Thrive (Guardian Protection) Read online

  “If you were serious about us moving in together, I’d love that.”

  He smiled. “Of course. You know I’ll always take care of you.”

  Unfortunately, I did know that.

  And a few minutes later, as I walked away, my hand folded in his, with Jeremy watching me go without a single objection, I told myself the biggest lie of all.

  I am better off with Kurt.

  Present day…

  The sound of the screen door slamming at four a.m. was nothing out of the ordinary. It was rare that the girls actually came home at night rather than finding a man for the evening. But, if they did, I knew I’d hear it. I’d warned Sherri and Tammy at least seven hundred times that I was going to take the damn thing off the hinges if they didn’t remember to manually guide it shut instead of letting it slap closed behind them. Did they listen? Hell no.

  I made a mental note to follow through on that threat first thing in the morning—well, later in the morning. Maybe after I’d actually opened my eyes. Those thoughts died and a sleepy smile curled my lips when I remembered we’d be out of there before I could even find the screwdriver.

  With all stressors momentarily forgotten, I started to doze off again. Then my bedroom door suddenly flew open.

  “Mira!” Whitney cried in a terrified tone that hit me like a freight train.

  I bolted straight up in bed, but it took a second for my eyes to adjust. Lifting my hand, I tried to block out the light flooding into the room, but all I could make out were their silhouettes.

  Their—as in two people.

  One of which was definitely a man, and his hand was attached to the back of Whitney’s hair.

  My pulse skyrocketed, and a blast of adrenaline tore through my system.

  “Whit!” I yelled, throwing the covers back and going for the baseball bat I kept under the bed.

  My mother used to say, “Men think a woman is the most vulnerable in the bed on her back. Show ’em you aren’t.” It was the best—and possibly the only—thing she’d ever taught me.

  I lifted the bat high and planted my feet shoulder-width apart before demanding, “Let her go.”

  A deep, somewhat familiar voice filled with humor asked, “Is that a fucking bat?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask your skull fragments in about thirty seconds.”

  He barked a laugh. “Jesus, woman. You always were a fucking nut.”

  I tilted my head to the side, my brain working overtime to place his voice. Then it finally hit me. “Jonah?”

  Jonah Sheehan was Kurt’s best friend for the majority of our marriage. He was a good guy. Nice enough. A little too cocky, and therefore obnoxious, but Kurt thought he was a riot. He was elbow-deep in the wonderful world of steroids with my ex-husband—using, buying, and eventually selling.

  “The one and only,” he sing-songed.

  My shoulders sagged. “Christ, Jonah. You scared the hell out of me.” Slowly lowering the bat, I sighed. “What are you doing here?” I twisted the switch for the lamp on my nightstand.

  And then my entire life changed.

  The first thing I saw was Whitney standing there, tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes wide with panic.

  Confused, I slid my gaze to Jonah. I hadn’t seen him in over three years, and the man standing in front of me was a shadow of the one who had sat at my bar.

  Gone were the pyramids of muscles that had covered his tall frame. Pale skin sagged under his eyes, and what had once been an attractive smattering of freckles across his cheeks was now covered by blotches and open sores. He looked at least twenty years older.

  But that wasn’t why I gasped.

  His hand wasn’t in Whitney’s hair.

  His gun was.

  I stumbled back a step, my mind unable to make heads or tails of what the hell was happening, but I lifted the bat again. “You need to let her go, Jonah.”

  He smiled, revealing a headful of yellow and brown teeth. “Oh, no. This one is coming with me.” He shoved Whitney hard, sending her stumbling out the door, and only then did I notice the other man.

  “No!” I yelled, racing forward, momentarily letting my guard down long enough for Jonah to grab the end of the bat and snatch it from my hands.

  Hooking his arm around my throat, he pulled me against his chest and pressed the metal tip of his gun to my temple. “Shut up!”

  “Let me fucking go.” Kicking and clawing, I fought against him. But, while he wasn’t the same mountain of muscle, he had no problem overpowering me. “Whitney!” I yelled when the screen door slammed shut.

