The car idling in front of his apartment building, I turned to my future brother-in-law, and said, “You ever pull Devi into your shit ever again, I’ll kill you my-fucking-self, got it?”
“Hey, I told her-”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snapped, and he smartly complied. “I did a background check on the both of you after I gave her the money, you jackass. And reading through the reports, it’s obvious to anyone who can read, that Devi’s been cleaning up your messes for years, and it stops fucking now.”
The addict in him came out. “My relationship with my sister is none of your business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I shot back. “You’ve been bugging me about my intentions towards your sister since I showed up at your apartment, and guess what? My intentions are to keep her for the long haul, and I protect what’s mine, Keith. And that includes protecting Devi from her own brother if I have to.”
“I would never hurt Devi,” he lied, like a true addict.
“You hurt her every time you lose your job, place a bet, or snort some coke, you fucking punk,” I returned with no mercy. “You hurt her every time she’s forced to take care of her older brother because he can’t get his shit together.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole about it,” he bit out, knowing I was only speaking the truth.
“Get out of my car,” I told him before I beat him worse than he already was.
After he slammed the car door behind him, I pulled out my phone and called Atticus and filled him in on everything. And that included how I lost my mind the first time I saw Devi Westland. After baring my soul, I told him to call Xavier and fill him in because I had shit to do. I needed to get to Devi’s and make my intentions clear.
I also needed to tell her to stay the fuck away from Alvin Fischer.
Chapter 12
Devi~
Kim had dropped me off about half an hour ago, and I was kind of going crazy with not having heard from Keith or Cassius.
And Kim? Christ, she was my best friend, but the woman was different in that crazy, fun, wild, what-would-I-do-without-her kind of way.
After telling her all the details of insanity I was involved in, her main focus had been on whether I was going to jump Cassius’ bones or not. Never mind Keith’s gambling problem, Alvin Fischer’s attempts at extorting sex from me, the thirty-thousand dollars I had to pay back, or the fact that I had to deal with two different loan sharks all in one day. No. She wanted to know if I was going to get down and dirty with that hot piece of sex on a stick-her words, not mine.
And she had really gone all sorority-girl-high-pitched squeal when I had admitted I wanted to. And the crazy woman had been undeterred when I reminded her that it was probably not a good idea to sleep with a man you owed thirty-thousand dollars to.
And speaking of…
In a poor attempt to hold my crazy mind at bay, I grabbed my sad-looking laptop, got comfortable on the couch, and pulled up a budget spreadsheet. Even if I had to eat noodles for the next six months, there was no way I was going to default on my payments to Cassius, and I needed to create a projected budget to see what I was dealing with more clearly.
The terms of the loan were favorable if you were able to repay the loan quickly. But if you weren’t, that’s where the interest began to hit hard, and it grew weekly, not monthly. The interest also got higher the longer it took you to pay off the loan. While the first weeks were extremely low, and promising, after the second month, the interest spiked and just kept going up. And since there was no way I was going to be able to pay back thirty-thousand dollars in two months, I had to restructure my budget to be able to make the bulk of the payments within the first two months before the interest started nipping at my heels.
I wasn’t sure how long I was working on the spreadsheet before I heard a knock on my door. Thinking it had to be Keith or Cassius, I set my laptop aside and practically raced for the door. Swinging it open, only Cassius stood on the other side, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
“Keith?”
“I dropped him off at home,” he answered softly. “He’s safe, Devi.”
I let out a deep breath, and tears burned behind my eyes a bit before I got my shit under control. “Thank you,” I replied, and meant it with every fiber of my being.
Standing there, too gorgeous for words, he asked, “May I come in?”
I snapped out of my relief. “Of course.” I stepped back and let him in.
Glancing around, he noticed my open laptop on the couch. “What were you doing?”
I shut the front door, locking it out of habit, and tried not to grimace. “I was creating a budget to show the best way to pay you back as soon as possible.” His head jerked, and he actually looked surprised, but I supposed not a lot of his clients treated the exchange as professionally as I was doing.
“You were doing what?”
I shrugged, embarrassed all of a sudden. “From the application, I’m sure you already know I work as a waitress at The Opera, and while they pay well, I have to plan the payments out to where there’s no chance of defaulting on the loan you-”
