Sebring

by Kristen Ashley

  The door opened.

  Georgia started in.

  Dad pulled the trigger.

  Nair’s head exploded.

  He just had to pull out his .45.

  I closed my eyes, swallowed the sick that surged up from my gut, turned back to the window and dropped my phone hand.

  “Seriously?” Georgia asked, not hiding her exasperation. “Our cleaning bill is out the roof already.”

  “Reschedule,” Dad barked. “And clean that shit up.”

  I opened my eyes and stared through the grime at the parking lot.

  “Olivia?” Dad called.

  I turned my head his way. He was now close to the door.

  He held my gaze and nodded, seemingly communicating something weighty, like for some reason he was proud of me.

  I felt my flesh crawl.

  Dad turned away, walked out and slammed the door behind him.

  I looked back out the windows.

  I then heard Georgia say, obviously into her phone, “Yeah, Gill. Call Henrietta. Get some heavy duty bags. Clean up on aisle five.”

  I sighed.

  “Liv,” she called to me.

  I looked to my sister.

  She had a hip hitched, her phone up in front of her face, her eyes to it, thumb moving on her screen.

  “How’re you fixed for next Thursday?” she asked.

  Good God.

  My family.

  * * * * *

  Nick

  5:38 – That Evening

  Jogging down the stairwell to get to the underground parking lot of his building, Nick made his fourth call to Olivia that day.

  He was concerned.

  It was his third call, the first, that morning, she’d answered. The last two that afternoon, she had not. But he’d also texted three times, all that afternoon, and none of those she’d answered.

  He had no ears at that warehouse.

  And he had a leak.

  She had a meeting that afternoon at that warehouse.

  She worked with vipers.

  And she was his.

  They found that out, they’d strike.

  He had no choice but to let her go to work every day with that threat hanging over their heads, a threat she didn’t fully understand.

  But with his access cut off to the House of Shade, and Sylvie and Creed just back from Phoenix and on the job, Nick was keeping closer tabs on his woman.

  So yeah, she didn’t reply, he got worried.

  Now, with spotty reception, he felt relief when she answered. He also immediately decided to put a man on her, everywhere she went, unless she was with Nick.

  “Sebring,” she said in greeting.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she answered.

  He jogged faster. “What’s happening?”

  “Not for the phone,” she stated, her voice breaking up as he got deeper underground, but he heard her.

  Fuck.

  She knew her cell wasn’t tracked. He’d told her after his boys went over it.

  She still had something she couldn’t say on the phone.

  Fuck.

  He pushed through the door. “I’m coming home. Where are you?”

  “Sucking back melon shit and vodka at your bar.”

  “Be there in twenty.”

  “All right, sweetheart.”

  He disconnected, got in his car and probably pissed off a fuckload of people as he made the thirty-minute, rush-hour drive to his place, doing it in twenty.

  He jogged up his steps taking them two at a time.

  He pulled open the door, shut it behind him, bolted it and strode swiftly into his unit to see her at his bar, tight skirt still on, high heels kicked off, the evidence of her recent activities littering his kitchen, hand wrapped around a green drink.

  “I’m cooking and you can’t argue since it’s mostly done,” she declared.

  It smelled awesome which probably meant each bite was going to shave a year off his life.

  “You’re home early,” he noted, making his way to her.

  “Even though my father thinks he owns me, I do tend to be allowed to make my own hours. So today, I gave myself the afternoon off to go to the grocery store, get the provisions and beat you here to start cooking because our monthly meeting about the family business was postponed due to unexpected circumstances.”

  He stopped close and she tipped her head back to keep hold on his gaze.

  Watching her hair glide off her shoulders and fall down her back, seeing how soft her slim-fitting sweater looked up close, having her mouth right there, he wanted to kiss her.

  But he didn’t quite get what was in her eyes.

  “What’s makin’ you not really okay, Livvie?” he asked quietly.

  “I have good news and…I think…good news,” she announced.

  He felt his head jerk.

  Then he warned her he was losing patience by saying, “Liv.”

  “My guess is that you know Drake Nair.”

  Nick felt his body go solid.

  He knew Nair.

  He knew Nair as an adversary of his brother’s.

  He also knew Nair as a total and complete asshole.

  He further knew Nair was mixed up with the human trafficking business that got Hettie dead.

  Last, he knew in all the getting to know you and figuring things out he and Olivia had been doing between fucking and just being together, he’d not figured out how to explain he intended to destroy her father, kill a family henchman and he’d first met her through carefully planned machinations because he intended to use her to start that plan in motion.

  What he did not know was why Olivia seemed aloof while bringing Nair up out of the blue.

  “Yes,” he confirmed tightly. “I know Nair.”

  “Well…” she flipped out a hand, “he’s dead.”

  Nick stared at her.

  “Say again?” he asked.

  “Around about the time he told Dad that when Valenzuela chewed him up and spit him out then put me on the auction block and Nair was going to buy me, come all over me and then put me out for sale, Dad blew his head off with his .45. He could have picked his nine millimeter, which would have been far less messy. But Dad doesn’t do the clean up or even order it, so he doesn’t mind messy.”

