Page 75 of Trick
“Oh God, he’s here, isn’t he?” I kept my voice low so Beau wouldn’t hear me, which was completely unnecessary in a sound-proofed room, but my sudden panic had muddled my brain.
I asked again about Tony, and JD simply shook his head slowly.
I gasped as I imagined the worst.
“What happened?” I swallowed hard around the ball of fear that seized my throat and made my voice tight.
“JD?” I prompted him when he still didn’t answer my question.
He cocked his head, and something about the expression on his face as he looked at me sparked a completely different sense of unease. His eyes were almost lifeless; a blank stare that seemed to be lookingthroughme, rather than at me.
“Why don’t you ever call me Damian anymore?”
I froze at the unexpected question, trying to make sense of it since I’d never called him anything other than JD.
A niggling thought wormed it’s way into my subconscious as the nameDamianregistered. The only Damian I knew of was the hero in my last audiobook.
“I…I don’t understand,” I responded hesitantly.
“I always loved that you called me by my middle name, instead of Johnny like everyone else did, but you don’t do it anymore.”
His voice had taken on an eerie, almost dream-like quality that I couldn’t quite define, and my mind raced, trying to work out what the fuck was happening.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked softly, sounding very much like a young boy afraid of being scolded.
I slowly shook my head. “No…why would you think that?”
“You act like you don’t know me sometimes,” he explained, sounding hurt. “I thought you were just teasing me at first, youknow? Pretending we were strangers, like it was a game. But then you brought me breakfast, and later we had our lunch date, and it seemed like everything was OK again.”
I was confused until I remembered that I’d brought him donuts to thank him for changing my tire, and a few days later I’d eaten lunch with him in his office because the odor of paint was too strong to stay in the break room.
“But then you went out with Dustin.Twice.” His voice hardened, and a dark look passed over his face.
The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and my unease and confusion changed to horror in an instant.
Beau wasn’t my stalker.
JD was.
Chapter 23
Trick/Jase
Bull and Irish had given me all kinds of shit about Lauren after lunch. Even though we’d agreed not to hide our relationship anymore – thank fuck – I refused to tell them anything on general principle. Still, Bull insisted that it was obvious we were hooking up, meaning he’d won the bet, while Irish reminded him that his side bet was still in play.
“We can expand on it,” Bull added with a laugh. “Not only how long will it take Viking to kill him, but how will he choose to do it?”
“I’ll take that action, brother. I’ve got twenty that says two days, and he’ll rip his balls off and pin them to the dart board.”
“Nah,” Bull said. “His back is too fucked up for that right now. I’ll put fifty bucks on three days, and he’ll shoot his dick off.”
I flipped them off and left them to laugh it up about the method of my demise, then went into the kitchen to start making a list of groceries I would need to have delivered. I had enjoyed cooking for Lauren and wanted to continue to do it even here at the clubhouse.
Luca Rossi’s phone call put an end to my perusal of the clubhouse pantry. I was pissed as hell when I stalked throughthe common room and into the annex, hoping that Lauren would agree to cancel her session. I knew it was a long shot, but I had to at least try. Her arguments made sense, but I was still worried about letting her leave the safety of the compound without me.
A few hours later, I struggled to put my concerns for her out of my mind, so I could focus on my meeting with Rossi. After all, only a fucking idiot would let his guard down when dealing with the head of the local mafia.
The meeting dragged on longer than I had hoped, since we had to go over every single detail to make sure it aligned with the date change as well as the change in fighters.
