Chapter 24

Every day I try to do something good for those around me. Today, for instance, I put on deodorant.

-Text from Coke to Cora

Coke

The next day, after getting the help of Parker, Rafe and a few of the men from Hail Auto Recovery, all the vehicles were where they were supposed to be.

And, surprisingly enough, Cora was able to drive her new truck home. From what I could tell, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with it.

From what the pick-up coordinator at the auction house said, the water from the flooding had never gotten over the axles. However, since the truck and about forty others on the lot had been involved in the flood, they’d all been totaled by the insurance company regardless of whether they were actually affected or not.

Which led us to now, at a restaurant, getting dinner with Janie and Rafe, Kayla and Parker, Johnny and June, and Reagan. Reagan, I’d come to know slowly over the last couple of weeks.

She was soft-spoken, shy, and honestly a very hard person to talk to—mostly because she didn’t talk back. No matter what you did to get her to say something, she just didn’t have much to say—and if she did have something to say, it was very little.

Cora had explained to me that Reagan, despite her beauty and openness with her friends, was very shy around new people. But once you got “in there” with her as a friend, she opened up.

She was still cautious around me, but I knew I wasn’t the only reason she was shy.

That likely had a lot to do with the other men at the table—Rafe and Parker.

I’d seen Cora and Reagan gabbing outside the door of the restaurant when I’d pulled up in my company truck, trailering Cora’s old car. On my way home, I’d drop it off at my yard where she assured me that it’d look ‘pretty in a corner.’

I didn’t plan on putting it outside. I had a massive fifty by a hundred-foot shop where I put all the cars that might be actually worth something, and that was where I’d put Cora’s car…just in case the truck she was driving decided to poop out on her, and the water actually did affect something internally in the truck.

Cora’s hand sneaked out and ran along my thigh, and I leaned back and wrapped my arm around her chair.

We’d just ordered an appetizer, and I was hoping this time we had dinner would be a lot different from the last time we were in the same place.

This time, I was very conscious of what made Cora, Cora. I was also hyper-aware of everything I said or did, not wanting to make this place one that she associated with bad memories, but instead with good ones.

Especially when they had some of the best steaks that I’d ever tasted.

I wanted to come back, therefore, I was on my best behavior.

“Coke?”

I turned my attention back to the woman at my side. “Yeah, baby?”

The restaurant had a live band, and my eyes kept drifting to the stage where a woman in a flowy dress kept stomping around in her boots, making my head start to pound. They’d started the set about five minutes before, and I was already over it.

Why couldn’t people just play good music? Why did they have to fuck with it and add their own unique ‘flair’ to a classic? If you want to play something new and edgy, don’t fuck up “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Fuck up your own song.

I’d had a long fuckin’ day, and that wasn’t including the even longer fucking days before that—when Cora had refused to talk to me.

“I’m sorry.”

I turned to survey Cora’s face and frowned. “For what?”

“I’m sorry for not trusting you, and I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable. I’m not going to break. You can talk about whatever you want to,” she explained.

I sighed and let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I’d been holding, not realizing that she’d caught on to my hesitation that evening. I’d thought that I’d been hiding it well.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings. We’ve had a good day, and this place may already bring back bad memories…I want you to have something sweet. Not something blighted with not-so-great every time you come here,” I murmured.

She smiled. “I’m fine. I promise.”

Or she was until Beatrice walked in with her mother.

“Shit,” she sighed. “This place…what’s with it?”

I had no idea.

Out of all the things that could’ve come up, there were two people in this entire universe who could’ve fucked with my good night with their mere presence, and that was Amadea, my ex-mother-in-law, and Beatrice.

Beatrice was bad, but Amadea was worse.

Way, way worse.

At least Beatrice was half raised by her father. Amadea was a silver spoon baby that was never once told no.

Her husband never hesitated to get her whatever she wanted, and her parents had given her whatever she wanted before she’d gotten married.

Needless to say, if there was anyone more selfish in this town than Beatrice, it was her mother.

Cora growled under her breath, causing me to turn and study her.

“What’s…oh.” She opened her mouth, and then closed it.

I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “With any luck, she won’t notice us. There’re a lot of people here, and we’re sandwiched in here like a couple of sardines.”

Yeah, fucking right. I should’ve known better.

