“Fine,” she said. “But the real question is, is your shower better than the one you want to give me? Because I don’t want to be given a second-rate shower. I want my kidnapping experience to be rated five stars.”
I blinked.
“His shower is better,” Bruno said. “But there’s only masculine stuff in there. If you want girly shit…”
“Silence, you fool,” she hissed, pointing her finger at him in agitation.
“Did you just quote Fairly Odd Parents to me?” he asked, his voice sounding higher.
She flipped him off. “I might have. But just sayin’, you are a fool.”
And with that she turned on her heels and walked away, not to look back again.
I waited until I heard her talking on the second-story level before I turned to Bruno.
“Want to tell me what the hell is up with that?” I asked. “You didn’t just drop her for no reason.”
Bruno grimaced.
“Her father felt it best that I stop talking to her,” he said. “He felt like she would do better at school if I wasn’t here to constantly want her to come home. So when she called, I didn’t answer. And I was a dumb, impressionable kid. Poor as fuck. He offered me a lot of money to stay away.”
“Her father paid off a fuckin’ kid?” I asked.
“He did.” Bruno shrugged. “Kind of disappoints me how I acted now. I should have done better, but hell, I was young. Not many kids act smartly at that age. And it was a thousand bucks. That was huge for me. Lasted me for a long time. Almost until I could get a real job.”
“That explains why you stayed away from her when you were younger. Why did you continue to?” I pushed.
Bruno’s eyes went hard. “Because I became who you made me. And I didn’t want her involved in that shit.”
That was true.
I’d somewhat adopted Bruno when he was a shithead little eighteen-year-old and tried to steal my car. I say try, because he’d obviously done his research. He was very good. He just wasn’t me.
So, I’d caught him red-handed, roughed him up, and given him a couple of options. Learn some skills, hone them, and then put them to work, or let him rot in jail. He’d chosen me.
I’d sent him to the Army, which had then pissed him off.
He’d thought that I was going to personally teach him those skills, but there were just some things that you couldn’t learn without time spent on the skill. And what better way to get experience than learning it with a few friends along the way?
Except Bruno was different. Though he had friends he made along the way, he’d always been somewhat guarded.
I had no real idea of what happened with his home life but I could guess—bad father, hunger, anything that people did not want to deal with when they were any age—but if it was half as bad as I had a feeling it was, it was more than anybody should ever have to endure.
Needless to say, I could understand why he was standoffish.
But if Six had gotten in there, I had a feeling that she’d always stay in there.
And whatever Bruno was dealing with was something that would soon be pushed to the side because I could tell Six’s attitude, even over this short amount of time, annoyed him.
“I also taught you to rely on the people that mattered,” I said softly.
Bruno’s eyes blazed.
But he didn’t disregard my words.
“She means something to you,” I said.
He turned the tables almost instantly.
“She means something to you, too,” he countered.
She did.
And goddamn, I would not admit it, though.
In my business, women were looked upon as a weakness.
And Six definitely would be a weakness.
I didn’t even know her all that well, and she was already under my skin.
Just the thought of her upstairs, in my shower, smelling of me was doing weird things to my soul.
“That’s not what we’re talking about right now,” I said.
Bruno all but laughed.
“Six has a way of getting what she wants,” he said. “And if she wants you, she’s going to get you.”
“She didn’t get you,” I said.
His eyes went hard. “That’s because you taught me how to hide.”
Meaning, I could hide if I wanted.
But I wouldn’t.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I admitted. “Do you trust her not to talk?”
Bruno poured himself a glass of whiskey and thought about what he was going to tell me.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew her?” I asked.
He’d seen her at the party. And now it was making sense how he’d stayed away all those months ago. He didn’t want her to recognize him.
Still, Bruno didn’t speak.
“You’ve got to give me something, or I’m going to have to keep her here against her will. I’m not normally a kidnapper to this extent. I usually draw the line at decent human beings,” I told him.
Bruno’s eyes twitched.
“She won’t talk,” he said. “She’d never talk.”
“How do you know?” I asked, pushing.
“Because she watched me get my ass kicked for years, and never once said a thing to another living soul because I asked her not to,” Bruno finally said. “She’s solid. She won’t say anything. And she’s probably not all that freaked out about being kidnapped by you in the first place.”
I had a feeling his words were truer than he realized.
“Why is that?” I asked.
Bruno shrugged. “Ines…”
I stopped him. “You know she hates being called that, right?”
Bruno’s eye twitched again. “It was her name in school.”
“Every time you call her Ines, her eye twitches like she wants to rear back her fist and deck you right in the dick,” I told him.
“Ines… Six…” he sighed. “She’s not like normal girls.”
I knew that more than he knew.
“She had some learning disability in school. Not really sure what it was now that we’re older. She had a problem focusing. Time management was nil. The entire reason we started to hang out was because she was ostracized by our peers like I was. She had trouble focusing, remembering the shit that we learned the day before, and hell if she didn’t always say or do the wrong thing. We were two outcasts that found each other. I… Six is different, Lynn.”
