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I pull back slightly and look him in dead the eyes, the warning loud and clear. One which I find really fuckin’ irritating.
“See who?”
“Ava,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “She ain’t for you, bro.”
“Yeah?” I chuckle, letting go of his death grip on my hand. “Real fuckin’ rich coming from you, Mackenzie.”
“The fuck?” He steps forward, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
“One... you’re with my little sister so you ain’t got a leg to stand on.” I pick up my duffel and sling it over my shoulder. “Two, you may treat her like a little sister but she ain’t.” I grab my weapons bag and hold it at my side. “And three, even if I was, it would have jack fuckin’ shit to do with you.” With that, I wink at them and saunter out of his office with a ‘see ya later’ thrown over my shoulder.
I hadn’t planned on going to see Ava but maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all.
She gives me peace and calm like no one else ever could. I just need to find out where the fuck she lives.
I’ll do this mission, check in with J and the bar, and then I’ll find her.
Shaking my head, I put my bags on the passenger seat of my car and speed out of there. I don’t have time to think about it right now. I have a target to apprehend.
For days I’ve gone back and forth on whether to go and visit Ava or not. I don’t like the fact that Daley knows that I’ll be going to see her but he’s the one that put the idea into my head in the first place.
Was he up to something? Was there a reason he wanted me to go and see her?
Nobody knew how Daley worked but there was always a reason behind his every move.
The job went off without any hitches and I was out of there six hours later. That’s how I liked to work; get in and get out as fast as I could.
Now it’s time to check on my other business venture. A couple of years ago, I bought an abandoned warehouse and had it turned into a bar. Having it renovated while I was out of the country wasn’t easy but having a manager who understood that I’d be away a lot, and could make those decisions for me, was something I needed.
That’s how I found Jamie.
Her husband was one of the men on my squad in the forces and he’d made me promise to look after her if anything ever happened to him. After he died, I knew I had to keep my promise and she was the first person who I thought of when I bought the place.
I didn’t know whether she would relocate or not, but she practically deafened me with her answering squeal when I had asked her and she was packed and moved across the country within days. She’d been a Godsend and had kept me as informed as possible which to be honest, wasn’t much with the way the mission had worked out.
I’d only seen pictures of the place so I couldn’t wait to see it properly.
Since the moment I saw the building, I imagined what it would look like and I was hoping that I had explained my vision well enough to Jamie for her to do it justice.
Being in close distance of two colleges meant that I would always have business and from what Jamie had told me, we were doing really well and the books reflected that. I was looking forward to seeing how the bar ran on a normal night.
Parking outside the bar, I push the door to my car open and smile, spotting Jamie stood outside the club, her auburn hair cut into one of those messy bobs and her sunglasses covering her eyes.
“Corey!” she shouts and runs up to me. I wrap my arms around her and lift her feet off the floor.
We’ve become close since she took on the bar, not in a romantic way but I think she’s probably the closest thing I have to a best friend. She understands the life and she knows her stuff, even though she’s only in her early twenties.
“Hey, J.” I grin and place her feet back down on the floor.
“I can’t wait for you to see this,” she squeals. Shaking my head, I chuckle at her as she bounces over to the door and pulls it open waving me inside.
When I walk in, I stop at the entrance, taking it all in.
It’s just how I imagined it, there’s a shiny black bar that runs in an L shape with hundreds of spirits stocked behind it and beer on tap, something that I insisted on. When I first envisioned the place, I was going for a fusion kind of style, something that would work well during the day as well as at night.
I run my hand across one of the leather booths and spin around in a circle.
This is way better than I had imagined it.
