Home>>read Property of Drex (Book 2) free online

Property of Drex (Book 2)(8)

By:C.M. Owens


She’s a good girl. And I’m the devil who stole her from grace.

After walking in silence for so long, Axle blows out a breath.

“Are you going to tell me why it looks like you’ve had the hell beat out of you?” he asks me.

Eve is laughing with the woman behind the sales counter as she hands her cash. She was worried no one would take my card since it didn’t have her name on it, and she only took the money because I told her she had to. It’s not like I’ve given her a chance to make her own money.

She looks carefree and all smiles. My eyes move around at all the other people living their lives without looking over their shoulders. I don’t fit in with those people. I don’t even want to fit in with them. But Eve looks at ease amongst them as she walks out, loaded down now with four bags.

“Damn it, Drex,” Axle growls.

“She wanted to be a school teacher,” I tell him quietly, watching as she eyes a diner, licks her lips, and heads in.

Axle and I sit down on a bench, staying across the street and adjacent to the diner she just went in. He blows out a breath while taking in what I just said.

“And she can’t be a school teacher and be with you. Your position is too dangerous for her to be so exposed.”

I nod slowly, watching her as she sits down and pushes her bags in on the other side of the booth. She beams up at the waitress who comes to take her order, and something squeezes inside my gut.

“She can’t be anything outside the club if she’s with me. She’d have to give up her entire life and dreams. If I was just a low-level nobody within the outfit, she could be any-fucking-thing she wanted.”

“She set fire to her dreams and future when she signed herself over,” he points out.

“She did that for her family. Not because she wanted to.”

I heave out a heavy breath and run my hand through my hair. Eve looks out the window, but she can’t see me from this angle well enough to know it’s me without actually knowing it’s me.

She just seems to be taking in all the sights around her, not studying them for potential threats. My life is bars, strip clubs, and lots of business with shady fuckers from all over. Her life is camisoles and daisy picking.

It’s easy to forget all that when she’s submerged in my world with nothing else around. It’s hard to ignore it when I get to watch her from afar in her own element with all the other innocent people.

Dash appears in front of us, wearing his own set of street clothes, and he leans against a pole while pocketing his hands.

“What’re you doing here?” Axle asks him.

“Figured I’d lend a hand in case Benny tries something.”

I don’t speak to him. It’s not hard to figure out that I’m still royally pissed. He finally addresses it.

“I’m sorry, D. How many times are you going to make me say it?”

My eyes tear away from my girl to narrow on him. “You shouldn’t have to be apologizing. You’re supposed to have my back. Not Pop’s. If I’m unconscious, you don’t fucking threaten my girl; you take care of her. That’s how it’s supposed to work. She was fucking scared enough; she had miraculously survived my house getting sprung full of fucking bullet holes; and she risked her life to try and keep me safe. Then you threaten her?”

My jaw grinds and my fists start to ache from their tight squeeze. He looks away, moving his eyes toward the window.

“I do have your back, brother. That’s what I thought I was doing. I didn’t know I was getting played.”

I open my mouth to retort to that, but a breath hisses out of Axle’s lips before he mutters a curse. My eyes dart back to the window just in time to see a familiar face hugging my girl.

“Whatever you do, don’t shoot him in public,” Dash says, grimacing when Ben Highland—Benny’s bastard son—kisses my girl’s forehead.

Axle is jerking me back down to the bench before I even realize I’ve stood up.

“Let’s watch how this plays out,” he says quietly, almost regretfully.

My stomach is in knots, but I do sit down. They’re just friends.

It doesn’t stop me from remembering Ben was her first and only before me. It also doesn’t make me feel less murderous when he sits down beside her in the booth and tosses his arm around her shoulders.

“I hope there’s a damn good reason for this coincidence,” Dash says tightly. “Herrin isn’t going to like this one bit.”

“Take my gun,” I tell Axle, ignoring Dash’s comment as my focus zeroes in on how close Ben is to my girl, “before I do something stupid.”





