His (2 page)

“Please don’t hurt me,” I say in a tiny voice.

“Scared now, aren’t you?” The satisfaction in his tone sends my adrenaline racing. “You better be.”

“I’ll do whatever you want. Just . . . please don’t hurt me.” My voice shakes, and he relaxes his grip on me.

It takes me less than a second to knee him in the crotch and wrap my hand around the knife in my leg holster. In a move too fast for this lard-ass to see, let alone block, I pull it out and sink the blade into his gut. Underhanded—harder to block. If I wanted to kill him, I’d pull it out quickly and stab him again with the tight, quick jabs Bean taught me. But he’s not worth the trouble.

There’s resistance from his flannel and his skin, but once I get past that, it’s a smooth trip through layers of fat. My arm muscles tingle as I hold the knife in place for a few seconds.

I see the whites of his eyes get larger. His mouth drops open as he stares at me in disbelief.

“You
bitch
,” he mutters. I’m not gentle when I pull out my knife. He cries out and puts his hands over the wound. I quickly wipe the two sides of my blade on his shirt to clean it.

He reaches for my wrist, but I’m faster. I’ve landed a punch to his meaty face before he even realizes it’s coming.

“Want some more?” I ask, flashing the business end of my blade.

“No.” He backs up a few steps, shaking his head.

I arch my brows at him. “Who’s scared now?”

I don’t wait for an answer. Instead, I turn and head for the street, where sirens are once again wailing in the distance.

My knife tucked safely away once again, I turn my thoughts back to Bethy and Bean. It’ll be cold tonight. Much as I hate to do it, it’s time for us to head back underground.

Andrew

It’s possibly the worst sales presentation I’ve ever seen. The guy trying to sell me his software company got Strike One when he didn’t introduce himself to me. And now he’s tapping his foot on the ground like he’s about to piss his pants or something. Strike Two.

“This thing could be
huge
. You know what I’m saying, Mr. Wentworth?” he asks me, grinning.

“Not at all.”

His smile slides away, and he clears his throat. “Um, well . . . like I said, I’ve already made close to a million on it.”

“How much have you made? Precisely?”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Seven hundred thousand or so . . . sir.”

I lower my brows. “Seven hundred twenty-one thousand eleven dollars. That’s according to the paperwork your CPA prepared and forwarded to me at your request.”

He nods. “Sounds about right.”

“About right?” I hold back a sigh of disgust. “This is likely the biggest meeting of your life to date, and you don’t have the answer to that critical question prepared?”

“Well, I . . . I knew it was in the papers, so . . .”

“Seven hundred twenty-thousand is
not
close enough to a million to call ‘close to a million.’ Especially when you subtract your start-up expenses from that figure. Cash flow of this venture is nearly nonexistent at this point.”

He silently concedes my point. “It’s still got a lot of potential.”

I’m about to lay out the cold, hard truth when my secretary, Susan, opens the door.

“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Wentworth, but Preston McCoy is here and he says it’s urgent.”

My stomach clenches into a knot of tension as I stand and button my suit coat.

“Go ahead,” the nameless man offers, sitting down on the leather sofa in my office. “I’ll hang out here.”

His suggestion that I’m going to step out of my own office while he “hangs out” here is Strike Three.

“Thank you for your time,” I say, heading for the door.

“Oh.” His expression is crestfallen. “We’re done, then?”

“We’re done.”

He stacks his poster boards in a pile and packs his laptop into its canvas bag covered with buttons advocating marijuana legalization.

“So . . . when will you know?” he asks.

I meet the gaze of one of my vice presidents, Carla, and I can tell she’s holding back a smile.

“I’m not interested in purchasing your company,” I say, spelling it out.

“Really?”

Susan puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him from my office before I blow.

“How the hell did he get this meeting?” I ask Carla.

“His mother is a friend of your mother.”

I just stare at her for a second. “My
mother
set this up?”

“Well . . . she asked if you’d donate to the hospital league banquet, and then she told Susan she’d accept an hour of your time in place of the monetary donation.”

My mother only accepts the word
no
when someone is saying, “No problem, Mrs. Wentworth.” I learned much of my tenacity from her, but I can’t have her using my time this way. I make a mental note to discuss this with her.

Preston McCoy steps into my office, his gray comb-over sparser than the last time I saw him.

“Andrew. Carla.” He shakes both our hands, and Carla steps out. Preston’s gaze stays fixed on her ass as she departs. The old perv isn’t even sly about it.

“So,” he says, sitting down in one of the leather wingback chairs in front of my desk.

I hold up a hand to stop him, walk over to my office door, and close it. Susan generally makes sure my door is closed for meetings, but she’s probably still getting rid of the pot proponent.

Preston waits for me to unbutton my jacket and sit down. I meet his gaze, not letting on that my stomach is churning, ready to spill its contents. I know why he’s here. He has the answer I’ve been waiting seven long months for.

