The F King: A Bad Boy Romance (Still a Bad Boy Book 3) (13 page)

“
W
hat do you mean “her
”?” I asked.

“The one you’ve been daydreaming about these last few visits. Come here, let me get a look at you.”

My mom held out her hands for Sarina, who let go of mine as she stepped forward. I brought a couple of chairs closer to the bed as they took each other in.

“Hi Ms. Crewe, I’m Sarina.”

“And do you have honorable intentions with my boy?” my mom asked.

Sarina stuttered over her response and I jerked my head to face them. “Mom!”

“Kidding! I’m kidding! Sorry, dear, I’ve had that joke pent up inside me ever since Ryan was born, but he never brought a girl home before.”

I put a chair down behind Sarina, who was chuckling with relief, and grabbed one for myself.

“Yeah, well, I still haven’t. This isn’t home, don’t even start thinking about it like that. You’re getting out of here,” I said.

“We’ll see.”

My mom spoke the words quietly, as if she was humoring me, and the chair felt all the heavier as I carried it over next to Sarina’s. The two of them were still clasping hands as I hugged my mom and sat down.

“Ryan and I thought it was really time for me to meet you, now that I’m pregnant,” said Sarina.

Sarina’s body was directly between my mother and me, but if my mom looked half as surprised as I imagined, then it was well worth the shock I felt before I realized Sarina was simply turning the tables on her. I heard spluttering from the opposite bed that were more than a little reminiscent of the way Sarina had sounded a few seconds ago, before I saw Sarina’s shoulders shaking as she put a giggly end to the charade.

“Oh! Oh you little… don’t do that to a poor sick old woman!”

Sarina moved a little so my mother could peer around her at me. “I like her. How did you two meet?”

“Just out on the town one night,” I said.

“I go to college at HU,” said Sarina.

“Let me guess, chemistry?” asked my mom.

“No, HR. Human Resources. Why chemistry?”

“Oh, I guess that’s just me living in the past. My Ryan was always so fascinated by chemistry, it confused me no end when he decided to study engineering.”

“I was just a kid, Mom, I grew out of it. I thought there were more jobs in engineering,” I said.

Sarina glanced at me with a slightly knitted brow, then back to my mom, who was reveling in this moment she’d supposedly been waiting for ever since I was born. It wouldn’t be long until she pulled the potty-training photo album out of nowhere.

“Just a kid, pfffft. You always got the best grades in chemistry all through high school. The last few times he visited me here, I knew he was daydreaming about something special. Or someone.” She squeezed Sarina’s hands. “I hadn’t seen him that preoccupied since the year he got a chemistry set for Christmas. I’m sure the neighbor’s Labrador is still a
little
purple to this very day.”

Sarina and my mom laughed, and neither of them looked likely to let go of the other’s hands. Clearly my mom was having a good day, perhaps made better by Sarina’s presence. I could only speak for myself, but my days were sure as fuck better when she was around.

The two of them got along like a house on fire. I felt my muscles, which had cramped up one by one on the drive over here, slowly unwinding while I listened to them banter as if they were best friends from school. I hadn’t felt this relaxed on a visit to see her since the day she told me she had cancer.

As much as I loved my mom, I could usually only last so long before the cramps worked their way up my neck and I ended up with a headache. Fighting the defeated resignation on her face, and the staff going through the motions of a hopeless cause, was more than I could take.

It was little wonder that I fed off the power that creating F had given me. It was because this, in here, was what powerlessness felt like, and it was horrific. To be so helpless in the face of this… monster attacking my mother was beyond my ability to really cope with it.

Having Sarina here was even better than I thought. I’d hoped it would feel safe like having two legs to stand on instead of one, but it was more like having two legs and a big fucking gun.

Wrapped up in a blanket of hope that my mom could see the same special things in Sarina that I did, I wasn’t even aware that my head rolled back and I fell asleep at some point. I had no idea how long their hushed voices washed over me, before I recovered from my power nap and sat there with my eyes closed for a few more minutes.

“No, I swear it, never,” said my mom, “but I
saw
a few. No offense intended to them, but… they looked like, well, skanks.”

Sarina laughed quietly.

“But you’re really…” my mom searched for the words for a moment. “Nice. That sounds like a weak word to describe it, I know, but… um… it’s not supposed to be. I mean, you seem like you really care for him. That’s all a mother really wants for her son. Somebody out there who thinks about him as much as I do before I kick the bucket. You’ve got to be good to him, Sarina, he’s been through a lot with all this. That’s all I want you to promise me.”

