no.” She groaned. “Although, speaking of your brother, Cade keeps trying to teach him lacrosse, but you know your little brother is all about his fighting.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. Asher had been training in different martial arts since I could remember.
“No, this is…I can’t believe I’m about to ask this.”
“What?” I sat up straighter, my attention on high alert. She sounded stressed, and I’d only ever heard Mom stressed a handful of times. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“Do you think you kids are too old to go to the lake house with us?”
A breath whooshed out of me at the thought of the lake house. It was a safe haven of sorts, somewhere we could go and just be together without all the distractions. Not to mention the memories we’d made there.
“No. I love the lake house. Why?”
“Well, your dad wants us to go there for spring break—all of us—but Asher said we’d cramp his style and that he’s too cool to be hanging around with old people. Am I old, Belle? I don’t feel old, but I wonder if I’m becoming like one of those women who still think they’re eighteen when they’re actually forty-eight.”
I chuckled and held a finger in the air. “First of all, you’re not even forty until next year. And second, Asher is about to turn seventeen, so you’ll always cramp his style.”
“So…you’re coming, then?”
I tapped my fingers on the desk. “Hell yeah, I am. The lake house is my most-favoritist place on earth.”
“You know that’s not a real word, right?” Mom huffed out a laugh. “Why are you attending college when you can’t even use real words?”
A grin spread over my lips. “I go for the parties. Nothing else.”
“The modern education,” Mom sighed wistfully. “Talking about education, I have papers to grade.”
I snorted. “You have fun with that, Mom. I’ll message you later.”
“Okay. Speak to you later. Love you, sweetie.”
“Love you too, Mom.” I ended the call and stared at Jamie as she waltzed into the room. “Swapped with Lou again?” I asked her.
“Yeah.” She smiled, but I could tell she wanted to roll her eyes. Lou rarely turned up for her shifts, and when she did, she half-assed them. “I didn’t mind swapping.”
I made a noncommittal sound and moved toward the feeding/break room, counting down the seconds until I would get more Lottie cuddles.
FORD
Rory stretched his arms above his head and groaned. “I hate fuckin’ waiting.”
I raised a brow as I continued to stare out of the windshield at the house we’d been watching for the last hour. It felt like any other undercover op, only I wasn’t a person of the law sitting here and staring at the house on the block that dealt drugs. No. I was a member of the cartel about to go in there and take all of their product and issue them a final warning to get out of town. Whether they’d listen or not was yet to be seen, but my gut told me they wouldn’t.
I remembered what Hut was like when I was his second-in-command. He ran his territory with a tight fist and didn’t care who got hurt in the process as long as the job was done. Garza was more thoughtful with his moves. He waited and watched, seeing what his opponent would do, and then he’d strike. I wasn’t sure which type of leader was more dangerous, but I knew people thought twice before crossing the Garza Cartel.
“How much longer we gotta wait?” Rory asked, his tone whiny. “We’ve been here for an hour now. What are we waiting for?”
“We’re waiting for the house to be empty, or at least nearly empty.”
“Why?” He twirled his gun in his hand and grinned at me. “We can just shoot the fuckers and get what we came here for.”
I gritted my teeth and clenched my hands in my lap. It was people like Rory, who didn’t think twice before he shot, that I couldn’t stand. Once you had that weapon in your hand, you best be sure you were ready to take an answering bullet; otherwise, you shouldn’t be pulling it in the first place.
“Because we don’t need extra bodies. Extra bodies mean eyes on us from the law.” I turned my head to look at him. “We go when I say we go, got it?”
Rory stared at me, his gaze flicking over my entire face, and I knew I’d pulled my mask on. The same mask I used to wear when I was a twenty-year-old who shot first and asked questions later. Those days had long since passed, but it didn’t mean the memories weren’t fresh in my mind. Rory looked away, his silence his answer.
Some people came filing out of the house, and I recognized one of them as the top dog of their little crew. He swerved to the left, and the woman under his arm righted him. First rule from Garza: never taste your own product. But it looked like this guy hadn’t been able to stop himself, just like Hut hadn’t.
Once they’d all piled into a car and left the street, I counted to ten and then pulled my gun out, making sure it was loaded. I didn’t want to use it, but if my life was in danger, I would. Unlike Rory, who would shoot anyone in that house just because they were there.
“Let’s go,” I commanded, pushing my door open and slamming it closed. I wasn’t quiet. I had no intention to sneak up on the house. I was coming in hot because I wanted them to see me. Garza had left it up to me how I handled this, and I knew I’d do it without a casualty, or at least, I hoped I would.
The front yard was littered with red Solo cups and empty baggies, and I shook my head. They weren’t even trying to be inconspicuous about it. They just didn’t care. I jogged up to the front door and knocked on it twice. I was going to try and be civilized, but I couldn’t promise anything once that door was open. I had some pent-up energy I needed to release. Belle flashed through my mind, and I immediately pushed her away. I couldn’t think about her or what had happened, not right now, not when the door was creaking open.
