Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(35)

“And give him complete and total power over the situation? Over me?”

She’s right in every sense of the word, but all I want is for her to be safe. All I want is for Carter Preston to leave her the fuck alone.

“It’s my life you’re messing with, Ryker . . . not yours.”

“I’ll make this right. I’ll figure out . . .” Fuck! “I’m so sorry, Vaughn.”

“I know you are.”

And without another word, she walks away.

No. I let her walk away, because I feel like a helpless piece of shit who can’t seem to do a goddamn thing right.

If I thought I knew rage before, I fucking know it now.

You did this, Ryk. You and your goddamn fucking selfishness. You sicced this pit bull on the woman you love, and now he’s salivating over the chance to sink his teeth into her.

And all I have in defense is a shitty garden hose to try to scare him off.

I move from one end of my office to another. The drywall calls on me to punch it, to push a hole through it, but I know it won’t do a goddamn thing to fix the situation. To call off the dog.

No. A hole in the wall will be just another reminder of Vaughn.

Of how she needs someone to patch the drywall when I keep punching through it.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Vaughn

For the second time in days, I find myself wandering the streets of New York City. I buy a coffee from Starbucks, but it grows cold in my hand without the java ever touching my tongue.

I know this isn’t Ryker’s fault.

I know that Carter is just finishing what I started when I denied him services, made him pay compensation regardless, and threatened him with blackmail pictures. I’m not naive enough to think we’d end it at that.

But I was naive when it came to thinking that maybe if I didn’t poke the sleeping bear, Carter would allow everything between us to grow cold and move on.

And then Ryker went and poked the bear.

I stand in the middle of Times Square. The jumbotrons flash bright colors from their screens. Tourists mill about, their shoulders and backpacks jostling me here and there.

But I’ve never felt more alone.

This is such a different feeling than when Sam died. With her it was absolute devastation and utter shock. But now? Now I have so many things I never expected right at my fingertips—adopting Lucy, everything with Ryker, the applications I filled out this week to get my teaching credential—and I fear one wrong move could take that all away from me.

My mind keeps circling back to Carter’s threat. To his mention of my uncle. And with a clearer head now that I’ve confronted Ryker, I can focus on why his threat is ringing out of tune to me.

So Carter Preston knows about my uncle . . . but what about him? How would Carter outing my sister’s abuse hurt me? Privately, it would remind me of the despair and devastation she went through to protect me, but publicly? How could him talking about my creep of an uncle do anything to harm me?

The only way it could is by outing the fact that I’m the owner of Wicked Ways. That I sell sex for a living and take a cut off the top.

So why is Carter using it as a threat? Is there something else missing that I don’t remember? It took me over ten years to remember her abuse, so what else is it that I’ve repressed, if anything?

That’s the unknown that’s haunting me.

At first it was the fear that my uncle would find me and drag me back—juvenile in thought, but no one can judge a woman who in her adulthood fears the man who haunted her youth and abused her sister—and now it’s the fear that there’s something else there I don’t know.

“What am I doing, Sam?” I mutter, well aware I won’t get a second glance in this crowd for talking to myself. “What am I missing?”

My Wicked Ways cell alerts a text, the vibration in my hand informing me. I turn it over to see a text from Ella. Just my bimonthly question. Lol. Are you ready to sell yet?

Ella’s been trying to buy me out since the minute I made a name for myself in this business, and I’ve held off because I need the ongoing income to pay off my debt. For the first time ever, though, I want to text back in all shouty caps YES! YES, I’M READY TO SELL . . . but I feel my client list isn’t robust enough to get the offer I need to make it worth selling.

Just one more piece of the life I’m trying to build put on hold.

Just one more dream I have to wait to achieve.

Just one more heartache I have to endure.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ryker

“Is this seat taken?”

“All yours,” I murmur just above the bluesy jazz the bar is piping through its speakers. The weeknight crowd is above average in size in this yuppified bar on the East Side.

“You’re lucky I was in town,” Carter Preston says, and I can see him hold up his fingers in my periphery to flag down the bartender. Once his drink is ordered and his first sip is taken, he leans back in his chair.

I make him wait. Not because I have anything more pertinent to do but more because the fucker makes my skin crawl.

“You going to talk, Lockhart, or am I going to sit here with my dick in my hand and pretend you love me?” He laughs like the self-righteous prick he is, and I’m already annoyed with him.

“A double this time,” I tell the bartender when he points to my glass asking if I want a refill. I look at Carter for the first time. “This shit has got to stop.”