Sinful Longing

Knew it was time to hit the brakes.

Ironic, because she thought it would be the past with pills and the drinking that were her deal breakers. But she’d gotten over the addiction issue faster than she’d imagined she would. This new threat, though? She didn’t know for certain if the texts were because of her involvement with Colin. But they sure seemed to be tied to his past. Not the addiction, the history he’d proven time and time again that he’d moved beyond. His other past.

The one he had zero control over.

Through no fault of his own, that past had resurfaced to the present. The past where a gangland shooter killed his father, and the present where a member of that same street gang was harassing her. All because she was in love with him.

Holy shit.

In love.

She was in love with him.

That was going to make it so much harder to do the right thing.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


He wished he could be there with her. Holding her ’til she fell asleep. Kissing her forehead as her eyelids fluttered closed. Brushing loose strands of hair away from her face.

Instead, from the wooden swing on the back deck of his house, Colin zoomed in on the screenshot Elle had sent him a few hours ago. The one of her newest text. A night breeze tripped through the trees as he studied the message. He stared so long he let his vision go blurry. The message turned hazy around the edges of the words, and the letters seemed to float off the screen.

Ladies. Smarter. Pretty.

Then one word, in all caps, slammed into him.

INVOLVED.

He tapped in the community center’s web address into a search bar. Quickly he found Elle’s bio, where it said she prided herself on being involved with the local community.

In his head, he replayed the messages.

Be careful who you get involved with.

Hey, pretty lady. Don’t you be messing around with that new guy. WJ.

Pretty ladies should be smarter about who they get INVOLVED with.

The blurry haze evaporated. The clouds burned away, and the sky was clear. Colin had figured a gang member was somehow targeting her, because she was involved with a man whose family had been torn to pieces by a gang. Someone like Kenny or T.J. Nelson, who didn’t want the case reopened. Someone who was trying to intimidate Colin’s family through the woman in his life.

But that theory didn’t entirely add up.

He called Ryan. His brother answered on the first ring. “What’s up? It’s late. You okay?”

“Yeah. You answered quickly. What are you up to?”

“Sophie and I just finished a game of pool,” he said, and if there was ever code for fucking, that was it. But now was not the time for razzing his brother.

“You told me something the other day, about visiting Marcus at the convenience store,” Colin said, reminding Ryan of a conversation they’d had earlier in the week. It hadn’t seemed like much at the time, but now he was examining every possible connection. “The kid mentioned a guy who’d been there?”

“Yeah. He got some weird vibe from him. Thought he reeked of Royal Sinners. Said he had a goatee and was bitching about not having an iPhone.”

“And that made him think he was a Sinner?”

“More like Marcus had a gut reaction to him. And he said his dad has always been worried about those guys coming after them.”

Colin snapped his fingers. That was it. Instinct told him the warnings Elle had received weren’t about Colin—but they might very well be about Marcus.

Elle wasn’t only involved with Colin. Elle was involved with the local community. Elle was involved in helping the kids at the center. Elle had been deeply involved with helping Marcus. And Marcus’s father had been worried about gang members targeting his family. Were they targeting Marcus through Elle?

In the morning, he called Marcus and asked him for help.

“Tell me everything about the guy who came by your store the other day,” Colin said, and his young brother described the guy in detail, right down to his hands.

*

After Colin finished a training swim at lunch, his phone buzzed as he left the gym. He’d set up an alert for any new photos from the Instagram and Facebook profiles he’d check-marked as likely belonging to the Royal Sinners. The account that had pinged was called Don’t Mess With, and it often featured snapshots of stolen goods.

As he walked across the parking lot to his car, he scrolled through the new set of photos in the feed.

Boatloads of iPhones.

In some of the pictures, a guy pointed at his stash, his fingers in the shape of guns. The guy’s face wasn’t in any of the pictures, but Colin punched the air when he read the caption.

Looks like Wicked Jack is gonna make a cool couple of Gs on this haul. Burner phones are the shizz, but iPhones are the biz. $$$$$$