Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“Hey,” I said while tapping Fernando’s cheek, forcing him to open his eyes. “You can’t keep doing this, man. You can’t keep trying to destroy yourself. Every time you do it, you tear me up inside.”
With a weary sigh, Fernando nodded slowly, his eyelids drooping again. “It hurts so much. I miss Jason every second of every day. Sometimes, I dream about him. It feels so real, so amazingly good to hold him again, to tell him how sorry I am and how much I love him. I can feel him, Ramón, feel his warmth and the softness of his hair against my chin. Then I wake up, and I’m so alone. So terribly alone…we failed him…all of us…”
With that, he mercifully went to sleep and Diego, Fernando’s twin, pushed himself up from the chair he was sitting in across the room, his long hair mussed from being pulled on while we fought to get Fernando into bed.
As he got closer, I noticed a nice bruise coloring the side of his face and wondered if I bore a similar mark. Even wasted, Fernando was a fierce fighter, and we’d had a fuck of a time getting him down without beating him to death. My back ached as I stood, moving to my dad’s side so I could rest my hand on his shoulder. He was a quiet man, patient and even kind in his own way, but he was a man of action and it devastated him that he couldn’t heal his son’s broken heart. None of us could, no matter how many shrinks he saw or what kind of drugs he was on, or not on.
“We need to get him a different nurse,” Diego said as he gently removed one black leather cuff from Fernando’s wrist. “I think he’s palming his meds again, and the bitch you have with him now thinks she’s in love with him.”
Rubbing my face, I pushed my hair back and thought again about getting it cut. Before all this tragedy happened, I wore my hair long because the ladies loved it, and I loved the ladies. After Nina’s betrayal, I couldn’t stand the thought of touching a woman and hadn’t been laid in eleven months, a record for me. The only way I’d been able to relax enough to get hard was when I had the woman tied down and a bodyguard watching me—literally watching me—fuck her. The tying down part was completely normal. I take charge during sex; I run the show, and binding women is part of what I like to do. But I don’t share my women and I sure as shit wouldn’t let a bodyguard watch me fuck, but times had changed.
I had changed, and not for the better.
With Fernando basically losing his mind with grief, I had to step up in my role in the Cordova cartel, taking on some of my brother’s duties, even though I kept my main role as an assassin. As far as the public was concerned, I was the heir apparent. Everyone knew I was being groomed to someday take over my father’s role as President of the Cordova Group, a multi-national conglomeration of pretty much every profession under the sun, all encompassed in one corporation. The legitimate money we made wasn’t anything to be sneezed at, but our real income came from drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Not just ones that get you high, but also drugs that the FDA has yet to approve, or ones that’ll never be approved but nonetheless have a huge market.
Real medical miracle treatments that could save lives…for the right price, of course.
Cracking his neck, Leo frowned at his phone then said in a preoccupied voice, “Judith said Hannah went home, but she’s not answering.”
I absently fingered one of the sore spots on my face where Fernando’s elbow had caught me. “She’s probably busy talking with Joy. What’s today…Thursday? Isn’t this around the time Joy gets home from tutoring? She usually grabs some food on the way, so they’re probably hanging out. You know how much she misses Hannah, so she’s probably talking her ear off.”
Everyone in the room stared at me, and I fought to keep my expression blank. They all knew I was slightly…possessive of the blonde, brilliant, super curvy, and mouthy as hell woman who happened to be Hannah’s roommate. And they all knew I watched Joy via the cameras hidden in the apartment she shared with Hannah and their bitch roommate, Kayla. They were also aware of the cameras I’d set up in Joy’s bedroom, cameras I’d forbidden anyone else from watching.
While I admit I violated Joy’s privacy on every level by recording her while she was in her bedroom, I didn’t analyze every minute of her day. Mainly I watched her at night, when she was either sleeping or getting ready for bed. I wasn’t spying on her, I just found a peace I’d yet to encounter anywhere else when I looked at her. Due to her lack of dating lately, I’d also gotten the occasional treat of watching her masturbate, a torturous affair for us both. Me because I’d give anything to be the one to satisfy her, and Joy because it took her forever to orgasm.