She nodded. “I’m fine. I have what I need.” She curled farther into Bax as he guided her down the steps and off to that wicked chrome-and-black monster of a car he drove. I swore when he started it up the engine sounded like a million demons roaring for release from their prison underground.
I wasn’t in the mood to go to class, but I had no excuse to skip when I had already missed so many, so I went, and found myself checking my phone every five minutes. Each time it came up blank it made my heart hurt. I didn’t have to work that night, so I went back to the condo, helped Karsen with her homework, made a simple dinner, and texted Race no less than five times to see where he was and to find out how he was doing. All went unanswered. I was worried, but I was also starting to get pissed. I watched some stupid reality dating show with Karsen, gave myself a pedicure, and paced back and forth until midnight came and went. I stared at my phone and at the zero calls and zero messages and decided enough was enough. I had no doubt Race was at the garage, he was suffering alone, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
I knocked on Karsen’s door and told her I was leaving for the night. She just gave me a knowing look and then went back to whatever she was doing on her phone. I think the poor thing had had enough of everyone else’s drama to last her well into her own adulthood.
I got to the garage and punched in the code on those steel security gates, relieved to see the Stingray in the spot where the Mustang used to sit. I opened the side door and practically ran up the metal steps into the loft. When I entered the big, open space I almost tripped over Race, who was sitting in the center of the floor, a half-empty bottle of Scotch in his hand, and his green eyes hot and glassy. I sank down to my knees next to him and took the bottle out of his hand.
“You promised to come home.”
His chest rose and fell and his tongue darted out to run along his lower lip. Even drunk and moody, he was the prettiest man I had ever seen. I reached out to cup his cheek in my palm and his eyes drifted shut and he turned to nuzzle into the touch.
“That ‘being there’ thing works both ways, handsome.”
“I feel like shit because I feel like shit.” His breath was high octane, but he wasn’t slurring, making me wonder how long he had been hitting the bottle. Maybe it had been an all-day event and he wasn’t really as inebriated as he seemed.
“What are you talking about?” I pulled the bottle out of his hand and ran my fingers through his hair. It always felt like gold silk.
“He wanted to kill Dovie. He was in Novak’s pocket. He cheated on my mom all the time and he cut me off without a thought. He was manipulative and so fucking heartless. He deserved to die, I was going to let Bax kill him if it came to that . . . but now . . .” His head fell forward on his neck and I saw his shoulder hitch up and then drop. “I feel terrible.”
I rubbed the back of his neck and tried to get some of the tension out. “He was your dad. Of course you feel terrible. It doesn’t matter how awful he was, he was still your father. You’re allowed to be sad about it, but what you aren’t allowed to do is try and take responsibility for it.”
His head shot up and he looked at me as I scooted over him so that I was sitting on his lap. He put his hands on my waist and lifted both of his eyebrows up at me.
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t your fault your dad turned on Novak’s guys to make a deal to save his own skin and it so isn’t your fault that Novak has more poison to spread around even though he’s long gone. Your dad ended up where he did because of his choices, not because of anything you did.”
He grunted and climbed to his feet, still holding me. Considering he didn’t stumble or stagger at all, I really doubted he was as drunk as I first thought.
“I know that, I just needed a minute and maybe you saying it out loud for it to sink in.” He headed to the foldout bed and tossed me in the center of it with far less finesse than he had been showing me since Drew’s attack. “And I was going to come home, I just had to sober up first and get my head back on straight. This is the kind of stuff that has no place there.”
Since he was standing at the edge of the bed looming over me, I reached up under his long-sleeved T-shirt and started to work it up over his always impressive torso. I would never get tired of seeing his abs flex and contract when I trailed my fingertips all along the dips and ridges.
“You’re wrong. I told you all along I want all of you; that includes this part of you. I get it, Race, you do what you have to do, not always what you want to do, but with me, that can’t be the case. I always have to be what you want to do, not what you have to do. You bring it home with you and we’ll battle through it together just like you told me.”
Since I had the top half of him naked, I decided I needed to get the rest of him that way as well. I reached for the button on his jeans and worked the zipper down, happy to see that even if he was feeling conflicted and melancholy, his always active sex drive wasn’t similarly affected. I worked my hands into the back of the fabric and gave his firm backside a squeeze while leering up at him.
He gave his head a rueful little toss and his dimple appeared and called to me. This time it was a real smile and that made my blood sing.
“You’ve been what I wanted to do since the beginning, Bry. How could you even question it?”
I wiggled a little closer so I could kiss him right over his heart and pushed his pants the rest of the way off of his hips. “Then come home so we can actually have sex in a bed and I can take care of you like you always take care of me . . . remember?”
He kicked his jeans off and stood before me in all his perfect gilded glory and lowered his head to give me the sweetest, most poignant kiss I had ever experienced. Any doubt I had lingering about how we were going to survive being together disappeared as our breath mingled together and I literally tasted his devotion on his smoky, Scotch-flavored tongue.
“All right, I’ll bring it home and we can wrestle around it together.”
