Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
I stared him down.
He held up both hands. “Okay, okay. What do you want?”
I exhaled, slow. This part made my jaw tighten because I already knew what it was, control. Habit. The ugly part of me that didn’t trust peace. “She lives in DC,” I shared. “Apartment in the suburbs but not far out of the city limits. Secure building. But secure doesn’t mean untouchable.”
Dippy’s smile faded into something more serious. “You’re worried.”
“I don’t like not seeing what’s around her,” I admitted, and the words tasted like rust in my mouth.
He tilted his head. “Does she know you’re like this?”
“No,” I stated flatly.
Dippy tapped ash into the tray. “You want me to install cameras in her apartment?”
“No,” I snapped, then tempered my voice. “Nothing inside.”
He watched me a moment longer. “Outside?”
I didn’t answer right away. Because the truth was this wasn’t about outside. Not really. It was about my chest tightening at the thought of her alone, of her walking through her building with someone watching her, of some threat I couldn’t put a beat on because I was hundreds of miles away.
“I want eyes on her door,” I stated carefully. “Her entry. Her hallway. The garage, if you can get it. Building cams if there are any accessible feeds loop in and if we need to send out a company to set them up, call the property managers and get it worked out where she doesn’t know it’s on her specifically. I want all angles.”
Dippy whistled low. “You know how that sounds, right?”
“I know how it sounds,” I corrected. “And it is exactly what it sounds like. A man protecting his woman until shit can be sorted that we aren’t hundreds of miles apart.”
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Is she in danger?”
“I don’t know,” I shared. “And that’s the problem.”
Dippy studied me, then sighed like he’d been waiting for me to ask this for years. “Give me her address.”
I hesitated half a beat, because some line still existed in my head, thin and frayed, but there. Then in a split second, I crossed it.
I gave him what he needed.
He typed. Clicked. His screen filled with windows and scrolling lines of things I didn’t understand and didn’t want to.
“You’re not putting anything inside her apartment,” I reminded, voice hard.
Dippy glanced at me like I was adorable. “You think I need inside? You got a front door cam? A hallway cam? That’s enough. You want me to get something inside, I got an HVAC guy that can make a service call and make it happen, but without you giving me the word, not doin’ that shit brother. This woman matters that is clear as day.”
My stomach tightened.
“Dante,” he spoke, softer, “you sure you want this?”
I stared at the screen, at the flickers of a place that belonged to her, that I had stood in and left. “I want to know she’s safe.”
Dippy nodded once, like that was the only justification he needed. “All right. I can route it through a secure channel. You’ll have a feed on your phone. Alerts if there’s motion at her door. Faces, too, if the resolution’s good.”
“Do it,” I ordered.
He worked fast. Too fast. It made my skin crawl a little, how easy it was for him to reach across distance and touch someone’s world. I knew he did this regularly for club needs, but seeing it firsthand in real time was a different experience.
When he was done, he slid my phone back toward me. “You’ll get a ping if someone lingers. If her door opens at weird hours. If somebody follows her into the garage.”
I picked up the phone, screen showing a still frame of her hallway—clean, bright, empty.
Relief hit first. Then guilt tried to crawl up behind it. I shoved the guilt down.
“This stays between us,” I told him not that I needed to.
Dippy’s mouth twisted. “Nothing to it, brother.”
I left him there and walked out into the main room where the club noise swallowed all thoughts. Men talking. Laughter. A pool ball cracking. The smell of whiskey and bodies.
Gonzo was at the bar, big shoulders taking up space like always. IvaLeigh standing in front of him between his legs as he sat on the stool. He looked up when he saw me, nodded once, then jerked his chin toward the back. I took the cue and headed back.
We talked business for an hour, territory, a dispute that needed smoothing, a supply line that had gone shaky. As the treasurer, my absence left gaps in information hitting him quickly so we needed a debrief of the club shit. These were the kind of things that kept a club alive and got men buried if they handled it wrong.
But even while I talked, my phone felt like a weight in my pocket.
Not because of the feeds.