Illusive Read online

  After six different public schools in three years, five of which were in neighborhoods where I was afraid she was going to get gunned down by gangbangers, I was finally at a point in my life where I was good at my job. I’d possibly just landed the most amazing opportunity with an income much higher than I’d ever seen before, and with that and the part scholarship Blair was offered because of her amazing grades in math and science, I was able to afford to give her the education I didn’t get. Yes, we were still living in a tiny apartment, but the complex we were in had security, a pool, and it was nice. But I wanted to make sure this job was permanent and long-term before I got us both excited about finally having more than we’ve ever had before.

  We’d been here for just under three weeks. My new big job included doing the interior design for around twenty new apartments being built fifteen minutes from our new home.

  It was the biggest job I’d had to date—hence, the move down here from Montana.

  It was an opportunity I couldn’t say no to. It would keep us going for the next couple of months, then I just had to cross my fingers and hope they liked me enough to keep me on to do other projects with them, or they would recommend me to others. Basically, it was a leap of faith, one Blair had taken with me more times than I could count on both hands.

  It’d been her and I against the world since she was born. In a few months, she’d be the same age I was when I’d gotten pregnant—sweet sixteen— but, in reality, she was an old soul already.

  She’d had to grow up fast.

  We both had.

  And I was determined to make this stop the last one—the place where we could finally settle down and stop running.

  I had to make this work.

  I was going to make it work.

  Come hell or high water.

  When I pulled up to the curb outside the school, we sat there for a few moments, staring at the perfectly constructed and intricately designed building.

  “We both know I’m not fancy enough for this place, Mom,” Blair murmured, continuing to stare at the imposing structure in front of us.

  It was hard for me to see her so nervous and unsure of herself. Blair was a fighter, but there were still moments where she struggled to find her feet in unfamiliar situations. Her fingers twirled unconsciously in her curly blonde hair. She hadn’t bothered to straighten it this morning, and even though it was pulled back from her face with a headband, it was wild and thick and often reminded me of a lion’s mane. And the girl was just as damn fierce as one too.

  A sharp bell rang, and the few students who were scattered around the front of the building rushed away. A handful of girls scurried past the car, chatting and giggling to themselves.

  Apart from the uniform, these kids looked like normal kids, the same as the ones you would find at any public school. Except they were going to get a better education, and they were going to have teachers who were paid to put in the extra time and effort with each student. These kids were going to be given opportunities to succeed with support, resources, and money. And as far as I was concerned, my daughter was going to be right alongside them, getting the education that I was denied. And it was going to be a damn good one, so I didn’t have to watch her struggle or fight to make a life for herself like she’d had to watch me do.

  I took her hand in mine and squeezed. “Just do you, baby girl,” I encouraged her, drawing her eyes to me, noting she was a little scared. I got it. I did. This shit was frightening as hell. “Fancy or not… who cares. Because you’re smart, and here, you’re gonna be challenged, and you’re going to excel.”

  She sighed, nodding slowly.

  Blair was smart—that was no understatement. Sometimes I wondered if she was too smart for her own good. Trust me, I wasn’t one of those parents who thought their kids were perfect angels and could do no wrong. Nope, that dream went out the window when I was called to the principal’s office on her second day of Pre-K.

  She wasn’t a bad kid, honestly.

  “Do you think they’ll give me detention on my first day?” Blair asked as she reached for the door handle. I threw my head back and closed my eyes, praying to anyone who would listen that she would at least last the first day. Unfortunately, along with her big heart and sparkling blue eyes, the other trait that rivaled her huge brain was her smart mouth and her inability to keep it shut when she felt like she had something to say.

  “Blair… pleas—”

  She threw herself across the center of the car and pressed a kiss to my cheek, effectively cutting me off, grinning smugly as she pulled the door handle and climbed out. “It’s fine,” she tried to placate me, waving her hand as if trying to shoo me away. “I’ll see you after school here somewhere.”

  I crinkled my nose and frowned at her jovial change in mood. “Listen here, missy,” I ordered, almost climbing out of the car when she rolled her eyes before focusing in on me. “No making anyone cry. No tormenting other kids with sick jokes about why you had to move school. No giving teachers lists of juvies when they ask about where they can find your records. And above all, no pretending to be allergic to the cafeteria food.”

  With each demand, her smile grew bigger.

  I knew her tricks.

  We’d done this dance plenty of times before.

  But each time she would come up with something new.

  And each time, I honestly couldn’t fault her creativity.

  “Mom, it’s gonna be fine,” she assured me again, leaning in the open car door with a smile. “I will keep the making people cry to a minimum… today. Just focus on work. Go and meet with that boss guy and impress his stupid business socks off.”

  I snorted, my mind suddenly moving again back to me.

  For some reason, I found it far easier to focus on Blair. It came much more natural to me to be the momma bear who needed to protect her cub than it did to pretend to be confident and like I wasn’t completely shitting my pants.

