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I don’t want a dime of his money, anyway.
I just want my life back.
Knox slants his head my way, smiles a bloodstained grin, then shifts his focus to Dallas. “Did you not hear what he said? He just threatened me.” When Dallas remains as frozen as Nicole, he shouts, “Do your fucking job! Get him out of my damn suite!”
Dallas doesn’t take a complete step. He’s stopped by Nicole fanning her hand across his chest. “This isn’t your suite. It’s mine. I paid for it just likeeveryhotel we’ve stayed at.”
“You’re taking his side? An ex-con you knew for two seconds before you opened your legs for him like the whores he sleeps—”
Nicole ends his sentence the same way my fists are dying to do but can’t since River is still using his weight to pin me to the ground.
He hates when people fight, primarily when he classifies them as family.
As much as this sucks to admit, he sees Knox as more of a brother than he sees me. Knox took care of him in his formative years and gave him access to a lifestyle he would have never had access to if I hadn’t taken the rap for Knox’s mistake.
River thinks the sun shines out of Knox’s ass, and I’m the villain threatening to disband his family for the second time in his life.
After righting his head, Knox works his jaw side to side before whispering, “Let’s see if you still feel the same way when you read what the PI discovered about him.”
When he pulls out a document from his desk drawer, River frees me from his hold so he can rock in the corner and mutter to himself, “You said you wouldn’t use it against him. That you would use it to help him.”
The world falls out from beneath my feet when it dawns on me what the document is. It is the form I was handed by Officer Riley when I was released from prison. The papers I trusted River would keep safe.
I can tell the exact moment Nicole reads my conviction on a record I should have burned. The color drains from her cheeks, and at the same time, her eyes fill with tears.
“Nicole—”
Knox cuts me off before I can promise her I’m not the man my conviction makes me out to be. “You haven’t read the worst of it yet.”
“Get your fucking hands off her,” I snarl out when her scan of the second document he hands her has her knees almost buckling beneath her.
Nicole pushes Knox off her before sidestepping him to confront me head-on. “Is this true? Did you do what this states?”
“It isn’t as it seems.”
“He pled guilty,” Knox interjects again. “It says so right there.”
Nicole acts as if he never spoke. “Did you do what this says?” She doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “Did you get behind the wheel drunk and crash into a fucking tree?”
She whacks at me with so much aggression Dallas has no choice but to intervene.
She’ll hurt herself if someone doesn’t calm her down.
As Dallas pulls her away from me, she continues to shout, “Did you flee the scene without checking if she had a pulse?”
Her knowledge of the accident Knox was a part of ten years ago is shocking. No one knows the details she’s sharing. I was underage when I was arrested, and part of my plea agreement was that my record was permanently sealed, so how the fuck does she know so many details about it?
I learn this goes way deeper than her believing I’m a murderer when she breaks free of Dallas's hold and screams in my face, “Did you kill my sister, Laken? Were you behind the wheel of the car that was meant to deliver her home safely but instead veered into a fucking tree?” Tears stream down her face when she stammers through a sob, “Did you leave her to bleed out all alone?”
“No…” When she slumps forward before all my denial leaves my mouth, I catch her in my arms and pull her to the floor with me. “Nicole...” I roll her over until her head rests in my lap and her hair falls from her face. Her eyes are closed, and her mouth is slightly ajar.
I snap my eyes up to Knox. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
Knox’s mocking tone breaks through the silence tearing me in two when he orders two men standing next to one holding a syringe to take Nicole to her room.
I try to push back the men I’m quickly realizing aren’t from the standard road crew, but within seconds, the same sedative the doctor used to subdue Nicole takes effect. Then, the only fight I endure is the silent promise I issue River when our eyes lock across the room two seconds before blackness takes over.
I will make things right for both him and Nicole.
