Impact (Suncoast Society #32)(11)

Grabbing it, she didn’t even glance at the screen before hitting the green button and the speaker mode, dropping it into her lap. “Cris Guerrero’s phone.”

When the caller didn’t speak right away, Tilly thought maybe the call had dropped. She glanced into her lap and saw it was still connected. “Hello?” Tilly asked.

“Who is this?” a woman asked.

Tilly’s instinctive reaction was to ask who the f*ck this was, but she reined it in. “I’m Tilly LaCroux, Cris’ wife. He forgot his cell phone. Can I help you?”

“His…wife?”

Tilly’s grip on her mental reins started slipping as she struggled to keep her thoughts from wildly running into dangerous territory. “Yes, his wife. Who is this, and how can I help you?”

She silently added “bitch” to the end of that question.

“I’m…My name’s Sofia Guerrero. I’m his cousin, Fi. He told me I could always call him at this number.”

Tilly immediately relaxed as she negotiated traffic, even as her confusion increased. She thought she might have heard Cris mention a favorite cousin before. As far as Tilly knew, he hadn’t seen or heard from her in years, had lost contact with her. She’d been the only member of his family Cris had talked to after his father died.

Tilly and Cris rarely discussed their families of origin. Tilly’s mom died in an accident, and she never knew her birth father. Her step-father raped her.

Needless to say, she wasn’t close to anyone other than her adopted family of friends.

And her two men.

Cris’ parents had disowned him as a teenager, and he’d survived an abusive couple of years living at his uncle’s house before he’d landed a college scholarship, graduated high school, and then while attending college met Landry.

“What can I do for you? Cris is in meetings all day today, but maybe I can help.”

The woman started crying. “I need help.” Her voice dropped. “Please. He threatened to hurt my baby if I tried to leave.”

In the background, Tilly heard what she thought was the sound of a baby crying. “Where are you?” Tilly said, upshifting from professional mode into full-on Domme mode. She pulled over into the next parking lot she came to and shifted the car in park. “Can you call 911?”

“I can’t.” The woman cried harder. “I told him I was going to leave him the other day and he beat me up again. I was going to go to a shelter, but now I can’t. He’ll have his friends lie for him and get out of it and hurt me and the baby. Cris told me once, years ago, that he’d help me get away. I need to leave now. Before he comes back to the apartment this evening. Me and the baby. If I call the police, his friends here will see it, and he’ll run.”

Beat her up again?

That sealed it. “Give me your address.” Tilly grabbed her phone and plugged the info into it, mapping it. “I’m in Burbank. It says it’ll take me about forty-five minutes to get to where you are.”

She knew Cris would spank her for this, and fine, she’d let him. But it would take her hours to get to his office near Anaheim and back at that time of day. She wasn’t even sure where his meetings were today, either. He might not even be in Anaheim.

“You get everything together you can carry,” Tilly ordered. “Including anything you need for the baby. And any paperwork you have, like birth certificate, health records, photos, all of that stuff. Do you have something to write with? I’ll give you my cell phone number.”

“Okay.”

Five minutes later, Tilly was weaving through traffic, heading for the 5 and hoping to holy f*ck that, for once, luck would be on her side.

She had a flash of brilliance and wheeled into a home improvement store, racing through the aisles and finding what she needed, checking out in less than five minutes. Then she was back on the road and hitting the on-ramp to the Interstate.

Tilly didn’t give a f*ck what they called it in LA, it was still an Interstate.

And she wished like f*ck she was in Florida, because she’d have a good friend with a concealed carry permit she could call for backup in a case like this.





Fortune favored the bold, Tilly knew. She had traffic on her side and managed to beat the navigation system on her phone’s estimated arrival time by five minutes.

Giving her enough time to pull over once again and prep.

She took the lighter and tested it, dropping it into the left pocket of her blazer. She popped the cap on the can of wasp spray and had it ready in her lap.

Calling Fi back, Tilly’s pulse pounded in her ear until the woman answered. “Hello?”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Yes. But we need to hurry. His friend next door left to go to the store.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be there in about two minutes. Do you have a car seat for the baby?”

“No, it’s in his brother’s car.”

Tilly was eagerly looking forward to meeting “him” and teaching “him” a lesson.

But not yet.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get a new one. Just be ready.”

Tilly’s adrenaline was pumping by the time she pulled into the ratty apartment complex’s parking area. She kept the can of wasp spray in her right hand and hit the button on the key fob to lock her doors with her left thumb as she ran for the apartment.