I squeezed his biceps and squealed a little in surprise when he lifted me up and started to yank my pants down my legs. “I’m not scared.” I was breathless and my heart rate had kicked into overdrive.
His eyes shifted from moss to midnight and black velvet and the dimple got even more defined. I wanted to kiss it.
“Good.”
Impatient hands that were rough got the rest of my clothes off and finally, finally the Race I was used to going to bed with was back. His touch burned, his mouth was everywhere and left marks in its wake, and he used dirty words and pulled my hair. It was awesome and oh so welcome. He made me whimper, he made me gasp, and he made me scream his name over and over when he put his mouth between my legs and wouldn’t let up until I was breaking all apart over his thrusting tongue and stroking fingers. I thought I was spent, thought he would crawl up over me and sink inside to ride us both to a soft and mutually satisfying end, but Race was keyed up, on fire, and had other plans in mind for me. I told him I wasn’t scared and he was going to make me prove it.
His fingers dug into my hips as he turned me over on a soft gasp and pulled me to the edge of the bed. He situated me where he wanted me on my hands and knees while he stood behind me and bent to drop a kiss on the bowed curve of my spine. One of his hands twisted in the short cap of my hair at the back of my head and the other skipped across my hip and dipped back between my legs where I was still tender and sensitized from his earlier ministrations.
It made me whisper his name and then choke on it when he suddenly thrust inside of me without any kind of preamble. In this position I could feel every inch of him ripple and flex as he moved inside of me. He felt huge, felt powerful and unhinged, as he moved behind me. That, combined with the stroking, gliding motion of his fingers, and there was no way I was going to last very long.
“Race!”
He grunted, pulled my hair a little tighter, and I really tried not to get lost in the sound of skin smacking skin and the way his heady motion was making my
arms shake. I felt pleasure start to uncoil at the base of my spine, heard him swear and say my name on repeat. Just as my arms gave out because my orgasm was just that strong—just that consuming—Race grunted and then groaned and let go of his caveman hold on my hair as he folded over my collapsed form. I felt his lips brush back and forth along the back of my neck and his hands run up and down my sides as they fluttered while I tried to find my breath.
“Thanks for coming after me.”
I thought back to me begging him not to leave me when they were taking me to the hospital and told him the opposite of what he had told me, even though it meant the same thing. “Always.”
He rolled off of me and pulled me onto his chest and rubbed his chin across the top of my head.
“I thought we weren’t a good bet, but now I would go double or nothing on us any day.”
I pinched his taut skin right above his ass and told him, “How about you don’t bet on us at all because you know we’re just going to be a sure thing?”
He chuckled, which made his chest rumble under my cheek.
“I love you, Brysen. You keep me me.”
“I love you, Race, whoever you have to be and who you are.”
There was no more probably about it, and there was no doubt we were going to survive it, even if the Point was going to continually test us along the way. I was ready to give that bitch a run for her money if she thought she was going to take my man from me.
Chapter 20
Race
THIS CITY WAS WHAT the Point would be if it was clad in stripper shoes, whore-red lipstick, and then coated in glitter and sequins. The neon lights and ringing bells were annoying and alluring, and the aimless tourists, so willing to hand over their money, that flooded every sidewalk and spilled out of casino doorways made my skin crawl. To me gambling, risk taking, wagering good money, wasn’t a joke, and this place had turned what I did in back alleys and on the streets into a family activity that people were taking entirely too lightly for my peace of mind. I couldn’t wait to get back home, which surprised me. Who would’ve ever thought there would come a time in my life when I wanted to rush back to the Point?
I cut a look at Brysen, who was taking in the entire setting of the ghastly strip club we were standing outside of with a puckered mouth and a frown. I don’t know if it was the location or what we were here to do that had such a sour look stamped on her pretty face. Hell, maybe it was both. When I told her where I was going and what the plan was, I had expected her to get upset and ask me not to leave. She had surprised me by asking to come along and telling me she wanted to be the one to lay it all out on the table for my latest target. At first I had refused, but when she explained it was the last step in closing all the doors to the past, I relented. I made her promise no less than a hundred times that she wouldn’t leave me, wouldn’t hate me if things went south and I had to get physical. She just looked at me like I was stupid and told me that she was always going to be on Team Race and that I needed to get over myself. So we packed Karsen off to Bax and Dovie’s for a long weekend and hit the road.
Booker offered to keep an eye on the younger Carter, but she was still giving him puppy-dog eyes and fawning over him in a way that was going to be trouble as soon as she was old enough for him to forget that she was just a kid.
“You ready for this?”
Brysen’s baby blues flickered to me, then to the door, and she nodded stiffly. “Let’s just finish it.”
I kissed her on the center of the forehead and then put my hand on her lower back as we walked inside. It was miles away from the District. This was like the Disneyland of strip clubs and it almost made me want to laugh. It was all for show and it was obvious the dancers were here for a quick buck and a cheap thrill, not for survival like the girls in the Point.
The man we were here to see wasn’t at one of the tables by the stage or in one of the velour booths off to the side. Nope, he was sitting at the bar with his head bent over a rocks glass. He didn’t look up when Brysen sat on the bar stool next him as I hovered off to the side over his shoulder, ready to step in if she needed me.
