“No transfers. I don’t want a trail, but I would not turn away a big stack of cash so I can pay off that loan from those loan sharks.” I shiver. “God, I was stupid.” I put my head on her shoulder. “Gavin was a walking red flag.”
“Only he wasn’t,” Cori says. “He hid behind that cute, nerdy exterior.”
“All the while, he was the biggest con who ever lived. After he took off, I called his job, and they said he hadn’t worked there in four months. And like a fool, I gave him rent money.”
“Well, the good news is, you know you were a fool, so you’ll make better choices.”
“And that does not include getting involved with that dark angel.”
Chapter 7
Rip
The house always wins. That’s what most degenerate gamblers can’t get through their head. I eye Dax from across the room. He’s in his element. Unlike most of these people, he knows his limits.
Besides, he knows how it would look to Brennan if he were to lose at these high-stakes games. As for me, I don’t gamble. That’s for stupid men who think they’re smarter than most. They’re not. If they were, they wouldn’t be here, throwing money away.
I don’t like gambling, and I don’t like Brennan. Something about him rubs me the wrong way. He’s too flashy. People who operate on the wrong side of the law, like we do, should blend in. But this guy is always the center of the universe.
He’s sitting in the middle of the room with two women on his lap while he eye fucks a third from across the room. Dax tosses in his cards and takes the chips. The other men at the table groan in protest, and he walks away.
“I’m leaving,” I say.
He nods, and he walks with me through the first floor of this mansion. Another flashy, gaudy building. Typical Brennan.
“How long are we going to do business with him?” I ask. I don’t bother saying his name or tilting my head in his direction. Dax knows I can’t stand that guy.
“Until it stops being lucrative,” he mutters.
And that’s all he’s going to say, so I drop it. He’s not wrong about it being lucrative.
We walk through the bottom floor. It’s decorated in gold and Egyptian décor. Too much gold. Fucking tacky motherfucker.
“I’m going home. Fuck this.” Dax walks me to my motorcycle. His sports car is next to my bike. He might drive flashy sports cars like a bat escaping hell, but he won’t get on a motorcycle. “Watch out for Brennan. I don’t trust him.”
No other words need to be spoken. Dax will work with Brennan until it stops making us money, but he’ll be cautious. As it stands, I have no reason not to trust the man, but my intuition is never wrong.
He’s passed our vetting. We don’t work with human traffickers, and we stopped working with drug dealers a few years ago. They bring the feds, and even though we are far removed and don’t engage in their daily operations, the feds are thorough and can find us. Brennan and his family are neither of those things, but there’s just something about him that gives me pause.
It’s not his arrogance. I deal with nothing but arrogant men. It’s not his philandering. It’s not how I do things, but it’s none of my business how another man chooses to live his life. It’s not that he’s a spoiled rich boy. There’s something else that I haven’t figured out yet.
Dax stands there until I ride out of his line of vision. It’s Friday night, and I want to be at home. The only thing I haven’t decided on is whether I want company before I go home.
It’s a cool night and barely ten o’clock. The highways are unusually quiet, but few people are headed to the small town of Shadow Cove. It’s one of the perks of living there. Dax has more than one residence in the area, including one in the city and one a couple of towns away from Shadow Cove.
He lives in plain sight, and few people know who he is or what he does. He sometimes works in the kitchen at Seven Heaven because he’s a weirdo who likes to wash dishes.
Instead of going down the abandoned street to the house I fixed with my bare hands, I head in the opposite direction. I haven’t seen her all week, which is what I wanted.
I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to hear her voice, and I sure as fuck don’t want to dream about her. However, the reality is that I want all of those things, and I hate myself for it.
I prefer to be alone, and I have been since I was twelve. That’s the year I lost my mother. My father shot her and shot himself, and after that, I went to live with my aunt, but her husband liked to use me as a punching bag. At least he did until I outgrew him and rearranged his face and broke his arm.
I was fifteen when that happened. My aunt placed me in foster care, where I stayed until I aged out. Two years later, Dax came into my life when I worked at one of his restaurants. I didn’t know then that it was a front for money laundering.
One night, a man with a gun came and threatened one of the waitresses. He was her abusive ex-boyfriend. While he had her cornered, I snuck up behind him and knocked the gun out of his hand. I punched him so hard that two of his teeth came out. I took the gun and pointed it at his head.
I kept seeing my father’s face, and the woman’s cries reminded me of my mother’s. Dax was there that night and talked me down. He took the gun from me, and when the police arrived, he stayed with me while I gave my statement.
