She hated that I’d ended our marriage, but only because she hadn’t been the one to do it.
Her father had given her an ultimatum. Leave me, and he stops giving her money.
So, she stayed with me out of greed—not because she wanted to.
She was petty, though. Meaning she disliked that I was able to end our marriage when she wasn’t.
But she’d sunk to a new low, and I was here to confront her ass and see what, exactly, she’d been thinking when she’d paid a man to kidnap our daughter.
I knew I didn’t have the full story, and honestly? I just wanted, for once in my goddamn life, to understand what in the hell had gone through Beatrice’s head when she was doing what she did.
Barging into her stupid corner office where she acted like she was so fuckin’ happy, I didn’t mince words.
“What. In. The. Fuck.”
Beatrice turned to me, looking so goddamn serene that I wanted to throat punch her.
I refrained. Barely.
“Well, Coke. For once it’s you coming to me. To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked, looking smug.
Like she knew she’d caused something to happen.
“Did you know that you had a large, lump sum come out of your bank account that paid one of the men that was caught kidnapping my new neighbor?” I asked carefully.
I mean, obviously she knew good and goddamn well that she’d had a part in that particular scenario. I just wanted to see the confirmation on her face.
Which came not two seconds later.
“I’m sorry, but it’s not illegal to pick your own daughter up.” She paused. “From what I’ve read, anyway. I hired a car service to get her. I needed her here so we could discuss a few matters.”
Lying bitch.
She knew exactly what she’d done.
“Well, there was a problem with that. Your car service didn’t even go to the college to pick Frankie up—and we’ll discuss why you think it’s okay to do that in a minute. Unfortunately, your ‘car service’ came to my place, and they kidnapped my neighbor, who happened to be coming to my house. And you knew good and well that Frankie wasn’t at my place,” I snapped.
“Oh, dear,” Beatrice said. “Was your new little toy hurt?”
My new little toy.
Now it was all making a sick sort of sense.
“So, you knew I’m seeing someone.” I guessed where her mind was.
I wasn’t actually seeing Cora, but Beatrice didn’t need to know that. Likely, all she’d heard was that her husband had moved on and had reacted to it the only way she knew how—irrationally.
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” she lied. “I was just expressing concern for your new neighbor.”
Lying sack of shit.
“Well, regardless of whether you meant for it to be our daughter or not, you can’t just go around kidnapping people and bringing them to you. And, unfortunately for you, you’re about to learn that lesson the hard way,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I turned, gesturing for Tyler to come in.
Tyler came in and held out a set of cuffs.
“Do you want to do this the easy way, or the hard way?” Tyler asked, looking at Beatrice, whose face had gone utterly shell-shocked.
She honestly didn’t think that this was going to happen?
She hadn’t even tried to hide her tracks. She’d literally paid someone to go kidnap someone else, even if it was our daughter—which I was ninety percent sure that it wasn’t her daughter she’d intended for them to get. Whether she’d actually given specific instructions for Cora to get picked up or not was beside the point. Cora had been the one to be kidnapped, and whether Beatrice had wanted that to happen or not, she was going to be punished for it.
The days where Beatrice ran roughshod over my life were over.
She’d crossed the line, and I was going to make sure she knew it.
“I don’t think so.” Beatrice crossed her arms and glared at the two of us.
“You may not think so,” Tyler continued around the desk and stopped next to Beatrice. “But it’s happening. Sorry for you.”
Then he gestured for her to get up. “Either we do this where you’re walking under your own free will, or I cuff you and force you to walk out of here. Which one do you think will go down better in your place of business?”
That was when Ben arrived, looking worried.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked the moment he walked farther into the room and took a look at what was going down.
“Your daughter is being arrested for facilitating the kidnapping of Cora Maldanado yesterday,” Tyler said. “And I’m taking her into the station. You can call her lawyer for her if you want.”
Beatrice stood then, clearly unhappy.
“I’m right here!” she hissed, displeased that she was being spoken about as if she wasn’t present. “And I’m not going anywhere with you. I did nothing wrong. I sent for my daughter. How is it my fault that this one’s” —she gestured to me with a flick of her hand— “new hussy got caught up in the crossfire?”
It was at that point that what little respect I had for the mother of my child wasted away into nothing.
***
When I arrived back at the yard, I wasn’t surprised to see Janie, Cora, Kayla, and June still there. Even though it was closing time over a half hour ago.
I nodded at June as I walked in the door. “Thank you for staying.”
She winked. “I got to pull a carburetor off of a car. But, this one’s dad helped me do it.”
She pointed to Cora, who was smiling.
I felt my heart soften.
“You mean he took it off for you, and you got to watch?” I teased.
That’s what she always did with me.
I’d taught her a few easy things, but honestly, I’d never hired her to pull out the parts that customers wanted. Plus, she was better utilized on the other side of the business—taking inventory on impounded cars—where she wasn’t required to do things that might cause her to actually get hurt.
