Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance by Carter Steele (books recommended by bts .txt) 📕

get it. Fucking whatever, I'd always move onto the next girl and fuck her instead. Didn't bother me, because I never went home lonely at the end of the night.

With that display Sarah made it perfectly clear that she wasn't interested in me.

8

Jezebel

“You told him you weren't for sale anymore?” Patrick replied after I signed to him exactly what had happened upstairs with me and Wreck. Patrick had learned how to read sign language when he found out I'd been learning it as well. He didn't want me to be able to speak in a fashion without him knowing what I was saying and to whom. He looked at me with hard eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he was the one who decided whether I was for sale or not.

I nodded, then lowered my gaze.

“I'll allow that for now.” He'd dropped a week's worth of groceries on one of the several broken washing machines. We didn't have a kitchen in the building so each week's food haul was microwavable or could be heated up on a hotplate. Patrick generally bought the same things for me each week- those styrofoam cups of noodles, mac and cheese, eggs I could boil and a bushel of apples. Day in and day out for years it was the same thing over and over again.

I missed my mother's cooking.

“You did good telling me all this.” Patrick laid a hand on my shoulder, and squeezed. He used just enough pressure to ensure it was uncomfortable for me. I had to suppress the urge to recoil. His touch was like a thousand spiders crawling across my soul.

“Is there anything else you need from me?” I asked with my hands. It was all I could think of for a reason to pull away from him.

“Yes. After we wrap up the Five-Five-Seven gang tonight, we'll be moving on the geriatrics running the Italian mob. Billy's grandfather, Don Accardo turns seventy eight tomorrow night. I want you to get the schematics on his mansion where the party will be held. You have three hours. Email it to me.”

I hesitated but nodded before he lost his patience. I'd never had to do research on a family so connected before. Some of their official documents might not even exist considering the mob connections. I'd always come through before.

Fear was a terribly efficient motivator.

“One more thing.” Patrick added like with the casualness of someone ordering at a fast food window. “You're coming with us tomorrow so overnight yourself a nice cocktail dress online. Two-hundred dollar limit.”

I stood agape. Going with them?! I'd never gone on one of their missions before. What use could I possibly be in the field?

“What do you want me to do there?” I asked.

“What you're told,” he said sharply, then turned to walk out.

My eyes burned holes in his back as he left. I hated that man more than I ever thought a person could hate another person.

Grabbing the bags of groceries, I headed back upstairs. One, two, three, four. I counted the hidden cameras as I passed them in the hall and unlocked the door to the office. Number five was at the far end of the office past the computer aimed at the door, and camera six was mounted above the door frame pointed at me and the computer watching me while I worked.

Patrick had never told any of us girls about the cameras, and I was pretty sure I was the only one who'd noticed them. It took years of incredibly passive inspection to find those six without letting Patrick know that I found them. If he knew that I'd discovered them he'd have either punished me or moved them and neither of those things had happened.

Dropping the grocery bags on top of a filing cabinet, I crumpled into the chair. It had been such a long, lonely week. All I could think of was Wreck, the only man who'd shown me any kindness in the years I'd been imprisoned here, and how I drove him off...

My heart sank into my stomach and a mild nausea came on.

I wished I could explain myself! I wished I could tell him that no matter how stealthy Wreck thought he was sneaking around picking locks like that, that we were being watched. If I didn't force him to leave Patrick would've known and he would've been furious with me. There was nothing I could do, and now I've driven away the only person that might've been able to help me.

The deadline loomed in the back of my mind and I knew I didn't have time to wallow.

Three hours to do the impossible. This was the mob we were talking about... I sincerely doubted their info was going to be easy to find. That bastard’s demands became more and more unreasonable as time went on!

I looked up public records and building ordinances, but none of the government sites had anything on Don Accardo's mansion. After some more digging and still coming up empty I realized that the house schematics weren't just missing they might never have been submitted in the first place. Their corruption went really deep in the local government so I wasn't too surprised what bribes could buy. I changed up my tactics and started looking into the long dead architect that designed the place in the first place. After some online sleuthing I found a grandson of the architect and it just so happened that he was continuing in his grandfather's career path. I emailed him as a wealthy, prospective client asking him if he had any plans done in a very specific style-something in the vein of an eighty-year old Italian mansion. Within a half hour he responded.

Something like this? The email header said. I opened the attachment and found exactly what I was looking for.

Don Accardo's mansion.

Just in time too because all my searches came up negative!

After careful studying of the building layout and with the looming deadline buzzing in my