“I might have made a mistake,” I begin.
“Piggy?” he asks.
“I promised Millie she would have round-the-clock security. Which at the Gilded Room is fine, and when I’m not at work, I can handle. But I promised a member, and I know I probably shouldn’t have, but I did.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Bullet mutters. “But I understand why you did.”
“He’s here, and he’s looking for her. It’s only a matter of time before he finds her, and they’re bad news.”
“They?”
“The Barones. Shocker recognized the name and did a little digging into the past. His father was a mob boss, which I’m assuming means the son who's after Millie has taken his place as the big boss.”
“Fuck,” Bullet hisses. “And he’s here looking for Millie?”
I could keep the facts from him, but I decide against it. He’s my president, and he needs to know exactly what the fuck isgoing on and the dangers that could possibly be lurking. She definitely saw something she shouldn’t have, and then she ran, which makes him think she’s going to talk, which means she’s a liability.
“He’s here looking for Millie. He was in Thunder Rock, driving like a maniac. Funny enough, I pulled his ass over. That’s when I started asking questions. He was in a fancy car from Nevada. It was too coincidental.”
“Why is he looking for her?” Bullet demands.
I still don’t want to actually say it, but there’s no way around it. “She was out with him, and he met up with another car in the middle of nowhere. He killed three men right there in front of her while she watched from inside the car. Then he dragged their bodies off the side of the road. She doesn’t know why or who they were, but she knew that wasn’t a situation she needed to be in, so she ran.”
“And now she’s seen too much, and he’s going to get rid of her,” Bullet finishes the story.
“That’s my assumption anyway.”
“Fuck,” he hisses.
“Yeah. That’s about the long and short of it.”
Bullet clears his throat before he leans back in his office chair. I watch as he lifts his fingers, pressing them together in front of his lips as he stares straight forward. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me and thinking.
When he drops his hands, only then do his eyes find mine. “Can you give me your schedule for the month at the department?”
“I can.” I nod once.
“And you don’t want to put her in lockdown at the club?”
I do, in fact, want to do just that, but at the same time, it’s not something I think would make her happy. I’m pretty sure it would piss her off, and I don’t want to do that, at least not yet. Iwant her to stick around long enough that I can piss her off later, not right away. I don’t want her to take off on me again. I want her tethered to me.
“Not yet,” I say. “I don’t want her to feel like I’m taking over.”
Bullet chuckles. “I can see that, but you’re going to take over, aren’t you?”
“You know I am.”
“Good man,” he murmurs. “Get me the month’s schedule, and I’ll make sure there’s a prospect on those days you aren’t staying at her place. I assume you’ll be staying at hers when you’re not on duty. And when you’re on, a prospect will be at her apartment during the day?”
Dipping my chin in a single nod, I think about those words. I’m asking a hell of a lot for a woman who isn’t an old lady, and he’s giving it to me, but why? When I flick my gaze up to meet his, I see the question there.
“You want me to claim her?” I ask.
“A lot of resources for her, and she’s brought some possible shit to our door…”
Yeah. That’s the way I thought this would go. Shoving my hands in my front pockets, I ball my fingers into fists as I think about his words. About what they mean. Because they aren’t words to throw around, and he knows that better than anyone else.
But this is my second chance.
