Crazy in Love (Lovestruck Series) (13 page)

Reagan

Five years later…

“Mommy, can I please have a big sword like the knights have?” Jack asks, his caramel eyes pleading with me.

“If Daddy says so,” I tell him, ruffling his hair while waiting for Gage’s decision.

“Sure, why not? As long as you promise to be careful with it,” Gage responds, kneeling down in front of our son.

“Promise!” Jack agrees throwing his arms around his daddy’s neck.

“I’ll take him back over to the knights if you want to keep browsing?” Gage says, standing up with Jack on his hip and placing a kiss on my cheek.

“Okay, have fun,” I agree with a smile.

Waving bye to my husband and son, who is his father’s spitting image, I walk farther down the row, looking for one tent in particular in the sea of vendor, until I finally spot her.

Wearing a burgundy dress, just like the one from years ago, I find Madam Tess sitting in front of her crystal ball.

“Hello, dear. Care for a free reading?” she asks, apparently not recognizing me. I guess she travels a lot and sees many faces, so I shouldn’t expect her to remember mine.

“No, thanks,” I tell her when I take a seat across from her on the same stool as before. Everything is perfect in my life, so I don’t want to chance a reading that will make me have doubts or any crazy worries. “I was just wondering if you still sell love potions?”

“Ah, I do, but you don’t have a need for such a thing.”

“I don’t?” I ask, playing coy.

“No. Your aura shows that you’ve already united with your soulmate.”

“That’s true,” I admit with a smile. “So I guess that means your love potion worked.”

“Of course it worked,” she replies with her own grin.

“I stopped tracking it years ago, though. Josie and I were going crazy and couldn’t deal with the constant worrying anymore. So why are Gage and I and Josie and Lawson still together if the potion stopped passing through different hands?”

“The power of persuasion is incredibly strong. And sometimes it only takes the idea of a phenomenon to make certain events happen.”

“So it wasn’t real? We just believed it was, so it worked for us?” I ask in surprise.

Madam Tess leans forward, and then whispers, “It was just Kool-Aid.”

“No way!” I exclaim with a bark of laughter. So, Josie was right. I paid this woman two hundred dollars for Kool-Aid. “Well, even so, thank you for the persuasion. Josie and I have been happily married for years,” I tell her as I get to my feet now that I have the answer to the question I’ve always wondered. “Good seeing you again,” I say with a wave.

“You too, dear,” Madam Tess replies.

Only once I’m halfway across the grassy field, heading for my two knights do I remember the way the liquid in the glass bottle changed colors, from blue, Josie’s favorite, to mine, purple, when we touched it. Turning back around, I walk over to Madam Tess’s tent again to ask her how she managed to pull that off, wondering if it was the same element that causes a mood ring to change colors. But when I get there, her tent is now empty. Her table and stools are gone too, along with her crystal ball. I look up and down the rows of tents and don’t see her burgundy dress. I even walk around behind the tent to see if she’s heading for the parking lot, there’s no sign of her. The woman just up and disappeared.

Wandering back to the knight’s stand, I find Gage and Jack sword fighting. It looks like we now have two swords instead of just one.

I love seeing my two guys playing together, and I love them more than anything. My life is perfect. I have a great job, taking photos when I travel around the country with Gage for his various reporting assignments, and we have Jack with us everywhere we go. Soon he’ll start school, and we’ll have to find a place to settle down, at least during the school year; but I think I’m ready to call one place home. I don’t care where it is, as long as these two are with me. So what if Gage and I ended up together because of a love potion? Real or fake, I’ll never regret that sip that gave us a lifetime of love.

The End

Thank you so much for reading
Crazy in Love
! If you enjoyed Reagan and Gage’s story, I hope you’ll leave a review on
Amazon
!

At this time, I plan to take a break from the Lovestruck series, but it’s possible I’ll come back to it eventually. Sign up for my newsletter to get updates on all of my new releases: 
http://eepurl.com/bqIWqz
 

Keep reading for a sneak peek of
Exploited
.

EXPLOITED

A Dark Redemption Novel

By Lane Hart

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.

The author acknowledges the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.

© 2016 Editor's Choice Publishing

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator” at the address below.

Editor’s Choice Publishing

P.O. Box 10024

Greensboro, NC 27404

Edited by Angela Snyder

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAngelaSnyder

Photo by Matt Geeling Photography

https://twitter.com/matt_geeling

https://www.facebook.com/MattGeelingPhotography/

mattgeeling.com

Model Shane Burnell

https://twitter.com/shanethepirate

https://www.facebook.com/shaneburnellofficial

Cover by vocaldesign

https://www.fiverr.com/vocaldesign

Warning: This book contains some dark, dirty and dangerous situations, before ending with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger. The debauchery will continue in
Redeemed
.

“My thrill-seeking angel is about to lose her wings.”

Blair Lockhart, age eight

“Blair? Blair, stop!
Listen to me, goddamn it
!”