Six was different. Really different.
And she was surprisingly refreshing, too.
“I know she’s different,” I said. “I want to know if I need to worry about her saying something, or if I can let her go.”
The door opened and Laric walked in with his dog.
He had that damn cat in his pocket as he walked, the cat looking for all he was worth as if he was having the time of his life.
“She won’t say a word,” Bruno promised. “This I swear.”
“Now, why didn’t you tell me that you knew them?” I repeated.
Bruno sighed. “Because I didn’t want her brought into this mess. She’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. Ivan could give two shits about her. He asked me to stay away from her not because he was worried for her, but because he knew that she would come back for me. He doesn’t like her. She’s too much like her mother.”
“Explain,” I said.
“Six’s mother was wild and free just like Six.”
CHAPTER 7
It’s not a walk of shame if you run.
-Six to Lynn
SIX
Today had been long, and even though I hadn’t intended to take a shower tonight, now that there was one available, I wanted one.
That, and I had a feeling that Lynn’s shower in this house would be badass.
I also had a feeling that Bruno wanted to talk to him, and he wouldn’t be able to do that with me there.
So, before he could dismiss me like the child he thought I was, I went
ahead and made up a reason to leave.
That’d been forty-five minutes ago.
Now I was freshly showered, had wet hair down to mid-back, and I was bored.
I’d sat down on the bed to upload a few videos to Instagram, but apparently not only was there no wi-fi at the house, but there was also no signal from the cell towers.
I’d tried to turn on the television, but had found out rather quickly that there was no television to be seen. Not in the room he’d tried to send me to or his own.
Which, might I add, was totally bare except for some shower accessories. Even the bed only had a sheet on it. No pillow or anything.
Which left me with nothing else to do but go down to the room I’d escaped from earlier.
I’d just made it to the first landing when low, deep male voices caught my attention.
I changed my course to where I could hear them—a room that was off the main room—when I heard my name mentioned.
I shouldn’t be eavesdropping.
I knew what happened when you snooped. You learned things you didn’t want to know.
Yet, I was, for all intents and purposes, being held against my will.
I needed to know what I’d gotten myself into, even if I didn’t like where I’d ended up.
Sneaking out of the room that Lynn had allowed me to use hadn’t been my intention, nor had coming down the stairs so quietly that they didn’t know that I was done with my shower. But his floors were brand new, and my feet had socks on them to keep the sound of my feet padding across the glossy concrete floors to a minimum.
Which then allowed me to walk right on up to the slightly open door without them tempering their voices in the least.
“I gotta be honest,” I heard Laric say. “You showing up with her at a function would’ve really waggled some tongues. It’s a good thing that you’re making that decision. Six is… out there.”
I felt my heart skip a beat at his words, and I waited for either Bruno or Lynn to defend my ‘out there’ but it never came.
“Her mother was like that, too,” Bruno said, breaking my heart just a little bit more. “It was like looking at a fairy princess. One that wasn’t of this world. She said and did things that you’d never, ever expect to come from a normal person’s mouth. I remember this one time that I walked Six home from school. Her mother was outside. Watering the lawn with a garden hose. She just sat there spraying it like one would a sprinkler. When I happened to ask why she didn’t just use a sprinkler, she said that she rather enjoyed watching the water spray.”
I remembered that, too. That was one of the very last memories that I had of her before she died.
That’d also been the very first time that Bruno had walked me home. I was kind of sad that he was talking ill of my dead mother, though.
There were a lot of things that I did that were exactly like her.
Which made my back stiffen.
“You sound like you cared for her.” Lynn’s deep voice startled me.
“I did,” Bruno agreed. “She was much nicer than her dad. But I could never really understand the connection they had. Not until I was older. An adult. She was very pretty and did what she was told very well. She didn’t have much of a mind of her own. Which apparently is what Ivan needed out of his wife.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
And I couldn’t listen to what they had to say anymore.
At least, I hadn’t planned on it.
Just as I turned to walk away, Laric chimed in.
“So is Six like that?” Laric asked. “Because she does seem a little wild and carefree.”
“Six is Six,” Bruno said. “She lives life to the beat of her own drum. Sometimes that means that she doesn’t use her common sense. I wouldn’t say she’s like her mother, though. At least Six is very much aware of the damage she can inflict when she does things. She just doesn’t care. She was a stupid kid, but she was sweet.”
It was good to know that Bruno felt that way when it came to me.
Stiffening my spine, I pushed through the door of what I assumed was Lynn’s office, taking in its occupants.
Lynn leaned against his desk holding a tumbler of amber liquid that was likely whiskey. He was now in jeans and a black t-shirt that fit him incredibly well, and he was wearing an all-black fitted hat that came down low over his eyes.
