Sinful Secrets (Savannah Sharks Hockey and Mafia #2)

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

SPENCER

My phone rings as I’m helping Rhett and Joey unload a cargo ship full of merchandise for the arena.

This might be the one and only legal shipment I’ve helped unload, but since everyone knows the feds are watching our every move, we need to lean more on the legal side of things.

After these next two away games, we are expecting a couple of material shipments for the interior of the new club. The burnt rubble has been demolished and disposed of, and the framing for the new club has just finished.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Looking at the screen, I see a missed call from an unknown number.

Almost immediately, they call back.

I step away and answer the call. “Hello?”

“Is this Spencer? Savannah’s boyfriend Spencer?” A soft female voice asks from the other end of the call.

“Yes.” I don’t know why, but a large part of me loves hearing her call me Savannah’s boyfriend.

“Hi. It’s Justine, Savannah’s roommate.”

Why is she calling me and not Savannah? The hair on the back of my neck raises. Something isn’t right. Savannah and Justine aren’t even speaking and haven’t since she saw Justine and Connor together.

“What’s wrong? Where’s Savannah? Did something happen to her?” Rhett and Joey overhear my questions and jog over to me.

Rhett raises his eyebrow and Joey steps into the shade and leans on the side of the building.

“Umm, I got your number from Savannah. She’s in trouble and doesn’t have her phone on her. Actually, I don’t know if she has her phone on her or not. She just asked me to call you.”

I narrow my eyes. Why is she dragging this out? How hard is it to just fucking tell me where Savannah is and what happened to her?

“Justine, I appreciate the play-by-play, but please, just tell me what’s going on. If Savannah is hurt, I need to get to her as soon as possible.”

She lets out a long sigh. “Savannah isn’t hurt. She was arrested in class this morning. They paraded her throughout the building. She told me to call you and to let you know what was going on, but she didn’t know why they were arresting her.”

Son of a bitch. This has to be because she told the detective and FBI agent no. I didn’t help matters when I interrupted their conversation and called him out in front of everyone.

“Thanks for calling me Justine. I’ll take it from here.” I end the call and quickly relay what’s going on with Savannah.

“That damn cop has overstepped for the last damn time. He fucking arrested her during class. He didn’t even have the decency to wait. He had to make it a spectacle.”

Rhett runs a hand through his hair. “Go and handle things with her. I’ll finish up here.”

“Thanks.” I say before jogging across the parking lot to my car.

Joey yells, “Don’t do anything stupid to catch a charge. We need you out of jail and packed tomorrow before the flight.”

I chuckle and race to the police station. Traffic is light since most people are in school and at work, and I only get stopped for a couple of red lights.

After parking in a visitor parking spot at the police station, I take several deep breaths before climbing out of my car.

A few officers turn to look my way as I climb the steps to the main entrance. Most of them are on Arturo’s payroll, but they don’t say anything to me. That is part of the agreement we have with them.

No public acknowledgement.

I walk around the administrator’s desk and barge into the police chief’s office. He’s on the phone and his feet are propped up on the corner of his desk.

As soon as he sees me, he ends the call and sits up.

“Mr. Reed, what can I do for you?”

“For starters, I’d like to know why Savannah Whitlock was arrested in the middle of her class this morning.”

He scrunches his face together as if he’s actually clueless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you seriously saying you don’t even know what your officers are doing under your watch? Do you even know they bribed her to spy on Arturo and the team, and when she said no, they started harassing her?”

His eyes widen slightly as he types a few keys on his keyboard. “She hasn’t been booked into the system yet. Are you sure she’s here?”

“I have it on good authority that she was arrested by your officers. Where else would they take her?”

“How long ago did this happen? Maybe they haven’t pulled in yet.”

“I got the phone call about ten minutes ago. SCAD isn’t a ten-minute drive away from here. If they didn’t bring her here, then where would they take her?”

“Are you insinuating they kidnapped her?”

