“Why?” My question isn’t for Smith. It’s for Theresa, who looks way too fucking smug for my liking. “What possible benefit would my father get from keeping her alive? Why wouldn’t he just kill her?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t ask questions. That isn’t the way I operate.”
I smirk before hitting her with one-tenth of the attitude she’s smacking me with. “That’s right. I forgot the only time you exert any kind of normalcy is when you’re flat on your back being served a healthy dose of dick. Is that why you keep showing up? Does the big gaping hole between your legs still need filling?”
Rocco’s snicker annoys her, but it has nothing on the rage that fills her eyes when her body responds to the faintest touch of my finger as I drag it up her arm. She doesn’t hate me, even though she really wants to.
With a huff, she folds her arms in front of her chest to hide the budding of her nipples. “I’m here to cash in the favor your father is refusing to bequeath.”
Itskat her, disappointed she believes I’m stupid enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book. “As I’ve told you before, if your favor was issued by my father, he’s the only one who can grant it.”
“He’s refusing!” she shouts in my face.
I bite my lip to half my smile before asking, “And how is that my problem?”
I swear steam almost billows out of her ears when she stifles her scream with a growl. “Because everyone knows you clean up your father’s messes. It’s what you do! You’ve done it for years.”
“For clients I deem worthy. Dried-up old hags who should have gotten out of the game years ago don’t count.” I catch her hand before it gets close to my face. Then I use it to bring her within an inch of my snarling lips. “You might have Isaac on the back foot with your tricks, but I don’t play by those rules. When you are no longer of use in this industry, you’re as good as dead.”
Her minty fresh breath hits my lips when she gabbles out, “Are you threatening me?”
I drag my index finger down her white cheek before trekking it across her lips. “No, baby. If I were threatening you, you’d already be on your knees, saying your final farewell.” Her cheeks will feel my nails for days when I grip her face with everything I have. “Now get the fuck out of my face before I send Clover over for a visit. He’s been waiting years to mess up that pretty little face of yours.”
I push her away from me, smirking when she almost loses her footing on the loose gravel. As she straightens out her jacket like it’s the only thing my grip creased, her eyes bounce between Smith, Rocco, and me. She doesn’t bother with Warden Mattue because even someone as fucked in the head as her knows the only pull he has around here is getting his dick sucked by one of the female prisoners.
Did I forget to mention this prison is mixed gender? My bad.
“This won’t be the last of this,” Theresa warns before she makes a beeline to a Fed-issued car at the back of the lot.
She’s right. This won’t end until one of us is dead. You can be assured my name won’t be on a headstone anytime soon. I can’t make the same guarantee for Theresa.
I’m almost made out to be a liar when my silent thoughts are interrupted for the second time this morning. This time, the female’s call of my name doesn’t send me into a fit of rage. It sees me issuing a threat so fucking firm, Satan will hear it. “If I find out your guards’ fingers got within an inch of their triggers, I’ll gut you where you stand.”
Warden Mattue’s eyes snap to Roxanne frozen at our right for the quickest second before they jackknife back to me. He drinks in the fury the red dots highlighting Roxanne’s chest caused my face before he frantically waves his hand through the air, demanding for his men to stand down.
The eagerness of his request is appreciated, but it’s too late for him now. He’s a dead man walking. He knows it. I know it, and so the fuck does Roxanne. My ruling six weeks ago wasn’t just that she wasn’t to be touched. She can’t be threatened either. Lighting up her chest with a dozen assault weapons is a threat, and I refuse to let the injustice off lightly.
“Go…” When Warden Mattue steps closer to me with his hands held up in a non-defensive manner, my souring mood the past six weeks steamrolls back into me. “Go!”
I want to follow through with my threat, I want to pull his insides out of his belly button before stabbing a knife in his eye, but since Roxanne is too close not to see me as the monster I am, I maintain my cool—barely.
After watching the warden’s terrified scuttle, I shift on my feet to face Roxanne. I haven’t seen her in the flesh in weeks. Just like Petretti’s restaurant, I kept her family’s ranch without surveillance. A system can’t be hacked if it doesn’t exist.
I want to say Roxanne has put back on the pounds she lost during her hunger strike, that she looks well-rested and healthy. Regretfully, I can’t. She looks as tired as I feel like the past six weeks were as painful for her as they were for me. Don’t misconstrue. She looks good—she will always look good—she’s just a smidge below the woman my thoughts drift to every night when I succumb to the tiredness overwhelming me.
“What are you doing here, Roxanne?”
Although my question is for Roxanne, my narrowed gaze is for Smith. This is his second slip-up today. That isn’t just a new record, it’s also unacceptable. He can’t watch Roxanne for every hour of every day, but heissupposed to log her movements. The last report my eyes skimmed this morning was about the light in her bedroom being switched off a little after midnight, so how the fuck did she get here by five?
“This isn’t Smith’s fault.” Roxanne skips across the dusty lot as if she isn’t placing herself in the firing line for the second time this morning. “Infrareds have their faults.” She presses a kiss to Smith’s cheek before she throws her arms around Rocco’s neck to hug him fiercely. “Is this new?” she asks while teasingly dragging her index finger across Rocco’s pecs, lingering longer than I care to admit. “I don’t recall seeing it on you before. It’s cute and body-hugging. I like it.”
I know what’s she’s doing, and I don’t fucking like it. She saw my altercation with Theresa, but instead of working out why it annoyed her, she’s serving the jealousy our exchange hit her with back to me one bitter pill at a time.
With my mood not knowing which way to swing, I take the easy route. “Get your ass in the van, Roxanne. Smith will take you home.”
She whips around so fast, her recently colored hair slaps her in the face. “No.”
“I beg your pardon?” I’m reasonably sure half the block hears me. That’s how loud my roar is. “I wasn’t asking.”