Not only did Beatrice know who Cora was, but so did her mother.

Not to mention they came right up to our table and looked down their noses at us.

It didn’t help that the woman on stage had finally stopped butchering “Bohemian Rhapsody,” leaving it strangely silent in the corner we were occupying.

“I guess you think you won, didn’t you?” Beatrice started.

I groaned and let my head fall back to my back as I tried to search for some calm.

Cora looked over at me worriedly, as if she was about to do something that she was going to get into trouble for.

It didn’t take me long.

“My lawyer told me that you weren’t testifying against me,” she sneered. “We think you filed false charges now. That’s a crime. We’re talking to my lawyer tomorrow.”

I studied the ceiling in an attempt to control my temper.

“Considering that there were five trained men who rescued her from her kidnappers, I’m going to go with a no, they do not think she faked it,” Janie supplied, crossing her arms over her chest and looking pissed. “And furthermore, the men who actually committed the crime for you are going to testify against you, not Cora. At their trials, Cora would testify. But since they entered a plea bargain, admitting their guilt, they will serve prison time without Cora having to show up and do that. I think you need to get your facts straight, my dear.”

Janie and Cora had a funny relationship. They were a lot like sisters, in a way. They fought and bickered, but ultimately, they had each other’s backs. If shit hit the fan, one would be there for the other, without question.

“Dear, let’s go eat before that horrid music starts again,” Amadea suggested, realizing before her daughter did that this wasn’t going to happen tonight.

“Beatrice, go away,” I said when she didn’t follow her mother.

She sneered. “Fuck you.”

My brows rose at that.

Beatrice never cursed. Never. She said it was crass, and only people who didn’t care that they sounded like inbred idiots used those kinds of words.

Personally, they were my favorite words to use, but that was just me.

“Beatrice,” Amadea gasped in surprise, having turned around when she noticed Beatrice hadn’t followed her. “That’s not how a lady speaks.”

Amadea put her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder, but Beatrice yanked her arm back out of her mother’s touch.

“You’ve ruined me, you know.” Beatrice edged closer to our seats.

That’s when I got tired of looking up at the psychotic woman.

That, and I had a feeling that if I wasn’t in a better position, Beatrice would launch herself at me like the deranged woman she was turning into.

Cora’s eyes caught mine as I stood.

The moment that our eyes connected, I let her see the worry there.

I was worried about what Beatrice would do next. Maybe she thought she was going to get out of the charges since she’d been informed that Cora wouldn’t be testifying against her, but she’s forgetting that her hired goons can supply all of the evidence against her that was needed.

I immediately thought about that money that she suddenly had in her account that wasn’t from her father.

Money that Janie said was so well hidden, she’d never seen anything like it before.

“You ruined yourself, Beatrice,” I countered, placing my body in between Beatrice and Cora.

Just in case.

“Daddy won’t hire me back, either,” Beatrice continued as if I hadn’t said a word.

“You don’t deserve to be hired back.”

“Normally when people commit felonies,” June said carefully. “They don’t get to keep their cushy jobs…sucks don’t it?”

June had made some questionable life decisions when she was a young kid and that had followed her into adulthood.

Before she’d started working for me, she’d had so much trouble finding a job that she was scared. I was glad that I’d given her a chance.

“Nobody asked you, whore.”

That’s when Johnny stood up, furious that someone would call his woman a whore.

Cora poked her head out from behind me, seeing this going south just like I did.

“Why is it that my life turned to shit the moment you arrived in town?” Beatrice pointed an accusing finger at Cora. “I had the perfect life. You ruined it.”

It was at that point that the door to the restaurant opened, and Cora used it as a convenient distraction to disengage herself from Beatrice’s angry glare.

And whatever she saw coming in that door made her scream.

Scream.

I’ve never, not once in my entire life, seen her that excited.

But then again, I’d never seen her near her brother before.

“Luca!”

Then she was off and running, straight into another man’s arms.

She hit the man—who was dressed impeccably in navy dress blues—and started to cry.

Janie followed suit, hurrying toward the door. Kayla followed, too, but at a much slower rate since her girth didn’t allow her to move any faster.

“Who the fuck is that?” Beatrice asked, looking…intrigued.

I, on the other hand, was thoroughly disgusted. “He’s Cora’s brother. Now, go away.”