“The paternity test results are in, and you are in no way related to Ms. Henley’s child.”

My insides liquefy with relief.
Thank fuck.
I press my sweating palms to my thighs and wait for Preston to continue.

“Ms. Henley has dropped her claim for child support. It’s over, Andrew.”

I nod. “Good. Thank you for coming by with the news.”

“Of course. I can file a claim for the ten thousand a month you provided as support during the pregnancy.”

I can still see Amber Henley’s quaking lower lip when she told me in my kitchen that our one and only sexual encounter had gotten her pregnant, and there was no doubt I was the father of the baby she was carrying. The bottom of my world fell out that day. At age twenty-eight, I was just hitting my stride with my company. Not to mention she wasn’t someone I saw myself with long-term.

I’d royally fucked that kid over before it was even born. Wasn’t in love with its mother and wasn’t ready to be a father. I’d spent a lot of the past seven months loathing myself over it.

And after all that, Amber had been lying. I can’t even be angry about it because the relief overpowers everything else.

“I don’t care about the money,” I tell Preston. “Like you said, it’s over.”

He arches his brows in a judgmental glare. “Well, maybe this’ll be a lesson to you.”

“I’m not paying you a thousand an hour for life lessons,” I say, my tone crisp. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course. I apologize.” He gets up and leaves my office, closing the door behind him.

I turn my desk chair toward the window and look out at the expanse of stone on the building next door.

It’s over. I didn’t wrong my unborn child. I don’t have to deal with gold-digging Amber anymore. If I ever cried, I’d weep with relief right now.

Instead, I sigh deeply and run a hand over the light five-o’clock shadow coating my cheeks.

Never again will I cede control of my life to a woman this way. I won’t give Preston the satisfaction of admitting this
was
a lesson to me. From now on, I hold all the cards.

Quinn

I’d forgotten how dark it was in the tunnels. It’s the kind of pitch blackness where you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. I hear the sounds of Bethy and Bean breathing beside me and the faint rumble of people talking ahead of us.

“I hate this place,” Bethy says, her low tone nearly a whisper.

“Better than freezing,” I remind her.

“I guess.”

The gurgle of a hunger pang from her stomach makes me press my lips together in a thin line. We haven’t had a full meal in nearly a week. Just bits and pieces of what we can dig up here and there. The only soup kitchen I’m comfortable going to is in a very seedy neighborhood about seven miles away. That’s a long walk in the cold, especially when Bethy has a hole in the bottom of one of her shoes.

“You guys won’t leave me down here by myself, right?” Bethy’s voice wobbles with nervousness.

“Never. One of us always stays with you.”

“Just . . . making sure.”

“Hey.” Bean’s gravelly tone commands attention. “We ain’t never let nothin’ happen to you, girl. Nothin’ to worry about.”

I’d be lost without him. Bean has become a most unlikely ally. When he crept up on us in these abandoned subway tunnels two years ago, I thought for sure he was going to slit my throat and make off with my sister. His dark eyes were menacing even in the dim light of the flashlight he’d pointed at us. I’d been too incapacitated with pneumonia to even react.

But he’d surprised me and helped us. I’ll never forget it. Now we’re a threesome. Me, my kid sister, and a thirty-six-year-old Mexican man with a wicked scar across his cheek and only one hand.

But Bean can take care of business with the hand he has left. I trust him with Bethy. Without him, I don’t know if we’d still be here. Even with his help, in dark moments I’ve considered surrendering to the people who are looking for Bethy and me.

No.

Every time that thought creeps in, I dig deep and find the strength to keep going. We’ve been living this life for four and a half years. What’s two more?

Bethy coughs and I stiffen. That hacking sound is one of the reasons I decided to come back down to the tunnels at night. Bethy’s sick, and we can’t keep sleeping outside in this weather.

The glow of a lantern ahead illuminates the forms of around a dozen people. My hand instinctively lowers to the knife strapped to my thigh.

“Me first,” Bean says when we’re close enough that people start turning to look at us. He pushes his way through the group and into the darkened alcove where we’ll sleep tonight.

It smells like pot smoke and vomit. But the icy wind isn’t cutting into my skin like it does outside. I’ll make that trade.

Bethy shrugs off the sleeping bag strapped to her back, and I help her spread it out. Her eyes meet mine as she crawls inside, and even in the dim light of the nearby lantern I see the question there.

Are we eating tonight?

She won’t ask me out loud. She learned a long time ago that asking just reminds us how hungry we are. I kind of wish she would ask me, though. I wish she’d give me a dirty look and say she hates me for taking away her warm bed and full stomach at home in exchange for this.

The guilt eats me up. I wish she’d confront me about this miserable existence. I wouldn’t even try to defend myself at this point.

But she won’t. She trusts me completely. She keeps me up when I get down. And that makes it so much worse when I fail her.

“I’ll go up for food,” I say. Her eyes light hopefully.