  Nick felt the muscle jump in his cheek as his hands formed fists.

  Although stunned at the suddenness of it when Nair had been a pain in the ass for a fucking long time, Nick was not at all pissed Nair was dead.

  The guy was a dick. He’d fucked with Knight in seriously shitty ways. And he was a memory that Nick didn’t like having since Nick had used the man back when he was an asshole to try to drive his brother and his woman apart.

  But he was pissed because he felt grateful to Vincent Shade for taking him out due to all of those reasons but especially because Nair spouted that shit in front of Nick’s woman.

  And he was pissed because he didn’t like feeling grateful to Vincent Shade at all.

  “A rare, as in unique demonstration of fatherly affection,” she declared, lifting her drink and taking a sip. She went on after she lowered it again. “That being said both in terms of it as the first demonstration of fatherly affection I remember in, I don’t know…ever and blowing a man’s head off with a .45 is just a jacked-up, crazy, lunatic way to demonstrate affection.”

  “Are you okay?” Nick asked, his voice still tight.

  “Yes,” she answered casually. “I was far enough away. No blood or brain matter hit me.”

  “Livvie,” he whispered, his warning gentle this time that her bullshit needed to stop.

  “Who does that?” she whispered back and he saw it happening deep in her eyes.

  She was losing it.

  Nick shifted closer.

  “Georgia just called Gill, ordered a cleanup and asked when we could reschedule our meeting. Now who does that?” she asked.

  He lifted both hands and framed her face.
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  “Nair was awful,” she said. “Everyone knows he’s awful. But now he’s dead and I’m just supposed to go to the grocery store and go home and make dinner and that’s it?” She shook her head in his hands. “A man is dead.”

  “Livvie—”

  She lifted her hands too, curling them tight around either side of his neck.

  “I don’t want this to be my life,” she whispered fiercely. “But now, I don’t want it in your life. Don’t you see? Don’t you see now why I can’t do this? Why I can’t have you? Why I can’t have anybody?”

  Before he could react to that, as in put a stop to where she was heading, she let him go, pulled out of his hold, jumping off the stool and taking a big step away. Throwing an arm out wide to take in his kitchen, she kept talking.

  “Honey, I’m home,” she called out sarcastically. “Oh good, sweetheart. Taco extravaganza for dinner and, oh, by the way, this afternoon, Dad murdered someone in front of me.”

  “Liv—”

  She bent toward him, the movement so abrupt it appeared painful.

  “That’s insane,” she hissed.

  “Baby—”

  She leaned back. “And what do you do? You can’t call the cops. Or you can. Then, as retribution, my dad makes you dead or I’m dead or your brother’s dead or the mother of his children is dead or—”

  He took two strides to her, yanked her in his arms and ordered, “Livvie, stop.”

  She held herself stiff then sagged so deep he had to take most of her weight.

  “We can’t do this,” she said into his chest.

  “I’m getting you out,” he declared.

  She went stiff again.

  Then her head jerked back and she asked, “What?”

  “I’m getting you out.”

  “Nicky,” she whispered, her hands coming up, going into his jacket and curling into his shirt at the sides of his waist.

  She did that but said no more.

  His family called him Nicky when he was a kid. He loved it until it was the time in a boy’s life to hate it. No one had used that name for years. Decades.

  He loved it again from Olivia.

  “I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, I’m just gonna do it,” he stated. “I’m gonna do it so you’re safe, I’m safe. Everyone’s safe. No worries. Just free. You just gotta give me the time to figure it out. And as much as I’d like to see that happen right now and do that by callin’ the cops and lettin’ them know your dad committed homicide today, I’m thinkin’ my plan’s gotta be more intricate than that. So we brave it out, suck it up, eat taco extravaganza, whatever the fuck that is, and I’ll get you safe as soon as I can.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible,” she replied.

  “I am,” he returned quickly and firmly.

  Her eyes registered surprise.

  Then her mouth whispered, “You believe that.”

  “Absolutely.”

  It took a few beats. It came slow.

  But that was when pure beauty entered her gaze.

  “Why is it that you believing makes me believe?” she asked in her gorgeous, delicate voice.

  “Because I’m the man who’s gonna eat taco extravaganza, whatever the fuck that is, just because you made it. I’m also the man who’s gonna put the effort into making you come for me after, more than once, even though it’s highly likely taco extravaganza is gonna sit in my gut like an anvil. And I’m also the man who knows every day I wake up you mean more to me than you did the day before. And I’m the man who knew you meant a fuckuva lot to me yesterday, so you meaning more today means everything. And I’m the man who’s got two priority missions. To get you free of a life you hate and to get you to a place that you smile, frequently and easily.”

  The beauty in her green eyes didn’t leave.

  But it did get watery.

  So Nick had no choice but to lift a hand to her cheek so he could catch the wet that leaked out with his thumb.

  “Right, that’s why you believing makes me believe,” she said, again with that soft, sweet, gorgeous voice. A princess voice. His princess’s voice.

  “That’s why,” he confirmed.

