Page 27 of Mine, Forever

“Sex rings?”

“That’s where the money is, son.”

“You always did follow the green, no matter the cost. You make me sick.”

He laughed, a sound I had had nightmares of as a child. “Good. Now I hear you’ve been holding a certain Torelli hostage. Time to give her back. You don’t want a war with that family, boy.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Just give her back.”

His jovial, chuckling nature was gone, replaced by hard eyes and a grimace I had once feared as a boy. Father of the year, he was not.

“She’ll go when she’s good and ready.”

John frowned taking a seat on the visitor lounge. I continued to stand looking down at him as he had done so many times to me as a boy. It was oddly uplifting for me.

“Since when did you give bitches a choice?”

“You heard me,” I growled.

He was silent, regarding me, before pushing off the seat and moving to the door. “Giordano put a hit on you. I know you have a rep for being the big bad wolf now, but there will always be someone willing to pull that trigger, even one of your men.”

“And you?”

He didn’t answer me, but that was the answer I needed. My father would be willing to kill me for cash. I shouldn’t be surprised he was the one who taught me to be ruthless in the first place.

Maria surfaced not long later with a bag in her hand.

“He’s gone,” I confirmed.

“Would you like her to go back to her room now?”

“No,” I said, instantly. “It’s time to let her go.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, noting how terrified Maria was. I knew John could be intimidating but never thought the tough-as-nails Matron could be scared of him. She had to know I’d protect her for all she’d done for me in the past. She headed through the doors leaving the bag on the counter.

It’d been a year since I locked Ebony up in here. She’d undergone a mass of treatments, and most of them involving electro-shock therapy. I wondered what kind of woman she was now.Please, please let her have some kind of fire left.That fire was all I lived for, it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing before I finally fell asleep. She had a fire in her that I wanted to make my own—I wanted to make her my own.

But I couldn’t do that to her, I wasn’t a man who fell in love. I was a man who fucked and killed. I knew what I had to do. I had to protect her from my father and that fucking twisted family of hers. I needed to get her away from this city and me.

Even though it would kill me to imagine her with someone else—just the thought alone had me reaching for my gun to shoot anyone trying to take her away—I knew that was what she needed and what I needed. I needed to be free from distraction, and that’s all she was.

I had to let Ebony Caine go.

Maria returned empty-handed. She must have sensed my confusion because she smiled. “She’s coming. Just need to change her into some street clothes.”

Maria was busy doing up paperwork while I rifled through the bag. There was a sketchpad in there with charcoal pencils.When had she gotten that?

Quickly checking to make sure I wouldn’t be busted, I opened it up. My senses were overloaded with drawings of me and detailed sketches of my tattoos. I wasn’t aware she had even seen them all, yet there they were in fine detail.

What an artist, I could only marvel at her skill.

The doors opened, and I shoved the sketchpad back inside the bag. Ebony walked through the doors unaided, nor was she in a dreamy state like the last time I saw her. She seemed distant, yet oddly confident.

“Here you go.” I handed the bag to her. She looked up at me with those damn black eyes that could force my knees to buckle. I almost lost the will to let her go right then and there.

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