“You don’t know anything about her. A ten-year-old girl needs her mother.” His voice became more erratic, loud then soft, and then loud.
It was my turn for my volume to rise. “Stay the fuck away from me and my fiancée. I swear to God, if you get close to us, I’ll have you killed. Money can buy anything.”
“Not the woman you want.”
“I’m not buying the woman I want. I have her.”
Phillip laughed. “Bullshit. I saw her picture. You found some child who looks like her.”
He was wrong. Julia wasn’t Madison.
He was still talking. “…make her into what you lost.”
“I didn’t lose. You did.” I took a breath. “And you’re still walking. Bottom is six feet under. Leave us alone and you won’t make it that far, not now, not when Brooklyn is waiting for you to go to her.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about her, and you never will.”
“We’ll call it a deal. I’ll keep my word with Brooklyn. You keep your word and stay the fuck away from me and my fiancée.”
“No deal, brother.”
The call ended as I was left listening to silence.
“Fuck.” My scream echoed off the walls of the Terrace suite.
That son of a bitch had been envious of me since we were young. Fucking competing and losing. He couldn’t take it then and he can’t take it now.
I paced around the empty suite, wishing that Julia was at the dining room table. I imagined her hair piled high on her head. I saw her sweet smile and the way her blue eyes shimmered when she smiled. I remembered our conversation last night and how quick her mind connected the dots. Fuck, she was something else, so much more than Madison.
Madison never had the drive for more, not like her sister or me and sure as hell not like Julia. Julia’s drive might not be for money, but I saw her desire for Wade. In the early morning or the middle of the night, she’d make her way to the table as ideas came to her.
Julia wasn’t Madison.
Fuck, Lip.
I found the woman of my dreams at a time I could give her whatever she wanted. Julia wasn’t a replacement; she was an original, sculpted and created just for me. That’s how out of all the women in the world, she was placed along the one road in the one storm for me to find.
Finders keepers.
My next call was to the security company I’d hired here in Chicago. I wanted double the men on Julia. I didn’t give a fuck what it cost. Unless she was with me, there were to be eyes on her every minute.
As the gray sky began to darken, I stood beyond the front doors of the Waldorf, cold air swirling around me as I waited for the sight of Michael’s sedan. The longer Julia stayed at her parents’ home, the more self-control it took for me not to get in a taxi or Uber and head over there myself.
Pushing my hands into the front pockets of my blue jeans, I barely noticed the temperature. With each passing black four-door sedan that delivered another guest, my skin tightened. And then I saw the car, spotting Michael through the windshield.
I didn’t wait for him to get out as I hurried to the back door.
“Van? Why are you out here?”
Her blue eyes staring up at me was a fucking vision.
The world was right again.