The Perfect Fix (Perfect Kisses #5) - Miley Maine Page 0,59

I’m trying to understand…”

“I need money.” His cheeks stain red. I don’t know if this is because of anger or humiliation. “I need money to get myself out of this hole. Then everything will be okay again. I need Aisha’s father to start paying me again because I can’t keep on top of things without that cash. I don’t know how he suddenly expects me to start paying up all of a sudden.” He stares at me, his eyes flashing with an intense darkness now. “It wouldn’t be kidnapping even if I did just walk up to Aisha’s house and take Travis. He is my son after all. But I wanted to do things in a more subtle way. I need Aisha’s fucking father to see how serious I am. I need that money.”

I can see that underneath it all, it doesn’t matter whether he has admitted his gambling addiction to himself, he is still tight in the grips of it. His addiction still has him which has turned him into this terrible version of himself. It’s almost sad to see, but I’m not going to feel sorry for him when his actions have been consistently terrible forever. He can blame his actions on whatever has happened to him, because he has made his own choices. He has decided to go down this path and to put an innocent woman in jail, to take an innocent child away from his family, just for a bit of cash… but if it’s money that he wants then I can sort that out for him. It feels like a really messed up way to go around things, but something needs to happen.

“So, if your money problems could be sorted, then everything would stop?”

“How the hell can my money problems be sorted? He won’t even speak to me now?”

“I might be able to help you.” Ronnie’s gaze snaps up to look at me. His eyes nearly pop out of his head. I can tell that this is something he definitely wasn’t expecting. “But I will require some things from you as well.”

“What do you mean?” he asks me with an edge to his tone. “How would you me?”

“How much money do you need?”

He eyes me curiously, as if he’s trying to work out how much he can get from me. He wants to know how far he can push me. I bet he’s trying to calculate right now how much I like Aisha. He won’t even be thinking about how much I like Travis as well. But that’s because as he has proven, he doesn’t give a shit about his son. Not at all.

“A million.” He folds his arms defiantly across his chest, thinking that he has me. “I need a million dollars from you before I can even think about negotiating anything.”

“Sure.” I nod back. “A million. I can sort that out for you.”

“You can?” He sounds genuinely surprised. “I had you down for a flash bastard, but I didn’t think of you as quite that flashy… so, what the hell do you want from me?”

“You have to legally sign over your parental rights to Travis, so he can’t get involved with all of these schemes again. And you have to promise to leave Aisha’s family alone as well. If you have a million dollars, you won’t need any more money, so you have to leave everyone alone. You have to sign a document stating that.”

“So, all you want is my signature and for me to basically leave everyone alone and you will give me a million dollars?” He looks like he can’t believe his luck. “I will do it.”

I can’t believe that he thinks of it as ‘just a signature’. He isn’t even considering what that signature means. And not just the signature about Aisha’s father but about Travis. He doesn’t care about his son that much; he means nothing to him.

But I can’t get angry at him. I can’t let my real feelings show because as horrible as this is, it’s the best solution for everyone. If Ronnie is out of Aisha and Travis’s life for good, then they will never have to go through this sort of drama again. They can live their lives without having to look over their shoulders at all times, wondering when something like this is going to happen again.

“Okay, so let’s go and do this now,” I tell Ronnie seriously. I don’t want him to have a chance for him to change his mind. “Let’s