Shit.

When I arrived at El Dorado, I pushed the automatic button for the neighborhood’s gate and watched as it remained locked. Jesus fuck. They’d changed it. They’d changed the electronic system. Didn’t take a genius to know who’d done it.

Samantha was the only person who’d given the key to an outsider.

Now, she was no longer a client.

What she was, was: pissed, vindictive, and no longer of use to me.

I parked my Harley in front of the gate. My foot was already on the first black railing, when I heard someone behind me.

“Trespassing in broad daylight. If you want to buy your lawyer their next Cabo villa, just open a GoFundMe account,” Vicious practically yawned.

I turned around, tipping my chin down to inspect him. He was tucked inside his silver Aston Martin One-77, one arm resting on the edge of his open window.

“Just open the fucking gate.”

“Bane. Didn’t recognize your face without the pube hair. Where you headed?” He skipped the snarky comment, and that’s how I knew even he took pity on me. Wow. I must’ve looked like one pathetic piece of crap.

“The Morgansens’.” It pained me to even say Darren’s last name.

Vicious flicked his Ray-Bans down, scrutinizing me. “Business going well?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I was still hanging from the gate like a drunken monkey when he pushed his automatic button and the thing started moving. I hopped down. Vicious cocked his head to his right.

“Get in.”

“I have my bike.”

“They’ll see you with it inside—they’ll freak out. Samantha Haggins got a verbal spanking the other day for giving her boy toy the keys. Any guesses who he might be?”

Damn. I shook my head and got into his car.

Vicious didn’t try to coax any details out of me on our ride to the house, and I tried not to think about how nervous I was to see Jesse. When he dropped me off in front of the colonial mansion, he produced a joint from his pocket, lit it, took a hit, and handed it over to me.

“No longer strangers,” he said.

I stared at him impatiently, but took the joint, because I needed it. I shook my head. “I think I’m in deep trouble, Baron.”

“Good. That means that there’s someone in your life that’s worth the risk.”

There’s a saying in Russian. Trouble never comes alone. I should have known when I left Darren’s office that there was more to come. But I didn’t, because I was so fixated on the unfolding clusterfuck I’d gotten myself into, I hadn’t even bothered to return Jesse’s call.

She opened the door, her eyes and nose red, the rest of her face the palest I’d ever seen. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes lacked that mischievous zing that made my dick hard. I immediately forgot my long, elaborate speech and took a step in, jerking her into my arms.

“You okay?”

“Shadow died.”

“Fuck,” I breathed, clutching her harder, my nose buried in her hair. “When?”

“This morning. Pam found him, but didn’t call me. He had cancer. She’s known for…a while.”

Jesse delivered the news with the kind of detachment that showed me that she was still in shock. Now was not the time to drop another bomb on her ass, and definitely not the time to drag her into my war with Darren. At the same time, I was aware that he was about to arrive home sometime soon, and I needed her out of there. I pulled back, running my fingers over her eyes, hair, cheeks, lips. Doing inventory, making sure everything was intact. That my Jesse was still mine. She was. For now.

“Where is he now?”

She looked up to the belly of her stairway. “I carried him up to my room. I didn’t know what to do. I need to bury him. But, Roman…”

She burst into tears again, and I held her for a few minutes, feeling the blood roar in my ears, before marching in and going up the stairs. Pam was coming down as I was going up. Her face told me she no longer wanted to fuck me, or if she did, it was with a broomstick up my ass. I flipped her the finger and continued to Jesse’s room, picked Shadow up, wrapped him up in a sheet, and carried him downstairs.

“Where are you taking the dog?” Pam barked from the kitchen, fixing herself a drink. I didn’t answer. I wanted to kill her, her husband, and Dr. Wiese, who’d taken the shortcut and dropped the C-bomb on Pam, just because he’d known it would be easier, that Jesse was fragile and sensitive when it came to her dog.

“Come on, Snowflake.”

I hoisted Shadow to the trunk and climbed into the Rover. Jesse followed in silence. I drove to the reservoir on the outskirts of town, knowing there’d be plenty of land for me to bury him there. Snowflake sniffed and looked out the window. I didn’t want to force a conversation, knowing how many things were going through her head. Sometimes she held my hand. I wanted so bad to squeeze hard and tell her there was more. That she needed to be strong for me, because shit was about to get real complicated, real fast.