The door creaks open and someone enters. Behind me, Kadence’s fingers brush against mine. She jerks and strains to move closer. I can’t get over how calm, focused, and determined she is.
“Stop,” someone says. I can’t place the voice. Male. Not Deacon. “You can’t get loose.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Kadence snaps.
A light flicks on and I slam my eyes shut, groaning as pain pulses through my head.
“Shit. I can’t believe how much you look like your sister,” the guy says.
Hemi?
“How do you know my sister?” Kadence asks.
He snorts and pulls a stool up next to Kadence. Guy must think I’m still out of it, I guess. Because he completely ignores me.
Yup, don’t mind me, asshole. I’ll just be sitting here working my fingers under Kady’s ropes.
“Known her since we were little. She was everything to me.”
“Oh my God,” Kadence whispers. “You’re Logan? Her first boyfriend.”
“She told you about me?” The prick perks up, as if he assumes Karina confessed to her sister she was in love with him.
Kady hesitates before answering, so I’m guessing Karina didn’t share a warm, fuzzy story. “Yes.”
“She tell you anything else about me?”
“Ahh, a little.”
“Fuck. She still pissed at me for taking her on a road trip?”
If by road trip you mean kidnapping her…
Kadence doesn’t answer, which seems to agitate the kid.
“All I wanted to do was make things up to Karina. For breaking up with her the way I did.”
Tired of this bullshit pity party and eager to move the afternoon along, I join the conversation. “You sure went about it in the stupidest way possible.”
Hemi jumps up, sending the stool clattering to the floor, and stomps around to face me. I open my mouth, but he cracks me in the jaw before I get a word out. The tang of blood saturates my tongue. I spit at him. “Untie me, you fucking coward and try that again.”
“Blaise, please,” Kadence begs.
Hemi ignores me and circles back to Kadence. Fuckin’ pisses me off that I can’t see him now. If he touches her, I’m gonna dismember him. Slowly. I wiggle my fingers again, brushing the edge of Kady’s rope.
“The deeper I got in with the Bulls, the more I knew it wasn’t the life for Karina,” he explains. “I was trying to figure a way out. A way back—”
“Fuckin’ pussy,” I snarl. “You prospected for them for what, two years? You knew what you were gettin’ into. I remember you runnin’ security down at their strip joint. Remember you nailing plenty of bitches. A real man woulda been worrying about his girl, not slamming into every pussy thrown at him.”
“Fuck you,” Hemi yells, but doesn’t move in my direction. “I was earning money to get her out of her dad’s house.” He lowers his voice, seeming to focus only on Kadence. “Then Dante swooped in. I figured if I could introduce her to her sister, maybe she’d forgive me.”
“Why not just tell me this instead of all the cryptic texts and setting up that weird meeting?”
“I couldn’t do that, Kadence. Not when you were hooked up with the Dragons and I…you understand how dangerous that would have been?” The sound of him pacing reaches me, and I work harder at loosening Kady’s hands. We’re perfectly in sync. When I need her to pull, she pulls, all without drawing Hemi’s attention to what we’re doing. Hemi stops pacing and I drop my hands, waiting for his next move.
“He used her. You don’t want your sister with someone like him.”
“She loves him,” Kadence says gently.