“You can’t talk to my daughter like that. Have some decency. This is hard on her. You’ve practically replaced her with a much younger version of herself. How do you think that makes her feel?” Amadea chimed in.

I turned to Amadea, surprised that she was being so quiet and had only chimed in a few times. “Amadea,” I tilted my head. “Beatrice and I divorced over two years ago. She wasn’t replaced with a much younger version of herself. This time around, I finally found a woman who makes me happy. Something that your daughter never, ever, not once in our seventeen years of marriage, did. Trust me when I say, I didn’t want a younger version of your daughter. I wanted Cora. The two couldn’t be any more opposite.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Beatrice snarled.

“No, what would make me an asshole would be to tell you that the things I feel for Cora are things I’ve never felt in my life. I actually want to wake up beside her every morning. I look forward to coming home. I want to make children with her—even though that ship has sailed for me. I want to live the rest of my life trying to make her happy. With you? I was biding my time until my daughter was old enough and I could get away. The only thing that I got out of our miserable sham of a marriage was a child who hates you just as much as I do…now what does that say about you?”

June coughed. “Burn.”

Johnny reached over and placed his hand over her mouth. “Shh.”

With that, I skirted around a gawking Beatrice, a scowling Amadea, and headed over to the man who was surrounded by three ladies who were coming to mean a lot to me.

***

“Dad filled me in on all of your extracurricular activities lately,” Luca said, eyeing his sister with humor in his eyes.

We’d come home—well, to Cora’s home, not mine.

Cora would spend the night at her house with her brother because tomorrow he’d be leaving to head back to his naval station in San Diego.

He’d gotten three days of leave, one of which he would spend traveling both here and back to his base.

“I don’t know about extracurricular activities, but whatever they’re called, they’ve been exciting,” Cora replied, holding a bottle of water out to both me and her brother.

We took them, and I thanked her. Luca tugged on her hair, which was precariously close to no longer being in a ponytail at all.

She looked tired—and beautiful.

She was also making my lower half do things that probably shouldn’t be happening with her brother around.

A brother who’d been watching me like a hawk since he’d sat down at the table with us.

The moment that Reagan, Kayla, Cora, and Janie had returned with Luca, Johnny had given the other man his own version of a hug—only this one a lot rougher than the ladies.

After sitting him down, Luca’s eyes had immediately gone to me.

There was zero welcome in the cool, blue depths.

He looked like a younger version of his father, complete with attitude and that dangerous air that his father had wrapped around him everywhere he went.

This kid was definitely going places if he stayed in the navy.

“So why did they give you leave?” Cora asked as she took the seat next to me and leaned into my side. “The last I heard you were on a ship.”

I absently wrapped my arm around her shoulder, and Luca’s eyes narrowed on the move.

I didn’t remove my arm.

I wouldn’t.

The kid would just have to get used to it.

I wouldn’t be leaving, and I definitely wouldn’t stop doing something just because he didn’t like what I was doing. Especially when it came to this woman at my side.

“Yeah…I’m going into BUD/s training. They gave me a few days to show my face, then you won’t be able to get a hold of me for a few weeks,” Luca explained. “But, I came because Dad’s been telling me some things.”

He looked at me pointedly.

Which, apparently, Cora missed.

“What’s that?”

I felt my lips twitching because I knew exactly what was coming next.

“SEAL,” I guessed as to what she was asking just as Luca said, “Navy SEAL training.”

Cora’s eyes widened. “You think you can be a SEAL?”

Then she burst out laughing.

I felt my lips twitching.

Luca only looked annoyed.

“I can be a SEAL,” he growled with a roll of his eyes. “You’re the only one who thinks I’m still a child.”

“Well…” Cora hedged. “You are kind of my baby brother. I’m allowed to think of you as such.”

True.

However, he didn’t look like her baby brother. He looked like a grown ass man. A man who was damn near just as intimidating as her father was.

If I hadn’t been who I was, a former drill sergeant and military man myself, I might’ve been intimidated by him.

All the glaring he was doing would’ve rocked someone else.

Not me.

But…somebody.

He’d make a good SEAL, despite what his sister had to say about it.

The drill sergeant that I would always be could see that kind of thing. When I came upon a batch of wanna-be soldiers, I could literally pick out the ones who wouldn’t make it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I was right.