“Your dad was here?” I asked, looking at Cora.
She nodded. “He came by to let me know that they had your ex-wife in custody. Though, that was hours ago…I expected you back sooner.”
She flushed, and it made me feel good that she was worried about me.
“I went on a ride,” I admitted.
“I love rides!” she informed me. “And yeah, my dad does that, too, when he’s got things on his mind. I can see how you would need one after a day like today.”
I had. I’d needed it very badly.
I’d also been thinking non-stop about what could’ve happened had Beatrice hired someone smarter, and not just some random dumbass off a Craigslist ad. Then there was the fact that I had to tell Frankie that her mother was likely going to see the inside of a jail cell for a while.
Although, I was fairly certain Frankie would classify that as good news.
To have her mother not able to call her any time she felt like, it might be a dream come true for Frankie.
“Well,” Janie stood and brushed off some crumbs that had fallen into her lap from something she’d enjoyed at an earlier point in the day. “I gotta go. Rafe’s been with the baby for the entire day, and I’m sure that he’s ready to have her momma home.” She looked to me. “If I were to apologize for leaving a child with her father all day, and ignoring his pleas to come home, what would you buy or do for him that would help with his anger?”
My brows rose. “Do you want the PC—politically correct—answer or the real answer?”
Janie’s eyes sparkled. “What would you say if I said I wanted the PC answer?”
“I’d say that there was something wrong with you, and maybe we should call the cops because you’ve been either drugged or silenced by a threat of some kind. Then I’d tell you to maybe get some pizza and beer,”
I teased.
She giggled and reached for her keys. “Now, tell me that non-PC answer, because we all know that I’m not a nice girl all the time.”
That was the truth.
“I’d tell you to text and make sure he has the baby happy, fed, and content enough to be left to play in her crib alone for about twenty minutes. Then I’d tell you to drop down to your knees the moment you walk through the door and give him a blow job.” I didn’t hesitate to tell her like it was.
There was one thing that I’d missed out on all of these years with Beatrice—and that was a blow job.
Beatrice, apparently, was too good to give those.
But, I’d heard that they were nice.
One day, maybe I’d trust a woman enough to get that, but for now…the only woman that I wouldn’t mind having that close to me didn’t need to be there.
Speaking of that woman.
“Are you ready to go?” Cora asked with a smile.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
***
It was an hour after she’d fallen asleep, exhausted and dead to the world, that my brothers finally cornered me.
I knew they’d find their chance.
Well—I knew that Ale would share the news that I’d found another woman with the rest of my brothers.
After our first talk about the kidnapping the morning that I’d opened my door to them, I knew that they wouldn’t be able to stay long.
Ale and Jim were headed back to their bases early in the morning, while Absinthe and Bellini were headed out tonight.
I’d intended to have at least a couple of hours with them before they headed out, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen—thanks to my ex-wife’s antics.
With three of four brothers still active duty army, I hadn’t expected to see them at all. Yet, as I opened my door, there they were. I hadn’t realized that I’d needed them as badly as I did.
They’d been there for a day, only able to stay for a short time, but knowing that they’d dropped everything to come had been enough to allow me to acquire a semblance of calm.
They’d always done that for me.
They’d never once said a word about my lack of forethought, or how stupid I was to ever get involved with Beatrice.
“So…you have a much younger chick living with you, your daughter’s away at college, and your ex-wife has taken offense to that fact.”
I grinned at Ale. “Yeah. No, she was just scared last night. She doesn’t live here.”
“Either way, seems to me like you have a conundrum,” Sin drawled. “What are you going to do about it?”
“You mean in the form of the cute little thing in his bedroom?” Jim asked, leaning back in his chair.
He had a five o’clock shadow and looked downright rough. Though, that would be gone by tomorrow morning when he went back to work. There was no room for anything but perfection when it came to being a drill sergeant.
“I think you should take advantage of the young ass,” Ale offered his two cents.
I flipped him off. “I’m not taking advantage of anything. The woman is off limits.”
“Is she off limits because she said she was off limits, or because you said she was off limits?” Jim questioned.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “She’s off limits because she’s my neighbor, she was kidnapped because my ex-wife thought it’d be goddamn funny and because she’s too nice for me. She’s a good girl that doesn’t need to be mixed up with my business.”
***
Cora
“Too nice for me,” I murmured as I listened to the men talk.
Too nice my ass. And good girl I was not.
Chapter 17
Sharing is caring…unless it’s a cold. Keep your ass at home with your flu face.
-Cora to Janie
Cora
I, Cora Maldanado, was insanely attracted to Coke Solomon.
And there was something seriously wrong with me, other than the obvious.
I was practically salivating each time the man came close to me, and it was getting to the point where I was thinking this was going to get bad.
I’d gone to work with him all week, and I did my work from his desk, right in front of him.
