Once that was done, the group continued all the way up the winding driveway, cursing and grunting as silently as they could. Which wasn’t all that silent.

  Finally, they reached the top of the hill and parked the bus under a stand of trees.

  Five minutes later, they had shocked themselves by securing the perimeter. Levi, however, was starting to lose faith. “This is a bad idea,” said Levi, crouching in the bushes. “Fiona is going to kill me.”

  There was no going back now: the Brute Squad had already sneaked up on Junior’s armed bodyguard and knocked him out with some foul-smelling rag that Billy had brought. Nobody asked too many questions when Billy was actually helpful.

  It had taken two of their members to subdue him, but it worked.

  The new guy, Alex, who was the most spooked about getting dragged into these shenanigans, agreed it was best if he hung back at the minibus and served as the lookout and getaway driver.

  “Man, keep your voice down,” hissed Ricky as the pack of them crouched low, carefully looking in windows to locate Junior.

  Billy snorted. “All of y’all won’t have to worry about your wives and girlfriends killing you if the mob gets to you first.”

  Dash smacked Billy on the arm. “Are you high?”

  “What’s it to you? Free country.”

  “Sure thing,” Ricky said. “Try being a black man and seen sneaking around someone’s beachfront property in the middle of the afternoon wearing a ski mask and see what a free country it is.”

  “Will the four of you keep it down, please! I need to see where Junior is.” Holden rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “This was a terrible idea.”

  Levi looked up at his friend with genuine concern. “We can give this up right now if you want.”

  Holden thought about it, then shook his head. Katie’s got her ways of dealing with problems, and I’ve got my ways. Bottom line, they needed to send a message. No cops, no FBI, none of that. These kinds of men only respond to brute force. “Yes. They need to know they can’t fuck with Newcastle. We’ve got enough of our own gang problems to deal with.”

  Levi nodded. “Then we’re sticking with you, brother.”

  At the next window, Holden couldn’t see anything, but he heard a noise. Water running. “He’s in the shower,” he whispered.

  “Perfect,” said Billy.

  Dash interjected, “I’m not kidnapping a naked dude.”

  “What, like nobody here has ever kidnapped a naked dude before?”

  Ricky cursed. “Seriously. Levi? Do your thing. Let’s get this over with. I’ll text Alex and let him know to fire up the bus.”

  Holden held his breath while Levi, the most talented of the entire Brute Squad when it came to locks and alarms due to his history of hotwiring and stealing cars, made quick work of the basement door of the house. Holden didn’t love the idea that he was asking his ex-con friend to help him in this caper, but technically, would the cops be called if they were caught breaking into the residence of a known criminal?

  Junior’s fault for renting a place in Shoreline with no nosy neighbors around.

  Once they got the all-clear from Levi, the rest of the guys crept into the dark basement, armed with their weapons: a burlap sack and rope. Levi stayed outside with a package of firecrackers and a lighter, slowly working the window open.

  Billy, Dash, Holden, and Ricky waited outside the bathroom door.

  “What’s our signal?” Dash asked.

  “Uh. I think we’ll know the signal when we hear it.”

  Truly, the entire city could have heard what happened next: a series of staccato explosions that could have easily been mistaken for gunfire.

  Holden braced himself. Seconds later, a shrieking, naked Junior sprang out of the bathroom, the open door filling the bedroom with smoke.

  “Get him!” someone shouted.

  What followed were shrieks, curses, fists flying, wet and naked arms and legs flailing. Finally, Junior was subdued inside the burlap sack between the four of them and wrestled to the ground. Billy climbed on top of him and hogtied his arms and legs together. It happened so quickly that the others watched in horror and awe.

  “Well, now we gotta carry him out of here, dumbass,” Ricky said.

  “He can’t run away, though,” Holden said.

  Dash being the tallest of that group, he hoisted Junior over his shoulder while the quarry kicked, screamed, and spat curses at them all.

  Levi met them at the bus, which Alex already had idling at the top of the driveway.

  Within feet of the bus, Holden let out a loud, “Fuck! Mike’s here. Haul ass!”

  “Who?!” someone shouted.

  Hauling ass to the bus did no good, as Mike himself appeared from behind a tree and was running their way. “Holden, stop! This is not the way!”

  “This is exactly the way. Alex, open the fucking doors!”

  Alex did as he was told and helped the guys load the naked, squirming Junior into the back of the bus.

  Mike had turned and began running to his car, just as Holden heard another voice shout, “Stop! FBI!”

  He turned to look, and there were the two agents who he’d watched strap down Katie with the listening device, the ones who’d put his Cupcake in danger.

  “Fuck. FBI? Are you serious?” Billy was livid.

  “Just keep going!” Holden said.

  Holden slid behind the wheel again and took off just as the rest of them got the doors closed.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Holden muttered, slamming his foot on the gas and peeling out, about as much as one can peel out on asphalt in a Volkswagen minibus.

  The long driveway wound down so steeply that under ordinary circumstances, Holden would have downshifted. With one Mike plus two federal agents on his tail, he made a decision not to.