“I can’t promise that… unless you make me a promise too,” said Sarina.

“What’s that?”

“I need you to promise to stick around for a while to make sure I keep
my
promise. You need to
fight
for every day. No more of this “we’ll see” and “bucket-kicking” bullshit.”

“Well… I can’t say I approve of the language. I hope that doesn’t rub off on my Ryan, but… OK. I’ll promise to fight. That’s the best I can do.”

“Good enough for me, Ms. Crewe,” said Sarina.

“Oh, you. Call me Diana. Hey, do you like baking? I was just reading a brownie recipe in this magazine I bet you could fatten Ryan up with.”

I
craned
my neck up at the Acardi building, wondering if Alberico was up there right now. If I hadn’t had that meeting with him right at the start of my arrangement with the Acardis, I might have wondered if he was a work of fiction, because I hadn’t seen him since.

Just inside the main entrance, a few men wearing “W. Darrin & Co Construction” high visibility vests came and went amongst the more professionally dressed members of the Acardi Crime Family, and the people who worked in the various businesses housed in Trafford Tower who had no idea who they really worked for.

They thought they were travel agents, accountants or personal assistants, many of whom had been pretty pissed at being temporarily relocated as the construction workers made their way through the building, checking for damage and making repairs as necessary since the earthquake. In reality, they were cogs in several interconnected money laundering machines, but at least their inconvenience was coming to an end, as the work was almost complete.

I sighed. I had big plans for this building. Plans that would entail a shitload more inconvenience for everybody, to put it mildly. Especially the Acardis.

Lately, though, all that had seemed to fade into the background in terms of importance. Ever since the night of the Halloween party, Sarina had decided that we’d moved slow enough for her liking and we’d been fucking like bunnies.

All I could think about was shaking Sarina’s body again and again, tasting her, and hearing her scream my name, when she was capable for forming words at all. Then, when we weren’t fucking, she was the sweetest, toughest, most supportive person I’d ever met.

My mom hadn’t looked this healthy in over a year. She glowed when she saw Sarina and I walk through her door, and even in that stark hospital setting, I felt complete. Maybe it would be easier and ultimately more satisfying to just disappear with as much of the Acardi’s money as I could, rather than take their place in a bloody coup.

The idea of all that power was still wildly alluring. To
own
a city, and then who knows where I might go from there? On the other hand, to earn the love of a woman like Sarina was incredible too. A large and growing part of me thought it was
more
powerful.

Was it possible to have both? A question like that was going to take more than the time required for the elevator to take me up to the forty-seventh floor, and my monthly meeting with Giovanni.

I’d barely started the mental logistics of leaving the path I’d been walking on for the last couple of years, when I had to dismiss that train of thought and concentrate on the scowling Mafioso behind his desk. Giovanni looked unhappier and more full of himself than usual.

“Sit the fuck down,” he said. “At least you’re not late this time.”

I sat the fuck down in the chair in front of Giovanni’s desk, hoping this was at least the kind of rant that I could autopilot my way through without having to really think of how to respond. Nod and agree at the appropriate places, take my money, order the shit I needed and get out before the insults got a rise out of me.

“Kid, you are a pain in the fuckin’ ass.”

I nodded and fought to stop my eyes from losing focus.

“You may have struck a deal with Alberico when he was feeling generous, but when you start fucking up like you have been, the generosity only goes so far.”

“What are you talking about?”

Giovanni opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a handgun. “What am I talking about? You fuckin’ serious? You think this is a fuckin’ game?”

Out of the corners of my eye, I could see Giovanni’s guards pushing their suit jackets out of the way to expose their holstered guns for quick access. The tone of the room brought me all the way back to reality, and I sat up a little straighter, eyes narrowing.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“This is a fuckin’ warning, shit for brains. A warning right from the top. You gotta know by now how much I fuckin’ hate you, and we both know you’ve been hiding behind Alberico’s protective wing like a little pussy. You make a lot of money for us, and you know that too, so you mouth off like you’re fuckin’ untouchable.”

Giovanni stood up and leaned over his desk. I tried to look in all directions at once, but mostly in his eyes when he started talking again.