  “I’ll see you after school.” I nodded, inhaling deeply to try and get my heart to stop racing. “Call me at lunchtime and let me know how things are going.”

  She started to back away from the car, and my heart squeezed a little tighter. Blair was my baby girl, my partner in crime, and every time I watched her walk away or disappear from my sight, I felt like a part of my world was missing. God forbid if she decided she wanted to go away for college in a few years and move across the fucking country or something like that.

  I sat there watching as she disappeared into the school office building, my hands clenched on the steering wheel.

  I was scared—fucking petrified, actually.

  But no one else was going to do it.

  And I did put my big girl panties on this morning.

  So even as I drove over to the construction site of the apartment building, my hands still shook, and I continued to swallow back the vomit that sat at the back of my throat, threatening every few minutes to spew out over the steering wheel and dashboard.

  You’d think at this stage in my life, at thirty-two years of age, that this kind of shit would become easier or that I would somehow become more confident. But nope, not a damn hope in hell.

  Outside the construction site, I pulled my car to the curb and took a deep breath before reaching for my pink hard hat that I kept in the back seat. After climbing out, I reached in and grabbed my design folder before heading for what I assumed was the on-site makeshift office.

  “Excuse me,” I called and cleared my throat when two men turned toward me. “I’m looking for Drake?”

  The temperature out here was horrendous. My black jeans and button-up blouse were clinging to my body as I tried to fight the urge to hold my folder in front of me and use it to fan myself. It couldn’t be helped, though. I’d learned early on that coming to a construction site meant wearing a certain type of clothing. Not just for safety, but for respect.

  This was undoubtedly a men’s zone, and while I wasn’t wielding a hammer or a saw, I needed them to see me as a colleague if I was going to get through my time here without having to defend my capabilities.

  It wasn’t ideal, no. But I was willing to do whatever I needed to prove I was worthy of this job and many more. I’d come too far to let my anxiety, or a bunch of men, get the best of me now.

  Already feeling sweat beginning to pool under my breasts, arms, and down the center of my back, it was not helped whatsoever by the two men who stood staring at me, examining me.

  I walked closer, the younger-looking of the two standing a little taller and handing off the large design sheets to the other man whose eyes drifted the length of my body before he nodded and turned to walk away.

  “I’m Drake.” He gestured with his hand for me to come forward. “Come in.”

  I swallowed against the hard lump in my throat and forced a bright smile as I followed him into the small trailer, thinking the whole time that he must have been almost fucking melting in his full suit when half the men I’d already spotted on site were stripped down to the minimum of a tank top, but mostly much less.

  There was a small table at the end of the trailer. He took a seat on one side and gestured with me to take the other. I slipped into the bench seat and placed my things on the table before pushing my shoulders back while fighting to keep the knot in my throat from choking me.

  “It’s nice to see you dressed appropriately,” Drake commented, his voice a little gravelly. “Thanks for that.”

  I nodded. “Sounds like you’ve had problems before.”

  He scoffed and leaned back into the seat. “Don’t even get me started. I have enough trouble keeping these assholes on track as it is without some floozy wandering around a worksite wearing a skirt, six-inch heels, and no fucking hard hat.” His brow pulled into a deep
frown.

  My eyes traveled down to my denim jeans and heavy worn work boots before returning my gaze to Drake with a shrug and a smile. “I’ve fought way too hard to get to where I am today. I’m not looking to waste all the crap I’ve been through.”

  The corner of his mouth pulled up, and he reached for my folder, pulling it toward him before spinning it around and flipping open the front page. On the phone, he’d asked me to bring some designs—places of my own creation along with images of styles and floor plans I liked.

  I’d gone through three years of school for this shit.

  A lot of people thought interior designing was simply picking pretty fabrics and accent pillows, but it was so much more. I could draw plans, I could remove walls, I could completely redesign the layout in a house if I wanted to.

  I understood spaces.

  How they worked together.

  How they flowed.

  “These are good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Probably better than the designs we have, to be honest,” he mumbled out under his breath, his fingers pinching at his brow. That was the first time I noticed the tattoos peeking out from beneath the cuffs of his business shirt. They were bright, colorful, and quickly snapped away the second he noticed my gaze linger a little too long. “We’re looking to add someone more permanent to our company, so we don’t have to outsource. The woman who drew up these designs, she was the daughter of the design company we hired. Barely a year into her training but forced to work when Daddy threatened to cut her off financially.”

  My entire body visibly cringed. “Can I see the plans?”

  Reluctantly, he pulled the floor plans from a briefcase next to him and slipped them across the table. This was going to be a large apartment building. Not only was the designer expected to plan and decorate the lobby and conference areas on the first floor, but there were also going to be at least six levels with a range of different sized and shaped apartments above it.

  The second I looked at the apartment plans, I knew I was about to face a challenge.

  “These have already been approved by the engineer,” I noted out loud, flicking through one after another.

  “Did you see the construction site outside?” he growled before sucking in a sharp breath and easing his tone. “This is what we have. Is it that fucking bad?”

