The hardwood floors turned to plush navy carpet I recognized. I focused on the pattern in hopes I could forget the pain radiating from my scalp.
We stopped.
He yanked.
I was face to face with the open safe door. Stuffed inside were stacks of cash, papers, jewels, and . . . a gun.
“Tell me where it is, and all will be forgiven.” Strangely enough, he sounded sincere. But his hold on my hair tightened, and I was no fool.
“Have you checked through everything?” I reached up to look under some of the documents in the safe, but he batted my hand away.
“Twice,” he hissed.
I twisted like some sort of contortionist so I could make eye contact. “I saw Esmerelda in here earlier.” I lifted a finger. “Come to think of it, the safe was open.”
His jaw clenched. That crimson shade turned up another degree.
“She has been with me for twelve years. Nothing has ever been stolen,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Maybe she’s patient.”
Whap.
Stars formed behind my eyes as pain exploded in my head. Automatically, I lifted my hand to my face. Did he just . . . punch me?
“I am not.”
He reared back, and I ducked, narrowly missing his swing. I’d broken free at the expense of some of my hair. The sting on my scalp temporarily made me forget about the pain around my eye.
I shed my Louboutin’s from my feet and chucked them at the bastard. My dress was too tight around the legs for me to jet, so I lifted it above my hips and sprinted for the front door.
Serge, Tamas’s bodyguard, froze in position in the living room at the sight of the white lace lingerie I wore, which left nothing to the imagination. Or maybe it was my ass hanging out. I didn’t stop to find out.
I flung open the front door and made for the stairwell. Taking the steps two at a time, I went up a few floors.
“Find her,” Tamas yelled as heavy boot-steps thundered.
Farther and farther away they went. Dumbasses. They assumed I went down.
After a minute to catch my breath, I realized my dress was still up around my waist. I straightened it, exited on a higher floor, and called the service elevator.
Without a trace, I sauntered out the back of the building like I still had on a two-thousand-dollar pair of shoes.
I had two rules:
Never get caught.
Never leave on their terms.
I had just broken both.
Chapter Three
Drew
Two thirty-seven.
I stared up at the ceiling, though I could barely make it out in the darkness. For hours, I’d tossed and turned until I’d finally given up on sleep. Even the whiskey hadn’t helped.
Was Mama bluffing about turning me in?
I didn’t think so. Her anger was palpable when she left me drowning in my miseries.
Fuck this.
I threw off the quilt. The last time I’d seen the thing had been in the room I shared with Easton at Grandma Carter’s house. Extreme Makeover Memory Lane edition hadn’t stopped with the front of the apartment. My mother hadn’t left a square inch of this place untouched by the past.
She never did tell me why she came to my apartment and deposited bits and pieces of my past all over my home, but she didn’t need to. She hoped the memories would bring me back to reality, to my beginnings and the person I was born and raised to be. Not the idiot I’d become.
I tugged on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed my keys and cigarettes, and trudged to the elevator. It wasn’t that I gave a rat’s ass about smoking inside. I felt as if I was suffocating.
New York City air hit my lungs when I stepped out into the alley behind the building. I tapped a cigarette out of the pack. Placing the Parliament Light between my lips, I cupped the end to block the wind and lit it with the engraved lighter my father had given me when I was fourteen. He hadn’t meant for me to use it for cancer sticks, but when had I ever done anything he’d intended for me?
I leaned against the concrete and looked down the alley. A rat scurried toward a garbage dumpster. What the fuck was I doing here? I drew in a pull, the cherry glowing on the end of my cigarette, and the smoke and fog of breath I blew out comingled in the darkness. I was on borrowed time, the laundry list of sins I’d committed finally catching up with me.
Yesterday, I’d signed over whatever parental rights I’d had to a child I’d refused to believe was mine. But Holly hadn’t lied as I’d thought all these years. The test didn’t lie. Not like the one in high school after a nasty baseball injury that deemed me infertile apparently had. She was the mother of my son even though it still didn’t seem possible. Things had worked out for the best anyway. I wasn’t built to be a father. That kid was better off away from the likes of me, yet I hadn’t expected how hard it would be to ink my signature on something so permanent.
Those fuckers my brother had befriended used my transgressions against me to force me into giving away my boy, although I’d never accepted him as such. I should be able to go on with my life as I had been, but everything was changing. I was . . . unsettled. Untethered. I didn’t have the same drive to be heartless. And if I wasn’t that man, who the fuck was I?
* * *
“What are you doing here?”
I was beginning to wonder why exactly I’d been so hell-bent on moving into this building. My brother stood on the other side of my door, looking almost as tired as I felt.
“Picking your ass up.”
“Is it safe to invite you in, or are you going to punch me again?” I held open the door anyway. When he discovered what I’d done to our family company, how I’d manipulated the software program we’d used to house all our financials, he’d wasted no time knocking me flat on my ass in this very spot. I’d had it coming. I rubbed my jaw where it was still sore.
“Let’s go.”
Apparently, Easton had been relegated as warden for the sentence I hadn’t agreed to serve. Yet I was dressed to go to Paths of Purpose even though I was still on the fence about going. I’d told her I wouldn’t do the time, but her ultimatum had gnawed at me ever since.
Paths of Purpose.
Jail.
Neither option was ideal.
I didn’t move. The image of Mama’s determination yesterday flashed through my head. I hadn’t seen that side of her in a while. Part of me lit up that she’d been fighting for me. Or maybe I just saw what I wanted to. When she found out about the boy I hadn’t thought was mine, the theft would be nothing.
I’d disappointed her enough.
The elevator chimed, and the doors scraped open. Please don’t let it be my brother’s bitch of a wife. They were like conjoined twins. What he saw in her—hell, what my whole family saw in her—was beyond me.
Dad?
I struggled to keep the surprise off my face when he stepped into the lobby. He didn’t appear any more pleased to see me than I was to see him.
“I can’t believe it.” I stepped backward toward the safety of my hellhole apartment. “That Paths of Purpose place was a lie.”
Easton arched a brow and our father remained standing near the elevator as if he got any closer to me he might catch something.
“You used her,” I continued before either of them could get a word out. “Because you wouldn’t be here unless you were hauling my ass to jail.” I thrust an accusatory finger in Dad’s direction.