His harsh hand grabs and shakes my shoulder so hard that my head rocks forward and back, snapping my neck and causing my eyes to pop reluctantly open.

Red. Red everywhere. Blood. There’s blood splattered all over his face and…and his white shirt and tie. Oh God, his hands. I look down and watch the blood drip from his hands that are holding me, staining the front of my blue Sunday school dress. The one mommy said looked beautiful on me and brought out the blue in my eyes. Mommy…I still hear her screams. Or maybe they’re my own because she’s lying on the floor next to the coffee table, unmoving, soundless…

“
Blair
!” he yells. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up and listen to me!”

He’s so close, kneeling in front of me that I flinch when his spit wets my already damp face. Now I’m even dirtier, blood and spit all over me.

God, his eyes. They’re so dark and angry. Scary. He’s never liked me, but now I think he hates me. My only thought is to scream at the top of my lungs for help, for someone to save mommy and me from him…

Whap!

The entire side of my face goes numb before my cheek begins to throb painfully like it has its own heartbeat.

“Stop screaming or so fucking help me…” he says through gritted teeth before pushing something sharp and wet to my neck. My eyes cut over to try to see it, but just moving my head to the side burns my throat. Then I notice the black handle he’s holding…the handle of the big knife that’s covered in her blood. A whimper escapes from my trembling lips despite how tightly I press them together to try and prevent sound from coming out. My sniffles are loud too when I try to catch my breath, but he doesn’t yell at me to stop those.

“Listen to me. You’re not gonna say a word. Do you hear me? Not a single fucking word to anyone! And if you do, this knife is gonna cut through you just like it did her. Do you understand me, Blair? Keep your mouth shut!”

I nod until the pain in my neck makes me stop. “Good, girl. Now go to your room, take the dress off and hide it inside your dollhouse. Wash your hands and face, then put on a clean dress. Got it? Can you do all that, or do you want to end up like her?” he asks, while pointing with the knife to the other side of the room.

Glancing over his shoulder, I see mommy so still, lying in a puddle of red, her unblinking eyes staring up at the ceiling. I shake my head up and down, and then side to side, unsure which answer he wants from me. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to him.

“Go!” he shouts, shoving my back, causing me to stumble forward.

When I catch my balance, I race down the hall to my room, trying to remember everything he wanted me to do.
Hide my dress, wash up, get dressed. Hide my dress, wash up, get dressed. Hide my dress, wash up, get dressed.
Repeating those three things over and over in my head, I manage to stop hearing her screams and seeing the blood, too busy trying to do what I was ordered. But once I’m standing in the middle of my room with a new, clean yellow dress on, I don’t know what to do next. What does he want me to do now? He didn’t say, and I don’t want to go back out there, but I also don’t want to upset him.

Oh God.
Panic rises from within me, making my stomach and chest ache. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m swimming under water at the pool when the two older boys tease me, daring me to try and hold my breath longer than them. I know he’s gonna hurt me too. It’s just a matter of time. Running to my closet, I quietly open the door and slip into the darkness, crouching underneath the rows of dresses. Wrapping my arms around my legs, silent tears start pouring down my face as my whole body shakes, but I don’t make a sound as I wait for him. I don’t want him to hit me again, or worse, stab that knife through me like he hurt mommy. So I’ll hide in here. He’ll come get me eventually.

And that’s what terrifies me the most. 

Ten years later…

Brede Rawls

Feeling my phone vibrating against my chest through my t-shirt pocket, I flip the right turn signal on and pull my bike over to the side of the road to kill the engine and answer. I’m guessing it’s Jim calling to give me an update on Paula. Fucking time’s running out, I know, so whenever the phone rings I worry it’s bad news, that I took too long… 

Unzipping my leather jacket to get to my phone, I let out a sigh of relief when I don’t recognize the three-three-six area code on the screen. Not knowing who the hell it is, I answer with a gruff, “Yeah?” while still straddling my classic, 1981 Wide Glide Harley.

“Brede! How you doin’, man?” A way too peppy masculine voice shouts into my ear, so loudly I have to pull the device away despite the noise of passing vehicles. 

“Who the fuck is this?” I ask since I only give my cell number to a small, select group of individuals who I trust implicitly, like the man and woman who raised me.

“It’s Roger Lemons, you know, from Lexington,” he answers quickly, probably because of my clipped, pissed off tone.

“Rog?” I reply in surprise as I watch the sun begin to set over the horizon. It’s been years since I’ve stepped foot in that god-forsaken town, but I do vaguely remember a kid from middle school named Roger. “Is this really the Ginga Ninja?” I ask with a chuckle. If I remember correctly, he was a freckled-face redhead that the other kids picked on, right up until he followed them home after school and whooped their asses in their own front yards.

“Yeah, man! How you been?” he asks excitedly.