The other one percent were the ones that only passed because they hated me so much.

Which I counted as a win in my book.

And this young man had the determination that it would take to get through BUD/s training.

“Whatever you say.” Cora grinned. Then her eyes narrowed. “What’s Katy think about this?”

Luca looked away. “Let’s just say…she’s not happy.”

My brows rose. “Who is Katy?”

“Katerina,” Cora answered when Luca sighed in exasperation. It was very clear that he did not, under any circumstances, want to talk about this Katy girl. “My brother’s on again, mostly off again girlfriend. Apparently, they’re off at this point.”

My lips twitched, but I didn’t reply. I was hardly one to talk about the decisions one made regarding their love life. I’d made the completely wrong decision time and time again. The only right one I’d ever made was allowing myself to entertain the thought of Cora and me.

This kid, though? He looked fucked up. As if whatever was bothering him was something that cut him deep. This Katy chick was going to fuck him up while he was out there putting his life on the line. In high-risk jobs like the one a SEAL did, relationships tended to not work out.

I hoped that they were the one of the small percentage that did.

Just as I was about to bring up a different subject, my phone rang.

I looked at the phone and frowned.

“Who is it?” Cora questioned, catching the look on my face.

“The mechanic who pulls parts for me on the weekends, I had him take a look at a few trucks I picked up at the auctions,” I answered. “Give me a minute. He never calls unless it’s an emergency.”

Cora patted my thigh as I got up, and I walked to the kitchen and turned so that my ass was leaning against the counter.

“Hey, Joaquin, what’s up?”

“Yo, boss.” Joaquin hesitated. “I was taking a look at the trucks like you asked, and kind of got carried away and moved to the car in here, too. Whose car is that?”

I frowned.

“My girlfriend’s, why?” I asked.

He hesitated, and he was breathing really hard. So hard, in fact, that I could hear him fairly well despite the air compressor going in the background.

“Joaquin?” I pushed.

“I think…I think we need to call the cops.”

For Joaquin, who was a convicted felon, to say that I needed to call the cops…it had to be something huge. Fucking massive.

Because he wouldn’t usually be caught dead anywhere near a cop, the police department, or anything that even hinted at authority.

***

I had my arms crossed, and I was watching the bomb squad go into my place of business and remove what they suspected was a bomb from Cora’s car.

A. Bomb.

A goddamn, motherfuckin’ bomb.

What. The. Fuck?

What in the absolute fuck?

Needless to say, I was not in a good mood.

Cora, luckily, had stayed behind with her brother.

Though he’d sensed there was something wrong, he hadn’t objected to me asking him to hang with his sister while I went and took care of something at the yard.

Though I suspect if he’d known exactly what was wrong, he’d have come, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

I’d called Gabe once Tyler Cree had taken a look at the trunk of Cora’s car, and now we were all waiting for the bomb squad from two counties over to take care of what everyone suspected was enough C-4 to blow the entire town sky-high.

“Who was the last person to have her car?” Gabe questioned.

“Me,” I answered. “I had it in the parking lot while we were at dinner. After dinner, Cora went home with your son while I took it over here. It was in the parking lot for about two hours. Parked in the very back of the lot next to a brick wall because that was the only place that I could find that would fit a truck and trailer as big as mine.” I paused. “And the trunk was empty when I put it on the trailer. I witnessed Cora cleaning it out myself, and transferring almost everything she had into the truck she just bought at auction.”

“What about the camera feed?” he asked.

“It’s being reviewed,” Tyler Cree supplied from Gabe’s other side. “What was in her trunk, however, wasn’t an actual bomb itself, just the components for one. Fertilizer, C-4, fuse. It was as if someone went and Googled how to make a bomb, then went and procured all of the components. Then shoved everything in there…but they didn’t know what they were doing, so they didn’t actually build the bomb. My guess, whoever did this only has a basic knowledge of what they were doing.”

“Maybe they were only trying to get her into trouble,” Gabe suggested.

“My suggestion is to talk to Beatrice first,” I said carefully.

I was so fuckin’ angry that it was really hard to articulate myself without using a long slew of curse words.

If a man could blow up—I’d be perilously close to completing the phenomenon.

“Already brought her in,” Tyler said. “I have Johnny questioning her.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

Couldn’t, really.

