Page 6 of Savage Protector

Well, Jack and my friends, all of whom would be waiting for me by now at Sebastian’s restaurant. Rather than open a second location named Home Again, he had decided several months back to expand his original location. “Really, it makes more sense this way,” he’d told me at the time he made the decision, and he clearly had a point. Rather than split his time between two locations, he’d expanded the original location and was doing more business than ever a month after the reopening.

His girlfriend, Claudia Granger, was chatting with a table full of diners when I arrived. Catching my eye, she greeted me with a raised hand as she approached. “Oh, good. Aiden can stop complaining about how hungry he is even though I put a platter of appetizers together,” she murmured after offering a brief hug.

“He is the world’s largest toddler sometimes,” I replied. She laughed gently before I continued through the dining room, spotting Sebastian seated with Aiden, Jackson, and Vaughn. There was something to be said for continuity and knowing what to expect. Once a week we got together for dinner or simply for drinks. It was only during the times life got in the way and made me change my plans that I realized how much I had come to rely on this— catching up, sharing ideas. We often talked business, and though we all work in different fields, sometimes an outsider’s perspective was exactly what was needed.

What a shame I couldn’t open up with them tonight. Not about this.

“There you are.” Aiden McConnell patted his stomach, groaning and rolling his blue eyes even though a plate full of nothing but crumbs sat in front of him. “It’s a miracle I haven’t wasted away. What took you so long to get here?”

“Aww, I’m sorry. I forgot baby needs me to cut his food for him,” I replied, sparking soft laughter from the rest of the group. “Had a meeting that ran a little longer.” They might have been my best friends, but that didn’t mean I had to share every detail of my day. Sometimes, a man liked to have a few secrets, something private that was only his.

Vaughn Eastman and I had met back during my wilder days when I was fighting to figure out my place in the world without Mom and Dad and all the people I had grown up around. It was an ugly time. He turned to me now, looking serious. “I’m thinking of increasing security presence in both casinos. Another guy or two on the floor per shift, nothing major.” I’d provided security to his casinos since he took over in the wake of his father’s untimely passing.

“You think there’s trouble around there?” Jackson Bennett asked. “To tell you the truth, I’ve got the new show at the Wynn, and there’s been some rumors going around about asshole influencers and so-called content creators causing trouble in the casinos.”

Vaughn touched the tip of his nose with one finger, scowling. “You’ve got it. These stupid shits making videos, trying to go viral. The entire world is not their studio, but somebody neglected to tell them.”

“Don’t get me started,” Sebastian warned in a dark voice that went well with his sour expression. “These assholes come in here, trying to take videos of our food and staff like they’re fucking critics or something. Like some shitty twenty-year-old is going to offer a deep insight. What a joke.”

“The worst thing social media ever did was give everyone the idea that their opinion matters and we all need to hear it,” Aiden concluded.

I was only vaguely aware of their conversation thanks to the woman who passed our table, offering a discreet smile when our eyes met. The sort of smile Scarlet offered customers as she crisscrossed the casino floor with her tray aloft. The same tight body, too, curvy in all the right places.

There was no getting her out of my head, every moment in the parking lot replaying for my review. She was so quick to protect herself, so terrified, her hair hanging in her face and eyes wide and wild. Full of fear. Obviously, any woman would be afraid during an attack, but there was something different about her.

Was I only telling myself that? Did I want a reason to doubt Dominic? I couldn’t let the past color the present. We hadn’t been anywhere near close in fifteen years. A lot of water had flowed under the bridge.

But some things did not change. Women and children were off-limits. I could not imagine that rule changing. Was he giving me the full story?

What would happen if I asked Scarlet?

“What do you have going on tonight?” Aiden asked, reaching over to nudge my arm when I didn’t immediately respond. Jerking a thumb to Jackson, he announced, “The three of us need to stick together with all this love and commitment bullshit going around. It’s like a disease.”

“We were thinking about stopping over at Dante’s club,” Jackson explained as he polished off the last of the garlic bread that had been left in the center of the table.

“Maybe you better rethink the garlic if you’re gonna head over there,” Sebastian suggested, chuckling as he twirled homemade pasta around his fork. “Unless you want to send all the women screaming from the building. I don’t think Dante has rules about offensive breath, does he?” he asked, looking around the table with a smirk.

“What do you say?” Jackson asked, ignoring him. “You look like you could use a little decompression.”

Normally, I might take him up on the offer. Dante West ran a highly profitable club specializing in every flavor of adult fantasy. Having invested in it along with my friends, I paid closer attention than the average bystander. Maybe it would be beneficial to stop in there, have a little fun, and forget Scarlet, Dominic, and the past for a little while.

When I imagined going through the effort of finding a worthwhile partner there, I couldn’t make the image materialize in my head. It didn’t work. “There’s a few things I want to get settled. Hit me up next time,” I said as I finished my spaghetti and meatballs. I was a simple man with simple tastes, and I had never admitted this to anyone, but visiting Home meant remembering the pasta dinners we used to enjoy on the weekends. Every Sunday, Mom would put a pot of pasta sauce on the stove, and it would simmer all day, filling the house with an otherworldly aroma that would leave me counting the hours until dinner. It had been years since I’d been home for one of those meals, and sometimes I missed it.

“What do you have going on that’s so important?” Sebastian asked after our plates were cleared.

“Maybe I’m going shopping for new friends who don’t ask too many questions,” I suggested with a smirk. “Work shit. You know the drill. And I’ll be sure to get the schedule worked out for you,” I added, nodding at Vaughn. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back.”

It was what I did. I protected. I helped. It wasn’t until tonight, sitting with Jack, that it ever occurred to me I might be trying to compensate for what I hadn’t done in my youth—freezing when I should have acted, telling myself my eyes were not seeing what they definitely saw, trusting the wrong person, and believing in someone who had never deserved it. Lives were lost as a result, one of which was likely innocent. Whoever she was, she hadn’t deserved what happened to her. And if Scarlet was on the run, she didn’t deserve it either.

The question was, who was she running from?

I got behind the wheel of my truck, originally intending to head over to the office for a few minutes after dinner. Instead, I called Chase, who normally took care of scheduling. “We’re going to need another two bodies per shift at Vaughn Eastman’s casinos,” I announced, heading southwest. What did I expect to accomplish? I wasn’t sure.

And if I needed any convincing, Chase delivered it when he said, “By the way, Dominic Garibaldi called earlier. He said he doesn’t have your cell number and wondered about an update on his case.” At least I knew Mom had made good on my one and only request—never hand out my personal number to anyone. If someone needed help, I could reach out to them from the office, which I’d done in this case.

It hadn’t been five days yet, but then I was the one who told him it was a generous estimate. I needed to learn not to run my mouth like that. “I’ll handle him. You handle the schedule. It happens that I’m on my way out to Primm again as we speak.”

“I thought we confirmed she’s working out there. That was what Drake said.”