Page 53 of Filthy Devil

She’s quiet. Her eyes meet mine, and they search, then she clears her throat. “It’s just us now. I’m going to ask you something personal. Do you love him? Truly?”

“I’ve never loved anything or anything more than I do Nash. It’s not because he saved me. I was willing to live out the fate Ihad agreed to. It’s because he showed me just how much I could feel. I fell in love with him, and I haven’t looked back. There is nobody else for me. Just him.”

She grins as her fingers flex around my wrist, then she releases me and brings her hand back to her lap. “I’m not going to say anything about the obvious, which is the age gap. But what I am going to say is that I want Nash to be happy. I want him safe and happy, nothing else. And if happy is with you by his side, then I love that.”

Thanking her, I try not to blush, shifting my gaze down to the table, but I fail. Then my eyes find hers, and I smile. “I heard you make the best bakery treats in the world.”

Shawn laughs. “Is that so?”

“That’s what Nash said.” And the rest of the conversation is about the bakery treats he brought to me and complained about.

The bakery items that he said didn’t hold a candle to Shawn’s. For a brief moment, I forget that he’s gone. That he’s missing and that I’m probably in danger. That my world is probably going to change all over again, but I don’t want it to.

I’m more than happy being locked up in this clubhouse, being bored as hell, as long as it means that Nash is here with me.

Safe and just… safe.

I just want him safe.

NASH

The fuckers are not goingto live. There is no goddamn way I’ll allow it, not after this shit. The women lined up along the wall are ushered out and loaded onto another semitruck trailer. I watch them climb the railing, knowing they’re lambs to the slaughter.

None of them will live past their thirtieth birthday. They will be buried or disposed of by then. I watch them walk onto that trailer, and for the first time in my life, being complicit isn’t something I can do.

“What happens now?” I ask, turning my head away from the women who are marching slowly, deliberately, and fucking depressingly.

“Now we start to make some phone calls. The merchandise is gone, and we can get to business.”

Fuck business.

I want nothing to do with this fucker or his business. What I want to do is go the fuck home to my woman and my bed. That is all. Fuck the Southern Mafia all together. I can’t wait to watch the rest of their club burn to the goddamn ground.

This motherfucker.

This motherfucking fucker.

He walks toward me, and since I’m not in the place to fight back at the moment, he ties me to the chair. Now, I’m not only hungry, stiff from being on the floor for hours, and without a weapon, I’m also rendered helpless.

Which I fucking hate.

The two of us are in this stupid warehouse alone, which I find interesting. Most men who are this goddamn worthless don’t want to do any dirty work. It makes me wonder if he has guards somewhere else that I can’t see.

Staying quiet, gnashing my teeth together, I watch him take his phone out of his pocket before he places a call on speaker. The sound of the phone ringing bounces off the metal walls around me.

Then I hear a voice that I know all too well answer.

It’s Bugsy.

“You the dumb motherfucker who has Nash?” he asks as his greeting.

That makes me smirk. Pencil Dick doesn’t seem fazed by his question or the fact that he was just called a motherfucker. Yet. But I’m sure he will. I can’t imagine Pencil Dick being able to take verbal abuse for too long before he loses his control.

“I have Nash, and I believe you have something of mine. Bring her to me, and you can have this old man back.”

That shouldn’t irk me as much as it does.

But it fucking does. Because yeah, I’m old. I can say I’m old, my kid can say I’m old, my brothers can say I’m old, even James can say I’m old.

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