I’d avoided looking at my face in the mirror for that very reason. I didn’t want to see the damage. I had glanced at my thighs which felt like they were on fire, there were scratches, but I’d live.
I knew that I had a black eye. I also knew that I had a bruise on my chin.
There were bruises on my wrists, knees, and backs of my thighs—though they couldn’t see those quite yet.
My eyes darted around the kitchen as I looked for Coke who was so obviously not there.
“Uhhh,” I hesitated. “Hi?”
The closest one to me stood, the youngest one I was guessing, based on his particular shade of gray.
“Coke is next door sorting out your clothes, figuring out which ones go together. He was never very good at dressing Frankie either. I’m Ale.”
I took his hand and shook it. “Hello, Ale.”
Ale turned to the side and pointed to the other three chairs that were now occupied at Coke’s kitchen table.
“The old guy over there is Absinthe. The one to your right is Jim. And that one,” he pointed at the one closest to us. “Is Bellini.”
Ale. Absinthe. Bellini. Jim. Then there was Coke.
“So y’all are all named after drinks?” I asked the obvious.
Coke snorted, startling me with his appearance at my back. I jumped and whirled, my face likely white as a sheet, and gasped.
He looked apologetic the moment he realized that he scared me.
“We’re named after drinks Mom had to give up during her pregnancy. The ones that she really craved. She had gestational diabetes with me. And the rest were alcoholic beverages that she missed. Dad thought it was funny, so he allowed it,” he said, placing his hand on my shoulder.
He squeezed it lightly.
It was the most non-sexual touch I’d ever felt in my life, but the warm heat of his hand seemed to seep into my body and head straight for places that I thought I’d already taken care of before coming out here.
What the hell was wrong with me?
“Plus, they’re all pretty cool names…except for mine,” the one named Bellini said from his side of the kitchen.
My lips twitched, and for the first time in two days, I smiled.
“I kind of like it, though,” I admitted. “They’re very unique names, even Bellini.”
Bellini winked at me, and for a short moment, I felt like I was staring directly at Coke.
What the hell?
“Do your parents look anything like y’all?” I asked, turning to eye Coke. “And does anyone ever mistake one of you for your brothers?”
Coke shrugged, letting his arm fall from my shoulder.
I missed his heat instantaneously.
“Our parents didn’t look much like us, no. Dad was short and pudgy, while mom was small and petite. We think we got our height from our grandfather,” Coke said as he moved to the coffee pot. “Do you want some?”
I moved farther into the kitchen, very aware that I was in a t-shirt with nothing but panties on underneath in a kitchen full of grown men who were all very attractive.
Not as attractive as Coke, but still. They definitely weren’t hard on the eyes.
Not even a little bit.
“To answer your question, yes, people mistake one of us for another all the time,” Ale drawled, stretching his legs out in front of him. “But since we’re a military family, people don’t necessarily mistake us for one of the other brothers much anymore. Unless we’re all on the same base at the same time, which has happened before. Not to mention we were, and some of us still are, drill sergeants. The confusion was definitely warranted when we were all on base. Unless you’re ol’ Sin. He’s the only one with those fucking dimples. The rest of us have to get along with the ass chins.”
Absinthe, or ‘Sin’ as Ale had just addressed him, grunted. “The dimples are cool and all, but it gets seriously old after a while. It gets tiring for women to be falling at my feet as much as they do.”
Ale, Coke, and Jim all snorted in derision. “Keep dreaming, fucker,” Coke drawled. “You may have the pretty dimples, but you scare the girls away. They don’t like when you glare and grunt at them instead of talking.”
I wasn’t sure about that.
Sin was definitely pretty. I knew quite a few ladies who wouldn’t care if he was mean as long as he was good doing other things.
Coke placed a cup of coffee down on the counter and gestured at it with his head. “Cream is in the fridge. Sugar is right there in that jar. Are you hungry?”
I moved to the fridge, and Coke hissed out a breath…as did his brothers.
I turned with the cream in my hand and stared at all of them.
They were looking down at my legs— or at least where the backs of my thighs had been when I’d been looking in the fridge moments prior.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” I lied.
It hurt.
It hurt pretty bad.
In my struggle to get away from the men and slam my door closed in their faces, I’d ended up falling when they’d grabbed me. When they caught me, they pulled me out by my arms as I was kicking and screaming.
The back of my thigh had caught on a wire rack that I’d bought for my shower that’d been resting on the carport. The bottom of the rack had some jagged edges, meaning that when my thigh grazed past it, seven angry red lines that’d been oozing blood the night before were now prominent.
I’d looked at them in the bathroom mirror before coming out here, because they hurt so bad.
It’d also been why I’d decided to forgo the sweatpants. Seeing the angry scratches, I’d dug through Coke’s medicine drawer until I found some antibacterial ointment and had caked it on as best as I could due to the awkward angle.
Not wanting to get his pants dirty or stained, I’d decided the shirt was long enough, and it didn’t rub roughly against the scratches.
