Page 1 of Proof

CHAPTER 1

Cass

“Your five minutes starts now,” I growled as I walked around the large but plain office.

“Cass…”

Fuck. I knew that tone. I hated that tone. It wasn’t a command or plea. It wasn’t disappointment or anger. It was… well, it was Sully.

Only it was the real Sully; the one he rarely let anyone see.

“Damn it,” I muttered underneath my breath. I’d already spent too much time in the company of the man I’d once considered my best friend.

I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure that the door leading into the office was wide open. It was, but that didn’t prevent the itch that was spreading beneath my skin.

Funny that I’d never felt that sensation while I’d been locked up. The need to keep moving was new too. I’d spent two years in a cell that had been less than half the size of the office I was currently in and yet the plainly furnished room with boxes, file folders, and mountains of paperwork scattered everywhere wasn’t big enough. It took every ounce of energy I had in me tostop moving and turn to face one of the many people who’d let me rot in my own personal hell for two long years.

“Four and a half,” I said simply. I’d made a deal with the man, so my only obligation was to see it through.

Sullivan “Sully” Ferguson was standing behind his desk, his head uncharacteristically hung. The man was built like a tank and pretty much behaved like one too by rolling over anyone or anything that dared to get in his way, but not today. Today he looked…tired.

I’d known the man since we’d been a couple of dumb fifteen-year-olds who’d both had to grow up fast. Sully had basically raised his younger brother and I’d been trapped in a world filled with wealth, power, and every other perk that had come with being born into a family with the right last name. Two worlds that had been as different as night and day and yet, in our own ways, we’d both been trapped within our own little prisons.

Ironically, Sully’s family had been the reason I’d been able to escape my life as an Ashby and the pre-stamped future that had come with it. Turned out, I hadn’t escaped—I’d just made a trade.

One prison for another.

One title for another.

Murderer.

That was my title now. It didn’t matter that my rich family had finally gotten around to scrounging up a fancy lawyer smart enough to get me out of prison… on a technicality, no less. Now I carried the mantle of two titles that would always be linked together no matter where I went or what I did. The Ashby heir turned murderer.

“You still do it,” Sully murmured before dropping into the worn desk chair behind him. His hard-ass, unyielding side was back.

“Do what?” I asked as I forced myself to move closer to the desk. There were a couple of chairs in front of the desk, but I didn’t want to sit. I didn’t want to be inside, either. I didn’t want walls or silence. I wanted to walk and just keep walking.

“Run your hands through your hair when you’re trying to get yourself under control,” Sully said around a cigar he was in the process of lighting.

Whatever brief lapse that had allowed me to see that my former friend was dealing with some heavy shit of his own was gone. He was once again the Sully the world needed him to be. Tough, cold, detached.

As teenagers we’d been nothing alike. Different social circles, different economic means, and very different personalities. I hadn’t understood what tough meant until I’d met Sully, but I also hadn’t aspired to be like him when it came to the way he’d held himself apart from the world.

Who knew that being locked in what had essentially been a coffin for two years would turn a man so far beyond hard and unyielding that it was like comparing a pebble to a boulder. Only now Sully was the pebble and I was the boulder.

“Three and a half,” I said. I didn’t have a watch on, but mental counting while doing ten other things had been required reading as part of myIntroduction to Surviving Prisonmanual. “I wanted to keep it shaved but Hutch said it would look better for all my future court appearances,” I murmured absently as I once again toyed with my hair. I’d kept it shaved in prison because lesson two in the manual had been that long hair in prison was a weapon that could be used against the owner of that hair.

“There won’t be any more court shit,” Sully responded. “Those prosecutors would have lost to Asa Hutch the first time around. He would have spotted?—”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “What the fuck do you want? You want reimbursement for picking me up even though I didn’t ask you to? You want gas money, cash for that shitty coffee and that breakfast that actually made the slop they fed us in prison taste like a gourmet meal?” I held my arms out. “You should have said something before I tossed my granddaddy’s Rolex into the trash when I was given my personal possessions back.”

Sully fell silent and then reached for a glass and a bottle of scotch sitting on the corner of his desk. The sight of the alcohol made a strange sense of calm wrap around me like the warmest of blankets.

“I assume your taste for cheap whiskey hasn’t changed,” I said.

Sully practically growled as he began pouring the amber liquid into the glass. “Cheapscotch,” he automatically returned.

Since Sully’s father had been Scottish, the rule in their house had been tonever everrefer to the alcohol as whiskey. It was scotch or nothing. And if you’d had the misfortune of calling it anything else, you’d have gotten a speech longer than your arm about how scotch and whiskey werenotthe same thing.

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