Prologue
RYAN
I’d saddled up my horse, Sergio, and gotten ready to go for a run, when I realized Sergio, as fast as he was, wouldn’t be able to give me the speed I was craving.
I patted him down. “Another time, boy,” I said.
Then I wandered back up to the detached garage at the guesthouse where I kept my pride and joy—my Porsche 911 Turbo. Sleek navy blue—custom paint job—and posh leather seats, the convertible sat under its chamois cover. His name was Jake.
I removed the cover and stared at it in all its glory.
Neither of my brothers were into cars. They were more comfortable in their pickups than in the luxury sedans they both owned. Me? I loved them, though I didn’t take Jake out as often as I would have liked to.
Right now? I needed speed. I needed the wind blowing through my hair as I sped a hundred twenty miles an hour down deserted country roads.
My life was in shambles.
The woman I—
The woman I what?
Loved?
Fuck. I shoved my fingers through my hair.
I fucking loved her.
Ruby. Ruby who’d kept a secret from me. She’d taken my punishment for that. A woman who had only recently opened her body and mind to sex had let me take what I needed from her.
Damn.
My life was a mess.
I couldn’t have a relationship, and I had no idea if she felt the same way anyway.
So for now, I’d get Jake out onto the open road and scream through the next couple hours at top speeds.
My phone buzzed.
Shit. It was Joe.
“Yeah?” I said into the phone.
“Hey, Ry. Tal and I just wanted to…”
“What, Joe? What the fuck do you want?”
“To make sure you’re all right.”
“All right? Of course I’m not all right. My life has been shattered, and I just spent the last hour listening to my biological mother spin all kinds of tales.”
“You went to see Wendy?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
“No. Of course not. But we should have been there with you.”
“Ruby went with me.”
“Good. Then you weren’t alone.”
“Alone? I got news for you, Joe. I’m fucking alone. I have no idea who I am anymore. I have no idea who my brothers are anymore. It doesn’t get much more alone than that.” I ended the call, furious.
I got into the Porsche, put the top down, and backed out of the garage. “Let’s go, Jake,” I said. “Show me what you can do.”
I drove through the private roads and off our property and then headed into the deserted country roads. Route 78 was straight and narrow with the ups and downs of the foothills.
Perfect.
The first one hundred miles an hour came easy. Jake’s engine roared with power, promising me more speed, more thrill. The sound of his tires screaming along the road began to disappear as I eased him toward one forty. The rubber clawed at the road.
I resisted the urge to close my eyes and drift away with Jake.
Closing one’s eyes at a hundred forty miles an hour was never a good idea.
I edged toward one fifty, and Jake drove as smooth as a gazelle running across the savanna. One fifty-five. One sixty.
Oh, yeah.
Lift. I felt the oxygen tunneling under the engine. Much more speed and I’d get into the air like a fucking plane.
Of course not, but I felt it. Truly felt it.
Jake’s engine had now drowned out all road noise, what little there’d been.