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Kincaid is waiting outside when we make our way out the front door. He hands me the keys to an SUV. Everyone else is already loaded up. It doesn’t surprise me when Kincaid climbs into the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by Shadow.
I clench my jaw when Mila walks around to the far side of the vehicle, pulling the passenger side door open on her own before I can reach for the handle to open it for her.
When I glance back at the SUV with Kincaid and Shadow, they’re both grinning like fools, having read my irritation from twenty yards away.
“Three vehicles?” Mila asks, as we pull out of the parking lot. “That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” I tell her, rather than going into detail about safety protocol and how we might need to leave one vehicle and still have room for everyone who’s coming on this trip if shit goes down. She’s already freaked out about leaving the kids at the clubhouse. I don’t want to stress her out even more.
I’m more cautious than normal as we begin our trip. It’s not unusual to travel this way, and as much as we were joking earlier about Cerberus being like Fort Knox, it’s really not something to joke about. We bring so much danger to our own doorstep. It’s almost enough to make me consider how it might be best to shelter Mila and the kids far from all of it. We bring this trouble to us, and then pride ourselves in protecting those we care about. It seems all of our problems would be solved if we just didn’t care at all.
Chapter 26
Mila
I really thought he’d be the first to speak, that maybe we could have a conversation, but silence only grew with the miles he drove. I couldn’t bring myself to speak either, and as intimate as things have been between us before, it was a stilted silence. I have a million questions, but doubt and the risk of how he might answer has kept my mouth closed.
The building we finally pull up to is massive. It’s not surprising that it’s in a mostly industrial setting. The supply warehouse was much the same in St. Louis, although I’d only been to that one once.
I take a deep breath as he parks the SUV, but I stay inside when he doesn’t turn the ignition off.
I watch as Oracle and another guy climb out of the SUV pulling a trailer. Kincaid and Misty’s husband, Shadow, climb out of the one they’re in.
“Ready?” he asks, the sound of his voice somehow startling me.
I climb out of the SUV and wait for him to meet me on my side.
The other guys are already walking inside. Em made a comprehensive list yesterday afternoon after sitting down with me and asking what it would take to run a full business. We had to discuss the types of services that people would want. The list was extensive and expensive.
“Just being here stresses me out,” I confess, my voice low so Vincent can hear.
“You’re safe,” he assures me, misunderstanding my reservations.
I turn to look at him. “I never thought I was in danger.”
He gives me a tight-lipped smile, as if there’s more to say but he’s just not ready.
“Some of the women mentioned an online scheduling system,” I say as we walk through the front door. “Apparently it’s something that Max can set up.”
“That seems like a great idea,” he says, a little distracted as he looks around.
“They mentioned adding my prices to it, insisting that they pay even though I’m not capable of buying any of this stuff today.”
Vincent gently grips my arm to pull me to the side so we aren’t blocking the entrance when another woman walks up behind us.
“If they want to pay, let them pay.”
His simple reasoning makes the simmering anger inside of me start to bubble faster.
“If you didn’t want to do this, then you could’ve said no.”
That statement rankles even more. I didn’t want to say no. In a perfect world, in the world I created in my head when I allowed those thoughts to come up, I’d have my own salon where I made all the rules. Where there was no booth fee or commission percentages split with others. I’d have the final say in every decision. It looked a lot like what I was being offered, only these things don’t happen. People don’t go from barely scraping by one minute to having their wildest dreams come true the next. At some point, the other shoe has to drop. The deeper I let myself sink into this fantasy, the more it’s going to crush me when it all comes crumbling down.
“They aren’t trying to set you up only to pull the rug out from under your feet, Mila,” he says in that infuriating way that tells me he’s almost an expert at reading my mind. “The women at the clubhouse have a need, and with you, they have the ability to fill it.”
“Some of the guys mentioned wanting haircuts too,” I tell him, not wanting to exclude anyone.
His jaw ticks with the news, and I just have to add his reaction to the growing list of shit I don’t understand.
