I pushed the covers back and slid my naked body out of bed to see what was going on. We seriously hadn’t worn clothes in almost a week, but Cole was sitting on the center couch with his colors on over a white t-shirt and blue jeans. His hair had been brushed back, instead of hanging down in front of his face as it had been for a few days. He glanced up at me as I approached and ended his call, telling the person on the other line that he was on his way.
“Let me guess, you’re still going after Fang,” I stated as I walked around behind him. I leaned forward and ran my hands down his strong, firm chest.
“Of course I am,” he said plainly.
“And you’ve been looking for him behind my back this whole time,” I teased him. “That’s why you’ve kept your conversations to text messages or why you’ve taken your calls outside, huh?”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to bother you with it all,” he sort of apologized. Well, I took it as an apology. I wasn’t quite sure if he meant it that way, or if he was just trying to soften the blow.
“I thought you had dropped it, honestly,” I said, making my voice a little firmer. I let the humor and amusement go from it.
“Why would I?” he asked.
“Because we have the perfect opportunity right now to walk away from all of it,” I tried to convince him. “We can get out of the business, leave everything behind, run off together, and start a new life.” I smiled as I rattled off my fantasy to him.
“Not hardly.” He laughed. “Look, I know Fang was behind the thefts. I know now that he had you stealing product from me so he could sell it and undermine my business.”
He grabbed one of my hands and turned around, looking up to me with his kind green eyes. There wasn’t an ounce of anger or hatred in them anymore. He’d gone soft for me. When he looked at me, all I saw was tenderness. I melted when I looked into those eyes.
“Besides,” he continued, “he threatened you. He sent those thugs after you.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I argued. “Fang would never do anything like that to me.” I tried to sound convinced. After all, Fang had been the one telling me to get out of Cole’s HQ. He had called me. It wasn’t like I had called him after being locked up to try to get him to meet me somewhere, even though that was exactly what I was planning on doing when he called.
“Sure he wouldn’t,” Cole said, letting me go and getting up from the couch. He turned his back because he was getting ready to leave, but it really felt like he was turning his back on me.
“Why do you feel like you have to defend me, though?” I asked him. “I’m not asking you to do anything like this. I don’t expect it. You haven’t been to the clubhouse in almost a week. You’ve barely spoken to anyone in the MC. I’ve completely dropped off the face of the earth since those guys in the park. Let’s cut our losses and move on, Cole.”
“Cut our losses?” He turned around and looked at me like I’d gone crazy.
“Yes, let’s call it quits. Let’s pack up what we need and hit the road. We can retire. We can both afford it,” I explained. I glanced around his nice apartment overlooking downtown as a prime example of our financial stability.
He paused a moment and looked like he was considering what I had proposed. Then he shook his head and frowned. The way I saw it, if he could have put Hell’s Overlords mostly aside for a week, there was no real reason he couldn’t just grab his money and go.
“I can’t call it quits, Sasha. The MC is all I’ve ever known. I have a responsibility to my men. When I took over the reins a few years ago, we were a small-time organization with a lot of chapters spread out and doing their own thing. Hell’s Overlords focused mostly on petty crimes. We made a pretty penny doing that, but it wasn’t sustainable. Some of our members still had real, legitimate jobs. I didn’t agree with that, so I took over and turned things around. Now, we have a reputation for being ruthless and deadly to our rivals, but we are dependable to our partners,” he explained.
I stood and listened, staring down at the floor. I felt like a child being scolded by her father. I didn’t like that feeling. I’d spent my adult life not answering to anyone but Fang, and barely even to him. The whole point of my life was not to have to answer to anybody, and I wasn’t about to start answering to someone just because I slept with him.
“Now, I can’t run out on the empire I’ve built, Sasha,” he continued. “If you want out of it all, that’s great. I’ll be happy to take care of you and protect you should your old boss come looking for you—and believe me, he will—but I can’t walk away from the Overlords.” His voice was tender and patient as he explained himself to me.