AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, boss,” Logan grits out, wiping a drop of blood from his nostril.
“Now…” He turns to the rest of his crew. “There’re over one hundred pounds of product headed here on the Odyssey Cruise. I want you all on that boat, ready to distribute it into vehicles and take it across town to the designated warehouses.” He directs his attention to the man from earlier. “Chino, since Justice is incompetent, I want you and Emilio to search the gala for Vaughn. Roster shows she’s checked in. Find her and get rid of her. A nice bullet in the head sounds like the perfect farewell. Make it look like a drug deal gone bad.” Then he turns to me. “And you…pretty little thing, when you get bored of this one, please do pay me a visit.” His smile is nauseating. “MOVE!”
Everyone steps into line, taking their orders and dispersing. Logan wraps his arm around my waist. “Let’s go.” My legs barely move as he guides me to another door and down a hallway that spits us out a side door of the ballroom. As soon as we get outside, a rush of wind blasts me in the face, practically knocking me over.
“Wait,” I plead, but Logan doesn’t stop. He pulls me toward the lake, where a large yacht waits. Yacht…boat…water—water.
“Nooo way.” I cement my heels into the ground, stopping us both.
“Yes, way. Let’s go.” He yanks me, and I stumble a few steps but manage to relock my feet. “Addy. Fucking move.”
My head whips back and forth as I begin to panic. “Yeah…or not. I’m not getting on that boat. I’m afraid of water. Or things that pretend to float. I’ve seen Titanic way too many times. Nope.”
Logan huffs an impressive gust of air, shoving his fingers through his hair. His hands ball into fists, and he curses, looking around for another option. Letting me go home would be the best one. “You have to get on that boat.”
“Yeah…well, I can’t.” His jaw clenches, and I can hear his teeth grinding over the violent slamming of waves against the pier’s barrier. His eyes are as dark as the night sky. I search the pier, hoping to find a savior in a stranger, anyone I can scream for to help, but it’s deserted. He comes at me, and I jump back. “Best option here is to tell them we got into a fight. Let me go, and you can go do your thing. I’ll just go home and call it a night. In all honesty, that sounds like a fantastic—”
His arm grasps my bicep, heaving me forward. I yelp, then melt into his warm body. Once I siphon just a little bit more of the enticing feel of him against me, I’m going to fight back.
“I won’t tell anyone what I saw, I swear. I’m loyal. Ask my mom! She always said I was so loyal to my friends…well, I don’t have any friends, but—”
He covers my mouth.
“I don’t think you understand. You’re not going anywhere but with me.”
That’s too bad.
“Do you not get the amount of fucking danger you’re in right now? You’re in the lion’s den of Chicago’s biggest drug lord. You think you’re going to just go home and tuck yourself into your pretty little flowered bed with fluffy pink pillows, wake up, and everything will go back to normal? I let you go home, they’ll come after you, and you won’t see tomorrow. They’ll want to know where my girlfriend went. And when you’re not with me, they’ll get suspicious. So, you’re going to get on that goddamn boat and play by my rules until I can figure out what to do with you. You. Got. Me?” I nod slowly, my eyes wide. “Now, I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth, and you’re going to be a good little girl.”
He pulls his hand away. “I have all gray covers.”
His brows crease. “What?”
“My bed. It’s all gray. I actually hate the color—”
“Jesus Christ!” He lunges toward me, tossing me over his shoulder. I pound furiously on his back. “Please no! I’ll do as you say, but I can’t get on that boat. I’ll have a panic attack and die. It’s a thing. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. Phobias. Long list of them.” His fingers dig into my hips, and a low growl echoes into the night as he flips me back over his shoulder and onto my feet. “I’m serious. I’m super scared of boats.”
He assesses me for another moment before turning his angry eyes to the boat, then back to me. He takes a step closer, forcefully exhaling through his pursed lips. “I need you to trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you, but I need to be on that boat. Which means so do you.” He’s no longer sporting his bad boy frown or firm jaw. He still looks like he wants to throttle me, but there’s a thin veil of stress in his eyes.