“So, normally, I’d threaten to kill you and you’d roll your cocksuckin’ eyes, take your money and waltz out of here. Today, I’m just gonna give it to you straight. In light of recent events, Alberico has officially given me permission to shoot your sorry ass in the leg if you give me any shit today. Maybe that doesn’t seem so bad to a tough cunt like you, huh? That’s only because you’ve never been shot before. I’ll be happy to pop your cherry, bitch.”

My brow furrowed at this sudden shift in orders from Alberico. “When are you going to let me know what’s got your panties in a bunch?”

“Keep talking, motherfucker. What you say is going to decide whether you get it in the foot, the kneecap or if I miss altogether and shoot your fuckin’ balls off. Do you have any idea how much time, effort, lives and money it cost to convince the Cannibals that they should leave you alone?”

“No.”

“Too much. And how do you repay us? You missed your fucking quota last month.”

Fuck. I ran my hand through my hair while Giovanni stared daggers through me. I’d been spending so much time with Sarina and my mom that things had, admittedly, slipped at my lab.

“I’ve always met or exceeded my quota before. Overall, I’m still ahead,” I said, grasping at straws.

“You think I give a fuck? You’re not stockpiling goodwill here, motherfucker. You do your fucking job month-in, month-out, and that’s all I care about.”

I held up my hands. “OK, OK. I get it. I’ll make sure this month makes up for the shortfall last month, and then business as usual from here on in. Alright?”

“Fuckin’ right you will. Remember, this is your fuckin’ warning. Next time, the chains come out. God damn motherfuckin’ Cannibals found out about you this time. Who’s next? Cops? DEA? Feds? Who the fuck knows. Who’s that cum dumpster bitch you’ve been hanging around with?”

The familiar hot anger that had been slowly bubbling up was suddenly frozen over by pure hatred. I took a deep breath to carefully control my tone with the man holding the gun.

“You been following me?”

“What would we find out if we did? It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know you’ve been getting your finger wet. So who the fuck is she? Where’d she come from and why the fuck is she hangin’ around somebody like you?”

“She’s none of your business.”

“You don’t tell me what my business is.”

Rising to my feet at glacial speed, I leaned forward on his desk as he and his goons all lifted their guns and pointed them at me. If I could have ripped his head off before any bullets could get to me, I would have.

“She. Is. None. Of. Your. Business.”

E
verybody always said
that love wasn’t supposed to be easy, but I didn’t think they could really be an authority on the topic unless they’d walked a mile in my shoes. Every day, I caught my mind deconstructing my life and trying to rebuild me into the Sarina Bell persona I’d created.

All my time with Ryan was like a picture-perfect postcard from heaven. He worshipped my mind, body and soul in the bedroom and everywhere else, paying homage to every square inch of my skin in his own good time.

We went Christmas shopping together, another first for me, and we visited his mom. He took me out and showed me off, and I hated to admit how enjoyable it was when I caught other women looking at me jealously.

I was twirling through a metaphorical field of flowers, in love, and then my old life had to butt its head in again. This came in the form of a meeting with Sergeant Shelton, who had finally received the lab tests back on the sample of F I’d given him, after several delays that weren’t explained to me.

According to the forensic scientists, not only was the sample I’d provided the highest quality they’d ever tested, it was completely pure. Ryan’s source was able to get F that hadn’t been cut at all, and Shelton’s excitement at that shone through his professional veneer.

This meant that my investigation might very well be starting higher up in the food chain than any of us thought. My heart sank when I heard that.

The higher Ryan was in the F supply structure, the more difficult it would be to protect him from prosecution, no matter what I did. Doing my job meant stabbing him in the back, but now it also meant plunging that knife into my own heart at the same time.

Sergeant Shelton noticed how quiet I was and gave his best undercover cop pep talk. He reminded me that I wasn’t the first undercover officer to go down this path, but then he surprised me by saying that I’d been in the field long enough to know that things happen that are never mentioned in the training.

He knew there were things going on that were never included in my reports and that was OK, there was always shit to work out from an undercover investigation. I got real quiet at that.

Just don’t forget who you are, and don’t forget who he is,
he said
.

For me, that was easier said than done. Love didn’t come along every day. What was the right thing to do? Turn my back on it? Break the heart of the first man who ever showed me what being in love felt like? I
was
an undercover cop. Was I
still
?

You’re the good guy, he’s the bad guy.

