Page 14 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

Less than an hour later, as Teddy was seated at his desk reviewing the final audit report while on the phone with the auditors that compiled it, and while Nikki was seated at her desk reviewing the deep background checks of the three men she had in mind to replace Mike Driessen, she got a text.

She knew she had to meet Juda after she left the office, but when she saw that text her eyes widened and her heart began to pound.

She had to read it again to make certain she had read it right.

When she was certain, she jumped up from her desk without turning off her computer.

“I’ve got to make a quick run,” she said to Teddy as she grabbed her phone and keys and began hurrying out of the door.

Teddy was surprised. She knew he didn’t like her out this time of night. “A run where?” he asked her. “Nikki?”

But Nikki had already left the office.

“Let me call you back,” Teddy said to his auditors and ended the call as he ran out behind her. But by the time he got outside, Nikki was already speeding out of the gate.

Teddy hopped in the Bugatti and took off behind her.

He flew out of that gate the way he usually did and turned left because he saw her turn in that direction.

A car was coming toward him when he sped out into the highway to make that left turn, and although the car slammed on brakes, it was going too fast. And Teddy, though certain he was going to make that turn before that car could make it up to him, had miscalculated.

The oncoming car t-boned him with a crash so violent that it slid Marco’s Bugatti nearly fifty feet across the highway.

It didn’t stop its skid until they both crashed into a garbage truck in the opposite lane.

Teddy was sandwiched between the garbage truck and the car that had crashed into him, and the airbags had deployed.

But he felt like crap. Not because he was in any physical pain: he wasn’t.

But because Nikki had gotten away without explaining herself, Marco was going to kill him for wrecking his car ( a car Teddy had given to him), and that damn airbag had wallowed him. It had knocked the breath out of him.

But it was emblematic of how he felt. Because he felt wallowed too.