Page 81 of Pin-up Girl

“Ah, good morning, Jules.” The man smiled. “You were just who I was looking for.”

He was in his mid-fifties, a few inches shorter than me with a winning smile to rival Milo’s. Small laugh lines around his eyes gave him a jovial air, but something about him was familiar.

The fog on my brain from just waking up slowly dissipated, and it clicked.

“I can see from the look on your face you know who I am. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” He tried to step past me, but I pulled the door snug against my body.

“Now, Jules. That isn’t any way to treat your friend’s father. Let me in.”

My spine snapped straight, and my stomach dropped to the ground. Last night, Derek said he got the call from his father. Hisfatherpassed him information on Elise and Cassidy. And now he was here, at my parents’ house, where there was no one except me and Elise.

My phone was upstairs because stupidly I thought I could get rid of the guest without a need to communicate with words. I mean, everyone who knew my parents knew about their mute son. It was practically a warning to all the other families not to fuck with the elite.

He tried to push the door open, but I bared my teeth in a feral smile and shook my head no. There were only so many ways you could mistake that.

Justin sighed, letting off on the pressure for a minute. “I see you’re not going to take this lying down. Good on you. But what you don’t understand is, there isn’t any way around this. There’s some truths that have to come to light, and I think you’d be interested in hearing them.”

I had no intention of letting him in the house, but I also had no intention of leaving this doorway. A black Maserati was parked at the curb, and it appeared empty, but the windows were tinted too dark for me to know for sure. It all made sense now, Justin had been behind the Maseratis on our tails.

Fuck, where was the staff member my parents usually left here?

“Jules,” Elise called from the top of the stairs. When I peered over my shoulder, she was walking down the steps, dressed only in my shirt, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. I waved to get her attention, to warn her not to come downstairs, but she didn’t see me.

Justin Waterford took that one moment of distraction to bust through the door with his shoulder. Then Elise decided to look up.

“What the—” she started to say as she jogged down the rest of the stairs.

Elise was fucking insane. Instead of running away from danger, she fucking jogs to it?

A triumphant smile spread over Justin’s face as he straightened his suit jacket.

Fuck this. There were no good reasons he would be here.

I tackled him to the ground, getting one good punch in before Elise screamed and ran toward us.

“Now, hold on a minute,” said motherfucking Derek from the doorway, right as he cocked his gun. And it had to be a Glock, fucking wannabe mobster.

I lifted off of his groaning dad with my hands up, while Elise backed away slowly.

“There that’s better.” He grinned. “Dad, you said you weren’t going to need me so soon. If you hadn’t been so cocky, you wouldn’t have misjudged the situation.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect Gregory’s kid to have so much fight in him.” I stood and watched Justin climb to his feet.

Derek rolled his eyes. “I told you how they are at Wellington.”

Now that Derek was fully inside and had shut the door, I could see him clearly. And someone had beat the shit out of him last night.

“Like that, do you.” He turned and spit on the white tile floor. “I have Milo to thank for this.”

Justin took his suit jacket off and draped it over a decorative table lining the wall. “Now, son, that was your fault. You played it all wrong. As I had previously advised, you were supposed to wait until the platform was out and called him up to complete the job. When he refused, everyone would have known their preciouskingswere working against them.”

Derek gritted his teeth but didn’t say anything. This felt like an old argument they probably had multiple times throughout the night.

“Now, where was I?” Justin tapped a finger against his lips as he pretended to think about why he was there. “You know what, let’s take this somewhere more comfortable. The sitting room perhaps.”

No one moved at first, then Derek started waving the gun around. I edged closer to Elise, making no wild movements that would set him off.

Justin waved a hand from where he walked in front of us. “Go ahead and collect your girl. I won’t keep you from sitting together. You might change your mind later, though.”

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