Free Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) by Elle Aycart Page B

hers, the one that made his cock so hard he could hardly breathe.
    She was all that he would ever want in a woman. Except for that attitude of hers. That would ruin everything. It would drive him crazy. He could never trust her, and she would never be happy staying in, making a home for him. Her priority would always be her work. Her agenda. And he was playing with fire. She affected him just by being close to him. Not good.
    She must have noticed his frown, because she gestured at him and pouted. And the more he frowned the more she pouted until she just burst into laughter, never breaking a step.
    When the music ended, the flash mob dispersed as fast as it had formed. Traffic was still stopped, passersby clapping and whistling.
    Elle walked up to him. “Now let’s go, Borg. I’m expected at Rosita’s. We are a bit late, but I’ll change out of this uniform and into the one for Rosita’s in the car.”
    He reached for his pills. Man, he was so fucked.

Chapter Six
    “Two-minute sprint. Rev up to one-oh-five.”
    Joaquín Maldonado huffed, watching the small screen on the stationary bike, stuck on 85 rpm.
    “Come on, come on. Abdomen hard,” Lars, his personal trainer said. “Keep pedaling. Piece of cake.”
    Piece of cake twenty years and twenty pounds ago.
    There was a knock on the door and Nico, Maldonado’s right hand, walked in. “You wanted to see me?” he asked over the loud music.
    Maldonado nodded and motioned for Lars to leave.
    “Slow down but don’t stop pedaling or get off the bike. Your heartbeat would spike,” he warned. “You need to continue pumping oxygenated blood into your legs.”
    Like he could get off by himself with all the wires Lars had strapped on him to monitor his heart, and those damn shoes that locked into the pedals.
    “When you recover from the cycling, we’ll do some weights.”
    Damn Swede, fucking worse than the Gestapo.
    “One of these days I’m going to shoot him. Let’s see how he recovers from that,” Maldonado grumbled after Lars left.
    Nico smiled, but didn’t say anything.
    “Kill please that damn music,” Maldonado ordered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “It’s driving me nuts.”
    Nico turned it off. “Death metal. It’s a Scandinavian thing.”
    Who the fuck thought pedaling to death metal was a good idea? That shit didn’t even have a rhythm. Salsa, bachata, mambo; that was something one could pedal to.
    Wouldn’t it be ironic that after relocating to Florida for security reasons—mainly to avoid getting shot by any of the thousand hired guns of rival cartels—he’d die here of a heart attack, at the hands of this vigorexic asshole?
    “We have a problem. Police got a search warrant and have impounded the jet.”
    Nico stilled. “The jet is clean. I personally supervised it.”
    “I’m sure it is. What worries me is the why. Was everything taken care of?”
    By everything he meant everyone. Nico didn’t need explanations.
    “I was told so by your men. Pilot, driver, the chick at the airport. The middlemen were disposed of too. Everyone who could have tied Aalto to the jet is gone.”
    “Well, those morons missed someone. My sources tell me the police have a witness linking me to Aalto’s murder.”
    “Do we have a name for that witness?”
    Maldonado shook his head. “You know what to do.” That witness could not be allowed to live; Maldonado had enough headaches as it was without this new threat.
    Nico nodded.
    Damn Aalto and inflight snacks.
    He’d planned to make the politician see reason. If the old fart couldn’t be swayed with money, then he’d resort to blackmail and show him all the footage he had on his kinky extramarital escapades. Convince him how beneficial it would be to forget about his latest proposal and support a less radical path. Unblock the port. Then the bastard had choked on the olive he was eating when Maldonado had shown him the pictures.
    “Let me, boss, I got this,” Emiliano had said as the man was