I was so carefully controlled, trying to hold all of my emotions in, that if I said anything without thinking the thought through, I might very well splinter.

I’d done this. I’d created this.

I’d allowed this to happen.

Because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Beatrice had something to do with this.

Then a thought occurred to me, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

“Frankie?” I said the moment she answered.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“You need to get in your car and come home.”

“Dad…classes just started…”

“No. No arguments,” I interrupted her. “Trust me when I say that you’ll be much more entertained here.”

My daughter was an intelligent girl. She knew when I said the word ‘entertained’ that there was something wrong.

It was the code phrase that we used when something was wrong.

“You’ll be much more entertained here” was code for “get your ass somewhere safe and don’t fuckin’ move.”

I didn’t really know why I had such a bad feeling, but it was sitting in my gut like a lead weight.

Something was wrong, and it was surrounding my life like a bad stain that just wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I tried.

Fucking Beatrice.

If only I’d known how truly toxic she was before I’d met Cora, I might’ve stayed far, far away from her.

***

Cora

“So…you have a serious boyfriend that’s ten years older than you and looks like he’s about to kick the bucket at any moment…” Luca teased.

I flipped him off, continuing to work on my drawings that were due in a little over three hours.

Tomorrow, I had a meeting to discuss them, and if all went well, they’d start production imminently.

“Fuck you. You’re so full of shit it’s coming out of your ears,” I shot back. “And he’s not old. He’s thirty-five. That’s the prime of life, motherfucker.”

Luca leaned back and laughed.

“Tell me about him,” he ordered, sobering fast.

My brother was like that, though.

Never one to laugh for long, my baby brother.

“I like him,” I said.

His eyebrows rose.

“You like him,” he repeated. “Anything else?”

I grinned inwardly.

“And he’s really good in bed.”

He gagged. “That’s not what I meant, and you damn well know it.”

I knew it, yet I still loved getting a rise out of him.

It was so easy to do that to him that sometimes I worried about his state of mind.

I also wondered how in the hell he’d make it through boot camp—him and his temper always got him in trouble.

Even as a young kid, he’d been argumentative. That’s why when he started dating Katy, I wondered how two of the most strong-willed people in the entire universe would get along. Let’s just say that they didn’t, which was why they fought and broke up as much as they did.

“I don’t know how to tell you why, exactly, but I love him.” I pushed my rolling chair away from the computer I’d been working at and swiveled to look at him. “He doesn’t treat me like I’m crazy.”

His brows rose. “Lots of people don’t treat you like you’re crazy,” he said. “Because you’re not.”

I smiled at my baby brother. He never understood my hesitation in life. He only saw the best in me.

And, if I were being honest, that was one of the reasons why I liked Coke so much, too. He didn’t treat me like I was different. He rolled with the punches and didn’t question why I needed things to be a certain way.

He allowed me to be me, and he didn’t complain if I acted a certain way or my anxieties got the better of me.

When I’d stayed away from him for five days, he didn’t berate me or question me in any way.

He just loved me.

“I don’t know, Luca. I just love him.” I didn’t know how else to say that.

“Have you told him that?” Luca asked.

I shook my head. “We’re still really new. His ex-wife is crazy, and to be honest? I don’t want to jinx it by telling him too soon. I’ll just continue to sit on my feelings until I’m sure he loves me back.”

He snorted. “He loves you back. Trust me on this.”

I found myself smiling.

“Did you…”

Luca got a text, and I went back to my work.

It was only when Luca stayed silent too long that I turned to frown at him.

If there was one thing about Luca, it was that he was never quiet. He always had something to say, and it wasn’t like him to keep quiet for longer than five minutes—at least if he knew you. He’d been like that since he was a baby.

“Luca?” I asked, turning back around to survey him.

He looked up at me and something terrible crossed his face.

“We need to go somewhere.” He stood up.

He looked spooked.

“Luca, what’s wrong?” I asked.

Just as I was about to demand he tell me what was wrong, a knock sounded at my door.

“Hold on, let me answer that,” I said.

But before I could even get two steps toward the door of my office, he had me by the wrist. “Let me answer it.”

I never once expected the person at the other side to be Frankie—who had a black eye, a swollen lip, bruises on her neck and a ripped shirt.

What I also didn’t expect was the way my brother freaked the fuck out.