Page 34 of The Last Time You Break Me

And then the gun fired and the bullet shot through the air hitting its target.

Chapter Thirteen

Lara

A Little Wicked - Valarie Broussard

Icouldn’t breathe. My body felt like ice as fear and disbelief coursed through me, disarming me from the inside out. I panted and heaved as I ran my hands through my hair and pulled at the strands. I thought I was having a panic attack and that scared me even more as my eyes blurred and my pulse spasmed under my skin.

Scared.

I never getscared.

And now I was on a downfall and I didn’t know how to slow it down. How to stop it. I never actually thought he would outright confess his feelings to my father like that. I mean, how was that even possible?

That after four years, the man I called a coward on that staircase that night had now risen to claim the woman he only now realized he had truly lost. Was it a game? Was he playing with my emotions because I had finally made him see I was notsomething to be conquered. I had so many questions and none of which were welcome.

This was my game.

The way I teased and taunted him. The way I lured him in only to push him back, wanting the dominance he exuded when he pushed back even harder.

But he just went and flipped the fucking tables.

He outted the relationship that had only been a fantasy for as long as I could remember and now it was taking form, shaping into a world of new possibilities and I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like change but fuck me if I lied one more time and said that I didn’t like him...

That I didn’tlovehim.

Fuck.

I was truly fucking, fucked.

He was offering me everything I had ever wanted and the fear that I had beaten out of me, was the only fear that was now stopping me from running into his arms.

This man hurt me. He betrayed my love and taunted me with vicious words. He tarnished my worth and he broke my heart.

How could I become a woman who forgives and forgets?

I was not a second chance kind of girl. The more I tried to tell myself to give in and let go, I felt like that humiliated girl, stood bare in her bedroom all alone again with tears in her eyes and vengeance in her heart.

I needed an escape.

I needed the violence.

I needed the pain.

I needed theclub.

Just as I had snuck out of the house and made my way into the underbelly of the fight club, my phone roared to life in my pocket as it vibrated against my inner thigh and caused me to have to rub my legs together to gain a little friction. As I pulledit from my pocket, I noted the name on the screen straight away and put the phone to my ear as I answered swiftly. “Techi. Whatcha got for me?”

“A hell of a lot of nothing and a hell of a lot ofwhat the fuck, Lara?Your dad’s best friend?” His broody tone echoed through the phone and I frowned. Techi wasn’t much older than I am, but he had a hell of a brain. It was why my father recruited him and gave him the name Techi.

Dude was a genius.

“Unless you’d like to depart from your spleen, I’d stick to the topic at hand,” I uttered, not at all joking.

“Yeah, right. Probably too soon,” he mumbled. “Right, anyway. The email was a burner. But we knew that. After what you said before that very entertaining meeting, I did some digging. Turns out, Black had a son. An illegitimate son with one of the whores that worked down at Shirtley’s Sugarhouse back in the day. I tracked it through a hefty amount of cash that was sent to her. But she never seemed to cash it. She gave birth six months later.”

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