His head tilted and came to me.
God, he was breathtaking.
Laric and Bruno were both in the same clothes as earlier, both staring at the door in surprise.
Lynn, not so much.
I narrowed my eyes on Bruno. “I’m not sure how you know me as an adult. Maybe I’m not that same stupid kid anymore.”
Bruno winced. “Ines…”
“Don’t call me that,” I said through a completely even tone, then turned to Lynn. “You have no television, wi-fi, or signal. I need something to do or I’m going to start walking my happy ass out of here.”
Lynn’s lips twitched. “I have a television in the living room. And there’s no wi-fi because I haven’t set it up yet. All the equipment is there, I just need to have the company out to hook it up.”
I nodded. “Where is this ‘equipment’ at?”
He gestured to the corner of his office, a corner that I hadn’t seen until now.
Dismissing all of them, I started to open boxes.
There was silence behind me as I began setting things up.
I’d done this a half dozen times in a half dozen different places, and each of those times I’d had to do it myself because my impatience knew no bounds. Why the equipment arrived before the scheduled appointment, I didn’t know. But I always ended up saving myself a hundred-dollar set-up fee.
Which I did for Lynn in about ten minutes, too.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I hooked up to the wi-fi and grinned.
Without another word, I walked out and didn’t look back.
It wasn’t even an hour later that Lynn emerged from his office with the two men at his back.
Lynn walked toward me. Bruno and Laric went to the bar at my back.
I continued to play edit the video on my phone.
Lynn stopped close enough that he could see what I was doing.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding intrigued.
“Editing a video,” I said. “I need a shorter clip for my Instagram account. Too long and people lose interest.”
“You took that today?” he asked.
I turned the phone’s screen so that he could see it. “Yeah.”
He watched, his mouth forming into a grin when the baby deer stood up on wobbly legs.
“Cute,” he said. “People really watch that? That’s how you make money?”
I shrugged. “Mainly I make money off of the advertising between my Instagram and YouTube account. Pretty much, sponsors pay me to put an ad or sponsor a product. I have a lifetime supply of these boots.”
He looked at my boots, his mouth turning up at the corner.
“I can see how that would be important to you,” he teased.
The way his lips formed the words, paired with the low huskiness of his voice, had me squirming in my seat.
“Are you ready to go home?”
The surprise must’ve registered on my face because he chuckled, making my nipples peak at the sound of it.
Jesus, was there anything the man could do that wasn’t sexy as hell?
“I’m ready.” I stood up, my hand fisted tightly around my phone.
His eyes took me in. “Don’t betray me, Six.”
I looked up into his downcast eyes, something close to defiance steeling my spine at his words.
“I don’t know what you think I would do or say,” I admitted quietly. “I don’t even talk to anybody but Wyett. And didn’t you say that you would feed me?”
Lynn’s lips twitched at the corner. “I did.”
“Then you can do that on the way to dropping me off at my car since you ruined my campin
g.” I shoved my phone into my front pocket.
His eyes went to the phone that was sticking halfway out.
“You should put that in your back pocket,” he said, eyes missing nothing.
“No,” I said. “What they should do is give women full pockets instead of this bullshit. I mean, I have room for full pockets.”
His eyes turned to look at my pants. He took in the way my hands only went halfway into the shittiest pockets in the world.
“Can you get your whole hand in your pocket?” I wondered.
He shoved his hand into his pocket. All the way up to his wrist.
“I don’t understand why a woman’s pocket is any different from a man’s. I mean, I seriously could use the space that it would provide. Now all I can do is carry half my phone, Chapstick, and maybe a set of car keys if I take all the extra key chains off. How fair is that?” I looked at him. “I’ll bet you can fit half the world in those pockets.”
As if to prove that he didn’t actually carry around half the world, he dumped his pockets, showing me everything that he carried in there before pulling away.
I looked at the sheer amount of shit he’d pulled out of his pockets. Two cell phones, both the same size as mine. A wallet. A set of keys that had more than the normal amount of keys on them. A small gun that was the size of a tri-fold wallet. A larger gun as big as two of my hands. The brass knuckles that he’d used to beat that guy with earlier. Chapstick, a cigar, and finally a pocketful of random bullets and a toothpick.
“That’s kind of a small gun,” I found myself saying. “And that’s a lot of stuff to have in your pockets. That gun looks like you couldn’t even take down a fly.”
I mean, it was the cutest little baby gun that I’d ever seen.
“It’ll take down what I need it to,” he murmured, shoving everything back into place. “And you’re right. I don’t know what to tell you about your pockets, though. Maybe start shopping where they give you full pockets instead of those jokes that particular brand of apparel considers as ones.”
Amusement tinted my voice as I said, “It’s not just this particular brand. It’s all brands.”
He tilted his head toward the front door. “Come. I’ll take you to your car.”
“How do you know where my car is?” I asked. “Maybe I was dropped off.”
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