Page 27 of Trouble

“Please, I have a son,”had been his last words. I didn’t know if it was true or not. Not that itmattered.

I looked at the gun in my hand and bit my lip at the faint tremble making it shake in mypalm.

The far door into the warehouse slid open with a rumble and Jeff stepped through, his helper Fred in tow. They were carrying plastic wrapping and buckets filled with what I knew to bechemicals.

“I’m off. See you in the morning, yeah?” Louis looked at me over his shoulder for the shortest moment before he nodded at our men and strodeoff.

I stared after him, wishing he’d stay and knowing how fucking terrible it would be if he did. That was the one downside of our twin-bond—that we always knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what the other was feeling. And right now, neither of us wanted to feel anything. Even if the darkness seemed to press in all around me, and I needed him so fucking bad. He was my safe place, the only peace I knew, andfuck,I needed peace from the horror screaming in my brain more than I needed the air in mylungs.

An uninvited image flickered through mybrain.

I breathed out through my nose, frowning at the floor as the memory of how fucking good I’d felt with Audrey in my arms last week. How confoundedly calm I’d been. Atpeace.

No.

No fuckingway.

I’d already made my decision when it came to her. My world was too dark, too bloody dangerous. And this kind of shit was exactly the reason why I needed to stay the fuck away from her. She was way too gentle a woman to get dragged into my shit, just because I needed to hold someone to get through thenight.

I threw my gun on the nearest wooden box and flexed my tensed hand to erase the feeling of the metal against mypalm.

A soft thud from where Jeff and Fred were rolling the body into a black tarp drew my attention, and I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood as I saw them roll Norman Wallis up like a deadfish.

If he did have a son, he’d never know what’d happened to his father. There’d be no body to identify, no grave tovisit.

No final resting place for the man I’d killed to save myFamily.

13

Audrey

“Liam?”I stared up at the redhead outside my door and wished I was wearing something other than my ugly pajama pants and food-stained T-shirt.

I hadn’t heard from him in almost a week, he hadn’t responded to the text I’d sent after three days of obsessively staring at my silent phone, and I’d thought… I’d thought I’d never see him again. But here he was, leaning against my doorframe in that casual way he had, as if I hadn’t just spent a week trying to desperately glue my broken heart backtogether.

“Hey, love,” he said, and then he reached for me. His hot lips crashed against mine with a desperate urgency I hadn’t expected, and I opened my mouth for him on instinct when his tongue swept against the seam. He pulled me close against his body, his hands curving around my backside until all I could feel was his heat and the hardness of his body againstmine.

Only when he dipped his hands into my pants did I find the will to pullaway.

“Liam—”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he interrupted, his hands tightening around me as if he couldn’t bear to let me go. His gray eyes, dark with a desperation that didn’t reflect pure sexual need, swept over my face, the plea in them impossible to ignore. “I’m sosorry.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, worry making its way through the shock of seeing him and the ache of longing in my stupid heart. “Did somethinghappen?”

“Nothing you can’t fix,” he said, his voice hoarse. When he pulled me tight against himself and buried his nose in my messy hair, I didn’t resist. Not until his hands delved back into mypants.

“Liam… I can’t,” I mumbled into his leather coat as I clasped onto his wrists to stop his advances. “It’s that time of themonth.”

He pulled back enough to frown down at me. “What do youmean?”

I arched an eyebrow at his obvious ignorance. Guess a player like him rarely hung around a girl long enough to experience that side of things. “I’m on myperiod.”

“Oh.” His stroking hands didn’t stop, but he gave me a quick glance. “I don’t mind. I just…” Liam paused, regret flickering across his taut face and he finally stilled. “You’re not feeling good, areyou?”

I gave him a pained smile. Apparently the dark circles under my eyes were more pronounced than I’d thought. “Sorry, no. I won’t be up for that sort of thing for a few days. If you’d called first, I wouldhave—”

He touched a hand to my cheek, silencing me. “I know, I’m an arsehole. I’m sorry, Audrey. I didn’t mean to just show up on your doorstep likethis.”

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