But now, with all the men staring at me, I could see the error in my ways.
Most men didn’t like when women were hurt. The Solomon men? Yeah, they didn’t like it more than most.
“It might get infected,” Jim murmured. “You’ll need to keep an eye on that, Coke.”
Coke. Not me.
Coke needed to keep an eye on that.
“Yeah, I’ll be doing that now that I know that it’s there.” Coke sounded kind of pissed.
I winced.
He’d asked me if I was okay last night, and I’d told him that I was.
But, I’d been kind of vague about my injuries.
And now, with the light of day, my injuries were making themselves known in the brightness—at least to everyone around me.
Something that I couldn’t hide anymore.
Shit.
“Anyway, you killed them, right?” Sin asked, sounding quite hopeful.
I found my lips twitching as I tried to control the grin that was threatening to overtake my face.
“I stabbed one with a screwdriver,” I paused. “And slammed another one’s head in the door. But from what my father’s text said from about an hour ago, they’re all going to make complete recoveries. Though they’re going to jail for a really long time, and my father has a long list of acquaintances in high places. I highly doubt that they’ll enjoy it wherever they end up residing.”
The men shared a look, and I knew it well.
They wanted to talk about me without me around.
Rolling my eyes, I turned with coffee in hand and leveled Coke with a look.
“I’ll be ready in about twenty minutes…is that okay?”
He winked. “Anything under a half hour I count as a win.”
They waited until they thought they heard the door shut before they started talking.
“So…they think that she was kidnapped because they thought she was Frankie?”
I waited for them to continue, bringing my finger up to my lips and nervously biting one nail.
“
How could they mistake the two of them?” the brother who I thought sounded like Ale pushed.
Coke grunted. “She was on her way to my place. Back behind the shop, on my property, and that’s where I think they made the mistake.”
“She is quite young,” Jim said. “But…she doesn’t look anything like Frankie. And when she ran back to her house to try to escape them, that should’ve been their first clue that something was wrong. I don’t think your teenage daughter would’ve been running to the new neighbor’s house. If they’d done any kind of research at all, they would’ve known that Frankie was away at college, that you had a new neighbor, and that the person they grabbed looked absolutely nothing like Frankie.”
Coke agreed with a grunt. “The entire job seemed rushed and not well planned. Even Cora’s father, Gabe, said the same thing.”
“Which begs the question…Who fucked up?” Jim murmured.
“Cora’s father is looking into it as we speak,” Coke admitted. “He’s got some sort of security business, and he’s utilizing those resources.”
Knowing I was eavesdropping, and probably shouldn’t, I quietly opened Coke’s door, and then closed it just as quietly behind me.
Then I took a shower and got ready—in ten minutes.
I wasn’t the type of woman who needed twenty.
***
Two hours later, I was just as curious as I was earlier. Only, with that curiosity came annoyance in the form of Janie.
“Stop looking at me like that, fucker,” I grumbled, casting sideways glances at Janie.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, her hand going to the precisely stacked stack of papers that were on the edge of Coke’s desk.
I slapped her hand away.
“Don’t touch that. He has everything where he wants it, and I don’t want him to kick me out,” I hissed.
“Coke doesn’t like us here. He says we’re distracting.”
Probably because you mess all his carefully ordered crap up, and don’t care that it drives him crazy.
I had to admit, everything in Coke’s house and office looked immaculate. Likely due to him being a drill sergeant for so many years, that kind of thing was ingrained in him. There was nothing wrong with wanting order in your life.
I didn’t mind a little order…but that was neither here nor there.
What did surprise me was that he was so scruffy looking. I’d known that drill sergeants retired and lived a regular, normal civilian life, but I figured that just because they were retired, that didn’t mean that they stopped needing order and continuing with precise grooming habits. I didn’t think they’d be growing beards or gaining weight.
Coke obviously had the order part down. He also was in fantastic shape—God, was he in shape—but the clean-shaven part? Yeah, that was obviously something he was no longer adhering to.
Janie moved to the cup of pencils and took one out and flipped it up on end, replacing it so that the sharpened tip was facing up instead of the eraser.
I rolled my eyes, sighed and then flipped my notepad over. I found a blank page that I hadn’t used yet, and I started drawing again—this time for Janie, not for work.
This one took far less concentration to draw. I’d been drawing her for years. Janie’s character had changed slightly, though.
I smiled, glanced up at Janie’s chest, and then back down at my paper. Her boobs had gotten bigger.
I smiled, making her boobs match on the paper.
“My boobs aren’t that big, Cora.” Janie sighed. “But they are bigger.” She grabbed them and fluffed them up in the cup of her hands. “I’m glad you can tell. I wasn’t sure if you’d continue to draw me with those pointy missiles.”
That was true. When we were younger, Janie used to despise having her boobs look like triangles. At first, I drew them that way because I was still learning how to draw, and boobs were, for some reason, really difficult for me to learn how to incorporate into my drawings. Then I learned how to draw them, but I continued to make them pointy because it annoyed her so much when I did.