Shelton’s assessment was a lot simpler than mine. Regardless, with this new information and since Ryan didn’t seem to be volunteering any contacts, my orders were to step up the investigation.

If F was ultimately being produced by The Cannibals, we needed to get to the bottom of things. With several gang members reported missing lately, some turning up
extremely
dead, the feeling around the station was that some third party was gearing up for a turf war.

Was it about control of F as well? We had to find out, before countless people died, some of them completely innocent bystanders who’d be nothing more than collateral damage in a criminal underworld war.

Since then, I’d been following Ryan as much as possible, while keeping up appearances at college just enough to maintain my cover. I was exhausted with all this and the constant mental gymnastics it took to try to stay grounded, while Ryan spent every moment sweeping me off my feet.

Most of the time, he only went to the building in the middle of the industrial area that had been converted into a rented workspace, with offices, meeting rooms, phones and computer workstations available. This wasn’t news to me; Ryan told me he ran his cosmetics business from there when he needed to, and Sergeant Shelton confirmed that it was a real business that paid its taxes.

Today was different. Today, Ryan went into the Trafford Tower. My mind worked overtime trying to make up excuses for him. There were plenty of legitimate reasons to go into that building, but half of the businesses in there were suspected fronts for the Acardi Crime Family. The other half would probably be under suspicion too, if they were investigated closely enough.

Something Ryan’s mother said when I first met her was bothering me too. She said Ryan was always into chemistry. Top marks in his class all through high school.

Oh, Ryan, what have you got yourself into?

What if he somehow continued his education in chemistry without his mom’s knowledge? What if he was actually involved in the production of F?

What if he’s actually the-

I cut off my internal monologue before it could finish the thought. Ryan,
my
Ryan, couldn’t be one of the most wanted men in the country. That was a thought scary enough to run away from.

Running away sounded like a good idea. If Ryan asked me to run away from all this with him, I might just do it. I guessed that answered my question as to whether I was still a cop.

When I thought about my future, I no longer saw a young woman rising through the ranks in the police force, all alone. I saw Ryan and I together, I felt his touch. I felt his love. My fake life was overwhelming my present in a haze of love, and overwriting my future with its sweet promises.

I half-heartedly told myself that I was here visiting Ryan’s mother so I could casually question her about Ryan’s abilities as a chemist, any criminal history that may not have been caught or reported, who his friends were, what she knew about his college days… but I hadn’t asked any of that.

The truth was that I came here because hearing somebody talk about Ryan who loved him so completely and unconditionally made me feel like I was being poured full of pure joy until I was almost drowning in it. I basked in her motherly attention like it was sunshine itself.

“I always wanted to do this,” she said.

I sat on a chair right against the side of her bed, facing away so that she could plait my hair. She worked slowly and methodically, and I could only gauge her progress by the various gentle tugs at my scalp.

“Even when Ryan had long hair he wouldn’t let me,” she sighed.

“He had long hair?” I asked absent-mindedly.

“Once upon a time. So did I.”

“It’ll grow back though, right?”

“It sure will, little miss, but it’ll never be as nice as yours!” she said playfully.

Diana had clearly taken on board how much Ryan needed to see her fighting as much as he was. Out of all my visits, I’d only seen her having one of the bad days Ryan mentioned one time, and that was right after one of her treatments.

We worked together to do all we could. We wiped her chin after she vomited, and we kept refreshing the cool facecloths against her forehead. I tried to keep everybody’s spirits up and manage their fear, as well as staving off my own.

I could see how much Ryan needed her to be OK. When she had the strength, it was obvious how she had earned that special place in his heart. She was working her way into mine pretty easily, that was for sure. What I wouldn’t have given to have somebody like her in my life as a scared and lonely little kid.

The sound of purposeful footsteps grew louder and louder, entering the room behind me. I felt Diana’s manipulations of my hair pause, and tilted my head to the side a little to see a poker-faced doctor standing there with a clipboard.

“Hi there, Ms. Crewe, how are you feeling today?” he asked.

“I’m doing good,” Diana replied tentatively.

“Hmmm. Well, I wanted to come have a talk with you. We’ve had some pretty important test results come back today. Is it OK for me to discuss them with you in the presence of…”

“Sarina,” I said.

“In front of Sarina?” he finished.

I could feel Diana’s bravery seeping out of her as the shaking of her hands was communicated through the grip she had on my hair.

“Y-yes… but… can I call my son? He should be here. For better or for worse.”