Brysen turned in the seat and shook her head when the bartender asked her if she wanted anything. Finally the man looked up at her and I saw shoulders tense and then fall in rapid succession. “Brysen.”
“Dad.”
Brysen’s dad visibly started at the sound of her soft voice.
“I’m here to give you an out, Dad. Race brought me here to offer you one shot, one chance, and if you don’t take it . . . well, then whatever happens next is all on you.” She made a disgusted noise low in her throat and met my gaze as I watched her over the top of his head. “I’m fine, by the way, and so is Karsen. Mom will be getting out of her program soon, and I’ll be encouraging her to file for divorce just in case you were wondering what’s going on with your family.”
He looked like the weight of her words hit him like a physical blow and he slumped even farther over his drink.
“I don’t have the money. I just don’t.” He sounded dejected and pathetic. I saw Brysen roll her eyes.
Interesting he mentioned money since this fancy strip club wasn’t cheap, but I wasn’t going to point that out unless I had to.
“You’re pathetic. You poisoned Mom, you lost everything we had. You used me, and when it came time to pay for your mistakes, instead of facing them like a man, you ran. What kind of moron thinks they can hide from a bookie? Jeez, Dad, don’t you think everyone who can’t pay up runs? Race wouldn’t be very good at his job if he just let them go, now, would he?”
Brysen sighed heavily and told him in a tone that held no room for negotiation, “I want you to understand that this offer has nothing to do with me or Karsen. Frankly, I would like nothing more than to see you suffer just a fraction of the way you made the rest of us suffer the last year.”
He just gazed at his drink almost like he couldn’t hear her speaking. I leaned my elbow on the bar on the other side of him and lifted an eyebrow at him when he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Better listen to her or this conversation moves outside with me.”
He gulped and looked back at his daughter.
Brysen understood that he owed well over three hundred thousand dollars, and by now, the interest on that had to be up over 75K. There was only one way to make it back and that was the same way that he had lost it—gambling.
“Nassir and Race are looking into setting up an offshore site. Online gaming that can’t be traced back to us and that can’t be shut down like a physical location. I’m talking high-stakes, no-holds-barred online gambling. The buy-in is gonna start high at a hundred K per seat. Race has a guy working on the security aspect of it, making it untraceable and making sure the funds are invisible, but he doesn’t want him to waste time with the actual programming of the site. That’s where you come in. Build it, run it, and the guys are willing to give you a cut after your debt is clear. Be mindful that it’s your neck that’ll be on the line if the feds hack into it, Dad. This is your one shot to get out from under your own stupidity.”
Her dad turned his head and looked between us with consideration. “What kind of cut would I get?”
Maybe I would crush his ball sack just for fun. I gritted my back teeth and narrowed my eyes at him. I answered because Brysen just looked disappointed and disgusted. “Ninety–ten.”
He made a choking sound in his throat. “Sixty–forty.”
I pushed off the bar and inclined my head toward the door. “Let’s go, Bry. This was a wasted trip.”
She swung her long legs off the stool and rose to come over to my side. She shook her dad’s hand off when he reached out for her. He scrambled to say, “Eighty–twenty is fair after the debt is paid.”
We had a stare-down for a long minute until I begrudgingly agreed. “Fine.”
I started for the door with Brysen in front of me and told him, “You will stay away from Brysen and Karsen, and you will grant your wife a divorce
with zero headache or I will be back. You don’t need to come back to the Point to set the site up, but if you choose to, remember those conditions, and keep in mind if you decide to run again how easy it was to find you.”
That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. From here on out it would be Booker’s job to make sure the man was doing what he was supposed to be doing, and if he slipped up in the slightest, I was going to give the go-ahead to make him bleed—a lot.
I wheeled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the hotel where we were crashing for the weekend. It wasn’t a terrible drive, just a little over six hours, but I hadn’t been sure which way things were going to go with her father, so we had made arrangements at one of the casinos that was off the Strip to stay for a couple days.
Brysen reached out and curled her hand over mine where it was resting on the gearshift.
“You didn’t have to let him off so easily. Not for me.”
She might think that way now, but after how sideways it turned me to hear about my own dad’s death, deserved or not, at the hands of another, I knew there was no way I could do that to her.
“If he follows through, it’s a win-win. If not, then he can deal with the repercussions and we’ll just move forward like we always do. We’ll focus on your mom, making sure she stays on her meds, gets into therapy, and tries to stay on the path to recovery so you and Karsen have a shot at having at least one redeemable parent.”
I was doing the same thing with my own mother. We weren’t reconciled by a long shot, but with my dad gone and all the money tied up by the government, she had nothing and no one and I couldn’t justify keeping her frozen out. It was what my dad had done to me, and if I had learned anything the last few months, it was that I was going to be many different things, but being like my father was not one of them. I set her up in a condo in the same building the girls and I lived in, and told her that as long as she made an effort, tried to adjust to life in the Point, I would help her out. So far it was hit-or-miss. She was asking for money left and right, but she had also gone out and gotten a job in an office as a secretary to help support herself.