Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
What we wouldn’t learn until later was that the man hadn’t just stopped at saying the bid. He’d said who’d placed the bid.
It wasn’t until that next morning when we became aware of the consequences of that man’s actions.
And fuck me, but I was stuck at work while she had to deal with it.
Twenty-Two
I have to succeed because I like expensive shit.
—Searcy’s secret thoughts
SEARCY
It was the first night that I’d slept alone in weeks.
It was awful.
I’d gotten so used to sleeping next to that hard, male body that I tossed and turned for hours before finally giving up and picking up my laptop to get some work done.
I hadn’t stopped working.
What I had done was become pickier with who I chose as a client.
I’d started looking through social media profiles, too, to make sure that I wasn’t signing up for some crazy author that liked to trademark universal words like ‘alpha.’
That author that had tried to copyright the word had so much backlash that people stopped buying her books. Which in turn caused her to want to pull out of her contract with me.
In the end, there wasn’t much I could do but send her the invoice and hoped she paid.
Newsflash, she hadn’t.
And she still used my cover.
But since I was poor, I couldn’t afford to fight her on it, so I’d had to let it go.
Well, as much as I could let it go.
I was a salty bitch, and though I’d forgiven, I’d never forget.
After pulling up my next client’s information, I got to work on her dream book cover.
It was two hours into my work when I heard it.
A solid banging on the front door.
I frowned and got off the bed, reaching for my pants.
After getting fully dressed, I headed for the door, my trusty baseball bat in my hand.
“Who is it?” I asked through the closed door.
“You know who the fuck it is,” Taryn growled. “Open this door, right now!”
My heart leaped into my throat.
Why would he be at my place?
“I’m not opening this door,” I disagreed. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving!” he bellowed. “You stole millions from me!”
My belly somersaulted.
“I called the cops,” Kent announced from behind me. “You need to leave or they’ll make you leave.”
I pulled out my phone and went to text Posy, but the door was kicked open in the next second and I was dropping my phone to swing my bat.
That’s when the chaos started.
Kent picked up his own bat and yelled at him, meanwhile I got in a ready stance and said, “You make one single move over this threshold, and I’m seriously taking you out.”
He pulled a gun out of his pants and aimed it at me, and I felt true fear slither down my spine.
I couldn’t win with a bat when he had a gun.
A loud whirrup filled the air, and I’d never been more thankful that the cops were so damn nosy at night than I was right then.
He shoved the gun back in his pants and went down the steps, and I knew damn well and good as soon as I saw who the cop was that this wasn’t going to go in my favor.
“Shit,” I grumbled.
It was the same cop that’d victim blamed Calliope a few days ago. The state trooper of the group.
He walked up the length of the sidewalk and took everyone in.
Me dressed in sleep pants and a baggy t-shirt of Koda’s, Kent standing behind me in thin shorts and nothing else.
But his eyes lit behind me, and I knew he saw Calliope.
Shit, shit, shit.
They narrowed on her and he said, “What’s going on here?”
“This man just threatened us with a gun and broke my door down.”
The cop rolled his eyes. “I doubt that is what happened.”
And that was exactly why I didn’t like cops.
I never got the chance to call Posy.
Not when I was escorted down to Decatur Police Department and sat in a room for hours.
I was sure that the kids would find a way to tell Posy, but he’d have to come home for that to happen, and his shift wasn’t supposed to end until tonight at seven.
And I’d been in this empty room, in the uncomfortable chair, for hours.
They hadn’t allowed me to call my lawyer, either.
Hell, I didn’t even have my phone.
I was fuming, and it pissed me the hell off that Taryn had this good ol’ boy relationship with a few of the cops on Decatur PD that I was even in this situation in the first place.
I was counting ceiling tiles—which were in desperate need of replacing—when a sound of heels clicking on hard floor caught my attention.
I looked up just in time for the door to swing open so hard that it bounced on the wall.
Then came Malone.
Damn, she was getting a good workout with all the times I’d needed her lately.