Page 41 of His Sacrifice

So I did. All of it. Even the part of spending time with my mom.

Tatum knew about my mom, but she had never gone with me to see her because I never let her. I hadn’t told Tatum where she was just to ensure she didn’t just show up. I would have probably stayed the same way with Creed if it hadn’t been for him insisting on driving me around.

I did leave out the sex in the garage. I was still weirded out by the fact that someone might have watched us.

“So?” I asked when I was done. “You don’t have anything to say?”

Tatum blinked slowly and shook her head. “Only you would be celibate for years and decide to get back in the game with a sexy mafia man who you’re supposed to pretend to fall in love with, but then you fall in love with him.”

“I’m not in love, Tatum. We’re just…” I wasn’t sure what we were. Getting to know each other?

“Just falling in love with him,” Tatum whispered.

“I barely know him, Tatum. We’re dating and trying to get the evil Candace to come out. You can take that love word out of your mouth.”

Tatum eyed me knowingly.

“Stop looking at me.” Tatum was the one person in this world who really knew me. It was like she knew what I was thinking and feeling without even telling her.

“Does Murphy know that you and Creed are rocking the boat?” she asked. “Because if he knew and didn’t tell me, that boy is going to have some explaining to do.”

“I have no idea what anyone else knows, Tatum. You and Creed are the only people I really talk to.” That sounded pretty pathetic.

“Well, just know if he hurts you, I’ve been reading up on karate when the store is slow.” She widened her stance and slowly moved her hands around in a circular motion.

“You’ve been reading about karate?” I laughed. “I think you need actually to do karate to say that you know it.”

Tatum shrugged. “Details.”

My phone dinged, and I pulled it out to see a text from an unknown number.

“Jada?” Tatum called. “You look like a ghost texted you.”

I stared down at my phone, petrified.

“Creed!” Tatum shouted. “Creed!”

For a second, I had forgotten about Candace. She was always on the edge of my mind, but she hadn’t been front and center since she messaged me over a week ago.

“What the hell is wrong?” Murphy demanded. He stood in the doorway of my office, and Creed pushed past him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked me.

“Sh-sh-she just texted me. I di-di-didn’t open it.” I shakily handed him my phone. I had promised that he would know the second Candace texted me, and I lived up to my word. I didn’t want to tell her a single thing, but something told me that wasn’t going to happen.

Creed handed the phone to Murphy and then wrapped me up in my arms. “Shh, it’s okay, gorgeous. You did great.”

“What if she can hear us?” I whispered. Time to pull my tin foil hat out again.

“I’m going to say that she can’t hear you,” Murphy announced. “She wants you to meet her tonight. She sent an address and a time.”

“If she could hear everything you were saying, she wouldn’t need to meet with you, right?” Tatum pointed out. “I mean, what’s the point of getting information from you when she just needed to listen to you on your phone? She could have just done that without having even to tell you.”

“You’re right, baby girl,” Murphy agreed. “She’s probably just watching you.”

“Right now?” I gasped.

“She could be,” Creed sighed. “Whatever we do next, we have to be careful.”

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