Page 99 of Never Again

“Yes, it did,” Jess murmured in agreement.

“And how did we really meet?” Bailey asked, swallowing hard as her gaze flickered to the gun aimed at her.

“You destroyed my life,” Jess simply said with a careless shrug.

“And how did I do that?” Bailey asked as her gaze shifted back to the login page that confirmed that she’d been watching her for a while now.

It also let her know that Jess hadn’t installed any spyware on her laptop until recently, otherwise, she’d already have her password. The fact that she’d waited this long to do it told her everything that she needed to know.

“This is about the game,” Bailey said as her gaze flickered back to Jess in time to see her nod approvingly.

“You owed me a game,” Jess said with another pointed look at the laptop, making Bailey frown until she said the magic word.

“Jonathan.”

“You’re in this together,” Bailey said, shaking her head in disgust only to once again find herself frowning in confusion when Jess said, “Not exactly.”

“The thumb drive?” Bailey asked, needing to know why someone that she cared about could hate her this much.

“Would have solved a lot of problems if you’d used it,” Jess admitted with a soft sigh before shaking her head and continued. “Other than doing what I told him, he had nothing to do with this. He owed me a favor for not taking him down with me when you completely fucked me over by deleting that game.”

“That had nothing to do with you,” Bailey bit out.

“It had everything to do with me. I put everything that I had on the line for that game, my reputation, my career, and everything that I had to make that work and you destroyed it because you didn’t like how the real world worked,” Jess said with a pitying look that only pissed her off.

“It was my game,” Bailey reminded her.

“And it was my life,” Jess returned with a look that told her just how much she hated her. “When you deleted that game, I lost everything that I’d worked so goddamn hard for and was forced to start over, biding my time and when I found out what you were planning with this game…” Jess said, shaking her head in wonder as she let her words trail off.

“Why are you telling me any of this?” Bailey demanded.

“I thought you had a right to know,” Jess said with a careless shrug as dread slowly crawled up Bailey’s spine and-

“You’re not planning on letting me leave this room alive, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

CHAPTER57

“Stay here,” Quinn bit out as he unlocked Casey’s handcuff and-

“What the hell are you doing?”

-pulled her arm closer so that he could snap the other cuff around Nathan’s wrist before he could stop him.

“Un-fucking cuff me!” Nathan bit out, moving to yank his hand back only to curse and stop moving his arm when the move tore a pained wince from the woman currently trying to pry the cuff off her wrist.

Ignoring him, Quinn focused on the small woman that he hoped like hell wasn’t about to fuck them all over. “Go get help,” he said, leveling a look on Kelly that told her that she better not fuck this up.

Kelly opened her mouth only to close it and jerkily nod her head as she quickly stood up and made her way towards the door. With a slight nod, Tristan followed her as Quinn made his way to the back stairs, ignoring Nathan’s demands to be released and moved his ass.

By the time that he reached the second floor, Quinn was pulling his gun free from its holster and letting years of training take over, knowing that he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t think about Bailey, how fucking much he loved her or the fact that he was terrified that he was about to lose her.

She was just another client.

He kept telling himself that as he made his way past the stairs, where Tristan quietly joined him. As one, they made their way down the rest of the long hallway to the last bedroom on the left, praying every step of the way that they were wrong. Without a word, they took up positions on either side of the door and after a shared look, Tristan reached over and wrapped his hand around the doorknob.

Slowly exhaling, Quinn reached over and pushed the door open only to immediately forget how to breathe when he spotted that 9mm pointed directly at Bailey’s chest. He was going to spank her ass after this was all over, Quinn promised himself as he raised his weapon and took aim while he stepped into the doorway. He forced himself to keep his gaze locked on Jess, knowing that if he looked at Bailey right now that he would lose his fucking mind.

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