“No, but if she isn’t here, then that’s the only explanation.”

Neither one of us speaks as he presses several keys on his keyboard. He lets out another sigh before pressing another set of keys.

“Arturo would not be happy to see how you’ve let the police force go. Between the harassment with the younger officers to the Emerald City Reapers running amok, your time is almost up if you don’t stop it.”

“I’m trying. It’s just hard when the entire new class is against our old school ways.”

“Well, you better fix it before I go to the higher ups with this. Or worse, the local news station. They would love to run a story on Officer Carter harassing a college student to spy on local businesses.”

“He’ll be on administrative leave for a month. I’ll have another talk with him after he returns about how things run around here, and if he isn’t on board, then he can resign.”

“Great. Now I’m going to find Savannah.”

“You can’t just walk around the police station unsupervised.”

“Can you pull up the camera feed on your computer?”

“Yes, why?”

“Then I’m not unsupervised, because you can watch my every move.”

I stand up and storm out of his office. Walking in the opposite direction of the main entrance, I stumble upon several closed doors.

The first two offices are dark and empty. The third one has a lieutenant sitting behind the desk, filling out forms. He looks up at me and scowls.

“Sorry. Wrong office.” I say before closing the door.

Down another hallway are a few doors. The first door on the left leads to an interrogation room, while the second door leads to an office that has a two-way mirror looking into the interrogation room.

The first room on the right side of the hallway is another interrogation room, where Officer Carter and another young officer are sitting across the table from Savannah.

They jump up as soon as I walk inside. Ignoring them, I head straight to Savannah. She’s rubbing her wrists and fingers.

Linking my hand with hers, I inspect her wrist. It’s red and angry, as if the fuckers had the handcuffs too tight.

“Come on. You’re coming with me.” I pull her up into my chest and wrap an arm around her waist.

She gasps. “What? Why? How?”

“I’ll explain later, but you aren’t even in the system. No one even knew you were here.” I exaggerate because I’m sure several people knew she was here, but the chief of police didn’t.

The officers get pissed. Jacob Carter walks over to the door of the interrogation room, preventing us from leaving.

“You can leave, but she isn’t. We still have questions for her.”

“The fuck you do. She’s coming with me, and if you have a problem with that, take it up with the chief.”

His jaw clenches.

“Oh, and by the way, your suspension starts now.”

I push past him and lead Savannah out of the police station to my car. As I open the door for her, she wraps her arms around me and hugs me.

Her normal vanilla scent is muted and mixed with something less floral.

She lays her head on my chest and says, “God, I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life. Jacob Carter arrested me in the middle of class. How dare he? Oh, God, I need to apologize to my teacher. I need to get my things.”

I wrap my arms tighter around her and let her voice her frustrations. After several minutes, I help her get settled into my passenger seat.

I crank the car, but stay parked. “So, your roommate Justine called.”

“Yeah, I hope it’s okay that I gave her your number. She was in the hallway when they were leading me to the police car, and I didn’t know if they were going to let me call you. You weren’t in the middle of anything, were you?”

“Your safety is my priority. I’m glad you told her to call me because the Chief didn’t even know they brought you in.”

We’re going to have to keep an extra eye on the younger officers because it’s clear that they know about Arturo and have their eyes set on us.

She turns in her seat to face me. “How did you get them to drop the charges?”

“There were no charges because you weren’t under arrest. I also reminded the police chief about who runs this town and if he doesn’t shape up, he will be replaced.”

Her eyes widen and her mouth falls open. “You can do that?”

“I can’t, but Arturo can. He has allies in very high places, including the Governor.”

“Wow.” she whispers as I drive to her dorm.

She picks at the fraying hem of her shorts. I have to fight the urge to reach over and stop her, but this might be what she needs to process her thoughts.

Her day didn’t turn out as expected and she probably has a lot on her mind. She already confessed to being embarrassed. That could be weighing on her, too.

I park in a guest parking spot and reach over to hold her hand.

