AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jesus, fucking Christ. What woman would want to saddle herself with me? And did he really want a messed up fuck like me to procreate? We all balked, but Chase, always the brownnoser of the family, followed orders. Granted, at the time he married and knocked up Sara the intern, he’d been thumbing his nose at my father. He’d found a loophole by having a marriage of convenience.
But I guess the joke was on him. He fell for her. Hard. I hadn’t realized how hard until the day he called me to say she was missing. He called me because I was the one that he trusted to find her. End the end, not only had I failed to keep her safe, but nothing that I’d done had led to finding her. My father was the one who had the contact that discovered her location. Chase was the one who found her handcuffed to a bed covered in blood where she’d lost her baby. I’d been worthless in finding her. Worse yet, I’d failed at my job of protecting her. She should never have been taken in the first place.
The endless cycle of self-loathing and self-hate spun on in my head. Too bad that brain injury that got me ejected from the military hadn’t caused memory loss or dementia. What a relief it would be to not have all my failures on replay in my brain.
I stepped from the shower and toweled off. As usual, I thought about walking out of the Rookery and never looking back. Instead, I put on a suit and headed upstairs to my office.
“Anything for me, Ms. Nichols?” I asked my secretary as I reach my office.
She smiled up at me in that way women did when they’d be willing to get naked for you. “A list of items stolen from the Ravish site has come in.” She stood up and came around her desk, handing me the piece of paper. She was dressed in a business dress, but it was likely a size too small, as it hugged every curve. The swells of her tits looked like they were ready to pop from the bodice. She used her fingers to push her long, ice blonde hair behind her ear and looked at me with chocolate brown eyes.
If we were in a bar, she would likely be someone I’d pick up. I liked ready and willing woman. But she worked for Raven Industries, and despite what my brothers thought, I could abide by the rule of no touching at the office. In fact, it was Boy Scout Chase that had broken that rule when he fucked his intern. Of course, now he was happily married to her, so maybe that was different.
Me? My avoidance of women at the office was more to do with not wanting to see them again once I slept with them. That was the biggest reason I didn’t even consider my secretary. While she put on a seductive vibe, I got the feeling she was auditioning for the role of Mrs. Hunter Raven, and that wasn’t going to happen. Yes, I was forfeiting my inheritance by swearing off marriage and a family, but I didn’t give a shit. I lived a small life and would have a military pension. I didn’t need Daddy’s money.
“Thank you,” I said taking the paper and heading into my office. I called down to our tech people to get copies of the surveillance footage of the site to see what there was about the newest theft. Then, because I was a glutton for punishment, I pulled up the footage of Sara’s abduction from the park. Where had her chauffer been? Where was my guy? Where had I been that this hadn’t been stopped?
A knock on the door had me turning off the video. No one needed to know I was secretly torturing myself.
My brother Kade poked his head in. “Chase wants to see us in the conference room.”
I rolled my eyes. Ever since he grew a heart and drank the there’s-more-to-life-than-business juice handed out by my father, he’d been more hands-on with us. In the past, each of us managed our own part of the business and didn’t give a fuck what the others did. I had the most crossover with them because I did security for all of them. Chase managed the hotels and resorts and was setting himself up to be CEO when dad retired. He could have it as far as I was concerned. Ash was in charge of all the clubs, and Kade all the restaurants.
“I’ve got more important things to do than to blow smoke up Chase’s ass to make him feel important.” Truth was, I had a hard time looking him in the eyes. Why he hadn’t run me out for not protecting Sara, I didn’t know.
