Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 160732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 804(@200wpm)___ 643(@250wpm)___ 536(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 804(@200wpm)___ 643(@250wpm)___ 536(@300wpm)
No one said anything.
Buck sat at the head of the table, drumming his fingers, because they’d had a good run.
From Rogan Kirk’s funeral to now, five days before Christmas, it’d been trouble-free.
Kids home, happy to be back with their old friends.
Gear had his first girlfriend.
Tat was dating, and Buck might be the only father breathing who was relieved when his gorgeous daughter went on a date.
But Gear had shared the kid was solid.
And Clara had informed him, “Tatie really likes him, and I think this is turning an important corner, honey.”
Since their first date, Tat had been out with the guy three times, and Buck had met him. He couldn’t find fault in the kid. He was into his girl. He didn’t seem like a creep or an asshole.
The rest remained to be seen.
Buck’s dad dug Clara to the point he wasted no time and made no bones about the strength of his stamp of approval.
One visit, she won him over.
Then again, it was Clara.
Buck had fallen for her in about the same amount of time.
Further, the store was doing a good turnover.
And they had so much work on the contracting side, they were going to have to recruit more people, or more brothers, or they’d have to schedule far out, which might mean they’d lose business.
Clara had embraced her new tub and had a little table set up next to it filled with all sorts of shit.
She’d also paid off her credit cards early.
This was because she had a little less than three million dollars in the bank.
The government took its share.
She gave the million and a half back to the pension fund.
But now, his woman was loaded.
For him, that manifested itself in sexy underwear, something she was on a mission to one-up her own damned self in getting a rise out of her man with each new set.
She achieved that feat.
She got a rise out of him.
Every time.
But she didn’t need the underwear.
That said, Buck didn’t share that with her.
Life was steady.
Good.
And then what started happening, happened.
Ending in what happened yesterday.
Which was why Buck was drumming his fingers.
Because he was pissed that run was over.
“First one,” Sylvie continued. “As we all know, Enrique Esposito was found, relieved of his head, yesterday.”
Yeah.
They all knew that.
Rayne Scott was staring at the table so hard it was a wonder his gaze didn’t burn through it.
He probably wasn’t a big fan of Esposito’s.
He was less a fan of murder.
But beheading took that way to the highest level.
Sylvie kept going
“We also know this wasn’t a loss to humanity. Onward from that, this happened because he let Tia Esposito get her hands on some pretty damning shit, and that was part of what led to the arrests Scott and his boys made last week.”
Yeah.
They knew that too.
Didn’t take long for the higher-ups to link who went down with those arrests to what Esposito had knowledge about, and corroborating evidence for, and for them to take care of Esposito.
The issue with that was, they didn’t gut him or shoot him.
They beheaded the motherfucker.
Everyone was wired just because of that.
That said some serious shit.
“So,” Sylvie went on, her gaze locked to Damian, “you wanna share with the class why Tia Esposito is still in Phoenix?”
“She wants to have Christmas with her girl,” Damian replied, his tone openly unhappy.
Because he was.
It didn’t take a psychologist to see the guy was twitchy.
And he was that way because he wanted himself and Tia in Bali or someplace like that about two weeks ago.
“We got players spreadin’ the word that it was what they thought it was. Esposito was pissed they took him down a notch, so he laid those boys out by handing shit to the cops,” Lynch put in, and Buck looked to him.
Lynch and Slate were back after spending months trying to find Tia.
And of course, Clara had met them.
After which, she’d felt the need to inform him they were “exceptionally good-looking, almost as handsome as you!”
Buck studied Lynch.
He didn’t see it.
“Tia’s back, Damian is tight with Scott, you don’t think they’ll put those together?” Tucker Creed, a good friend of Buck’s and Sylvie’s husband, asked.
“I think we’re runnin’ the best interference we can on that until Damian can haul her ass outta Phoenix,” Slate responded to Tucker.
Buck looked at his other brother.
He didn’t see it with him either.
He then sighed.
Tia being hauled out of Phoenix had two meanings for him.
The first, it was clear Damian was not going to do anything without Tia with him.
And as such, his woman could quit worrying that Damian was going to get shot of her girl to carry on his “rootless life.”
He could have called that two months ago, something he told Clara repeatedly.
The man was gone for her girl.
Clara still worried.
The second, now he was going to have a woman on his hands who again was going to lose her best friend.