Page 60 of Shades of Loyalty
Making a fucking plan just for nothing to happen? It’s wasted time. One of my biggest nightmares.
The past five days have been a mess. Between planning the shipment, keeping an eye on my men, and whateverthe hell is going on with Jennifer, I haven’t had a second to think about myself.
We haven’t talked about what we are yet—not properly, at least. Maybe that’s for the better. Maybe it’s not. I can’t fucking tell.
I know she wanted to ask me five days ago, before our meeting, before we ended up in that heated situation. But I panicked.
It’s fucking embarrassing. Me—panicking over a woman. If my father ever heard that, he’d think Julian was right about me not being good enough.
The thought fucks with my head. All of this does. But who else is going to handle it? Nobody.
So, I have to handle all of this.
I’m the boss, after all. It’s my responsibility.
I grab my keys and head through the house, nodding at some of my men. They’re probably off to a deal—drugs, most likely. Or something else. I don’t have the capacity to care right now.
The only things on my mind are the shipment, Volkov, and Jennifer. The rest is taken care of. I made sure to tell Hayden about everything that could be important work before diving into all the work about the shipment.
It’s not just some shipment. It’s a huge one—for both the Volkov family and the Caruso family. We’ve done this shipment a few times before, and everything always seemed to go cleanly. But now, I’m questioning if this partnership is a good idea.
Being allies is one thing. Sharing a shipment is another. Especially when it’s still unclear to me who really killed Roy.
Sure, I could leave Roy behind. I could just deem it an accident, since nothing else has happened since then—but it’s only been, what? Three weeks?
Something like this can always happen again, and it could kill anyone. Hayden. Me. Fuck, that snitch maybe even has the power to kill Jennifer. Or, even worse, her daughter.
Men like Hayden and me are usually the ones targeted. But you never know what these men are up to. Most of these guys are into things like sex trafficking too, after all. A woman like Jennifer would be a dream for them.
She’d get them thousands of dollars. And her daughter?
These sick fucks would never stop at that.
They’d never protect her innocence, if it’d mean they could get money from her.
It pisses me off just like Julian does, who always wanted to include this shit in our business. Worst part, he doesn’t even act a little bit like the snitch.
He’s been doing his job well, never mentioning anything that seemed off, and all he does is tease me and Jennifer sometimes. But that’s literally it.
I can’t take teasing as a threat, can I? They’re meaningless words. That’s all.
He's just a member lower in rank who wants to provoke me in order to seem better than me.
My thoughts are interrupted just a few meters before I enter the garage. I don’t have to turn around to know who it is that’s sneaking up to me.
“You’re right on time, pretty,” I say as I open the door, waiting for her to enter. Jennifer smiles at me as she walks up and passes me.
“I tried to hurry up,” she laughs.
I grin, suddenly forgetting about everything that has been fucking with my mind. Although these last few days have been hard on me, whenever she’s with me, it gets better.
It’s like she’s a safe anchor I can hold onto. I barely know her, yet she gives me a feeling of home.
I feel guilty for not being able to give her an answer. What we are. What we should be in the future.
Friends with benefits? Colleagues with benefits? Strangers with benefits?
Idon’t even know what to call us at this point. And I know it makes her feel unsure. I want to reassure her, tell her what this is, what to call it—but I have no fucking clue either.
