Excerpt Reveal:Hell Of A Mess

 

🖤𝔼𝕏ℂ𝔼ℝℙ𝕋 ℝ𝔼𝕍𝔼𝔸𝕃 🖤

𝑯𝑬𝑳𝑳 𝑶𝑭 𝑨 𝑴𝑬𝑺𝑺 by New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Abbi Glines releases on September 29th. Check out this sneak peek! 

𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗨𝗽: https://forms.gle/wBtdhzSFsi3bpFDp9

𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩: 

✔️Southern mafia romance

✔️Who did this to you

✔️Age gap 

✔️Morally grey hero

Excerpt: 

Linc scowled at me as if he already knew why I had met him in the garage before he could go inside the house. I stayed where I was, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in my mouth. Technically, this wasn’t inside the house, but I could already tell he was about to bitch about me smoking out here. Gathe had driven Branwen and Stevie today, and he’d let them out at the front of the house. Neither of them would be coming in the fucking garage. Didn’t matter though, he was going to be pissy about it.

“Put out the goddamn cigarette,” he snarled.

I took another long pull from it and ignored that command. He could suck one. “She’s staying upstairs. I’ll give her one of my guest rooms,” I said as the smoke drifted from my mouth. Might as well get to the point.

Linc’s eyes narrowed. “No, she’s not.”

Chuckling, although I wasn’t finding any humor in this, I shook my head. “Don’t answer to you. I own that half of the house, and if I say she’s sleeping in one of my rooms, then she is. Keeping her in the damn basement is inhuman.”

Linc’s teeth were clenched tightly as she glared at me. “My wife and child are in that house. We don’t know who the hell she is. All we know is a name, and since you left before we had Wilder run it, there isn’t one goddamn LACE listed under missing persons. There also isn’t one who meets her description in Mississippi or the surrounding states. Yet you want to let her in our home, around my family. When we know nothing!”

“Did you check Texas?” I asked.

“Why? Did she remember something else?”

I shook my head. “Not really. She remembered a white horse named Griffin. But there is a Texas drawl under all that refined speech of hers. It’s faint, but it is there.”

He jerked his phone out of his pocket and pressed the screen aggressively, and then it began to ring. It was on speaker.

“Hello,” Wilder Jones' voice came over the line.

 

“Run a list of horses by the name of Griffin. It’s white,” Linc barked. “And check for missing women in Texas along with the horse.”

                

“She remember something else?” Wilder asked.

                

“Yeah, the horse. Luther detects a Texas accent in her voice.”

                

“Alright, I’ll run it. Give me ten minutes and I’ll get back to you.”

                

“Thanks,” Linc replied, then ended the call and started toward the door leading into the house. “She is fine in the basement. It’s secure, and she can’t get upstairs and murder us all in our sleep.”

“No, she isn’t. And she’s not going ot murder anyone. She’s fucking harmless, scared, and alone. Maui loves her. Dogs know shit.”

                

Linc stopped at the door, gripping the knob tightly. He hated it when I went against his orders. Everyone else here obeyed him, but when I moved here to help him, I’d warned him that Garrett was my boss. Not him. Of course, that had changed now that his oldest son, Blaise, was the Boss. I obeyed a kid I’d fucking helped raise. We all had. It was weird, but the little bastard had turned out to be more powerful than his father had. Mostly out of fear. He was ruthless.

                

“She stays on your side,” he said tightly.

                

“We share the kitchen and great room.”

                

“F*CK!” he roared, turning back around. “Can you not at least respect that I am trying to protect my family!”

                

I did respect it. But he was being ridiculous. Lace wasn’t a danger to anyone. He wasn’t going to listen to me though. Until he had her identity and knew her background, he wouldn’t rest easy with her around Branwen and Stevie.

                

“I’ll be with her if she’s in either of those areas,” I told him.

                

His jaw worked as he clenched his teeth, then he jerked the door open hard and stalked inside. That had gone better than I imagined, at least. I finished my cigarette, trying to decide if he was right and I should leave her in the basement. Not that I was worried that she was going to kill us in our sleep. I was more worried about me. My reaction to her. I didn’t do the protective thing, but this one female had shit stirring inside me that was foreign. I wanted to take care of her, and that was what scared the hell out of me.   

                

Find more books by Abbi Glines: https://abbiglinesbooks.com