Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 115525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 578(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
“When I heard Mike had settled down—” She waved her hand in Rayne’s direction, eyeing him up and down with disdain. “—I never imagined it’d be with a goddamn—”
Rayne and the women degrading him spun towards the sound of an engine roaring, followed by the violent crash of metal and iron slamming together. Rayne dropped his mat and bottle of water as he closed his palms over his ears at the terrified screams coming from inside the Jeep as they were thrown a couple of hundred feet, until they were no longer in front of his lawn.
Rayne’s mouth fell open, his eyes wide and not believing what he was witnessing as Mike rammed the Jeep again with the grill of his huge RAM truck, causing the passengers inside to jerk hard enough to make their necks snap back. Once the Jeep was cleared out of Mike’s way, he hit the gas hard and roared into his driveway, stopping with a screeching halt less than five inches from the bumper of the Jag.
“Jesus Christ,” Brooks Brothers gasped as he scurried around the front of his car.
Mike got out of his truck and slammed the door hard enough to make them all recoil in fear.
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” the driver of the Jeep hollered at Mike as he practically fell out of his vehicle and hurried around to his groaning girlfriend in the front seat and jerked her door open. He looked her up and down, then asked, “Are you okay, baby?”
“I told you not to come here!” she screeched, clutching the back of her neck. “He’ll kill you, you idiot.”
Manny got out of the passenger side of Mike’s truck, his oil-black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, his sharp eyes scanning the yard before they stopped and held on the woman that’d been fucking with Rayne. Recognition dawned on his face, and his expression went from pissed to… worried.
Oh god. Who in the hell is this woman?
“Big Mike always did know how to make an entrance,” she chuckled lightly and shrugged in the direction of the furious couple in the Jeep. “You never see him coming… until he’s already on you.”
“I hope you’re insured, motherfucker,” Mike growled.
The goth woman appeared so freaked-out that she could barely articulate what she wanted to say. “You’re crazy! You can’t… you can’t just…! You’ve got fucking issues, Mike!”
“I damn sure do. And I refuse to get help for any of ’em,” Mike said way too calmly as he pulled a shovel from out the back of his truck and began to walk towards the Jeep until Manny stopped him.
“Not now. We’ll get his ass later,” Manny hissed between clenched teeth, but his voice was strong enough to carry across the yard. “You got a bigger problem right now.”
Mike had been so focused on the man blocking his driveway that he didn’t notice the real threat. The one standing only a few feet away from Rayne with a victorious but evil grin on her glossy lips. He’d never seen Mike look shell-shocked before, but he glared at the woman as if she was a demon who’d somehow escaped the pits of hell.
“Mike,” Rayne said from the top of the porch steps, ready for answers. “Who is this?”
Mike’s chest was heaving with each breath, but he managed to grit out, “This is the woman that gave birth to my son.”
“Our son,” she corrected smoothly.
“My son!” Mike roared.
Chapter Fifty
Mike
Mike felt as if someone had clocked him in the jaw. He couldn’t believe this witch had the audacity to come to his house.
“Well, well, well,” she said a bit too lustfully for his liking as she drank him in the closer he got. “Look at you. All grown up into… a big man now.”
“You have that little value for your life?” Mike asked, truly curious.
“Mike,” Manny warned in a low rumble, standing close to him. His friend knew the hell and torture he’d suffered from this woman’s conniving ways.
“Okay, okay, everyone, let’s just keep a level head and talk about—”
“Who the fuck is this?” Mike pointed to the man standing beside a fancy Jag. He looked like a Wall Street reject, complete with the hair plugs and the oversized smartphone clipped to a leather belt holding up his overstarched shorts.
“Michael, this is my husband, Riley St. James the Fourth. Rye, this is him. This is Bishop’s father.” She shook her head. “I told you he was a pit bull.”
“All bitches recognize a stud when they see one,” Mike retorted.
Her smug smile slid from her lips before she turned them up into a sinister sneer. “I didn’t come here for your shit, Mike, or to be insulted. I came to see my son.”
“Fuck. You. Ivy.” Mike accented each word with a step closer to her until he was right in her face. “You left me asleep in a hospital room with a damn infant, and now you show up thirty-three years later with the balls to just barge back into his life?”