Page 29 of Bully

If you need money so badly, you should have shown up to your actual job. + $500.00

Immediately, I groaned, knowing that would simply piss her off and make her ignore me harder. So, I sent another one as desperation morphed into something akin to anxiety in my gut.

Call me and I’ll give you another grand. + $500.00

I didn’t wait for her call, knowing it wouldn’t magically come through.Instead, I called the only person who could help me at the moment, even knowing what it would cost me.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” My brother’s annoying gruff voice floated through my ear as I grabbed my keys and jacket from my office.

“I need you to track someone. Immediately.”

“Who?” He asked and then sighed, “Dammit, if you say the Rainbow from last night, my answer is no.”

“Sloane.” I barked, irritated that he called her by the name I used for her in my darkest fantasies. “Her name is Sloane and you know it. I need her location.”

“And why can’t you just ask her nicely for it?” He asked, “What did you do?”

“What I always do.” Snapping in frustration as I got into my car. “Pushed. Avoided. Irritated. Annoyed. And then slammed her up against the wall by her throat.” He sighed through the phone, “Until she dropped me on my ass and held my own knife against my heart.”

“Hmm.” He hummed, intrigued. “That’s not at all what I was expecting you to say, though I can’t say it’s impossible to imagine that scene based on the fire she had in her eyes when she found you last night.”

“Dane!” Cracking my neck, I took a deep breath. “Please.”

“Fine.” He sighed, and I heard him groan as he adjusted himself in his chair, no doubt working late like usual. “But answer one question for me first.”

“What?”

“Is she more than just a girl that works for you?”

“Not currently.” I replied instantly, pleased with his wording and the avoidance I could use to respond.

“Noted. Send me her phone number.”

I hung up and instantly sent her info to him and then forced deep breaths in and out of my lungs as I imagined the situation Sloane was putting herself into out of spite.

Well, to be honest, it probably had nothing to do with me at all. She loved sex. She loved the power it gave her; I recognized that call for control the moment I saw her on stage all those weeks ago.

She wasn’t mine; it wasn’t as if I had a claim on her or told her she couldn’t sell her body the way she had been doing for years. But fuck, if it didn’t irritate my nerves, knowing she was about to let someone else touch her skin when I hadn’t even had the privilege.

Other men were going to use her body, while she used them for money.

Sloane wasn’t a victim, she wasn’t stuck somewhere in life, forced to make these terrible decisions to survive.

Sex was her drug.

Money was her high.

Power was her kryptonite.

And she was my fucking antidote to madness. Her ignoring me and cutting me out was driving me insane, and she knew it. She just didn’t know what it would cost me to lose control when it finally happened. Sloane didn’t understand that someone would get hurt.

My phone pinged with a text from Dane, clicking on the link gave me a live tracker to her phone’s location in real time.

“Gotcha.” I whispered to myself as I dug deep into the venue she was at and the event going on tonight.

Lucky for me, I knew the man running the event. Unfortunately for me, he had been trying to get access to my particular skills for years to benefit his own business ventures. The man wanted me to kill off his biggest competition in the cocaine trade on the east coast.

Up until that exact moment, I had no interest in trading my skills for his fat wallet.

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