  My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, and my mind swirled. It all felt like a dream. But, when I heard her scream from the driveway, I knew there would be no waking up.

  I froze, terror ricocheting inside me. “W-where are you taking her?”

  “She’ll be fine as long as you listen closely and do what I say.”

  I cried out when he painfully forced my head to my shoulder with his gun.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “What do you want?” I snarled.

  “First, you need to chill the hell out.”

  “You have a fucking gun aimed at my head, Jonah. It’s safe to assume I’m not going to chill out.”

  He tightened his arm around my neck. “Then stop fucking fighting me.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was give up. If he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going out of this world quietly. But, then again, this wasn’t just about me anymore. Whitney was involved.

  With a deep breath, I willed my heart to slow and dropped my hands.

  “Good,” he praised. “Now, listen up. Kurt needs a favor.”

  Bile rose in my throat as I craned my head back to stare at him. I hadn’t spoken to my ex-husband in over three years.

  Kurt had been shit for a husband. And, come to think of it, shit for a boyfriend and shit for a fiancé too. But, even after everything that had happened between Kurt and me over the years, I’d never doubted that, in his own twisted way, he loved me. He would have lost his mind if he thought someone was hurting me.

  “Funny, because I’m thinking Kurt would put a bullet in your head before he allowed you to put your hands on me,” I seethed.

  He chuckled, his putrid breath breezing over my face as he whispered, “Who do you think got me the gun, Mira?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and my stomach tied into a million knots. “He’s still in prison,” I choked out.

  He smiled sardonically. “Doesn’t mean he’s stopped working.”

  Make that two million knots.

  “What does he want?” I whimpered.

  He roughly shoved me to the bed, and Bitsy jumped on top of me when I landed beside her.

  After tucking the gun in the back of his pants, he walked to the door and kicked a huge rectangle duffel bag into the room. It was all but bursting at the seams.

  “W-what is that?” I breathed, scrambling across the bed while holding Bitsy close to my chest.

  “Seven hundred thousand dollars. And I can’t spend a fucking penny of it without the Feds crawling up my ass.”

  I pursed my lips. “Okay?”

  He lifted the gun and aimed it at me. “I need you to clean it.”

  I looked down at the bag. Back up at Jonah. Then back down at the bag. Then back up at him. “Like in the washing machine?”

  It was his turn to look down at the bag. Back up at me. Then back down to the bag. Then back up at me. “Not in the fucking washing machine! Clean it! Pay your taxes and then get it back to me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “I do not have the patience for your bullshit, Mira.”

  I blinked.

  He blinked back.

  I blinked again.

  He planted his hand on his hip and blinked harder.

  I threw my hands up in the air. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

  He tipped his he
ad to the side and smirked. “Word is you’re opening another Sip and Sud.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ll repeat, clean my fucking money!”

  I ground my teeth. “Okay, again, I’ll repeat, like in a fucking washing machine?”

  He sulked over to the bed and sat on the corner. My whole body went on alert as he reached out and picked up Bitsy.

  “Put her down. Now,” I demanded.

  He stroked his dirty fingernails down her neck. “Not usually a fan of little dogs, but I gotta admit this one is right cute.” He lifted her up into his line of sight and asked in a ridiculous baby voice, “What do you say? You want to come home with Uncle Jonah for a little while?”

  My heart stopped, but a fire ignited inside me. I lunged toward him, blood roaring in my ears, murder coursing through my veins. But he moved, which sent me crashing to the floor.

  After snatching the gun from the back of his pants, he leveled it on me, all of this done with Bitsy still tucked into the curve of his arm.

  With a heaving chest, I threw my hands up in surrender. “Okay. Okay. Just stop.”

  He jutted his head toward the bag. “Clean it.”

  “I can’t,” I cried, climbing back to my feet. Folding my hands together in prayer, I took a step toward him. “I swear to God, Jonah. I don’t know how.”

