AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kash took a pause. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but then the door was opened. He was inside, and he didn’t say a word before he pulled away.
I knew he was furious.
I was bracing myself, because I didn’t know if he was mad at me, mad I was there, or just mad at his grandfather. I was guessing the last two were definites, but I wasn’t sure about the first and I was holding my breath, waiting. A sick feeling was in my gut.
He waited until he was on the freeway before starting.
His voice was low, back to being controlled, but he didn’t look at me. “I knew he was coming to your school today. Knew he was going to make a move to approach you again. I knew all this because those guards on him work for me. He knows about the one, but I gotta make the decision to pull the rest or risk him figuring it out and executing them all.” He swore, and it was savage. He punched a button on the car’s phone.
The dial tone filled the car, and then it was ringing.
“Boss?”
Kash was grimacing as he spoke. “Pull everyone. I can’t risk him doing anything to you guys. Everyone, Connor. Everyone.”
A moment of quiet on the other end, then, “Got it. Disperse, or new job location?”
“Disperse, except you and Monty. Both of you come in. I want you at the estate.”
“Got it, boss.” Another beat, and then we could hear his smile when he said, “Have to say it was a pleasure holding him back from you today. I’ll send the word and we’ll dump him. He’ll get picked up within minutes, but the guys will take off and wait for your new orders.”
“Good.”
The call ended, and without blinking, Kash was filling me in. “I had six men guarding Calhoun. He thought they were a gift from a family friend. They weren’t. They were sent by me, and through them, I was told his plans for today. I’ve known about his plans for the last week, and even before that. His stop at the apartment was not announced to his team or I would’ve been told that ahead of time, too.”
He flashed his turn signal, smoothing his car over two lanes of traffic and onto the exit ramp.
I was half taking in our surroundings before he started again. “I didn’t want to lose my guards on him, but he upped his trip today. I had to move in, drop my news to your school, and he would know that the first time might’ve been a coincidence but the second time was not. He would’ve known. I had to burn six guards I had on him. The trip to Brazil was a calculated guess and a move to strike a better relationship with who I think he might pull a brand-new security detail from. It’s a guess. He won’t trust anyone else from this country, since your father and I are the two people who most want to be aligned with, not aligned against. I guessed at who he’d approach, just didn’t know it’d be so fucking soon.”
A nerve was pounding. A vein stuck out from his neck. He was speaking again, the car sidling up to a stoplight. “My grandfather wanted to hurt me through you, so he was moving to hold a claim over your school, and then therefore over you. After he thought that would be cemented, he wanted to see you again. That fact alone had the sole purpose to scare you, to let you know he could get to you whenever he wanted, wherever you went. I took out both those options because I told your university that if they accepted his thirty million donation, Peter Francis would pull his seventy million donation that they were set to receive later this month. Like I said before, money aside, they do not want to align against myself or your father, and that was them choosing. They chose our side.”
The light turned green and we moved forward.
We weren’t going to the apartment. I recognized our surroundings. We were going to Naveah.
Kash was still speaking. “I lost one of the edges I had on him today. I don’t know if my trip will work out to give me that same edge on him, so that means after we go to Naveah, after I fire your classmate, after I shower with you, I have to keep making moves on him. I have edged out ahead of him and I cannot lose that. I could lose you, but that won’t happen, because I know his last play and that will be to hurt you.”
We were slowing, turning in to the basement parking lot of Naveah. Kash stopped talking until he had parked. The door leading to the elevator inside opened and two guards were standing there.
