Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
I flinched.
His mouth flattened, and he grimaced. “Let’s talk about why you wanted to come here and not Naveah.”
It was like he threw a bucket of ice water over me, and swallowing over a knot, I glanced over. Fitz went to the booth’s door. The other two guards were on the edge toward the dance floor, the one remained at the bottom of our pathway.
We were good to talk.
I pulled my phone out and showed him Hoda’s text messages.
He read them, his jaw getting firmer and firmer until he scrolled to the end. He clicked on something, and then hit another button before almost shoving the phone back to me.
I took it, already looking. “What’d you do?”
“I sent them to my phone.”
“What?” I was scrambling. I hadn’t expected that from him. “Why?”
“Because that shit is bad.” He pointed a jabbing finger at my phone. “That shit can’t stay between us. That’s why you wanted to come here, isn’t it?” His eyes were blazing and fierce.
I shifted away, letting out a sigh.
That was messed up.
He was right. I needed to tell Kash.
I leaned back, my head resting against the back of the booth, and there, I felt the club swirling around us. Everything was swimming. I felt the waves pushing down on me. I was lost, hearing the techno bass, feeling the heat of the lights, the smell of the dry ice in the club, and he was right. He was totally right. I mean, I knew it, but seeing my brother’s reaction to Hoda’s text messages, I knew I’d been wrong.
But craaap.
Crap!
Crap!
I tasted salt and opened my eyes, everything blurring.
I was crying. Again.
I hated crying.
A hand circled my neck and I was pulled in to a chest. Matt’s arms wrapped around me again. He hugged me to his side. “Bailey. Man.” His hand began smoothing hair back from my forehead. “Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—Well, I don’t know what I meant, but if this is about Hoda and Quinn…”
I shook my head, the tears falling even faster.
It wasn’t. I wished it was.
He hesitated then, and finally, after maybe a minute of sitting there in silence, he spoke. “I think we should call Kash about this.” The admission came out of him in a rush, almost rueful, like he couldn’t believe he was saying what he was saying. His hand shook as he said those words, then he smoothed it out, letting it fall to rest on my shoulder.
He was right.
And why was I crying?
EIGHTEEN
Kash
The inside of the warehouse was completely silent.
I had a twin. A fucking twin.
This man, this brother of mine, was tied to a chair and had been kept captive for weeks until it was time to finally deal with him. Didn’t say a word, either. I put my phone down, my wallet. I laid my gun on the table and I picked up tape. I wrapped it around my knuckles, flexing my hand to test how it felt. All the while, he watched me.
He hadn’t been beaten.
He’d been fed. He’d been given water. He was put in a room that was deemed comfortable. A bed. An audio cassette recorder, with tapes if he wanted to listen to anything or record his own message. There was a bathroom just off the bedroom. The temperature was always comfortable. He asked for a fan once, and it was given. He gave no indication of escape, or wanting to hurt himself, or even plotting an escape.
He read. He listened to music. He exercised in his room, and when he asked, he was brought out to do laps around this very warehouse.
He was also kept away. The closest building was a thirty-minute drive, through woods and rivers and fields. All the time, nothing.
I watched my grandfather, but there was no report of him being worried.
“Is that supposed to intimidate me?”
His first words to me.
I looked at my taped hands before going and dragging a chair over. “These?” I flexed them. “No, no, no. They’re to cover up a cut.”
His heavy eyes just watched me, not missing a thing. He didn’t react. There were no emotions flickering over his face—his face that resembled mine exactly. But no. Looking closer—and I had been; I’d been watching him on video this whole fucking time—there were differences, but they were slight.
His cheekbones were a little wider. His jawline wasn’t as pronounced as mine. He had a slightly wider forehead. But his eyes were mine. His nose was mine. Our mouths were the same. I imagined we would’ve been considered identical twins.
All the time—since he broke into my apartment, since he was captured—I didn’t know how I felt about his existence.
I leaned back in my chair. “Do you know why I’ve waited this long to speak with you?”
He didn’t hesitate. “To figure out if I’m here because our grandfather sent me or if I ran from him.”