She glances at me before turning her attention back to the hem of her shorts. “So…”

“So?” I give her hand a supportive squeeze.

Her voice is quiet. “So what happens now that I know about the Marinos’ secrets? Will I be scared into silence? Killed?”

“What?”

Did someone tell her Arturo will kill her? He’ll have to kill me first.

I shake my head. “No. You’re mine, and we protect our own.”

She stares at me. “I’m yours?”

“Yes. You are mine. And only mine. No one else will get to know what it’s like to be with you. No one will feel your pussy tighten around their cock as you come.”

“But that won’t stop them from coming after me.”

“Yes, it will. Besides, I’d kill anyone that tries to harm you.”

She sighs and moans, making my dick harden.

Shaking her head, she asks, “What is wrong with me?”

I squeeze her hand. “Nothing is wrong with you.”

“The idea of you killing someone for me doesn’t scare me like it used to.”

I wait until she’s looking at me to speak. “It was never meant to scare you.”

She shrugs. “Well, it did. You are very intense pretty much all the time.”

“Sorry.” I grunt out.

She closes her eyes and laughs. “No, you’re not.”

I join in and laugh along with her. “You’re right. I’m not sorry.”

Her laughter dies down. “Can I ask you another question, and if you don’t want to answer, I won’t ask again?”

“Uh, yeah.”

What could she want to know that I haven’t already told her?

“Before we met, you used to come into the museum all the time. There was one night you came in right before we closed. You looked sad and traumatized and had dried blood on your hands. What happened?”

I try to think back to what was going on before I met Savannah. Francesca was kidnapped and shot, but I didn’t get blood on my hands. She was taken to the hospital.

When would I have gone to the museum with bloody hands?

Jax. There was so much blood when I was dealing with him.

“You must be talking about the night I had to bandage Jax up.”

“Who’s Jax?”

I take a deep breath and tell her about Jax and his family and how they kidnapped Francesca. I explain every event thereafter and how it eventually led to Rhett killing Jax and Francesca, wanting to attend his funeral.

If Savannah’s going to be a part of my life, she deserves to know everything that has happened, so she isn’t blindsided.

“Do you want to head inside? I can order some Chinese for lunch?”

“That sounds incredible.”

Surprisingly, Justine isn’t home. She might still have classes for the day.

I place our lunch order and take off my shoes before joining her on her couch.

“What’s your backstory? Are you an only child, or do you have brothers or sisters? I feel like there’s still a lot I don’t know about you.”

“I have three brothers and two sisters. I’m the oldest at twenty-five years old. My brothers are twenty-three, twenty-one, and eighteen. My sisters are twins and are fifteen years old. Mom really wanted a girl and after four boys, she got her wish.”

Savannah chuckles. “Yeah, she got her wish times two.”

“She loves it. The three of them are best friends.” And probably always will be.

“Where are you from?”

Have I really not told her where I’m from? We’ve had so many conversations late at night. We’ve talked about our favorite foods and colors and our life dreams. She’s told me about her past, but I guess we skipped over my history.

“Minnesota.”

“That’s a long way from home.”

I nod slowly. “It is, and I miss it, but I love hockey more.”

“I bet your family misses you.”

Without thinking, I blurt out, “Would you like to come over and look at some pictures?”

“I can bring our lunch to my place. You can stay the night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, besides, it’s about time you really met my friends and experienced life as an NHL player’s girlfriend.”

She glances around her living room.

“Only if you’re sure.”

“Of course I am, besides you are staying at my place while I’m out of town. One extra night won’t hurt.”

“I am? I thought that was only for the last away games.”

“No. That’s every time I’m away. If you can’t travel with me, then you are staying in my apartment.”

“Uh, okay.”

She doesn’t sound so sure. Does she not like my apartment?

Someone knocks on the door.

“I’ll get that. You can start packing your bags.”

She gives me a quick kiss before disappearing through her bedroom door.