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He pulls out a business card and hands it to me. This is the second one I’ve received in the space of an hour. One good. One bad.
“My name is Cillian. Or Kill, for short.” He gives me a clipped smile and I don’t miss the intended pun in his words. “If you see your stepfather, you call me straight away. As for the money, your mother and stepfather have until next Friday to pay it back. If they don’t, I’m taking the house and the restaurant as agreed. Do you hear me?”
I feel like I just landed on a battlefield and several bombs have detonated around me. Still, I nod my understanding. “Yes. I hear you.”
“Good. If I were you, I wouldn’t run back to L.A. We’ll be watching you from now on, Chloe.” His gaze clings to mine for what seems like an eternity, then he moves.
He steps back and leads the way out. The rest of the men follow.
I watch them go and don’t release the breath I’m holding until I hear the front door click shut.
All the air flows out of my body and I slump against the wall, holding my heart in so it doesn’t leap out of my chest.
What madness have I landed myself in?
Mom married some guy and now she’s not just in a coma, she’s also in trouble.
I’ve already run away from trouble but got myself caught in its net once more.
What the hell am I going to do?
Chapter Four
Cillian
“Please don’t tell me you saw the girl and got pussywhipped.” Jaxon frowns at me when we get into my Bugatti and pull out onto the road.
“She didn’t know anything.”
“She could have been lying.”
“She wasn’t lying.”
He glares at me and I know the reason he didn’t insist on staying at Chloe’s house is because of my rank in the Creed.
I hold the third seat, while he’s still an underboss. So when we’re on missions like this, my word overpowers his. This is just us talking as friends now.
“How do you know she wasn’t lying, Cillian?”
“I just do.” I saw it in her eyes, but I won’t tell him that. He’ll definitely think I was pussywhipped.
The thing is, he’s not entirely wrong. A man doesn’t go around a woman like that and not think of her pussy.
That said, despite the fact that I want to fuck her, we have serious matters to worry about. It’s past midday and we have nothing to show for our efforts.
“I’ll keep eyes on her at the house and put a man at the hospital. Something will turn up.” I blow out a frustrated breath. “It has to.”
“I fucking hope so.”
“Maybe when Harlan’s wife wakes up we’ll have more information. Although, something tells me he left her out of this. I don’t think she knew what her husband was up to.”
“I got that feeling from the reports.”
My additional searches uncovered that Harlan had been taking money from the restaurant for years to fund his gambling addiction. He borrowed to pay debts then balanced everything with the money he took from the restaurant's earnings.
When Harlan and his wife came to me for the loan, she looked excited to expand the business and like she wasn’t worried that they wouldn't be able to pay the monthly repayments. That was a month ago. Now they have nothing.
“That restaurant has been in his wife’s family for eighty years. There’s no way she would risk her business the way he has. It’s her sole source of income. And then her home on top of that.” I will own both come next week if I don’t get my money back. The house by itself is worth two million, so I’d be compensated. But I stand to lose more from everything else Harlan has done.