  Wet leaked out of her other eye where he didn’t have a thumb to catch it. Seeing as he didn’t want to take his arm from around her, he had no choice but to sweep it away with his lips.

  This he did.

  She slid her arms around his middle and held tight.

  Since he was there, he dropped his forehead to hers.

  She took in a deep breath that hitched.

  He just stayed close.

  She got it together.

  He pulled away a couple of inches but only to look toward the kitchen.

  He did a quick inventory and looked back.

  “An entire bottle of French dressing?” he asked.

  “Trust me,” she answered.

  “Boxed mac ‘n’ cheese?” he went on.

  “Trust me.”

  “What is taco extravaganza?” he asked dubiously.

  And then it happened. A moment he knew he’d never forget. Not in his life.

  She gave it to him.

  Open and out there and once it was, for the first time, it didn’t fade away.

  She smiled as she repeated, “Sweetheart, trust me.”

  Oh yeah.

  Fuck yes.

  She owned him.

  He’d never been owned.

  Not even by Hettie.

  But he was hers. All hers.

  Olivia’s.

  He knew it in that instant because he also knew in that instant he’d do anything, absolutely anything, beg, borrow, steal, kill, crawl, lie, cheat, die, eat taco extravaganza…

  All just for her smile.

  * * * * *

  8:58 – That Night

  Her cheek to his thigh, his hand in her hair, she was flat out on the sofa at his side while he had his feet up on the coffee table and they were watching TV when he heard Knight’s car.

  “He’s here, Liv,” he muttered.

  “Pause, honey,” she muttered back.

  He paused the program and she pushed up.

  She’d brought the groceries.

  She’d also brought a bag and was now casual in soft, black, loose-fitting drawstring pants and a gray ribbed tank.

  “I’ll start the dishes,” she said.

  “Help when I get this done,” he replied.

  She reached out to touch his collarbone through his tee before she glided to the kitchen, no less graceful in bare feet.

  He went to the door, turned the bolt and slid it open.

  He walked out to the landing, sliding the door closed behind him, seeing his brother nearing the top.

  “Not feelin’ big on this habit you’re gettin’ of summoning me,” Knight stated, still two steps down.

  “Livvie’s here,” Nick replied.

  “And?” Knight prompted when he hit the landing and stopped.

  “And until shit is sorted, I got the opportunity to be close and bein’ that, know she’s safe when every day I gotta suck it up when she goes to work for those lunatics, I’m takin’ it.”

  Some of Knight’s irritation faded.

  “Wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important,” Nick went on. “And would tell you over the phone if I could risk it.”

  “I gotta get to the club so you wanna lay it on me?”

  “Vincent Shade murdered Drake Nair today.”

  Knight’s head jerked back before he ordered, “Repeat that.”

  “After I got her through freakin’ out that her bein’ in my life means this kind of shit bein’ in my life, she briefed me. Nair was with Shade to try to get him to partner up, percentage off the backs of your girls when he takes them over after he takes you out. To make that sting, he had plans of putting a hit on me. Shade didn’t feel like taking up that offer. Nair got ugly. Shade shot him in the face with a .45.”

  “Jesus,” Knight whispered.

  “Good news is, that recu
rring headache is done for you.”

  Knight watched him closely. “Any bad news?”

  “Mention of the Feds which confused her, though not enough for her to snoop around to find out what it means. She doesn’t much care what her dad did or does outside of the fact she hates all of it. But even though she now knows my end game is to get her clear of that mess, she doesn’t know how that game started. So it’s good she isn’t snooping around because not only have I not figured out how I’m gonna get her clear, I haven’t figured out how to tell her how that game started.”

  “Fuck, Nick,” Knight muttered.

  “You got any ideas?” Nick asked.

  “No, brother,” Knight answered quietly. “Feel for you on that. That’s gonna be an uncomfortable conversation.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Nick mumbled.

  “Advice, sooner rather than later,” Knight said.

  “Right,” Nick mumbled that too. He drew in breath, looked to the door and then looked to his brother. “You wanna meet her?”

  Knight’s focus intensified. “Absolutely.”

  It was the perfect moment. She knew Knight was coming. She knew why. She had to figure Nick wouldn’t keep him out in the cold. And Knight couldn’t stick around so Olivia didn’t have to be on the spot for long.

  The first meet over, the next would go easier.

  He slid open the door, and if the sound it made wasn’t enough of a warning, he called out, “Babe, you wanna say a quick hi to Knight before he has to take off?”

  If Nick had to guess, he would have said she’d ice over. Stone-cold. Polite, definitely, but distant in her princess way that might be borderline insulting.

  He was shocked as shit when she walked from the kitchen toward them, her hands engaged in rubbing a dishtowel to dry them, doing this almost obsessively, her eyes on Knight, the wide hems of her pants too long.

  She tripped, fortunately close so when she went flying, he could lunge and catch her before she hit the deck.

  The dishtowel floated to the floor as she latched on to him and he brought her up straight and close, her head jerking back to look at him, her face beautiful and horrified.

  No stone-cold princess there.

  “Shit, fuck,” she whispered.

  No stone-cold princess there either.