  “That’s not what Kurt said.”

  “Then Kurt lied!”

  He scoffed and stroked Bitsy on the head, using that baby voice again to say, “Your mama is a crazy-ass bitch who is about to get a bullet in her head if she doesn’t stop trying to bullshit me.”

  My back shot straight as he lifted his eyes to mine.

  “You got three days to figure it out.”

  My stomach dropped, panic exploding within me. “Three days? What the hell can you possibly expect me to do with seven hundred thousand dollars in that time? I’m at least six months away from opening the Sip and Sud. I don’t even have a loan for the building yet. But, honestly, even if I did, I don’t know the first thing about laundering money. I ran a business, Jonah. A legal business. Any of the rest of that shit was Kurt.”

  “So you’re telling me a fucking bar inside a laundromat made you hundreds of thousands of dollars each year?”

  “Well, not one of them. I had three before they were seized. Sure, everything was in Kurt’s name.” I rested my hand over my heart, pride swelling inside me. “But those were my babies.”

  I hadn’t exactly had pie-in-the-sky expectations when I’d opened the first Sip and Sud, but after refusing to allow Kurt to beg more money off his parents, the old laundromat was the only location we could afford. I’d worked my ass off to get that place in any kind of shape to open the doors. I’d figured we’d get some cash flow and I could open something bigger, preferably without washers and dryers playing the bassline to the music.

  However, the Sip and Sud exploded. Over half of our revenue came from the laundry side. At first, I hired a few of the local college girls to come in and wash, dry, and fold customers’ laundry in bikinis. I charged a mint by the pound for that service, and while they waited and watched, I charged another mint for drinks. As to be expected, our clientele was mostly men—bachelors and married alike. But, when the novelty wore off and they realized no one was getting naked, business became so slow that it almost died. That is until I realized I was catering to the wrong audience. Switching things up, I hired a group of off-season male athletes from the local college to wash, dry, and fold shirtless. That was when things went nuts. Women poured through our doors in flocks. Which, in turn, brought the men back in flocks.

  Soon, the Sip and Sud was providing two-thirds of our income without Kurt’s illegal shit involved. Money we both could have lived on very comfortably if he had just stopped with the drugs.

  But it was Kurt. He didn’t need the money. He needed the thrill of the game.

  He’d played me more times than I’d ever be able to count.

  And, as I stared up at Jonah, who was standing in my apartment and holding my dog after he’d kidnapped my best friend in the wee hours of the morning, it seemed like, once again, Kurt had dragged me in as his pawn.

  Christ. Why did that hurt? Oh, right. Because I was getting my life back on track. I was terrified, doubting myself at every turn, but damn it, I was doing it.

  Or at least I had been.

  Defeat rolled my shoulders. “I can’t do it.”

  “You’re a smart girl, Mira. Figure it out.”

  Tears sprang from my eyes as he headed for the door, Bitsy still in his arms, Whitney God only knew where.

  “Wait, please,” I begged.

  “Tony is gonna stay with you to make sure you don’t do anything stupid,” he called over his shoulder. “You figure out a plan. I’ll figure out how long I can give you to execute said plan. But, until that happens, your girl stays with me.”

  I rushed after him and tugged on the back of his shirt. “Please, Jonah. Don’t do this. Just leave them here. I’ll make it happen. I promise.”

  But his legs never stopped moving.

  Frantic, I followed him to the front door, where a young kid with long, blond hair and a face full of tattoos—yes, his actual face—was glaring at me.

  “Get her off me,” Jonah ordered.

  Tony’s arm hit me hard around the stomach, knocking the breath out of me as he lifted me off my feet.

  “No!” I screamed, but there was no air in my lungs to carry the sound.

  “Three days,” Jonah declared as Tony dragged me toward my bedroom.

  Gasping for air, I did my best to fight, but it only made Tony’s grip tighten painfully.

  “Jonah!” I managed to choke out, tears streaming off my chin. “You can’t do this!”

