He shook his head. “And he’s still a problem?”
I carried the suitcase toward the door, setting it against the wall. “Yup.”
“Why haven’t you called the cops?” he asked as I headed for my duffle bag.
“Because the last couple of times I had done that they believed him over me,” I said. “So, I have tried, but it never worked out.”
I finished with the bag and sat it next to my suitcase before heading into the bathroom to collect my items and placed them into my hygiene bag.
Steele’s form showed up in the middle of the doorway from within my periphery. I huffed. All I wanted was to get as far away as possible, but Steele kept asking me questions. I didn’t want to give him answers. I wanted to leave.
“Do you think he followed you here?” he asked.
I spun around to face him with more tears filling my eyes. “No. More. Questions. You need to leave. I have to go. Please just let me go!”
“Not until you give me the answers I need,” he said. His green eyes turned possessive and for some psychotic reason, it turned me on.
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes closed and shoving my budding arousal as far down as I could get it to go. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Seems like we have all the time in the world,” Steele said. “Trust me, he’s not coming back.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “He—”
“No,” he said and took several steps closer to me. “It’s you who doesn’t understand.”
I gaped at him, confused. “What?”
Another knock on my door and I yelped. I was starting to lose my ever-loving mind. This day was getting better and better. I didn’t want to know who was on the other side of the door this time. Steele held a finger up to me and headed to the door. He peered through the peephole and stiffened.
I sucked in a breath and prepared for a war in the middle of my hotel room.
10
DALLAS
I was heading back to the resort with my alpha’s latest victim under my arm. She was barely able to walk straight, much less keep her hands to herself, which was good for business, but bad for her. She wouldn’t remember much of the events of the night come the morning. The woman was almost too easy prey. I hated that she would inevitably be teased until she passed out, at which point I would rob her blind. She deserved so much better than being treated like nothing more than a paycheck, and it especially sucked knowing it had to take meeting Cassidy for me to figure all of that out.
I hated myself. I was a sorry excuse for a man and had a lot to make up for. And so long as I was under Charlotte’s control, I couldn’t even start to make amends.
Most of all, I hated Charlotte. I hated her as my alpha and my boss. I hated that I had to do whatever she told me to do because if I didn’t, she would find ways to make me regret my insubordination. Painful ways. Ways that I didn’t even want to fathom.
As we walked along the sidewalk, I put my attention on everything else but my newest victim. It wasn’t like she minded. She was too far gone, looped into the drug Charlotte forces us to spike the drinks with, to mind much of anything. She was too far under the effects to be aware of much more than what she was feeling. All she had the compacity to process was I had her wrapped in my arm, and we were walking back to her room. Luckily, the resort was up ahead. Less than five hundred feet away. But as I watch the damn thing grow closer as we headed toward it, I caught the sight of a familiar figure as he pranced out of the front doors.
He adjusted his shirt before turning his attention on the things around him. He glanced my way, and I almost thought he saw me, but then he turned in the other direction and stalked off into the shadows. He was most definitely up to something, and I almost felt slighted at the fact he didn’t think to include me in his nefarious plans. I set my eyes on the spot where he had disappeared like a man on an important mission.
“Malachi, what are you up to?” I asked out loud. My suspicions were high. Mostly because he had been missing from work for the past few days. He hadn’t even shown up at our place. Yet there he was, leaving the resort, and I had every reason to believe he was with her.
My Cassidy.
A ball of anger formed inside me as I instantly wanted to punch him in the face. First, he abandons Steele and me. Then he decided to sneak behind our backs to get to Cassidy? The asshole.
The woman giggled and leaned in closer. The alcohol on her breath was fruity. “Who’s Malachi?”
I raised my eyebrows into arches. I almost forgot about the client. With a smirk, I said, “Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head about anything of the sort.”
She chuckled. It was high-pitched and annoying. “You think I’m pretty?”
I forced out a breath of air through my nose as I smirked down at her. “The prettiest.”