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“Understood?” Killian repeats. Slowly. Menacingly.
Uh, wow. Who knew you needed to be such a badass to run a hotel?
Focus, Amara!
“Yes.” I nod.
“Good.”
Two minutes later, Killian pulls over in front of my shop.
“Thanks for the ride,” I tell Killian with my hand on the door handle. “And for letting me crash.”
“You’re moving in, not crashing,” he reminds me as I unfold myself from the car, grabbing my bag.
“It’s temporary.” It’s my turn to remind him.
Killian doesn’t answer. I see it as my cue to slam the door and head to work. I’m halfway to my shop when I hear the Bentley’s window rolling down.
I stop, but I don’t turn to him, too scared of what might come next. Scared of how much I want it. How much I want Carter here for it.
“Amara.” His stern tone forces me to look over my shoulder. “Stay safe, beautiful girl.”
With another nod, I clutch the strap of my bag tighter. I unlock the door of my shop to the sound of a rumbling motor. Of a car pulling out and onto the road.
Surrounded by my flowers, I’m finally able to breathe.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carter
People, when they’re angry, are truly the purest form of entertainment.
“Five minutes and twenty-eight seconds.” Tom Willis tears at the short strands of his brown hair. His blue eyes show his rage behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “Being five minutes and twenty-eight seconds late to a crime scene in the middle of nowhere does not give him the right to deduct my fee.”
I rub my jaw, leaning back in my leather chair. The three of us—Tom, the dead bodies’ cleaner, his client, Rhett, and me—sit around the oval table in one of Voltage’s conference rooms.
I grin from ear to ear, enjoying this little show I’m running.
“The hell it does,” Rhett Razor Martin, the drug dealer for the decadent wealthy people of the Upper West Side, snarls. “It could’ve been a second. Could’ve been an hour. Doesn’t change the fact that you were late.”
“It was less than six minutes.” Much like me, Willis is used to dealing with dirtbags like Razor here. Hitmen, serial killers, and other types of filthy criminals, he’s seen them all. He doesn’t cower. “It means nothing. Nothing.”
One of the most sought-after cleaners in New York has a point.
I’m here as a mediator who was given the power to resolve this shit. I can do it, right here and now. In less than five minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
Matter of fact, I can do it in less than one.
Except I’m way too fucking entertained.
Doesn’t hurt that watching them takes my mind off last night.
Normally, I don’t trouble myself with overthinking. Complicated emotions and what stands behind them bores me to tears.
That is until Amara’s crazy soul latched on to mine. She softens the hardened parts in me. Makes me almost…care.
It confuses me. Last night confuses me even more.
