Page 18 of Fearless

“Get her out,” I tell him as I walk into the room and take the couch opposite.

He shoots up. “Don’t be a dick, Kill. She’s sleeping.”

“I can see that. Doesn’t change a thing.”

Cole chuckles. “She stayed here with me for the whole week you were in Manchester.”

Is that supposed to make me feel better about it?

Fuck it. Whatever.

I’m honestly too exhausted to get into it with him after the night I’ve had. “She’s not here when I wake up.”

He nods. “Fine, fine. How did it go?”

I adjust Meisie’s position so I can get my phone out of my pocket, then throw it over to him. He unlocks it easily because we have the same face.

The lights from the video footage flicker across his features, and he glances up toward me occasionally, biting down on his knuckle and grinning like a child with a lollipop.

“Happy?”

He throws the phone back to me. “Delighted. Did you fuck her?”

“Behave. Course not,” I tell him.

Cole shrugs and lies back down on the couch. “I would have ”

I chuckle. “You wouldn’t have. She’s not exactly... agreeable.”

Cole’s a fan of an easy conquest.

He smirks over at me. “We’ll see about that. Just wait until she sees what I’ve planned next.”

My eyes narrow, but he’s still smirking.

Next?

There is nonext. We got what we wanted, and thanks to the impromptu photo session on Cole’s bed, we got even more. Now all we have to do is send the proof to the right people, and wait. She’s free to leave as soon as we get what we want.

“What are you talking about?”

He jumps up from the sofa, exhibiting far more energy than any normal person should have at five in the morning. “Come. Let me show you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Come!” he shouts as he walks through the living room door.

I haul myself and Meisie up off the couch and find him already halfway down the hall. He stops under the staircase, where there’s a door that leads to a cupboard, which leads down into the basement.

“You’re shitting me.” I can already see where he’s going with this. We used to keep the basement for parties and… other things when we were in our mid-twenties and lived for the weekend. It was a way of making sure the house didn’t get wrecked and people couldn’t snoop where they didn’t belong. But I’ve not been down here in years. I still remember what it looked like, though, and I’m not about to let him lock her up down there. “We’re not recreating the fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cole.”

He laughs while he unlocks a padlock I swear wasn’t on the door this morning. “Nope. It’s better.”

The door opens with a creak and he pulls the cord to turn the single bulb on. The cupboard is rammed full with I don’t even know what, but I follow him along until we get to the second door.

Another padlock.

No good can come of this.

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