It was getting harder to handle my attraction to him.
I was currently making a list in my head of things that shouldn’t be sexy, but they were.
One, watching the man pour himself a cup of coffee. All he was doing was something so mundane that almost every human on the planet does it at some point in their life. But watching him with his strong forearm muscles reach forward and lift the heavy industrial pot of coffee and pour himself a cup? Yeah…that had inspired more than a few clenches in my nether regions in the last week.
Then there was watching him read something with his usual, everyday black reading glasses—the kind that anybody could buy at the grocery store.
To anybody else, he likely just looked like a normal person. To my brain, though? Yeah, I wanted nothing more than to look at that man wearing his glasses while he was down between my legs, doing things to me that no man had ever done before.
Then there was that freakin’ way he bit his lip when he was concentrating…kinda like he was now.
He was staring at a list of some sort, periodically stopping to check things off for something he was buying at auction next week.
I’d lost interest in my work about thirty minutes ago. In all actuality, I was ahead. Surprisingly, considering I stopped every few minutes to ogle the man wherever he might happen to be in the yard.
Sometimes I’d go to the window and watch him crushing cars or growling at an employee for sleeping when he should be working.
That employee needed to be fired. He was the most useless employee I’d ever seen, and I honestly had no clue why Coke put up with it.
Kind of like now. With one glance in the direction of the yard, I could see the man looking at his phone instead of at the car that he was crushing.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Why exactly do you still employ him?”
Coke looked up, releasing his lip, and focused on me for a long, heart-stopping second, then looked out the window to see his employee on his phone. Again.
He sighed. “He’s my father-in-law’s nephew from his sister who passed away. He’s a complete fuck up, but he’s sort of kind of family. I’d feel terrible if I fired him.”
That made a whole lot of sense but…
“At what point is your obligation to that family over?” I asked. “I mean, honestly? It doesn’t make sense that you feel required to employ that kid. He’s awful. It doesn’t matter if he’s family or not. Which, technically, he’s not. Not anymore. Yes, your father-in-law did you a solid by making sure you had this business but…what about what he didn’t do?”
He sat back in his chair and waited for me to continue.
I didn’t disappoint him.
I let him have it. Just like he’d let me have it a few days ago when he called me on my false bravado.
“Your father-in-law forced you to get married to his daughter, knowing that she was a bitch.”
Coke’s lips twitched.
“You’ve done your duty. Over and over again. You’ve paid off the loan he gave you. You’ve given that horrid woman a whole lot more time than she deserved, and he was a part of that.” I waited, allowing that to sink in. “Did you ever ask him why he forced y’all to get married? This isn’t the dark ages. The day when you’re forced to marry is long gone. He didn’t help you live. You did that. You went into the army. You provided money for your wife and child to live here when you could’ve gotten housing for free where you were stationed, but she despised the idea of giving an inch. I’m sure the only reason you took anything from him was because he offered. Right?”
His lips quirked.
“It was an incentive.”
My brows rose.
“I got injured. When I
got home, Beatrice made my life a living hell. Trying to recover while dealing with her was even worse. She was screaming at me, and I couldn’t scream back. I was at my wit’s end, and I think my father-in-law knew it. He saw what I was about to do—which was divorce her ass—and he offered me the money to buy this place. At first, it wasn’t really something I wanted to do but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Plus, it gave me a few more years to get Frankie straightened out while having both parents home.”
“Frankie straightened out?” I asked.
He sighed. “Beatrice ignored the fuck out of her. And with me being active duty, and Beatrice refusing to move where I was stationed, it was really fucking hard to make sure that I was there for her like I needed to be. Then, as Frankie excelled in school, and Beatrice did her utmost best to push what she wanted for her—which was marriage to a good man at eighteen—Frankie rebelled even more.”
I moaned.
“If that woman wasn’t already facing jail time, which I think is quite hilarious to see a woman like her facing jail, I’d go kill her just because of what she put you and Frankie through.”
He chuckled and got up, walking around his desk and ruffling my hair before leaning over to grab his Yeti cup that was sitting on the edge of his desk opposite of where he was standing. “I’m going to go pull a transmission for a customer.”
I was too busy looking at his crotch to process his words, and before I could say anything in response, he was walking out the door, his tight ass mocking me as he went.
I closed my eyes and realized that maybe he was right. Maybe I was just a girl. Maybe I was too nice.
Maybe I wasn’t good enough.
I was such a coward.
Tonight, I’d go home.
Maybe being in my own space would help me gain purchase in my life and give me the courage to tell him that I had some serious feelings for him.
Feelings that only got stronger the more I was around him.
***
“I think I’m ready to go home tonight,” I lied. “I’m going to give it a try…but be ready just in case, okay? I might call freaked out in the middle of the night.”
He blinked. “You don’t have to go if you’re not ready.”
I gave him a shaky smile. “I have to.”
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