Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
It was the wrong thing to say. My vow only gave her fear a new direction, and I glimpsed the panic in her eyes before I turned and damn near sprinted for the door.
“Ocean! I swear to God you better not hurt her! Ocean!” she screamed at my back.
I heard her running after me just as I slipped from the room. My bedroom door slammed behind me, and I quickly swiped my card over the pad just as Coby collided with the door. The beep and flashing red light confirmed it was locked. Knowing she’d eventually end up in my bed (I didn’t think it would happen this soon), I’d had the same lock installed on mine because while I might be gone for this girl, I couldn’t turn off the part of me that always thought three steps ahead. I hadn’t intended to lock her into today, but it only took one mention of Hunter to bring us back to square one.
Even now, Coby’s fists banged on the other side as she cursed me out. “Let me out, you psycho bastard, so I can fucking kill you!”
“I’ll miss you too, sweetheart.”
“Fuck you!”
Already eager to return to Coby, I was grinning as I walked away, but Abel wasn’t when I reached the end of the hall and saw him waiting outside the wing’s double doors. His phone was plastered to his ear, but he quickly hung up with a curse and fell in step beside me.
“What’s up?” I asked as I steered us toward the housekeeper’s office. If Hunter was going to stay with us for an undetermined time, she’d need somewhere comfortable to stay.
“We got a problem. Your pops called a meeting, but he wouldn’t say why.”
And just like that, my smile and excitement fled as I recalled the warning my cousins had brought under the guise of petty gossip. “I know why.”
Pulling out my phone, I quickly sent Priscilla a message before leaving the apartment.
Hunter Parrish would just have to wait.
“The fuck yo ass do now?” my cousin Keefe leaned over to whisper as only the Fola’s leadership—the capteans, my uncle Tyrone, and I sat around the conference table in my father’s study at Glamis. We were all waiting for my fucking pops to finish taking a shit. The only sound was the hammering and drilling in one of the rooms my mother was having redecorated.
A bridal suite, I was told.
For Niamh.
“I found her,” I said simply as I ignored the migraine forming and kept one eye on the room. Most of the men present were of the blood, but that didn’t make us family. Abel, along with everyone else’s personal guard, waited outside but within shouting distance in case someone (me) decided on a whim to paint these dark walls red.
“Who?”
“My wife.”
“Shiiiiit,” Keefe croaked as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his head in agitation.
It was possible we wouldn’t leave this room alive if my father somehow found out that I wasn’t just reluctant to marry his choice, but that I’d gone out of my way to find my own. The look Keefe and I shared expressed exactly what we both thought of my father’s trifling ass.
The only ones who weren’t apprehensive about the impromptu meeting were Tyrone and Evan. The latter wore a sneer directed at me while the former seemed resigned to his entire day going to hell.
Tyrone was my father’s comhairleoir1. Other than my mother and me, no one else was closer to the Boss than he was. Tyrone liked to think of himself as important. Indispensable. In actuality, Tyrone was a wannabe politician, a sometimes lawyer, and a glorified secretary. He was also my mother’s younger brother, who sold her to my father in order to become made. Shitty-ass siblings were something Coby and my mother had in common.
Evan’s bitch ass was the only one of my cousins I didn’t trust because he believed he should be the next Boss instead of me. To keep me in line, my father let Evan’s dumb ass believe he could really choose him over me, but the truth is that Malcolm would rather slaughter our entire family and progenerate a whole new line than concede the throne to someone else’s seed. My father believed our empire was his right as a direct descendant of James, but that kind of thinking is exactly what could lead to a civil war within the Fola. Luckily, my father knew better than to make his feelings known. The Kilpatricks have been in power since the start, but the Balfour-Young and the Torrances were just itching for a reason to take it from us.
Finally, the door to the study opened, and we all stood in deference as my father entered the room. The largest of us all, he towered over everyone as he walked to the head of the table and took a seat. I sat on his right while Tyrone sat on his left.