“Yeah?” she challenged. “Then let’s leave now. Let’s just go. Screw the money. We can just grab Amber and leave. You promised me, and I’m holding you to it, right now. I don’t care what happens, Laz, get us out of here!”
“Now, today?”
“Now, today. If you love me, let’s go. Right now.”
I looked at the ground between us. “We can’t do it today.”
“She could kill me, Laz. Kill us both.”
“Red, I know it’s hard. Just give it some more time.”
Even disguised in anger, I saw disgust. I looked at the road between us.
“I’m taking back all my hopes I had for you, Lazarus Walker.”
I snapped my head up and took a step forward as my chest exploded. “You don’t mean that.”
“Leave me alone,” she barked as she stalked toward her house.
“Take that shit back, Taylor!” She was just out of reach before she began to sprint.
“I won’t. Stay away from me!”
“Red!”
She ran on as I jumped into my truck and beat on the wheel until she disappeared. I reached into my glove box then grabbed and lit a foil. I swore I would make her eat her words. I would pull her through. I swore it.
But instead, I smoked her away.
I wiped my face of the memory as I sped down I-40.
She forgave me a week later, and the week after that.
And still, I smoked her away.
And she took away my hopes for her when she left.
Then the smoke stopped working.
She tossed my love aside like trash, whored herself out to some man she hardly knew just to get away from me. He would get his too. I waited too long. But I knew one day she would come back for Amber.
But she came back with another man beside her.
He is probably fucking her right now.
I saw red as I pressed the pedal to the floor and tore through the Blue Ridge mountains. I might one day be able to forgive her. And it was time she came home, one way or another, permanently. The boy she left in the motel was a pussy in love. I was a new man now. And that man would erase everything that stood in the way of her homecoming.
Perry’s piece of shit truck blew smoke midway between Dyer and Charleston. I was forced off the road for a full fucking day while I waited on repairs.
I’d spent my first day staking out Taylor’s condo. Hate brewed as I watched my son come and go in the arms of his lying whore of a mother with a few of Cedric’s fucking minions on her heels. I only caught sight of Taylor as she drove past to reach her garage. Her condo was locked up tight. There were eyes on them both. It would be a hard breach but not impossible. Apparently, when it came to opportunity, Derek was always looking at doors and never thought about the windows.
Taylor and I were good at windows.
Just when it seemed I couldn’t catch a break, the minute I pulled onto Bay Street I spotted the building Derek described. And with the silky stroke of lady luck, I managed to catch Taylor’s boyfriend pull into the garage in his SUV. Slipping in behind him, I drove past the elevated security bar.
When the SUV pulled to a stop, I tucked my pistol in my waistband and followed him into the elevator. Awareness struck as I crossed the threshold. He turned on me lightning fast, but I already had the barrel aimed as the doors closed.
“’Sup, motherfucker.”