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Laric just shook his head and headed to his bike.
Sin did the same.
Finally, I got into Six’s old piece of shit SUV and started it up.
I looked down into the floorboard of her vehicle and saw her heels from a few weeks ago at the banquet that I’d nearly fucked her at.
They were discarded, along with about five other pairs of shoes, probably never to be seen again.
The drive to the facility where Ivan was rehabbing didn’t take long.
When we arrived, the facility was all but empty thanks to it being lunchtime, and the only woman manning the desk was a flustered looking young woman that didn’t look like she was doing too good of a job.
Knowing that we could slip by unnoticed, I gestured toward the long hallway where Ivan was set up.
Footsteps quiet, we all came to a halt right outside the door when we heard talking.
“No, I’m fine,” Ivan said. “Can walk just fine. I can move around normally. I should be out of here by Monday at the latest. Then I can help. Anything that you need.”
Anger burned in my gut that I’d been played.
What pissed me off even more was that the only reason I’d been played was because of Six.
If it hadn’t been for her, and my thoughts about how this would hurt her, I might’ve seen past the obvious.
Then again, I didn’t know that whomever he was talking to was ‘bad.’ But I had a gut feeling that usually never steered me wrong.
“Yeah, you can come pick it up after lunch,” he said. “It has the keys to my office. The files. Anything that you need. You’ll have to go after nine tonight when Evans leaves. Evans will never let you in there to go through my things. There is one thing that they did right. They found a good man to replace me. One that won’t stand for anything bad going down in the office that he’s trying to clean up right now.”
My jaw clenched hard.
“Yeah, you, too, Dumas.”
Then there was silence.
My eyes met Laric’s—eyes so much like my own—and I could tell that he was just as pissed as I was.
Yes, we’d definitely been played.
Well, I had. They’d just done what they were used to doing, which was go along with my word.
“Why do I have a feeling you’re about to go in there and rip his balls off?” Sin asked curiously.
Laric snorted. “Probably because that’s exactly what he’s about to start doing.”
I pushed through the cracked door of Ivan’s hospital room and wasn’t surprised to see him jump at my ‘surprise’ entrance.
“Oh, Lynnwood.” Ivan licked his lips nervously. “When did you get here?”
“Lynn,” I corrected automatically. Being called ‘Lynnwood’ made me think of my informative years, and I fuckin’ hated those years.
I didn’t need another reason to be pissed right now.
I needed a calm, cool and collected head.
“Um, hey, Lynn.” His eyes went around the room, taking in the other two people with me. Sin, who looked like he’d just rolled out of prison in too-tight clothes, newly shaved head, and brand-new ink on his arm that apparently, he’d gotten the day that he’d gotten out. Then there was Laric, who looked mean as hell even now, all these years after he’d gotten out. “How’s it going?”
I came up to the edge of his bed and looked down at him.
“Six made a comment the other day,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the end of the hospital bed. “She said that she didn’t know who Wyett owned the land with. Why doesn’t Six know that it’s you?”
“Uhhh,” Ivan said. “I guess it just never came up?”
Liar.
“Why would Wyett not mention it then?” I asked. “Wyett is her best friend.”
“I honestly don’t know,” he hedged.
“You got two more weeks to go?” I asked, feigning innocence of what I’d just heard. “They said six to eight weeks non-weight bearing. Does that mean that you got two more weeks?”
His eyes flicked from me to the boys at my back then back to me. “Umm, yeah. That’s what I heard anyway. Why?”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I asked your daughter to move in with me,” I said. “And in a couple of months, when she knows that I’ll still be here despite all the mess you put her through that causes her to have anxiety when people show her the least bit of care, I’ll ask her to marry me.”
Ivan’s mouth fell open. “You can’t marry her!”
My brows rose. “Why not?”
“Because you’re you. You’ll, uh, never be safe,” Ivan tried.
Laric snorted from behind me. “If there was one person in this entire world that will always be safe, it’s her. Ivan, Lynn just got six men, all murderers or near murderers and other hardcore convictions, out of prison. Released on good behavior or pardoned. Do you honestly think someone that wasn’t Lynn could do that? The man has more skill in his pinky toe than most men have in their entire bodies. And, just sayin’, but people are scared of him. People that don’t even belong to our business know who Lynnwood Thatcher Windsor is. And if they don’t know him, they’ve heard of Joker, or Bonus. If one name doesn’t scare them, one of the others will. And what do you think the scary ones think knowing that he’s actually all three?”
