DECEIT (B723) by Hazel Grace (ebook reader for surface pro .TXT) 📕

talk to Kyson?” Then he quickly catches himself. “Fuck, you can’t.”

“Mills will.”

“Also, I’ve received a court order too for your children’s DNA results. Alexander is making his move.”

My eyes snap shut on their own. “Okay, I’ll…get on it.”

“Judge Collins,” he tells me. “He’s a patient of one of my associates. I can see if he has an appointment coming up. He’s the judge who signed the court order.”

“That’d be great. Thank you.”

“Let me know if you need anything else. And keep the blood out of it.” I salute him with two fingers, and he hangs up, aware that there isn’t much I can do but come clean to everyone.

Thing is, if Alexander knows I’m alive, it’s not going to be good.

For either of us.

With a glass full of whiskey and a perfect view of Mills, I glare at him while Kyson bitches at me to behave. It’s Marty’s birthday, and Reagan and Stormi have spent days allegedly making it perfect.

I don’t care.

Mills is still alive—that’s all I give a shit about.

And he should be dead, cleaned out, and buried by now.

I watch Reagan coo over one of the babies, tucking her raven hair back to get a better look at them. Blue stands close by, holding the other and this is fucked up and not right.

“You got me?” Kyson presses, propping his elbow on the table next to me. “I don’t want to hear about this shit again.”

I’m assuming he’s talking about Mills still and my first attempt to kill him.

And I’d inquire on what the hell he’s going to do about it but I’ll have to have the same conversation with him in a few days when I try for round number two on my ex-teammate.

However, right now, I’m interested in Blue and her subtle change in hobbies.

Rising from my chair, I hear my best friend ask two or three more questions but I’m far past zoning him out.

His redheaded ass can wait.

The other redhead, the one who disappears and comes back without any recourse…something is going on.

Blue is the secretive member that no one bothers to crack—the outsider. And she’s the one I want to nab up before she flees in the dark again.

Her moss green eyes latch onto me the moment she senses immediate peril—me—and she turns to meet me head-on.

Blue has more balls than most of the guys in the Marines. I don’t know her backstory, never cared to discover or inquire about it, but she’s either stupidly foolish or clearly doesn’t give a shit if today’s her last day.

“Well, if it isn’t the Prodigal Son?” Slowly, she raises a brow, silently asking me what the fuck I want. “You should have your ass beat.”

I bring my glass up to my lips and shrug. “You wanna be the first?”

“Nah.” I watch her over the rim as the liquid warms the back of my throat. “I wanna be the last. You’ll remember it longer.”

A smirk creeps up my face. “At least I’m true to my intentions instead of being a poser.”

“A what?”

“Poser.”

Recognition begins to dawn on her face, and she nods. “I’m a fake because I like babies?” She squints at me, covering up whatever bullshit lie she’s hiding.

You see, Emmy used to do the same shit.

She’d try to distract me by biting down on her full bottom lip and fib her big ass right out of my prying.

And, yeah, I’d get absent-minded and forget what the hell I was even talking about. My cock would take over all question-asking, and sometimes it’d be days until I remembered that she never did answer the question in the first place.

That’s what Emmy was.

A deep-rooted and alluring creature who owned me. I was Emmy’s, and I’ve never been anyone else’s.

Not fully.

I will never belong to another human being, and I’ve got way too much time—the rest of my life—to feel the loss of Emmy.

“Nah.” I step forward, towering over her scent of watermelon, long lashes, and faint freckles. “You’re one because this isn’t your thing. Your style.” I cock my head to the side. “So why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

One of the babies, the one she’s closest by begins to fuss, and she promptly turns to pick it up. The little thing is wrapped in a purple blanket and when I expect her to talk to it or calm it down, she does the furthest thing I’d ever want her ass to do.

“Here—” She gently shoves the baby into my chest, forcing me to take it or let it be dropped on its head. “—watch her for me.”

“Her?” My palm finds the back of its skull on instinct and big, dark blue eyes locate mine.

“Atlas,” Blue says while I’m being exorcised by a small little bundle of curls. She grunts and sucks on the pink thing in her mouth. “Emmy’s daughter, Bishop. Keep up.”

Right.

The reason why everything feels worse and empty in my life. When it’s late, and I can’t sleep, I feel as though one more secret that comes forth is going to break me.

Emmy’s daughter. 

“I just need to warm up the formula. Can you fucking watch her for me, or are you going to plan another assassination on a two-month-old?”

Slowly I shake my head, apparently brain-dead or stricken with a swift stroke, I’m not sure.

Blue steps closer, positioning Atlas so that she’s lying within the crook of my arm and in the perfect position to suck the soul and hate out of me with her eyes.

“Be right back.”

Atlas keeps sucking on her pink rubber thing, and I can see her little gums moving around it as she continues to just stare.

And me, I have nothing to say.

This is Emmy’s fucking daughter.

My girl is in this tiny human being.

She was inside her growing and listening to her voice. She was with her when Emmy was giving birth, unconscious from what I somewhat gathered.

A little girl who would never fully know how amazing her mother was. But every time she looked in the mirror I