  They weren’t bad, but they were nowhere near good. The flow of the apartments was wrong, the layout not optimizing the space, leaving areas empty and useless with dead space. There was no consideration to which areas could appeal to families and which would be better suited to working couples—things that opened up sales to a wider range of buyers.

  “I can work with them.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Drake?” A young man poked his head through the door. “Structural is here. He wants to finalize plans before they start doing things that can’t be changed later.”

  “All right, Zoey,” Drake announced, getting to his feet. “Let’s hear what you have to say about these apartments.”

  With quick movements, I scurried to gather all my things and shoved them back into my folder before answering, “But I’ve only taken a glance at the plans. I need to take a further good look, get a feel for the job ahead of me,” I exclaimed, rushing out after him and almost face planting into the dirt.

  “Well, what better way to get a feel for the space than standing in it.”

  Fuck.

  HUNTSMAN

  “Where’s your man, Wallace?” Romeo questioned, a sharp edge to his tone.

  The small rat-looking bastard shifted on his feet, bouncing from one to the other as his eyes flickered between Romeo and the door. “He’s just running a little late.”

  “A little?” I scoffed from the shadowy corner, my shoulder pressed onto the cold concrete wall of the hotel basement. “He was meant to be here ten minutes ago.”

  “He’ll be here!” Wallace snapped, though the regret in his eyes was instant when I pushed off the wall and took a step toward him. “Huntsman, man… you know I’m good for it. This guy is just new.” His hands shot up, and he stumbled back, hitting the solid wall with a thud.

  Romeo huffed out a laugh then shook his head. “There’s a crowd out there who paid to see a fight, and I’m not about to walk out and tell them they aren’t getting one.” Wallace was right to be scared. Romeo might have a romantic name, but that was as far as it reached. “So, I suggest, you get your buddy here fast, or you’re going to be taking his place.”

  We all had our own demons we were battling, but from what I could tell, Romeo’s were something quite specific. Something that had shaped him in a way I wasn’t sure many people could even imagine.

  Wallace ripped his cell phone from his pocket, shuffling into the corner of the small, dungeon-looking room as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Where the hell…” He trailed off, covering the mouthpiece with his hand as he half-whispered, half yelled down the line.

  The door creaking pulled my attention, Rip leaning through the small space. “The crowd is getting restless,” he warned under his breath.

  “Working on it,” I hissed, his rolling eyes making my palm itch, wishing my son was a little closer so I could smack him around the upside his big ass head. “Go… fuckin’ entertain them.”

  “With what?”

  “Your sparkling personality. Or maybe try that chicken joke you told me this morning,” Romeo jabbed, earning him a dark glare before the door eased closed again. “That’s your kid.”

  I snorted. “There’s rumors he was switched at birth.”

  Wishful thinking.

  My foot began to tap, knowing Rip wasn’t exactly wrong.

  The small underground arena a few rooms away was packed to the rim with almost a hundred people. Each one hyped up and practically frothing at the mouth for the violence and bloodshed these illegal, underground fights supplied.

  The club had been working these events for Romeo for the past couple of years.

  Romeo was one of the biggest players in the Las Vegas underground, and he approached us to do some of the heavy lifting so to speak. We made sure the fighters followed the extremely short list of rules. The main one—checking for hidden weapons. I’d seen my fair share of jumped-up idiots attempting to smuggle in fucking knives and chains, including a guy who’d had steel knuckles surgically implanted.

  Anything to win.

  Not just for the money, but for that crazy addiction these bastards had to hurting another human.

  Romeo offered a fifty-thousand-dollar prize, but each fighter was expected to put up two grand before the event to secure themselves a place in a fight, and the winner took it all home.

  It was just a slight dent in what Romeo made.

  The real money was in the people who attended.

  They paid thousands to be here, sometimes more than five thousand a seat depending on who was getting in the ring that night. It sounded like a lot of money to sit and watch two guys beat the living shit out of each other, but that one fight weekend a month, every damn seat got filled—often by rich assholes like politicians and celebrities looking for somewhere they could divulge in their sick blood-thirsty fantasies that if people knew about would have them thrown to the sharks.

  The door to the small room swung open suddenly, and Wallace almost leaped through the ceiling. “He’s here! See!” The young guy that stepped into the room was wearing some gray gym shorts and a wifebeater with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He was probably in his early twenties, hair messy and loose, pieces falling over his face that he kept swiping at to try and keep them at bay, for a second making me wonder whether I’d been punked. “This is Cash.”

  “Boy band auditions are in the hotel upstairs.” I raised my finger skyward. “I think you’re lost.”

  He’s not going to last one round.

  The young guy stepped toward me, shoving his bag out in front of him. “Here’s the buy-in.”

  I raised my brow but made no move to collect the drooping backpack. It looked heavy. Hopefully two grand heavy, or Cash was about to find out just what happens to those people who fuck me around. “You’re late.”

  He scoffed, tossing the bag at my boots. “I got caught up with some personal shit.”