Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Yeah, how long has this been going on?” he asked, looking between the two of us.
“Casually? For a couple of years,” Nyx admitted.
“Christ,” Cillian said, sighing. “How’d I miss that?”
“Well, in your defense, she would only meet up out of town,” I told him as I handed Nyx a cup of coffee. “Which is all part of the story we have to let you in on.”
So then I launched into it, getting little snippets of input from Nyx as I let Cillian in on what was happening.
“So, you’re going to the Bratva,” Cillian concluded.
“That’s one of my stops today, yeah.” The others included getting her shit from the motel and paying the bill, then grabbing some of her stuff from her apartment when I went to check out the damage.
Nyx, after a lot of grumbling, had agreed to stay behind at the clubhouse where no one could get to her without a bunch of guys with guns ready to step in and save her.
She needed the break.
She’d been through enough.
Besides, I didn’t really know what to expect from dealing with the Novikoff brothers, so I figured it was smarter to leave her out of it.
But first, it was over to the motel, where Jack practically ran out to meet my bike.
Which was unusual.
Because Jack did as little as possible as slowly as he could.
A rampant underachiever, you really never saw the man putting a stick in it, or going above and beyond to do anything.
“Have you seen Nyx?” he asked before I even got my helmet off. There was even a hint of panic in his voice. Being the person who’d seen her first, after Dr. Price, I imagined he’d been worried about her and whoever did the damage to her pretty face.
“She’s at the clubhouse,” I told him, holding out a hand. “She’s safe. I’m just here to get her shit and settle her bill. What?” I asked when he gave me an uncertain look.
“Someone tossed her room,” he told me. “She took off yesterday morning and sometime after, one of the other guests told me that one of the rooms’ door was open and that the room looked wrecked.
“Fuck. Did you catch them on the cameras?”
“You mean the brand new cameras I just spent a mint on to have installed? No. I didn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Fuck if I know. I didn’t see anyone tampering with them on the feed, but they were offline.”
“Shit,” I hissed, exhaling hard. “Alright. Show me,” I invited, following him into the motel.
The other guest was right. The room had been tossed. Not that there was much to toss. But the sheets were thrown all over, the bed stripped, every drawer and the closet opened. Nyx’s weekend bag was on the bare bed, all the contents spilled out, the inside panel of the bag gutted.
“Stupid,” I mumbled, touching the slit. “There wasn’t even enough room to stash something in here.”
“What the fuck did Nyx get into?” Jack asked, looking around the room that would likely sit empty and a mess until the maid came in to put it to rights.
“Someone else involved her in something,” I said, tossing her shit back into her bag, then closing it up.
“You handling it?” Jack asked.
“Yep,” I agreed, exhaling hard.
“Good. She clearly needed some help,” he said, nodding toward the belt I had picked up. “That’s mine,” he told me, and when I shot him a look, he held up both hands. “I gave it to her to use to lock the door,” he said, gesturing up toward it.
“Right,” I said, handing it back, surprised by the intensity of the jealousy that had surged inside me.
“Where you off to now?” he asked.
“To handle shit,” I told him, reaching into my wallet to hand him the money for a few nights, plus a little extra in case something had gotten ruined.
I actually felt a sizzle of uncertainty as I parked my bike on the main street in town and made my way toward the pool hall.
It was closed most of the day, but that didn’t mean people weren’t going in and out. Just not patrons. Members of the family. Of the organization.
“I need to talk to the brothers,” I said to the guard standing at the door, sizing me up like he hadn’t seen me in town a thousand times before.
“I’ll see if they’re in,” he said with a thick Russian accent.
The Novikoff brothers themselves only had slight accents, moving to the US when they were young teens and living here since.
“They say you have ten minutes,” the guard said, holding open the door so I could walk in.
Pool halls in most towns were usually kind of old and rundown, cheap-looking.
Despite the low fees to play at The Shady Valley Pool Hall, though, the place was as upscale as it could get.