But I don’t know enough. Not yet, despite what my dad showed me over the summer.
My stomach rolls and I force the box to close. If I spiral in the woods, I won’t make it back to the house.
And I have to make it back, because Jeremy is counting on me for sunrise at the marina. I help him out with maintenanceand lawn care and machinery when I’ve done all the work I need to for the week, and besides, runs are at night anyway. I don’t necessarily need all these jobs, but I can’t be bored.
If I’m bored, I get destructive.
And no one wants me to be destructive.
But it’s not only boredom that can eat at me.
I think of anger, the girl I made cry, the moment I swore I wouldn’t drag another woman into my mess ever again.
Stop.
I need to focus on this text and not the woman and how she reminded me of another one I’m doing my best to forget.
I frown in the dark and recount all the deals I’ve made over the last few weeks. Too many to count, really. I scored an entirely new customer base in a gated subdivision half an hour from here because my dad introduced me to the CEO who lives on the street. I have a boss I have to report to, Franklin, but he’s got one too, and on and on. Yet they all know Hawthorn Leary and even though the only similarities between our businesses are that they’re illegal, the paternal connection still works in my favor when it comes to earning respect.
To say my bank account is looking healthy is an understatement.
And there’s the new drug my chemist, Grey, is working on, but it hasn’t gone out yet because I sampled it last week and nearly lost my fucking mind. Ever since, I’ve been more edgy and paranoid, my fingers too twitchy, and I can’t seem to keep my hand off my gun or my mind off the summer night in the hotel with Dad and the other man.
No, everything else I’ve dealt with has been pretty standard, and I don’t cheat people of their money and I don’t put my nose where it doesn’t belong. I recently acquired a warehouse but those operations are normal. For my world, anyway.
Fuck it.
I decide to bite the bait. The person called me “Wolf.” They know enough already.
How’s that?
I send the text at the exact moment I hear the snap of a branch at my back.
Tense, I grit my teeth, push my phone in the pocket of my pants, and reach for the gun I rarely ever go without now tucked into the back of my waistband as I turn.
It’s hard to see much at all in the thick of the woods; better luck looking straight up with the light from the stars, but the noise was from a few feet level with me.
I curl my finger light as a feather on the trigger as my pulse ticks heavy in my head.
I blink a few times to clear my vision and help my eyes adjust to the darkness which seems heavier from this vantage point.
There’s nothing.
Nothing I can see, anyway
No need for all that.My dad’s voice in my head, and it’s exactly what the man who has enough ammunition to power a small country’s army would say to me.
But ever since the maroon hotel room…
Bile churns at the back of my throat.
I don’t need therapy and I don’t need help and I know everyone would say otherwise but all I need is to keep. Fucking. Moving.
It was probably an animal, and I should’ve known that in the first place. I’m in the middle of the woods for fuck’s sake.
But the tension and the fear and the nausea, they don’t leave easily.
I press the back of my hand to my temple, gun still clenched between my fingers.
