Submerged(Bound Together Book 1)(31)
“Boys, we may have to continue this meeting another time,” Mattias says as he watches the standoff before him. His head bounces back and forth as he watches their apparent impasse like a slow-motion Ping-Pong match.
“No,” Roman says from his chair behind his desk without taking his eyes off the woman in front of him. “We will start our meeting as planned,” he adds, raising his manicured eyebrow upward as if daring her to say something.
I wait for someone to speak. The collective sounds of everyone breathing are the only noise in the room as we wait. And when the wait is finally over, there’s no way I could be anywhere close to being prepared for what comes out of his mouth. “Señores, this is my daughter, Carlina.”
The name means nothing, but the face that turns around means everything. The face I’ve seen in my sleep every night for two years. The woman I left sleeping in her bed while I slipped out in the early, pre-dawn light. The woman I picture every time I’m with another girl. The woman I haven’t been able to forget.
Carly.
Chapter Eleven – Can’t Be!
Carly
After the shock wore off of seeing my father for the first time in over two decades, I was too upset to listen, and I mean really listen, to what he was saying. Something about business and protecting me, yada, yada, yada. Uncle Mattias didn’t even speak up. He just let my father try to fill in a few of the blanks that I have in my memory. Okay, a lot of blanks. Twenty years of blanks to be exact.
When the door opens behind me, I don’t pay any attention to it. I can’t. My father–who is alive and well, by the way–just told me that his “business” is less than honorable in the eyes of the law, therefore to protect me and my mother after some bad business deals went down, he sent us away. New names, new life. A life that no longer included him.
I have so many questions, and it completely pisses me off that he’s practically dismissing me to have some stupid work meeting. After twenty years, don’t you think spending a few extra minutes with your daughter is a higher priority than a meeting? I know damn good and well that it is more important to me!
“Señores, this is my daughter, Carlina.” When he doesn’t return his eyes to me right away, I slowly turn around to see who had entered the room. The man on the left is short, but built well. He has tattoos that peek out from under his shirt collar as well as his sleeves. Ability and purpose radiates off him like a furnace. But the look in his eyes makes me do a double take. I can’t describe the look he’s giving me, but it makes me feel uncomfortable all the same.
When I turn to look at the other man, my heart stops beating. A loud buzzing sound fills my ears as I stare at startling green eyes. Eyes that I see every day when I’m at home. My breath chokes me in the throat and my eyes widen, as I take in the man before me. He’s harder now. His hair is cut close to his scalp in a no-nonsense sort of way, and his jaw is brushed with a few days worth of stubble, but his build is the same as I remember it. Tall. Strong. Like a force to be reckoned with. Yet those emerald eyes hold so much more than they did that night we met. They appear rigid and emotionless.
Except now, as recognition sets in and he devours me from head to toe with those beautiful eyes, they completely flare to life with something deep. My body hums and my blood races. I stand before the man I spent one night with, only to find him gone the next day. The man with whom I share a child.
“Blake.”
Chapter Twelve – When Your Past
and Present Collide
Blake
She’s more beautiful than in my dreams. More beautiful than I could possibly expect her to be after all this time. More beautiful than any other woman in the history of mankind. She steals my breath and clouds my judgment because without even thinking, I stand up and take a step towards her. I swear I’m having a fucking stroke right now or maybe an out of body experience. Either way, seeing Carly after two years, in this house no less, is blowing my fucking mind into nothingness.
I reach out to her, completely oblivious to the fact that two of the biggest names in auto theft are sitting right in front of me. And apparently, one of them is her father. Before I can touch her soft skin, she pulls back as if she was slapped. The look on her face screams surprise, but also something more. Fear, maybe?
“I need to go,” she whispers before turning to the man sitting in the chair behind her. “We’re not finished,” she adds to the older man before turning and practically running out of the office door.