Page 55 of Her Filthy Reverse Harem Romance Collection

“Right now, we need to focus. We should know at all times who walks within our borders. Let them know our disappointment comes with a price. Those we keep, run background checks on them again. See who they’ve been chatting with. Call in the girl down at the phone company and pull records. She brought her boy toy here a couple of weeks ago for a free night. Time to call in that favor.”

“How steep are we talking about with the men?” Drake pulls his piece checking his rounds.

“Enough to send a message to the new crew we bring in.”

Drake nods. “And Katriona?” Drake draws on his whiskey as he raises his big frame to stand beside me.

I stretch my neck until I hear apop-pop. Tension releases immediately but the relief is only temporary. “Bring her back and we might as well hand her over to the feds ourselves. They’re watching. They’ll try to put her into witness protection.”

“We won’t let that happen.”

“It won’t be long before they tie her to her father anyway. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Not until the bastard is rotting will she be okay. Until then we stay away.”

Drake drains his drink and slams the glass down on the desk. He props an arm over the back of the chair looking as relaxed as a cobra with his neck flared.

“Not happening. I’ll go it alone before I leave her completely defenseless. We had her in our hands, on our tongues and our cocks were all so fucking hard it would have taken hours of fucking her to drain our need to have her. Tell me, how easy do you think it will be to walk away from the only woman we’ve all wanted for fucking months? Better, what would you do if something happens to her?”

I have no answer.

“Yeah. Thought so. And we all let her leave here. Unprotected.”

Keeping my voice calm, I turn my gaze to his. “Put feelers out. Keep a tail on her when you find her. She won’t go far without cash and she’s smart enough not to touch her bank account and credit cards. Watch. Nothing else and report back.”

“Grey promised we would come looking for her.”

“But not until it’s safe.”

“I get that. But it’s going to be fucking hard.”

“It’s the best we can do to protect her.”

Katriona

Six Months Later

I’ve lost everything. The truth hits me at this time every night.

The familiar jingle of the evening news drowns out the sizzle of fries being lowered into days’-old oil and a group of rowdy teens out for a late Friday night meal. Like every other night, I let the smell drag me away to a time when I enjoyed a fast-food meal with my best friend.

Girl nights with Nikki seem like a lifetime ago.

They seem like nothing more than a dream. Sylan. Drake. Grey. I push past the lump of pain clogging my throat. I’ve scoured all the obituaries and listened to the news for any hints of the infamous Grey Hudson’s demise but came up empty-handed. Then again, it’s not like they would announce about him taking a bullet for me.

Now I just numbly make my way through my shifts.

The rowdy teens grab a booth in the back far corner where they think no one sees them lighting up a cigarette. It’s about the biggest excitement this place will see until three in the morning when the less-than-upstanding citizens of this Podunk town stop in for a heavy dose of coffee and our famous cherry pie off at mile marker number 132. It’s the only claim to fame this crappy small-time diner at the corner of forgotten and nowhere has going for it.

Honestly, I don’t pay too much attention to who I serve. I keep my eyes on the tips that help me cover rent, and I don’t mind working graveyards and serving men with massive leather coats big enough to cover a small arsenal and enough bad hoodoo vibes to send anyone with a lesser constitution scurrying out the door.

Thanks to my father, the few thousand dollars I had saved up from working at Club Lex are sitting in a bank account I can’t touch. I do, and I might as well put out a billboard ad for my location.

So here I am. Working longer hours for less pay hoping to survive long enough to make a few hundred bucks more before I move to the next no-name town.

I’ve been working at Sally’s diner for five months now. She’s the only one who took a chance on a nobody girl with no home or ID.

So I clock in when she needs me and serve pie and the house special to anyone willing to walk through those doors. It’s that simple.

But on nights like tonight, I can’t help but think about them. Wonder whatever happened to Grey. A ping of regret stabs at my heart but I rub at the pain until it goes away. It’s all I can do.

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