In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(59)

Asad chuckled at his reference to what’d happened in that hotel room all those years ago. “You liked that, didn’t you? Watching the power a man has over a woman?”

No. He hadn’t liked it at the time. He’d cried until his eyes swelled, screamed behind his gag until his throat was raw, and struggled to get free of his bindings until his wrists bled.

All to no avail, of course.

But the thought of doing to that blond American bitch what his father had done to his mother made his manhood swell with blood. So, perhaps his psyche had broken that fateful day, or maybe it’d simply been warped beyond all redemption. Unfortunately, he was coming to believe the truth of the matter was that he was more like his father than he ever imagined.

“I want the information,” he declared, resisting the urge to wipe the cold sweat from his brow. It would be a sign of weakness, and he’d learned never to show weakness to his father.

“And you shall have it,” Asad reached into the side drawer of his desk, pulling out a file, offering it to him. For the first time in his life, Sharif thought perhaps there was a spark of pride in his father’s eyes.

When he opened the file, his blood boiled. There she was, her laughing face captured in a full-color, eight-by-ten photograph.

Rebecca Reichert.

I’m coming for you…

***

What the hell am I doing here?

It was the third time in as many minutes Frank had asked himself that exact question as he stood in the dark, empty hallway on the third floor of the shop, his forehead pressed to the outside of Becky’s bedroom door.

It was oh-one-hundred. Everyone had turned in hours ago, including him, and despite his belief that he wouldn’t, he’d managed to fall asleep. But he awoke sometime later with a violent start, his shoulder throbbing, chills racing down his spine, the certainty that tomorrow he’d see his last sunrise absolute.

So what did he go and do?

He jumped out of bed like the mattress was on fire, threw on a pair of old jeans, threaded one arm through a button up shirt, pulling the other half over his bandaged shoulder and sling, and padded down the hall to stand…outside the one door on the entire planet he shouldn’t be standing outside of.

That invitation…holy hell, he couldn’t get it out of his head…

“If you ever change your mind, you know where I sleep.” It kept swirling around and around inside his heated brain, right along with, “Whatever happened to sex just for the sake of sex”

And right behind all of that, a little voice would whisper, It doesn’t matter. You’re still her boss. She’s still too young for you. And think of how this will hurt Shell.

Unfortunately, with morning and his shoulder surgery creeping closer, that little voice was growing fainter and fainter while another voice, a more tempting voice, grew louder and louder.

That voice was telling him by tomorrow night he might be dead, and it was asking him which he would regret more. One night in the arms of the woman he wanted more than his next breath? Or the betrayal of someone he loved?

In answer, a memory flashed behind his closed lids…

It was a bright, sunny June day, and he was riding with the windows down in the passenger seat of his father’s teal-blue Thunderbird. He was ten years old and on his way to get “ice cream.” That was the code Robert Knight used when he was going to see one of his lady friends, as he liked to call them.

The “ice cream” runs were always the same.

His father would buy him a double scoop of Rocky Road and a new comic book and plunk him down on the stoop of whatever apartment building Robert’s current lady friend happened to inhabit. An hour later his father would emerge, his step jaunty, his dark hair mussed, and they’d go home, both smiling at the little deception because it was fun to have guy secrets. Things they shared, just the two of them. Things the girls in the family didn’t know about.

But that fateful June day things were different. Because that fateful June morning Timothy Murray, Frank’s best friend and next-door neighbor came over crying, wailing that his parents were getting divorced because his dad was having sex with a woman other than his mother, and a light bulb went off in Frank’s head.

For the first time, it occurred to him that maybe his father wasn’t simply drinking Coca-Colas, smoking Marlboros, and playing poker with his lady friends.

“Do you have sex with them?” he asked when they pulled up to a little clapboard house with a covered porch and a patchy lawn. At one time, the house had been white, but it’d deteriorated to a peeling, faded gray. And even ten-year-old Frank recognized the smell of desperation hanging in the air like the fumes from a refinery.

“What do you know about sex?” his father replied, leaning a muscular arm on the windowsill and pushing in the lighter on the console.

Robert Knight was one handsome devil—that’s what everyone said.

Frank didn’t know about all that, he only knew that his father was bigger, meaner, and tougher than most men. And he felt absolutely dwarfed, especially with the hot air inside the car suddenly vibrating with the tension stretching tight as a piano cord between the two of them.

“I know enough about sex to know you’re not supposed to have it with anyone but mom,” he answered sullenly, throwing his ice cream cone out the window, watching it splat on the sidewalk below, the pointed cone sticking up like a sad, little party hat.