  The consequence of that decision came to fruition when he barreled around the bend and came face to face with the gate, which the feds had evidently closed when they had arrived. Probably because they’d been hoping to stop anyone from leaving the premises while they were there to serve a warrant or search the area.

  “Hang on!” Holden shouted.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dash hollered.

  Holden once again floored the gas pedal and shouted, bracing himself as the iron gate approached at a terrifying speed, “Going to Florida!”

  The crash was violent, thunderous, and could have easily killed everyone in that bus. The gate was totally fine. Unmoved. The bus’s front end? Crumpled.

  Gate: 1, Volkswagen: 0.

  It wasn’t every day Holden was surrounded by a flock of law enforcement: private security and the feds on one side and a fleet of cops blocking the end of the driveway on the other side of the gate.

  “Guess we’re not going to Disney,” Billy whined. “Fuck.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Katie

  It took some finagling, but she managed to keep everyone in the Brute Squad from getting charged with obstruction, criminal trespassing and kidnapping. Along with whatever the hell else they had been up to that day.

  Katie was just thankful none of them had been armed and that the FBI had quickly stepped in and urged the local police to stand down and holster their weapons.

  The FBI was still investigating Junior and the Miami Mafia’s involvement in the local boxing league, but they could not pick him up on charges that day.

  She asked for an update on the Barrett investigation, but of course, it being the FBI, all they could say was she’d done her part and they were grateful. She had a feeling that she’d be hearing about the councilman’s arrest someday soon.

  She wondered when she would see those phony casino blueprints reappear, but she didn’t hold up too much hope and instead tossed in a big bonus to her firm’s private architect for her troubles.

  The Brute Squad was livid that the feds were not going to arrest Junior. “We wrapped him up and handed him to you with a pretty bow and everything!” Billy had squawked at the agents when Katie had gone down to the station to sort everything out.

  Gilmore had shaken his head and informed Billy that they had only been on the property to carry out a search and seizure of records needed to build their case against someone else, not Junior. But they also said they would be informing their colleagues at the Florida bureau of Junior’s antics in Newcastle, which they knew the FBI would be very interested in learning about.

  Everything was salvageable but the minibus.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” Holden said.

  The two of them drank tea at the condo together, hashing out everything that had happened.

  “About which part?” she said with a smirk, sipping her tea.

  “About the bus, of course. It didn’t deserve that.”

  Katie shook her head.

  Just then, she heard an unfamiliar mewling at her feet. There, looking up at her with blue eyes, was an orange tabby she didn’t recognize. “I thought we had a gray one and a black one.”

  “Uh,” Holden stammered. “An orange one followed me home the other day, I forgot to tell you.”

  “Three,” she confirmed. “Okay. I can manage with three.”

  As if on cue, a white one appeared, peeking out of Holden’s room.

  “Really?” she asked, leveling him with a look.

  Holden shrugged. “I couldn’t take Tom Petty and leave his buddy Roy Orbison out in the cold.”

  She laughed. “So, do we have a complete set of Traveling Wilburys now?”

  “What’s that?” He stared at her blankly.

  “Oh god,” she said, remembering how young he was. “Never mind.”

  “I’m teasing,” he said.

  “Four cats is too many, but I’ll let it go. But Holden, we need to talk about whether you want to be a cat owner or a full-time cat rescuer because there is a difference. This is turning into hoarding now. Any more cats come up to you, and I’m drawing the line. Consider fostering instead of owning.”

  A light appeared in his eyes. “Fostering. Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “You have a real sense for people,” Katie replied. “I bet you’d be great at finding good homes for cats.”

  Holden thought about this and had to agree with her.

  “In the meantime, let’s just focus on making sure you’re safe and that there’s no fallout after the boxing match,” she said.

  “I had it handled, but then you had to sic your security man on us.”

  “Because you obviously didn’t have it handled, Holden.”

  He stood up and put his tea into the sink, then walked to the window overlooking the harbor.

  “You have to let me take care of my own problems. And tell your Mike guy to stop nosing around, because he's going to get himself and you killed.”

  “You don’t understand, Holden. I’m not the one who gets killed. Mike’s not the one who gets killed. We are the ones who make problems go away. I was halfway to getting Junior gone and out of your life, and nobody would have asked any questions. I can even make all of Girardi’s henchman disappear, if only Governor Locke would say the word. But he won’t, because he wants to carry on with the rule of law and carry out justice and all of that. He can put people behind bars, but he can’t make it stop. I can do that. Mike can do that.”

  Holden looked at her with a strange apprehension she’d never seen before.

  “That’s scary as fuck, do you know that?”

  “Mike is scary as fuck. I don’t half-ass it when I hire people to protect my assets. Or my ass.”

  Holden’s mouth twisted and his jaw clicked.

  “I don’t like it. I don’t think I like him being that devoted to you.” He wiggled the sliding glass door to the balcony, and seeing it was locked, stalked over to the main door and checked its lock as well.

