Page 99 of Almost Beautiful (Beautiful 3)

I raced to the gym and parked, shutting down the engine. Why the fuck is Brandon talking to the Feds? Especially after he’d asked me about the fire. He wasn’t there, he didn’t need immunity, so what did he have to gain? Was this how he planned to get rid of me to take a fair shot at my wife? Was he really that desperate?

My mind raced until I saw my next client get out of her car and walk to toward the Iron E.

“Hey, Travis!” Debbie said with a wide smile. “You ready?”

I mirrored her expression, but the last thing in the fucking world I wanted to do right then was smile. I was going to have fake it, maybe for a long time.

“Yep! It’s leg day,” I said. “Let’s get in there and rock it out.”

She gave me a high five, and we walked in together.

Chapter Twenty-Three

That Side of Love

Abby

MY THUMBNAIL BENT AS Ipressed it against my teeth, but I was careful not to bite it or break it with our first anniversary—and wedding—being a week away. We’d been lucky, celebrating our firsts as a married couple almost normally. My birthday was a stark contrast to the year before, intimate and relatively tame with just Kara, Finch, Shepley and America, Trenton and Camille in attendance. Our first Thanksgiving at Jim’s was far better than the year before. It wasn’t lost on us that the year before had been brutal, and we spent the day making everyone around us groan with disgust at our constant PDA. Christmas and New Year’s came and went, and then America went into full wedding planner mode, finalizing all the details for St. Thomas.

The year had past almost as if federal agents weren’t still forcing us to having important conversations outside of our apartment. Travis and I went to class, went to work, paid our bills, and went on date nights like normal married couples, but there were still more than a few things we had to adjust to that I was sure no other newlyweds had to face, like carefully planning with Finch how to get Adam and Travis in a room alone together without anyone finding out.

Three times we’d thought we had our chance, but twice Adam chickened out, and a third time Travis came down with the flu. This time, though, was a now or never situation. Adam had a hearing coming up, and both sides were pressuring him for a plea bargain.

After almost a year of planning and stressing, Adam and Travis were finally meeting in the shed behind The Red Door, long after last call so they didn’t chance being seen. I’d had a good feeling when he left that it was the right time and everything would go smoothly, but he’d been gone for hours.

Pacing the living room floor hadn’t helped, so I resorted to sitting in the recliner and rocking back and forth only pretending to chew my nails.

The sun would be rising in less than two hours. In my mind, there were only two reasons why it was taking so long: they had a lot of information to go over, or they’d been caught and arrested.

Right when I thought I might go out of my mind, a key entered the lock and the door opened. My husband had just stepped into the entry and closed the door behind him, bracing himself as I threw my arms around his shoulders.

He held me at arm’s length and held his index finger to his lips.

I nodded, and he led me outside by the hand, down the narrow walkway that ended at the complex’s small playground.

Travis sat on a swing, and I joined him on the adjacent one. He rocked back and forth, keeping his feet on the ground.

“Tell me he didn’t take a plea bargain and confirm you were there,” I said, keeping my voice just above a whisper.

Travis shook his head. “He hasn’t implicated me, but I found out why Brandon was talking to the Feds. He doesn’t want to get me out of the way to get a chance at you—well, that may be part of it—but it goes deeper than that. I knew Adam made good money off those fights, but he was driving a Lambo for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t have made that much more than me. Now, it makes sense.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Adam had a business partner.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Since when?”

“Almost since the beginning. A guy who used to fight in The Circle back when my brothers did. When he graduated college and retired from the ring, he made a proposal to Adam so he could keep making money off the fights. But they weren’t just taking bets in the basements. Adam set cameras up before every fight. They were streaming and taking bets from all over the world. Adam was clearing a million a year.”

“What?” I said, louder than intended.

“He didn’t tell me, so it didn’t make a dent in his cut—he was already halving it with his partner.”

My mouth fell open. “Brandon?”

Travis nodded.

“So … so, what? Brandon is in trouble, too, and he’s wanting to take you down with him?”