Roman - Lane Hart Page 0,38
so sorry.”
“I will,” I agree.
“Anything else you need before I go?” I ask her.
“Yeah. Have you heard…did they catch the…did they catch them yet?”
She wants to know that her kidnappers are locked away. And I wish I could tell her they are, but I can’t.
“The Savage Kings are looking for them. Those guys found you, so I’m confident they will find the men responsible and make them pay.”
“Make them pay?” she repeats.
Lowering my voice, I tell her, “They won’t be dragging them to jail, if you know what I mean.”
“You think…they’ll kill them?” she whispers. I nod, and then wait to see how she feels about that. “Good,” she says with a heavy exhale that sounds like relief. “I want them to die. In fact, I want to kill them myself.”
“You don’t mean that,” I tell her. It’s easy to say the words, even imagine the act, but much more difficult to carry out the actual deed.
“I would do it,” Tessa replies. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“What? No, of course not, sweetie.”
“If I kill them, then I would finally know that they were gone and couldn’t hurt me again. If someone else does it…I’ll never really know it’s over.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” I say even though I pray that Roman and his guys get rid of the assholes before Tessa leaves here in a month.
Roman
“How’s it going?” Winston asks when he sticks his head in my office the next afternoon. “How’s Tessa?”
“She’s settled in at the treatment facility. Charlotte said she’s still calling off the wedding, but overall she sounds stronger.”
“That’s good,” he says.
“Yeah, I just wish we had more intel on where to find those fuckers,” I mutter.
“Amen, brother,” Winston agrees. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“How are you doing with all this?”
“I’m great.”
“Great? Does that mean you finally got to nail the widow you’ve been stalking for years?” he asks with a smirk.
“First of all,” I start. “It’s none of your business who I’m nailing or not nailing. Secondly, I haven’t been stalking her. I’ve been checking in on her, making sure she’s okay since her husband was killed.”
“So she turned you down. Understood,” he says with a gruff chuckle.
“She didn’t turn me down! Actually she’s staying with me for the next few weeks, but we’re taking things slow.”
“Taking things slow as in the ghost of her husband is still lurking around, refusing to let her go?”
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Have you told her the truth about him yet?”
“No. I can’t. I won’t.”
“You should. The man is dead, Roman. His secrets should all die with him. Maybe when she finally learns the truth, she’ll be able to move on.”
“I can’t do that to Charlotte, hurt her because of him in the hopes it will help her let him go. She has to do that on her own.”
“So, you’re just going to give yourself the worst case of blue balls ever and wait her out, even if it takes years.”
“Yes! I’ll wait…even if it takes years.”
“Too bad you don’t have years,” he remarks.
“What do you mean?”
“How long is Tessa staying at the facility?”
“A month.”
“Then that’s all you’ve got with Charlotte, Roman. In a month, she’ll be going home with her friend, and your time will have run out.”
Fuck, I hate when my best friend is right about shit. I don’t like seeing things from an angle that I missed, and then being forced to admit I’m wrong. But that’s why Winston is my VP — he’s a pessimist who constantly finds problems with every damn thing.
“Didn’t think about that, did you?” he asks with a chuckle.
“Fuck off. I know she has a house in Raleigh. And a job she loves…”
“Tick tock, motherfucker,” he says, tapping the top of his wrist on the way out the door. “Now or never, prez.”
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte
“Oh, good, you’re all packed up,” I say when I get back to the rental house and see Paul and Steven’s luggage sitting at the door.
“I need to wrap up a few things at work, but I can come back since I put in for time off during the wedding and our honeymoon.” When I don’t respond to that, he adds, “Charlotte, please tell me you have some good news,” he pleads.
“Let’s…sit down and talk a minute,” I suggest while trying to figure out the best way to tell him the last thing he wants to hear.
Once we’re all sitting on the sofas in the living room, I say, “So, I have