Page 46 of Of Pranks and Passion

Gary wasasleep by the time we got upstairs. It spared me from having to answer a dozen questions about my place, so I did my best not to wake him. I laid him on the bed and carefully stripped him out of his clothes. They had blood and dirt on them, and I saw him grimace a few times like he was uncomfortable in them. I tossed them in the hamper and put him in a pair of my boxers instead. I wasn’t going to leave him naked. He was too much of a temptation like that, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to push sex on someone who was almost assaulted. I wasn’t that much of a douche.

Before crawling into bed next to him, I took a quick shower to rinse off from the fight. While I was in there, I went over the reasons not to go on the hunt again and again to keep myself steady. The cops could have the guy who attacked Gary. I wanted to go after the source. And it’d be a lot easier to find her.

Like he knew my mind was swaying towards the dark side, Jayden called as I was drying off. I answered the phone, keeping my voice low so Gary wouldn’t hear me from the attached bath.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking of doing right now, don’t.”

With a heavy sigh, I leaned back against the sink. “I’m guessing the old man called you?”

“He did, and I love how you ignore how much he hates that nickname, no matter how many times he tells you to stop.”

“Mm.” I didn’t care, and he stopped telling me to knock it off years ago.

“Is your boyfriend okay?”

“Minor concussion, some cuts and bruises. He’ll live.” I sounded crass, but I had never been as terrified as I was tonight when Gary appeared in the crowd with blood all over his face and tears in his eyes. He was pale as a ghost and so damn scared. My free hand clenched at my side. He wouldn’t be going through this if his sister would back the hell off.

“Don’t, Easton,” Jayden warned.

“Are you a fucking mind reader or something?”

He huffed out a laugh. “No. I just know you. You’re protective of whoever you consider your people. This guy made the list, though we’ll talk later about the whole boyfriend thing. I thought you didn’t like romantic stuff.”

I made a face. I didn’t. It wasn’t about that. He was mine. I protect what’s mine. Simple as that.

“Sergeant Cruz is a good cop. An excellent detective. He’ll find your guy.”

“It’s not just him.” I gave Jayden a quick overview of Gary’s family situation, gritting my teeth when I remembered the resigned look on his face. “All this because he didn’t send money when she demanded it. Nevermind the fact that his bank account was empty at the time. He sent the money two days later, but she wants him to get raped to teach him a lesson. What the fuck is up with that?”

“Seriously, that’s messed up. But you can’t go around attacking women. There’s gotta be a better option. Has she met you yet?”

“Not yet.” That was going to change soon. Gary’s old man called about the party recently, demanding Gary show up to help. Which meant we had the location and the time for the prank. Showing up was supposed to be plenty, according to Gary, but now I needed to consider Chuckles’s plan. Just intimidating her wasn’t going to be enough. I wanted to show her I had money behind me. Enough money to bury her and her family and make it look like an accident.

“Hey, I need to borrow a suit.”

I wokeup when Gary started wriggling. One of the many reasons I couldn’t stand this apartment was the lack of curtains. The sun was streaming straight into my face, and it irritated the hell out of me.

“Uh, Easton? Where are we?”

Sitting up, I rubbed my hands over my face. When I opened my eyes, Gary was sitting up next to me, looking around with wide eyes. He looked like hell with the bruising over half his face and the cuts on his forehead and his chin, but still so goddamn innocent. He wasn’t, I spent hours defiling him, but he still looked like it.

“My place. You don’t remember?”

His brows furrowed slightly. “I remember you saying we were staying at your place but not going inside. This is your apartment?”

Condo, technically, but yeah. I waited for it to click, for him to finally realize who I was, or at least who I was related to, butwhen he looked at me, I wasn’t expecting what came out of his mouth.

“You must be an amazing fighter if you make enough to afford a place like this.”

A grin stretched across my face. He really was good for my ego. “That’s part of it, yeah. But this place actually belonged to my old man. He compromised a lot about letting me pay my own way for most things, but this place was where he put his foot down. He wanted me to have a roof over my head, no matter what.”

“Is he a fighter, too?” Gary asked innocently, looking around in wonder. It wasn’t that big a deal. One bed, one bath. It was my old man’s place before he married his wife. It didn’t have much in it because I was never here unless I was sleeping. Even the fridge was empty, since I always ate with my friends. But compared to Gary’s little dorm room, it was probably a shock to the system.

I snorted at the idea of my old man fighting. “No. He owns a conglomerate. Have you ever heard of the Warner Group?”

“Like Warner Brothers?”

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