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“Mom!” I call out when only a few cars separate us. Mom doesn’t look up, and I open my mouth to call her name when a hand reaches out and wraps around my mouth, scaring the shit out of me.
“Make one fucking sound, and I will cut your throat right here.”
The low, menacing voice is unfamiliar, and I assume I am about to get mugged. Again.
I nod that I understand and suck in a sharp breath in an effort to slow my racing heart.
“Kelsey!” My sister calls out, and the sound of her running in heels grows closer with every beat of my heart.
“Hey, asshole,” she yells out, “let my sister go!”
I start to squirm, to try and turn to tell McKenna to stay away, but the man’s grip tightens around my mouth and my stomach. I bite his hand, not hard, just hard enough to get him to let go.
“McKenna, no!”
My words come too late, and I turn just in time to see the masked man raise the butt of a silver gun and bring it down over the top of my sister’s head, knocking her out cold.
“Kenna!” I lunge for her, but he keeps me locked in his grip.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he hisses. “Not until the boss is done with you.”
Before I can ask what the hell he’s talking about and who is his boss, the man slaps a black hood over my head, tosses me over his shoulder, and runs away. He only runs a few seconds, so I know we’re still in the Mimosa parking lot, and I know they have tons of cameras because I’ve seen the drunken YouTube videos. Then I’m in the air for a brief second before I land on the hard metal floor of what I suspect is a van or a truck.
“What the hell is going on?” I shout the question because I can’t see a damn thing. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”
“We got a talker,” another male voice says with a laugh.
“Excuse me,” I say again in my best pissy voice. “I asked you a question.”
“Shut the hell up, puta,” says the same voice that put the bag over my head.
“You shut up, pendejo.”
The voice from farther away laughs.
“Fucking talkative-ass bitches,” the voice closer to me spits out, and a moment later, I feel a searing pain on the side of my head that makes me sick to my stomach.
Nausea rolls through my gut for a brief second before my head goes dizzy, and I pass out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Coop
I glance at the clock for what feels like the fiftieth time in the past thirty minutes, which makes me feel like some kind of sappy asshole. Why? In a word, Kelsey. Her car is done, and she’s half an hour late for our lunch date. Yep, a fucking lunch date. I shake my head with a disbelieving smile that I had asked a chick out on a date.
Not that I haven’t done it before. I’ve asked out plenty of girls and women in my life. Got a lot of yeses and a lot of nos, and it had never really mattered to me which answer I got. You only lose the game if you don’t play, right?
But something feels off now. Kelsey is a worrier by nature, and I know something has to be wrong if she’s late without a call or a text to let me know. It’s not like her, and I call again.
“Hey, this is Kelsey! I’m not available right now—”
I smile at the sound of her voice, but ultimately, I end the call again because straight to voicemail meant her phone is off. This also isn’t like Kelsey.
She likes to be reachable for the people in her life, like her sister, even though they don’t always get along, her friend Ruby, and her mother, who spends most of the time traveling the world. Like I said, my girl is a worrier, and her lack of communication is worrying me plenty.
That’s how I know that I’m too far fucking gone over her. She’s woven her way into the fabric of my life to the point that I call her sometimes just to hear her voice. When I hear a joke, even an off-color joke from one of my brothers, I want to share it with her. My body craves her because she’s fucking gorgeous and sensual and craves pleasure the way I do.
I didn’t recognize the signs at first, but with Shades giving me shit about spending so much time with the same chick, I was able to figure it out on my own.
A hand claps me on the back, startling the fuck out of me. I turn to see Ace wearing a grim-looking face, and I’m instantly on alert. “What’s going on?”