  Katie watched as he turned to check the locks on the door. He unlocked and locked them again.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure the locks were all working. It’s my thing. After you go to bed every night, I check all the locks, the doors, the windows, the balcony. I walk around the building, check the hallways. All of it.”

  Katie’s stomach flipped over. “Are you serious?”

  “I know it’s a little paranoid, but you gotta let me have this. This is my way of protecting you. I don’t have computer hacking skills. I can’t make people disappear. I have my fists and that’s it. I would protect you with my life, and that’s all I know how to do.”

  Breathe, Katie. Just soak it in.

  “This feels…very different.” She took a step closer to him and he to her. Even though he glared down at her, even though the two of them were far from finished with this argument, she had feelings to deal with at the moment.

  She took his hand in both of hers, and still his mitt felt too big to be real, rough from a lifetime of boxing and fighting and scrapping, but it was warm and tender. His thumb grazed the outside edge of hers.

  “My whole life I’ve been protected. But right now, this is something else. Knowing that you do those things for me, without even getting paid, without expecting anything in return, makes me…I don’t know how to explain it.”

  Holden spoke, and for the first time since she had picked him up from the police station, he sounded warm again. “Katie. It’s love. What you're feeling is love.”

  She raised her face to his. “How do you know that?”

  Holden smiled shyly and drew in closer, closing around her and pressing his forehead against hers. “Because I love you. I feel it every time you come home to me. I like the way I feel when I’m with you. I love it when you text me you’re on your way home. I feel it when you make me laugh. I feel it when you try to play Halo with me and get shot in the head every time, but you refuse to give up.”

  By then, tears streamed down Katie’s face. “You’re right. It’s love.”

  “I love you, Katie. Can you cope with that?”

  She nodded. “I can. I…I love you. I’ve never said it before, to anyone except my sister and her kids. And maybe the guy who delivered my food during the pandemic.”

  Holden laughed. “I’m going to have to have a chat with that guy.”

  Katie chuckled and went on. “I think I said it to Griff the first time he made me a dirty martini.”

  Holden groaned. “Come on.”

  She continued, “I’m not kidding. He makes the best one in all of Newcastle.”

  “I’m gonna have to have a chat with Griff now, too.”

  She laughed. “Don’t even try out that possessive boyfriend thing on me.”

  Something in what she said seemed to flip a switch in Holden. He was done. Done arguing. Done teasing. Done speaking except for complete and utter filth.

  “I’ll show you possessive. Bend over and grab the sofa.”

  The heat in his eyes, the way he sucked his lips into his mouth to wet them, sent all of her blood straight to her crotch. So, good thing he’d instructed her to hold on to the armrest of the sofa. With trembling limbs, she obeyed. “Step backward and spread your legs.”

  Katie bit her lip and did exactly as he said. She turned her head to the side and observed the sun coming up over the skyline, casting a glow on the sides of the buildings in dockside.

  “Do…do you want to draw the curtain?”

  When he responded, all the moisture in her body pooled warmly between her legs. “Let them see. Let them see who owns Katie Moss’s pussy.”

  “Fuck,” she whispered, biting down harder on her lip and smiling.

  He cupped her pussy through her leggings, then ripped them to shreds with a snarl.

  He slipped his thumb between her cheeks, spread her wide and then sank his dick where it belonged.

  “I missed this, every second we’re not together,” he huffed, slipping his thumb into her ass.

  She looked back at him and watched as he plunged into her, again and again, so hard he grunted loudly with every upward thrust.

  “My cupcake is all wet and all mine.”

  “All yours, baby. Pull my hair.”

  Holden did as she asked, threading her hair through his fingers and twisting the locks around his fist. He tugged gently at first with every push inside her, but then at her insistence, pulled a little bit harder each time.

  By the time she exploded around his spurting cock, he’d had to let go of her hair to prevent injuring her in the midst of his wild, loud, bucking orgasm.

  She exhaled a delighted laugh as her body lay limply over the side of the sofa.

  Immediately he picked her up and carried her to his bed, gently laying her down and pulling her close against his chest, massaging her scalp.

  “All good?”

  “So good,” she said, almost drunk with the aftershocks.

  “Had enough drama for one day?”

  She laughed quietly and nestled into his side.

  “Enough drama for a lifetime.”

  Holden muttered. “Too bad. The Brute Squad comes as a package deal, and I don’t think Billy will ever leave.”

  She laughed again. “As long as we don’t leave him with any important duties like bringing the ring to our wedding, or babysitting our future kids, I think we’ll be fine.”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  “Is it weird I still feel uneasy around crowds?”

  They had decided to go down to the boardwalk to watch the fireworks for New Year’s Eve.

  She looked up at him. “You’re asking the wrong girl about that. I still say we need to go back to virtual meetings.”

  Holden chuckled and squeezed her in close.

  While they watched the colorful explosions in the night sky over Newcastle Harbor, Holden slipped his arms around her waist.

  He picked up her hand and threaded his fingers in between hers.

  Katie relaxed into his big chest. She was so happy to give in to this solid wall of a human.

  After a time, she noticed he wasn’t watching the sky and was fiddling around with her left hand.