Page 45 of Riding Dirty

I’m about to ask him what the fuck and also how in the fuck, but he anticipates my question and answers it before I can.

“She moved to Vegas for work. Thought she might want to venture out on her own. She got a job in the marketing department at one of the casinos. I figured she’d be good. She’s twenty-five. She knows what kind of guys to stay away from.”

And yet she didn’t, because she got mixed up with one of the most dangerous organizations in the fucking world, and now she’s knocked up.

“She already announced the pregnancy. How the fuck are you going to say it’s someone else’s?” I ask.

Cake snorts. “As much as I want to believe my daughter picked someone who would do the right thing and marry her, he doesn’t want anything to do with her, and even if he did, I’d kill him.”

“So why do you want one of us to claim her?” Dare asks.

He presses his lips together into a thin line. He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he drops his hands, then stands. He moves straight for the window, and we watch in silence. There isn’t much to see in the dark, but he stares anyway.

Then, as if he’s ready to say whatever the fuck he’s planning, which would be nice to be let in on the shit personally, he spins around, flicking his gaze up to meet Dare’s. I hold my breath, wondering what the fuck he could be saying at this point. Because I cannot imagine how or why he would involve us in this.

“They don’t know where she is; that’s the only saving grace at this point. I’m pissed as fuck she said something, and I’ll be disabling her fucking social media. But he doesn’t love her. He just wants to control her, and in that, he wants the club to be part of his shit.”

“Part of his shit?”

He snorts. “They want us to run drugs so they can focus on their stable of call girls. I like what we do. The fire insurance game is easy, it pays well, and it’s somewhat safe. I do not want to be mixed up with them.”

“Well, I’m not claiming Chassis. I like her and everything, but I got my own thing going on,” I say.

“I’ll do it,” Dare announces.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

ELODIE

I know my eyes are puffy. They’re probably swollen as hell, too. I don’t care, though. All I know is that I am going to work after not hearing a word from Coast all evening. Not a text, not a call, nothing.

And now I have to go to his little clubhouse, clean it top to bottom, and pretend nothing happened. But something happened. I fell for him, and he doesn’t give a shit about me, plus he’s got my key.

“This is such a clusterfuck,” I grind out as I grip the steering wheel tightly, staring out the windshield.

“You are a bad bitch,” Alex interrupts the silence.

I turn my head, and my gaze meets his. His lips are curved up into a grin. I shake my head from side to side, my eyes filling with unshed tears. I am not a bad bitch, but I do love that he says I am. Even if it’s not true at all. I am not a bad bitch. I never have been.

Sucking in a deep breath, I nod once. “I am not a bad bitch,” I whisper, “but I love that you think that.”

He snorts. “You are, and you’ll see it. I should make you say it, but I want to get this shit done and over with so we can leave. Less than fifty cleanings to go.”

“Less than fifty, and no more extra jobs, no matter how well they pay,” I say.

“Agreed, if you can stick to that anyway.”

I open my mouth to ask him what the hell he means, but he doesn’t say anything else. He opens the car door and unfolds, closing it behind him. Slowly, my gaze shifts over to the front door of the main building. I inhale a deep breath, I let it out, and murmur to myself as I open my own car door.

“I’m a semi-bad bitch.”

And that is what I repeat more than once as I gather my things and walk into the clubhouse, hoping like hell he’s not here but also wanting him here and wanting to hear him grovel. I want to watch as he levels me with a gaze and tells me just how he feels about me.

That he wants to keep me—forever.

My stupid heart still has hope. I should have known this was a mistake, a huge one. He is a man, one who has been around and one who is very clearly an alpha. He knows exactly what to say to make someone want him, to make someone like me just spread their legs for him.