“Can I help you?” a squeaky voice asked. He sounded like his balls hadn’t dropped, but he looked about forty with the scars on his face and the way his eyes sunk in. He was high, that much was obvious.
Instead of answering him, I pushed on the door, and he stumbled back. I hadn’t even used much effort at all, and the sight of it had Rory laughing his head off. “Jesus! He’s out for the count, and you didn’t even touch him!”
I couldn’t stop t
he quirk of my lips as I looked down at the guy and then back at Rory. He was out cold, but I had a feeling it was more to do with the drugs than it was me pushing the door into him. “Come on,” I told Rory, walking through the main room the front door led us into. The walls were yellow, the furniture covered in stains, but it was the smell emanating from the house that was unmistakable. It was sweet and inviting, a lure these people couldn’t deny. All you needed was one taste and you were hooked, and that one taste would never be enough for them.
We needed to make sure there wasn’t anyone else in the house, so I took the upstairs while Rory checked down. Each room was empty—no drugs, no people. Had I not known the head guy was here ten minutes ago, I’d have thought it was just another crack house.
“Anything?” I asked Rory as my boots echoed on each stair.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hands on his hips with his gun hanging off two of his fingers. “Nothing.”
I frowned and narrowed my eyes on the walls. There were only so many places you could hide drugs and have easy access to them to sell to buyers. I thought back to Hut’s house and all the hiding places we used to use. Lola had known about a couple of them, the main one being—
“What’s behind that picture?” I pointed at the wall which held a picture, the only one I’d seen in this house. It was out of place, a beacon, which meant there had to be something behind it. Rory rushed over to the wall and stood on the sofa, yanking the painting off, and sure enough, there was the safe that I had no doubt held the drugs.
A groan rang out from the guy on the floor, and I stepped toward him. I may not have been here to take a life, but I had no problem knocking people out, especially those who were high as a kite. I slammed my fist down onto his temple, the one shot doing its job, and then sauntered over to Rory.
“Now, the question is, do we take the entire safe or just the contents?”
Rory’s lips spread into a wide grin, and he nodded like an eager puppy. “I say we take the whole thing.” He turned and pushed his hands on the front of it to test how secure it was. “It’s not even installed properly.”
I shrugged. “Let’s take the whole thing then.” I hadn’t even finished what I was saying before Rory had pulled the safe halfway out of the wall. Did these people not understand that a safe was meant to be a safe for a reason? This was just a glorified lockbox.
“Need a hand there?” I asked, wiping off my hands on my jeans and stowing my gun away.
“Nope.” Rory clutched the safe in his arms and jumped down off the sofa. “I got it.” His voice was strained, his face turning red, but he was used to lifting things this heavy. I was sure he spent every spare moment in the gym doing weights.
I stepped over the guy and pulled the front door open for Rory, but we couldn’t leave without a parting message. I glanced around the room for something to write with and found a paper and notepad sitting on the table. It was full of numbers, probably their sales, but I didn’t care about that. They were small fish in a big pond with a shark for company. I wanted the shark, not the bottom feeders.
I wrote a little note: Courtesy of Eduardo Garza, and placed it in the hole the safe used to be in. The guy was still knocked out cold, but it wouldn’t be long until he woke up and found the safe gone, although I wasn’t sure he’d even notice. Either way, my job here was done. Now all I had to do was go back and tell Garza, and then I could head to the apartment I was using.
The break I was waiting for was coming. I could feel it in my bones. Garza had me going to more meets and warehouses, and I knew of at least ten places that had copious amounts of drugs stored—enough to put him away for a long time—but we needed something else. We needed all of his businesses, not just one of his hustles. His clubs and bars laundered money. All I had to do was find the proof, and then we could take him down. Eight months. I’d been undercover for eight months, and I was at the stage where I wanted to go home. It was so easy to lose yourself on an undercover job, and I could feel myself on the edge of the cliff. I needed out and back to my normal life, if only for a little while.
I pulled open the car door and pushed inside, my gaze flicking over to Rory, who had the safe on his lap. “Why didn’t you put it in the trunk?” I started up the engine.
“No point.”
I supposed he was right. If he put it into the trunk, he’d only have to get it out again when we got to Garza’s house, and it was only a twenty-minute drive until we were pulling up at the gates and being let inside by his security detail. That was another thing Garza didn’t take for granted. He was constantly surrounded by people who would take a bullet for him without a second thought, which meant when we finally did take him down, we’d have a fight on our hands.
