After her little aggressive fit last night, I couldn’t wait to rile her up again and again. It was like poking the tiger. Would she show her claws again? What was her plan going forward? Keep biting me? Kick me in the balls next time I did something she didn’t like?
A risky thought flew through my head—she wasn’t bad to look at with all that glowing and smooth skin contrasting against the snow-white pajamas. Her eyes were green, shining in the morning light. Not even green. Jade. Intense and striking. And her lips—still cherry red, vitriol right on the tip of her tongue.
“If you take a picture, it’ll last longer.” The sound of her voice brought me back to reality and I trailed my gaze to the wall behind her instead, lamenting the fact that I didn’t sleep last night. It was hard to concentrate.
"I have your phone here.” Andrei’s voice sounded beside me. “I want you to call your dad and tell him what happened."
Andrei dropped the phone on the coffee table, but the brat didn’t even look in that direction. It wasn’t her phone. We swapped her phone case and forwarded her calls to the one Andrei placed in front of her. Her cell phone was already in another state, powered down, and left in the middle of nowhere. Sebastian Moretti had resources.
But so did we.
"Nope,” Jade drawled, shaking her head. “I’m not calling him. You call him.” She settled back into the couch, as if she was getting comfortable.
Of course. No way would the Moretti girl agree to anything. Suddenly, the text from last night popped into my head.Your dad agrees we should talk.Whoever was sending her those texts was in agreement with her dad. It was painfully clear that she wasn’t in agreement with them, hence…she and her father weren’t on the same side.
But technically, I didn’t give aflying fuck.Because this crazy chick was working with her father, diligently showing up at the office every day to build a case against us and lock us up for a decade or two.
“You’re going to call him and tell him what happened last night. If you refuse, I’ll lock you in the fucking basement. I’m tired of your shit.”
Andrei slowly turned to me, annoyed that I’d veered off the ‘we’re the normal guys’ script. Jade though, looked amused. Of course she did. The damn heathen.
She shifted on the couch and straightened out, her voice syrupy and smug. “There’s no basement here.”
“I’ll find one. Call him.”
Seconds ticked by and silence reigned as our little staring duel continued, but then her phone buzzed on the table and both our gazes fell to it.
It was an unknown number.Theunknown number from last night. I reached for the phone, but Jade’s shrill voice startled me back. “Don’t answer it! Don’t answer that number!”
I froze with my arm out, and Andrei sat motionless as Jade stared at the buzzing phone, breathing fast, her back rod straight. “Don’t answer that number,” she repeated, as if it would make the call go away. The buzzing stopped then and Jade sighed with overwhelming relief, leaning back on the couch again.
“What the fuck was that? Who is that?” Andrei asked after her unnerving reaction. Butof course, Jade had no intention of answering the question. Instead, she bolted off the couch and into the kitchen, ignoring us both.
This girl just did whatever the fuck she wanted, what the fuck?!Shewas at a disadvantage here.
“Don’t answer that number.” Jade said the words again, like it was a magic spell. She stood behind the kitchen counter, turned away from us.
“Was that your ex?” I probed, and Andrei whirled around toward me at the same time as her, both of them surprised at my question.
Her reaction to the phone call stirred anxiety within me. She wasn’t angry, she waspanicked.And evidently, her father was in agreement with the person who made her feel like that. No matter what happened between the boyfriend and her…that sounded like it was all kinds of fucked up.
“How did you know that?” Jade spoke from the kitchen, a little unsure.
“Who is he? Why don’t you want to talk to him?” I had a bad feeling. A bad,badfeeling that we should have donesomeresearch on this girl.
Andrei still sat in the chair, looking from me to Jade, his eyes lost and searching for a smidgeon of understanding.
“Have you been snooping through my phone?” She wandered back toward us, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows furrowed, like she was scolding me. “Why are you doing that? That’s an invasion of privacy!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jade! We kidnapped you!” I shot out of the chair, and she flinched at the sudden movement. “Who gives a fuck about an invasion of privacy?!”
Jade gulped, blinking up at me with her pure, green eyes, sending my soul into freefall. “That was my ex,” she began calmly. “I don’t want to talk to him because I think he’s stalking me.”
“What’s his name?” Andrei asked immediately, quickly calculating the depth of this newly uncovered risk.
“Xavier Knox. He’s got a ton of money and no head on his shoulders,” Jade revealed quietly, her hands at her sides, lookingmightily resigned. She slumped back on the couch, all the wind knocked out of her.
Andrei and I exchanged glances—no words were needed. We knew who that was, and this little detail wasn’t great news, that was for sure.