“Busy,” I say since I’m still suspicious about how he got my number, and I don’t have time for fucking pleasantries. Heading out of New York after a job fell through, I still have at least eleven hours before I reach Kentucky, if the sky doesn’t open up on me. And I need to get there before Jim’s call. I need to see her and say what I should’ve told her years ago before it’s too late. But I also hate the idea of showing up empty handed. Guess I don’t have a fucking choice. 

“What’s going on? I’ve got somewhere to be, and you’re slowing me down,” I bark into the phone at those somber thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry,” he says. “So, I got your number from an Army buddy who said you’re the one known as
Azrael
, the angel of death. That true?”

Running my free hand through my windblown hair, I exhale a breath. Must have been Nolan Stevens since he’s the only person from Fort Benning who has my number and knows about my illegal side business.

“What do you need?” I ask, neither confirming nor denying the nickname that I received during my three tours in Afghanistan.

Both of my biological parents were murderers, so it seemed fitting that I should follow in their footsteps. As a trained sniper, I was the government’s executioner, disposing of bad guys for them. They paid me to be a murderer, and it was easier to do than I expected. Putting a man in the sights of my rifle, holding my breath, pulling the trigger and simply walking away. I was deemed a hero for stopping at least forty-two hearts, taking the lives of men who could’ve had wives and kids depending on them for all I know.

Since I was honorably discharged a year ago, well, I haven’t found any civilian jobs that require my skills of assassinating men with a single gunshot to their head. To pay the bills and all my vices, I’ve been living as a mercenary, getting paid to kill seven different men so that those individuals who wanted revenge didn’t have to get their own hands dirty. My hands are so damn stained they’ll never be clean again, so what’s a few more deaths on my conscience?

Rog clears his throat before he answers. “My…associate has a loose end that needs to be…snipped. You game?”

Yep, he wants me to take someone out. Lucky number fifty maybe?

“What’s the pay?” I ask.

“Six figures,” he says. “Easy target without any family ties, and one who won’t put up a fight.”

“What’s the catch?” I ask since the job sounds too easy for that kind of money. And if it’s so easy, my services wouldn’t be needed.

I hear Rog’s breath whoosh across the phone line. “You’ve gotta find her first.”

“
Her
?” I echo in disbelief.

“Is that a problem? Because I could probably get him to cough up some more money.”

What the fuck? And how convenient that I just so happen to get a job when I desperately need the money more than ever. It’s my damn fault for loving Atlantic City and Vegas a little too much, squandering away most of my paydays on gambling, girls, and good booze. Those three things just so happen to be the best ways for me to get through the nights. Now that I desperately need the blown money, I would gladly trade the miserable, lonely insomnia for it if I could.

Never one to believe in a higher power, when I got the bad news from Jim about Paula, I asked the devil for a deal. Just let me take one more life with a big enough payday to help the couple who raised me with their medical bills, prevent them from losing their house, and give me enough left over to live off of until I could settle down and find a legitimate, permanent job in Louisville.

I’m tired of being a fucking assassin for hire. I can’t sleep anymore without getting shitfaced drunk to block out the endless faces that haunt my dreams, which only makes me an even grumpier bastard than usual.  It’s not the faces of the dead that bother me, but their blameless sons and daughters, mothers and wives, brothers and fathers who I’m certain still grieve for the men I killed, even if they were the lowest scum of the earth. 

My life is shit, and I know it’s because of the lives I’ve taken. Sure, all of them deserved it, like the leader of a human-trafficking ring that a stolen girl’s parents paid me to go find and kill in Mexico, or the crazy zealot who was wanted for the church bombing that killed three innocent people. Even so, that doesn’t mean
I
should’ve been the one to pull the trigger. So maybe this is really it, the last job I’ll ever have to take. An answer to my…well, not prayers, but perhaps my curses?

“Half a mil and no less,” I tell Rog as I scratch my scruffy beard in thought. Not only do I want that big ass payday, but I want to price myself out if it’s not gonna be the end all. As a general rule, I don’t go after women. My hits have
always
been men, the worst evil to walk among us, and I’m doing society a favor by eradicating them from ever breathing again. But some chick without family ties, who he says no one will miss? Well, I just don’t know about all that. 

“I’ll see what I can do and get back to you,” Rog says. “And boss…I mean, my associate expects her to end up back this way, so maybe I’ll see you soon, huh? We can grab a beer, and you can even crash at my place if you need a place to stay.”

Fuck. If I have to go back there to that shithole and all the depressing memories it holds, my price is definitely going up. For years I’ve been avoiding that place and all of its ghosts.

“A million is the bottom line,” I tell him. “And I want twenty-five percent up front, so I know he’s good for the rest.” That should be enough for me to send to Jim to stop the foreclosure while Paula waits for a transplant. Apparently, the slight relief she got from chugging aspirin for years of crippling arthritis has destroyed her kidneys.

“Shit, man. I dunno about all that. Let me get back to you,” Rog says before hanging up.

Part of me hopes that I never hear from him again; but on the other hand, I need the money now more than fucking ever.