But she was right. There was no way I could justify them being pointy anymore. Especially with the way they were so round.
I did make sure to draw them up near her chin, which made me smile.
Then I started in on her feet.
“Oh my God, those look disproportional. My feet aren’t that big!”
“You did gain an entire shoe size while you were pregnant,” Kayla said.
“Why are y’all here?” Coke’s voice interrupted.
“Our friend is here,” Janie pointed to me and then June.
June snorted from where she was sitting down the counter, on the phone. It was more than obvious she was listening to every word we said, though.
Or at least every word Janie said seeing as I’d yet to talk of my own free will.
“Hmmm,” Coke said, peering down over my shoulder. “You missed the puke stain on her shirt.”
I looked up and studied Janie’s shirt, smiling when I noticed the spit-up stain on the collar of her obviously day-old t-shirt.
Janie looked down and sighed. “That’s not fair.”
Kayla snorted. “I have to get back to work soon or they’ll miss me and accuse me of not doing my job again. Then they’ll say that I probably should stop working because I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant and try to make me go home.”
Janie looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I’m not really sure how much work you do now that you’re nearly full-term anyway. They only let you answer phones. That’s why I took you. They’ve already hired your replacement and everything. You’re still getting paid, too. I’d seriously just live it up while you can. You won’t be pregnant forever.”
For once, I actually agreed with Janie. “Here.”
Janie took the comic I drew her, then snorted. “Go away? That’s the best you could come up with?”
I gestured for her to turn it over. She did, then burst out laughing.
The back read: You’re a whore.
“Hilarious.” She sighed. “But I do agree. I have to go back to work, too. Uncle Sam and Gabe have me looking into your kidnapping. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“Thanks for what? Getting kidnapped?”
She nodded at my words. “Now they want me to get that little chip, too. They say it saved your life, which I know damn well it didn’t. But they’ve since reformatted it and can get to within a hundred yards of whoever the chip is located in. I told them I’d consider wearing a necklace. But I wouldn’t have it implanted like you did.”
I shrugged. I never saw the problem like she did. She’d hated it, the idea that her father could find her. Me, on the other hand? I always saw the logical side of it. Not to mention I felt like I owed it to my father after all that I’d put him through.
It was the least I could do…and honestly? After all that had happened yesterday? It could’ve been a whole lot worse. Those men who had taken me could’ve just as easily been a whole lot worse than they were. They could’ve known what they were doing. They could’ve taken me across state lines. They could’ve straight up taken me out of the country. They could have hurt me, beaten me, raped me. Honestly, the benefits of having the chip in me far outweighed the disadvantages—such as my father knowing where I was any time he felt like looking.
“A necklace can be taken off,” I shrugged. “I’m going to be completely honest with you. I haven’t ever seen the problem. It’s not like it’s the government that’s tracking me. It’s only Free. I think you’ll be surprised with how easy the decision is. It seriously can’t hurt.”
She shrugged. “I’ll think about it.”
I had a feeling that she’d probably go ahead with it.
It wouldn’t be long and everyone would have one.
“I got an update from the man that your father has on Frankie,” Coke said as he took a seat on the opposite side of the desk. “He…” He paus
ed, leaned forward, and fixed the pencil that was out of place in his cup holder, and then continued as if he hadn’t stopped. “Hasn’t seen a thing. Frankie has been a good sport about it, too. So, she’s not sneaking out or going anywhere that she shouldn’t. Everything from what he can tell is clear. I still think she might need to come home.”
I shook my head. “I honestly don’t think that whomever did this knew that she was away. But it’s only been twenty-four hours. My dad and Janie will have something by tonight. I guarantee you.”
Just on the verge of that thought, Janie came barreling back into the room, a triumphant smile on her face. “Found it!”
“You weren’t even gone two minutes,” I said.
She shrugged, then put her laptop that she hadn’t opened once while she’d been in here on the desk, and then opened it. “I had a program running in the background, and Jack found something on a bank statement of one of the guys. I tracked that down, and found it linked to your ex-wife’s bank account.”
Coke stiffened.
“What?”
That one word was said in such a deadly quiet tone that I felt my belly clench.
“Your ex-wife.”
Coke got up slowly, then left the room without a backward glance.
Chapter 16
Stop encouraging everyone to go to college. There isn’t enough parking.
-Text from Frankie to Coke
Coke
I arrived at Beatrice’s office—which just so happened to be my father-in-law’s office, too—and didn’t bother to stop at the receptionist who was clearly expecting me to at least slow down.
Instead, I stormed right past her, then walked at a fast clip in the direction of where I remembered her office being.
She didn’t do anything for my father-in-law.
In fact, they weren’t even on the same goddamn floor.
He gave her this corner office, with a fancy title, and basically gave her a paycheck to show up every day.
In all honesty, I knew the only reason Ben had done it was because he knew I’d end up having to pay alimony to the bitch. Beatrice was that petty.
She’d been living off her father for years, but she hated me a little bit more than was likely normal.
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