Page 112 of Road to Redemption

All of this just for me to get some shares.

I’d somehow managed to make it more dangerous for the three bikers trying to protect me from an evil man.

Whether I wanted to deny it to Dom or not, I’d put her at risk. And now I had to hope that our plan would work — that somewhere down this winding road there would be safety and peace.

59

KIERA

Dom hadn’t been joking about this lockdown shit. I’d thought it was bad before when I was penned up in my bedroom, but now it felt like she didn’t even want me near the windows.

Not that she’d said it explicitly. But it didn’t take a soothsayer to interpret the giant knot that had made a permanent home between her shoulders.

It’s really not that deep.

I was half convinced that her constant vigilance over my every move was the result of her annoyance with me rather than any real concern.

The other two had already let go of my slip up with the IPO — we’d had to do a lot of forgiving and forgetting around here the past few months, and I’d have thought Dom would understand that from first hand experience.

But she wouldn’t stop eyeing me like I was a bomb that was about to go off, or maybe a piece of gum clinging to the bottom of her shoe.

When she looks at me at all.

Though I told myself that this was some advanced form of psychological torture, guilt still ate away at the quiet corners of my mind. I had put her at risk — all of us, really. And while I resented her weird, standoffish behavior with me, there was a twisted part of me that took comfort in the punishment.

I wouldn’t be able to relax until I’d found a way to make things right, and short of that, a way to pay for my transgression.

Would be easier to fix this if my mere presence didn’t piss her off.

But I wouldn’t let that stop me from trying.

When Spencer and Leo weren’t busy pounding down my door, they were usually in the gym. But a quick peek through the doorway showed that Dom’s were not amongst sweaty muscles on display today.

That didn’t quell my temptation to stop in the room. Maybe she would show up soon, or maybe my angels and I could find another way to pass the time. But I shook my head as I walked away from the temptation.

No, I’m on a mission. Where the fuck is she?

Checking her room was an absolute last resort — if I thought she’d been cagey about the West Wing, she’d probably behead me for stepping foot past her threshold. But I had a hunch that wasn’t where she was, anyway.

Careful not to alert my lovers, I crept down the long hallway, pausing at the door that led to the underground garage. From downstairs, I could hear heavy rock and the slam of a bucket hitting the ground. Bingo.

She’d found an excuse pretty much every day to lurk around down there: at first, she needed to oversee the handoff of our blue escape Audi back to a few of Violence’s mechanics. Then, she wanted to ensure her Camaro and all of their bikes were returned in the condition they’d been in before my meeting with Maura: fucking pristine.

Now, I wasn’t sure what she could be doing. Probably shuffling around her car collection by model and year.

Probably finding any excuse to avoid me.

But as much as seeing me might piss her off, I’d learned in Washington that avoiding her only made it worse. It was for the best to force her to rip the bandage off, no matter how much it stung.

When I got downstairs, I didn’t see her at first. The only sign of life was the music blaring from the in-ceiling speakers and an industrial-sized container of car polish set out in the middle of the otherwise pristine ground.

But just before I could call out, a high-pitched buzz whirred from across the garage. Following the sound, I saw Dom with her back to the staircase, holding the source of the sound against the hood of a white and blue Ford Mustang.

Through the armholes of her black ribbed tanktop, I could see her scars, along with the wings of her tattoo. Her back and arms were tensed as she slid the polisher along a square section of the car in a slow, controlled motion. She made the movement look easy, but I could tell that it was exhausting: long lines of sweat ran down her back, making the muscles glisten and soaking a dark V into the back of her shirt.

Stop staring. How long has she been at this?

I tried calling out to her from the staircase, but there was no chance of being heard over the machine and the music. Staring creepily at her from the doorway didn’t seem like a great option though…