Chapter 7



EVE



Ben showing up is a surprise, and the squeeze he’s holding me in almost hurts too much to be called a hug.

“I’ve been so fucking worried,” he says as he holds me tighter.

“Can’t breathe,” I wheeze, maybe doing it a little more dramatically than necessary.

He pulls back, grinning down at me before kissing my forehead. For some reason, I wince. It feels wrong for him to touch me like that.

“Glad to see you still have your sense of humor. And to see that you still look like you.”

His eyes rake over my clothes. I had to wear some I originally brought to the warehouse. Sarah’s stuff was too tight for me to even try to melt my body into.

“Um… Yeah. How did you know I was here?” I ask, confused as I sit down.

Unsurprisingly, he sits down right beside me and tosses his arm around my shoulders like he’s scared I’m an illusion.

“I have friends, Eve. I’ve been trying to figure out where you’ve been. People told me you were with Drex, but I never heard for sure. Some said you even seemed happy about it, which I knew was total bullshit. What the fuck has been going on? Your phone has been off since you left.”

I try to scoot away, but he has his arm locked around me. It feels like a betrayal to be so close to someone I’ve been with intimately. I sure as hell wouldn’t want Drex to have an ex’s arm wrapped around him.

“They took my phone on day one.” I don’t mention I have another phone, because he’d be upset I didn’t call. No way in hell could I have called the son of Benny Highland while everyone suspects me as a spy.

“Can I get you anything, sugar?” the syrupy sweet waitress asks Ben, biting her lip as she drinks him in with her eyes.

She’d keel over if she saw Drex.

Drex. He’d kill Ben if he saw this.

While Ben is distracted with ordering, I manage to scoot over and put some distance between us. I even manage to settle one of my shopping bags in the space I’ve created.

When he turns back around, his eyes drop to the bag before coming back up to meet my gaze as he frowns.

“What’s wrong? Are you mad at me because of this? I begged you not to do this, Eve. I could have—”

“I’m not mad,” I tell him quietly, noticing a few eyes have drifted toward us, considering Ben is a little loud.

“Then what’s wrong? What have they done to you? I swear, Eve, I’ve been going out of my mind with a thousand possibilities. I’ve went to all their public businesses, and even tried to discreetly ask questions, but—”

“Ben, I’m okay,” I tell him, unable to stop the smile that spreads.

Confusion crosses his features.

“You’re okay? The fuck does that mean? They let you go?”

I shake my head while sighing.

“No. You know your father wouldn’t like that. It’s safer for me if I stay put. But… I want to stay put.”

Anger replaces confusion, but I don’t know why. If anything, he should be relieved that I’m not living through hell right now.

“You want to stay? They gave you the option to leave?”

“Well, not exactly, but I think Drex would have if I’d told him I wanted to go. I know he wouldn’t force me to be there. I was once afraid he’d give me back to Benny, but now I know he wouldn’t. And… anyway… I should probably get going.”

The waitress seizes that inopportune moment to bring me the food I ordered, and Ben’s eyes drop to the plate.

“Looks like you need to eat first,” he says bitterly, glaring at me.

Shit.

“I don’t think we should be talking. At least not right now. Your dad—”

“Isn’t me,” he reminds me. “Since when can’t we be friends? Since Drex? Does he really have you?”

He grabs my arm so hard that I cry out, and he roughly turns my wrist toward him. I bite back a whimper when he shows my other arm the same harsh treatment, practically jerking it toward him so he can study that wrist.

Pissed but satisfied, he tosses my hand away, and it slams into the table. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him like this. He’s always treated me with kid-gloves.

“Obviously they don’t plan on keeping you. At least that’s good news.”

I’m glad he can’t see my shoulder right now. If he’s going this crazy over thinking I’d have the typical DD initials on my wrist, he’d flip out over that.

His jaw is tight and his eyes are blazing with fury. He’s cracking his knuckles while staring at nothing in particular.

“I should go,” I say quietly, hoping he just gets up.

“You should eat the fucking food you ordered,” he argues, not budging from his spot.