Stone Cold - Ashby Crime Family

“She’s not ready to get clean, which means more trouble will land on our door, and we already have the Rhymer heiress and The Crusaders to deal with. Isn’t that enough?”

“Dammit, Cal it’s not that easy and you know it!” Virgil rarely let his frustration show, but I knew this was all a little too close to home for him.

“I’ll protect the family the same way I’ve always done, but I can’t, won’t, let anything happen to Bonnie.”

Maisie would never forgive him and he’d never forgive us.

Me most of all.

“You know what Calvin, you don’t want to deal with Bonnie anymore? Fine.” Ma nodded to Virgil. “Go get Bonnie and bring her back to the blue room.”

“I’ll get her,” I insisted. The least I could do was deliver the news to her myself.

“No. You stay here. Virgil will get her.”

Shit. I was pissed at Bonnie, sure, but this would just feel like one more rejection to her. It wasn’t right. “Ma, please. She’ll—”

“Oh? Now you suddenly care what she might think or feel? No. Virgil can handle it. He’s grown.”

“Just tell her…shit, tell her I’m sorry.”

Virgil nodded and walked out to do Sadie’s bidding. I dropped down on the sofa beside Kat, imagining the look on Bonnie’s face when she realized what was happening now. Especially after what happened earlier today. Last night too.

“Oh, God.”

“Ooh, that sounds juicy. What did you do, little brother?” Kat asked with a wicked grin.

“Nothing,” I shot back, too quickly and earned another laugh.

“Yeah right. I’ll find out. Sooner or later,” she said in a sing-song voice. “I expected better of you brother. I really did.”

There was nothing I could say to defend myself because Kat had already condemned me without hearing me out. It was a testament to Bonnie’s ability to pull people into her orbit. There was something about the vulnerability she wore like a cloak that made people, especially bad people like us, want to be near her. Maybe it was her innocence of before.

“Yeah, I expected more, too, Kat.”

It was my own damn fault, hell my own arrogance for thinking that a bad six months, back when I was a kid, meant I could handle Bonnie’s problems.

Clearly, I couldn’t handle shit.

Virgil came stalking back into the office, dark brows dipped into a low, angry vee. “Did you get her settled in her room already?”

He shook his head. “She’s gone. Her stuff is gone except some of the nice stuff that Kat brought from the boutiques. Looks like she took off almost as soon as we did.”

She’d turn up sooner rather than later, I was sure of that much at least.

“Find her,” Sadie insisted. “She couldn’t have gotten too far. Yet.” The gaze she sent my way said I better hope Bonnie didn’t get too far away or I’d be paying for it for a long time.

Chapter Nineteen

Bonnie

Thank goodness for twenty-four-hour parking garages or I would’ve been proper homeless for the past week. Instead, I’d been enjoying the hospitality of my little blue sedan. Hotels, motels, and even hostels were all out of my meager price range, which I found out by going to about six of them before being laughed off the premises once and for all.

I never dreamed my life could get this miserable.

The parking garage wasn’t bad when you really thought about it. There was enough barrier from the wind that even without a car it didn’t get too cold. That was the thing. Desert temperatures dropped unreasonably low at night.

If you had a parking sticker, the cops wouldn’t bother you. Twenty bucks a day was also out of my price range, but a few of the other homeless folks I met had offered some good tips. Like searching through the discarded tickets to find one for free. Parking between work trucks might earn me an extra night as well.

I also had to be careful about driving around too much. A week had passed since I’d left Ashby Manor, and I was still sitting on half a tank of gas, which I considered a win. It wasn’t as if I had anywhere to go or any place I had to be.

Because I might be homeless now, but I was also still jobless as well. What people would call a real winner, I supposed. But those negative thoughts were for people who had the luxury of feelings like humiliation or embarrassment, not people like me who spent every second thinking about survival.

Survival. That was a joke because this wasn’t surviving, this was existing, and it was barely even that. I spent my days at the public library or the university library, applying for any job I could do anywhere in the country. My nights were mostly spent huddled in the backseat, barely sleeping for fear of the people and things that populate the streets after dark.