The car shuddered to a stop as I pulled up outside the front door, and I pushed out of the car, knowing Rory would be right behind me. The front doors to the mansion opened up, and one of his guards patted me down. He took my gun attached to my belt and the one on my ankle, but unlucky for him, I still had my knife taped to my side. I never went anywhere without a weapon I could conceal.
“Mr. Garza is waiting for you in his office,” the guard said with his slight accent. He’d obviously been in this country long enough to lose most of it, but you could still detect the twang. I nodded and stepped into the main foyer. It was grand and full of marble and decadent lighting, precisely what you’d expect from a cartel boss. It was almost cliché.
Rory’s heavy footsteps followed me down the right hallway and toward Garza’s office. His door was half-open, but I still knocked on it and waited for him to say, “Come in.” I pushed the door fully opened and let Rory go in first. He deposited the safe near the door.
“It’s done,” I told Garza, my gaze meeting his.
Garza sat behind his desk, a crystal glass in his hand filled halfway with light-brown liquid. “You took the entire safe?” he asked, standing slowly and then walking around his desk. His gaze was focused on the safe, a small quirk of his brows showing his surprise.
“Yeah.” I pushed my hands into the front pockets of my dark-blue jeans and stared at him. “Figured it’d be easier.” I waited a beat to see what he’d say, but when he was silent, I continued, “Left them a note in the hole in the wall too.”
Garza chuckled. “Only you would think to do something like that.” He pointed at me as he stepped toward his drinks cart and poured two thimbles of the light-brown liquid. “Here,” he said, tilting his head at the glasses. I didn’t move an inch as Rory eagerly moved across the room to gather them. He handed me mine, but I didn’t take a sip. I wouldn’t drink on the job, especially when it was Garza serving the drinks. I’d been at this long enough to know some of his men came into his office and never made it out alive.
“You both did good,” Garza praised, walking back behind his desk. “Why don’t you go celebrate? Drinks on me at the club.” Garza’s gaze locked with mine, but I didn’t move an inch as he stared. “Maybe you’ll see that girl again, huh, Ford?”
My shoulders tensed, my nostrils flared, and I knew he’d seen my reaction. Garza had never seen me with a girl before, which meant there was only one person he was talking about. Belle.
Fuck.
“What girl?” Rory asked, oblivious to the tension swirling around the room.
Garza tutted. “Did Ford not tell you about the girl he left the club with Saturday night?” I heaved in a breath, trying my hardest to keep my reactions under control. Why the hell were they so interested in what girls I hooked up with? I never cared who they kissed or fucked—not that I’d fucked Belle. I’d never do that. The only reason I’d kissed her was because I had to, but fuck, even I couldn’t deny how it made me feel. I shouldn’t have liked it. I shouldn’t have wanted to do it again. She was Belle—Baby Belle. The girl I’d known since the moment she was born. It was wrong—on so many levels.
But then, why did it feel so right? Why was it, when my lips pressed against hers, I felt like I was home?
“No,” Rory said, knocking his shoulder with mine. “He didn’t tell me.” I gritted my teeth and tried to push all my thoughts aside. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to let my mind wander, not when Garza was staring at me with something unsaid in his eyes. “Who was it?” Rory asked.
“No one,” I growled out. Rory wouldn’t be able to detect the pitch in my voice, but I had no doubt Garza had. Fuck. I was fuckin’ up beyond words. I’d always been able to keep my composure with anything, but when it came to Belle, I couldn’t stop it. It was instinct to protect her. It always had been.
I placed my untouched drink on a side table next to one of the dark-brown sofas. “I’m heading out.”
“I need a ride,” Rory said, downing his drink.
I didn’t look away from Garza, who leaned back in his seat with a small smile on his face. Had I just fucked up? Had I just put the whole undercover job at risk?
“I’ll call when I need you next,” Garza said.
I nodded, then spun around and headed out of the mansion with what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Chapter Three
BELLE
I wasn’t the kind of student who sat at the front of the class, but I didn’t want to sit at the back either. The do-gooders were at the front, and the students who didn’t care and either messed around or slept the entire hour would be at the back, so I always aimed to get a middle seat. I was far enough from the front not to gain the attention of the lecturer, but not too far back where I’d be distracted.
Sometimes, on rare occasions, I felt the need to sit closer to the front. Like today. I’d hoped it would help me understand the subject more, but I had no idea the train the lecturer had taken with his teachings today. I simply was not on board. I was still on the platform, unsure which carriage to get on.
I made a copious amount of notes, so many that my wrist was starting to cramp, but still, I didn’t understand it. Philosophy wasn’t a requirement, but an elective, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the wrong choice. Maybe if I knew what I wanted to do when I graduated next year, I’d have chosen better classes, but I was still in that “finding myself” phase—a phase I was afraid I’d never come out of.
Bonded Duet: Ford & Belle: Torn Bond & Tied Bond (Easton Family Duet Boxsets Book 3) Page 3