Page 23 of Satisfied
I sigh as I walk to the server rack and point at the blinking light on the router. “Did you try resetting the router?”
Saint stares blankly. “Reset? How?”
I bite down another sigh as I explain the steps. “Looks like there was a power surge that tripped the circuit breaker and the router lost its connection. No one hacked the computers,” I patiently point out. “A quick reset should bring everything back online.”
Saint, visibly relieved, claps me on the shoulder. “Ever since I learned that someone could easily steal half a million dollars with a few keystrokes, I’ve been paranoid.”
Well, it took more than a few keystrokes, and days of forming a path and covering my tracks, but I don’t correct him.
Saint sighs. “All this computer shit is giving me gray hairs.”
“Well then, Prez, if we’re done here—”
“Of course,” he says. “I’m sorry I had to pull you away from your girl. I sent Hound to watch over her. Nothing to do here anyway with the internet down.”
“Alright, call me when there’s an actual system failure,” I say with a smirk, earning a middle finger from the man as we part ways.
I know what I’ll find when I pull up to my building. I made sure to wait until Hound showed up before leaving, and I’m not surprised to see my soon-to-be brother-in-law parked outside, scrolling through his phone.
He looks up when I approach him, quickly pocketing his phone, but I already caught a glimpse of what he was doing over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare tell your sister,” he warns as I walk up to him.
“If she didn’t leave you for that ugly mug of yours, I’m pretty sure she’ll stick around when she finds out her biker fiancé plays Candy Crush on his phone when no one’s watching.”
“Oh, fuck off. It’s called a distraction.”
“Sure.” I laugh as I turn to look up at my apartment. The lights are off, so I imagine I’ll probably find Abby curled up on the couch watching a movie or lying on the floor and staring up at the stars on the ceiling. “Thanks for this, man.”
“It’s nothing.”
Except it’s not. Hound isn’t a prospect who sits around guarding people. Well, unless that person is CJ; then that’s an entirely different story. As the club’s tracker, he doesn’t usually do things like this, yet he offered to sit out here for two hours protecting someone I care about. It’s hard to believe that this same man had his gun pointed at me a few months ago, ready to shoot and kill me. My sister stepped in and offered herself as collateral while I paid back the money I’d stolen, then went ahead and fell for her kidnapper. Ours is the strangest relationship I’ve ever come across.
“You should head back now,” I tell him. “I fixed the internet at the clubhouse, so you should be able to play Candy Crush without any interruptions.”
“You’re just a barrel of laughs today, aren’t you?” he deadpans, straightening up to straddle his bike. “Speaking of which, Chelsea came by to drop off some dessert at your place. She was in there for a while and just left.”
“CJ was here? Why didn’t she wait to leave with you?”
“I didn’t know when you’d be back,” he says, his voice drowned out as he revs his engine, the noise roaring through theair. I move back to watch him ride off before walking into my building. I didn’t think CJ and Abby would meet so soon, but the thought of the two most important people in my life getting to know each other puts my heart at ease.
I groan when I imagine all the embarrassing stories my sister must have told Abby, and there are many. I’m already preparing myself to defend my honor when I walk into the apartment, expecting to find a laughing Abby, probably amused by whatever stories CJ told her.
Instead, I’m met by a completely different sight.
The projector has been turned off, and so has every light in the room except the TV. Abby is curled up on the couch, a small, huddled form, staring unseeingly at the TV screen. Her face is buried in the cushions and she barely moves when I walk in.
Something feels off. The air is thick with a tension I can practically taste.
“Abby,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. No response. I try again, louder this time. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Still nothing. It’s like she can’t hear me, or maybe she’s choosing not to.
I take a tentative step closer, my heart pounding in my chest. I have no idea what’s going on, but I can tell it’s bad. My first thought is her ex, but Hound was posted at the entrance the whole time I was away. That pest would never have gotten around Hound. Maybe she had a flashback of that day and needs my comfort, but when I reach out to touch her, she flinches, moving away from me.
“Don’t,” she chokes out, sitting up and sweeping a hand through her hair to push it from her face. That’s when I notice the tearstains.
“Abby—”
“Just leave me alone, Ransom.”
