Page 47 of Bishop

My hand instinctively moves to my throat, my fingers touching the material covering my bruises.

“If you need anything I’ll be in the kitchen making coffee.” He stalks for the hall with a curve to his shoulders. A slight hunch to his usually pin-straight back. He’s exhausted and I’m to blame.

Why does that fill me with guilt?

“Bishop?” My stomach squeezes as he stops at the threshold and turns to face me.

“What?”

“I know I’ve asked before, but can you explain again why you’re helping me?”

“Because you’re Langston’s sister, and he wants to make sure you’re safe.”

“That’s it? He wants something so you provide it.”

“Yes,” he states simply. “This is what loyalty looks like, belladonna. He might be your brother by blood, but he’s mine by choice. If he needs help, I give it. And he does the same in return.”

My heart clenches. I’d give anything to have that allegiance. From anyone. Yet this hardened, murderous man got what I’ve always wanted from my own brother. The devotion. The kinship. The trust.

“Do you want coffee or not?” He pivots back toward the hall, the soles of his shoes squeaking against the floorboards. “We’ve only got long-life milk.”

“Coffee sounds great, thanks. But do you mind if I stay in here a while? I’ve got calls to make.”

He shoots me a glance over his shoulder, his brows raised as if the sudden appearance of my manners is surprising. He continues into the hall, disappearing from view. “I don’t care what you do as long as you’re not causing me trouble.”

10

BISHOP

I enter the open living area that’s covered in a thin layer of dust and head straight for the coffee machine in the kitchen, my jaw locked tight, my muscles tense.

I shouldn’t have brought her here. Not alone. Not while she’s desperate and I’m too tired to think straight.

Last night was bad enough. When she’d been forthright and stubborn. Tempestuous and explosive. But today is worse.

One minute she’s fractured glass, threatening to break. The next she’s a clawing wildcat, fighting as if her life depends on it.

The woman is a ticking time bomb, and I’m not equipped to dismantle this level of unhinged.

I also don’t appreciate how I itch to figure out the rhyme and reason behind all the crazy.

I want answers. To make sense out of the tangled mess of her.

Instead, I make coffee, the memories of the last twenty-four hours running through my head as the machine sputters and gurgles. I recall the sight of her half-naked and terrified on Gordon’s bed. How she mounted me with spite-filled audacity in my own suite moments later. Or the show of goddamn brutal vulnerability in the shower a mere hour ago.

She’s under my skin. Stuck there. Like a fucking parasite.

I deliver the coffee to her room where she stands staring out the window, her cell held to her ear, her forehead pinched.

“I understand what you’re saying, Jenna, but it’s urgent that I speak to him.” A strangled edge of authority enters Abri’s voice. “I can stay on hold all day if I have to.”

I place her mug on the dresser, getting a fake smile of thanks for my troubles, then return to the kitchen in search of food.

I keep my distance, staying away from her insanity in the hopes it dissipates without the need for forced pharmaceutical intervention.

For hours, all I do is drink more caffeine, message Langston with an update, and dabble in a little calculated eavesdropping.

I overhear Abri leave numerous messages for her mother. Then the less interesting calls where she talks about material swatches and sales figures. Jenna is addressed numerous times throughout the day, each utterance of her name made with increasing desperation.

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