Page 9 of Off-Limits Protector Daddy

I’m already getting out of bed and pulling on a pair of pants and a long sleeve, effectively hiding the tattoos that cover my body in case I’m about to leave my house.

Part of my job is blending in with a crowd. While dark hair and a beard make that easy to do, being covered in tattoos makes it significantly harder. I was at least smart enough when I was younger not to get tattooed anywhere I couldn’t hide with clothing.

“I thought you would be thrilled to hear from me again. Don’t most men your age start looking for someone younger? I thought it was part of the rite of passage for turning forty.”

“I’m only thirty-four and you already knew that I was in my thirties. Why are you calling, Aria? If it’s just to waste my time, I hanging up and going back to bed.”

There’s a long pause, and I don’t know if she’s going to say anything. I sigh and consider hanging up but there’s a reason she called me. She’s not the kind of person who’d call, from what I assume is a burner phone, just to bother me.

Not when it could mean her own death if her father ever found out.

“Aria, are you still there? Is it safe to talk to me?”

“Cut the shit,” Aria says, chuckling. “It’s perfectly safe to talk to you. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered calling. Please, Tyson, have a little more faith in me. I might be young but I wouldn’t have made it this far in life running with some very bad people if I wasn’t at least a little bit street smart.”

She has a point, as much as I hate to admit it. The protective part of me that claws its way to the surface whenever I think of her still isn’t satisfied with her answer, though. Something else must have happened to make her want to get in contact with me now, before the week-deadline is over.

If something did happen, it had to have happened when I wasn’t watching her. Jameson had taken over her supervision a few hours ago, which gave her father a long window of time to do anything he wanted to her.

“Aria, are you safe?”

“I’m never safe, Tyson. Now, stop worrying about me. Meet me at the marina in an hour.”

She hangs up before I can say anything else. I send Jameson a status update before looking at the time. The marina isn’t far from my home which means I have more than enough time to have a cup of coffee or two before I have to meet with her.

* * *

When I getto the marina, everything is quiet. I can hear the boats rocking against the docks and the gulls calling to each other through the fog. If it wasn’t so eerie to be walking through the marina in the middle of the night, I might have thought there is something almost peaceful about it.

I head to the old lobster warehouse and enter through a hidden door in the side. Aria hung up on me before I could tell her where to go but she seems more than smart enough to figure it out on her own.

As I wait for her, I pace around in the shadows of the warehouse. There are some rays of light cast on the floor from the spotlights streaming through the windows. I stay out of the light, not knowing who might be wandering around in the night.

An hour passes and then another half hour and I still haven’t seen any sign of Aria. It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to wonder if she’s standing me up. It’s more than likely that she got cold feet, especially if her father or any of his men caught her sneaking out of my house.

What if she wasn’t caught sneaking out? What if she’s setting you up instead of standing you up?

Though I don’t want to believe she would do something like that, I also know that I don’t really know Aria at all. There’s no reason for me to trust her and every reason for me not to. She’s been raised to be as cunning as her father, even if people say she isn’t as ruthless.

If she’s on his side and playing me, this would be the perfect opportunity for her father to kill me.

I pull my gun and flick the safety off, keeping it steady as I pace around the warehouse, checking behind every old tarp and stack of crates. The only sounds in the warehouse are my own footsteps and the hammering of my heart.

Jameson will come looking for me if I don’t check in with him within the next hour and that’s the only thing that gives me comfort as I do another lap of the warehouse.

When the hinges squeak, a long line of light appears on the floor and I duck behind a stack of crates.

There’s a heavy thud as the door closes. I look around the stack of crates, squinting through the dim light to see Aria standing in the middle of the warehouse. She’s looking around but her face is turned away from the light. She stands tall and her manner is relaxed, but I can see the gun tucked into her waistband.

“You made it,” I say, putting my safety back on and coming out of my hiding place. “I was starting to think that you set me up.”

Aria shrugs as she turns to face me. For the first time since she walked into the warehouse, her entire face is illuminated.

Rage flows through me as I take in her black eye. She smirks at me and gestures at the eye.

“Nice little decoration, isn’t it?” she asks, chuckling as she steps out of the light and back into the shadows. “How do I know that you don’t have this place wired?”

“Because if you weren’t sporting a fucking black eye, I would be pushing you up against the wall and fucking you from behind one last time before we begin working together.”

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