Page 62 of Jonas

“You can’t?” Cash quipped.

“No, Cash, you can’t. And for encouraging him, you’re on babysitting duty when we get back.”

Cash suddenly looked sick to his stomach.

“You know, I’ve rethought my position. You’re right. That behavior’s totally unacceptable. My apologies.”

“Thought so. I’m counting on all of you to keep my husband out of jail. Zane, take me off speaker.”

“We have insurance for that, right?” Smith asked.

Easton pulled Nebraska closer before he returned, “For what?”

“Bail money.”

“I’d have to double check but I think it’s part of our ransom insurance,” Kira rejoined. “Though Zane doesn’t carry insurance on himself. He thinks it’s a scam and doesn’t want ransom paid if he’s ever taken.”

Derrika shifted and watched Zane as he moved to the corner of the basement, still talking to his wife. Her gaze came to mine when Zane turned his back to the room.

“I couldn’t get a read,” Derrika quietly started. “Is she worried or not?”

She was asking about Ivy and I understood why. But if she’d ever seen the two of them together she wouldn’t have to ask.

“She’s scared out of her mind. She covers it up by throwing attitude. She does this because she knows if she shows the barest hint of concern it’ll set Zane off and the possible scorch-the-earth scenario turns into a definite. There are two things in Zane Lewis’s life you don’t fuck with: his wife and his kids. There’s no fuck around and find out when it comes to them. There’s only fuck around and die—that includes scaring his wife. The rest of us, he has our backs—always. He loves his brother, his nephews, he protects what’s his. But Ivy, Eric, and Rose—they’re sacred.”

I hadn’t realized my mistake until after I’d finished. The ravished look on Derrika’s face said more than I suspected she’d want to expose. But it was clear—not only from what she’d told me but from the hurt in her eyes—she’d never had anyone love or care for her the way Zane did his wife and children. It was also clear she felt pain over never having it. More, there was envy in those blue orbs—envy that covered yearning.

Fuck!

“Dee Dee⁠—”

“It’s good she has that.”

Oh, yeah, I’d inadvertently gutted her.

Fuck.

“It is,” I agreed. “And people like us who never had that know just how good it is.”

She didn’t miss my understatement.

“You’re right, we do.”

“And just to say, Ivy didn’t have it all that great growing up, so she knows, too. That’s why she shields her man the best she can. It’s a two-way street with them. She gives him what he needs and he returns that.”

Thankfully, Zane returning to the table interrupted me from saying more and digging my hole deeper. He tactlessly announced, “I hate pussy.”

I heard Lore and Derrika’s matching gasps. No one else batted an eye or made a sound.

“He means pussy cats,” Kira explained.

“I’m allergic.”

“That’s your excuse about everything you don’t like,” Nebraska rightly pointed out. “And by the way, you can’t be allergic to paperwork.”

“I have a valid doctor’s note that says I am,” Zane returned.

The lengths Zane would go to get out of paperwork stretched as far as him paying his personal physician a boatload of money to write a fake excuse.