  He snapped and Tony suddenly stopped. “Oh, Mira,” he breathed. “This was not the reaction Kurt was hoping for.” Slowly, he prowled over to me, an evil smile pulling at his lips, and brushed the hair off my neck.

  I wrenched my eyes shut and turned my head away from his tender gesture.

  “It would be good for you to remember how well Kurt took care of you before he got locked away. I don’t think he’s going to be so nice if you turn your back on him now.” With his thumb and forefinger on my chin, he turned my head. “Eyes open,” he demanded.

  My chest ached, and I was sick with dread and betrayal. Kurt hadn’t been nice to me. Kurt had been a nightmare to deal with. He’d ruined my life time and time again. This was just one more reminder that I was never out of his reach.

  I found the strength to flutter my lids open at Jonah’s order.

  He was standing only inches away. Tony’s arms were still wrapped around me, rendering me unable to escape.

  “Mirabell,” he whispered, and I flinched at Kurt’s silly nickname for me. I’d hated it then, and I hated it even more now. “I will only say this once. You call the cops and your girl is dead. Do you understand?”

  His threat slayed me from all angles. I’d known that day would come. Kurt had been out of my life for over three years, but he’d never let me go.

  I’d been wrong when I’d thought I was the pawn in Kurt’s game.

  I was the fucking queen—whether I wanted to be or not.

  Slowly and filled with threat, Jonah repeated, “Do you understand?”

  I did. Loud and clear. So I nodded, but I felt like I was dying.

  He tapped my nose. “Smart girl. Three days.”

  “Three days,” I repeated on a broken sob.

  And then he was gone, just like every hope I’d had for the future.

  Tony released me when the door shut behind Jonah, and it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. From my fingertips to my toes, I was numb as I heard a car roar away, Whitney inside, and there was not one damn thing I could do to help her.

  “I suggest you get to work,” Tony said, tucking a gun into his waistband before collapsing onto my couch and propping his biker-boot-clad feet on the coffee table.


  A coffee table I’d bought at a garage sale the Saturday after Kurt had been sentenced. I hadn’t had much money to celebrate that day, but something inside me had told me that that damn coffee table was the start of a new life. It was the first thing I had ever owned that was completely mine. Not Kurt’s and not something the government could take away.

  I’d bought that forty-dollar coffee table with money I’d made.

  On my own. The legal way. Free and clear of Kurt and any sludge he could rain over me.

  It had taken me thirty-three years of life to finally own a fucking coffee table.

  And there it was, two boots covered in Kurt’s filth resting on it.

  I couldn’t clean that money. Not even if I’d wanted to. But I could make sure Kurt lost his very last game with me serving as his queen.

  I stumbled to my room, careful not to trip over the seven hundred thousand dollars that had literally been dropped at my feet, and sank down to my bed.

  “Oh, God,” I choked out, slapping a hand over my mouth, far too many years’ worth of tears finally escaping.

  Calling the cops was risky while Jonah had Whitney. But short of a miracle, I had no way to help her without getting the police involved.

  Reaching out to my nightstand, I retrieved my phone. My hands were shaking so violently that I was barely able to click the home button. The bright light on the screen illuminated the dark room. And then I froze, chills pebbling my skin and a blast of hope igniting my system.

  The answer was staring back at me.

  In a tight, black Guardian Protection Agency T-shirt.

  “How much do you love me?” I asked while holding my phone in front of me as I walked through the underground parking garage of Guardian Protection Agency.

  Sophie laughed, edging her sister out of the screen as she exclaimed, “Infinity!”

  “Dat’s what I was gonna say!” Amelia yelled, shoving at her sister.

  Sophie was all of twelve minutes older, but she had taken the role of big sister extremely seriously. She loved getting under Amelia’s skin. And there was one thing you could always count on: Amelia was going to give her one hell of a reaction.

  “I said it first,” Sophie said with a mischievous grin, fanning Amelia’s flames.