Free Slow Release (Ebony and Ivory Book 1) by Suzanne Steele, Stormy Dawn Weathers Page A

being selfish by keeping her here when I knew she was in danger of being hurt by one of my enemies?
    As much as my head told me the safest thing to do was to send her back to Haiti and get her out of harm’s way, my heart wasn’t listening. Just the thought of not having her body next to mine in bed at night caused a violent twisting in my gut and was more than I could tolerate. I would just have to protect her here.
    This was the first time I could ever remember being in physical pain at the thought of losing a woman. I was a man undone. I didn’t care how crazy I had to be to keep her. I would do whatever it took.
    If it meant I had to stalk her myself, obsessing over her and never letting her out of my sight, then fuck it. I was crazy. I knew in my soul that as crazy as I was to keep her, I would be even more insane if I ever lost her. The more I agonized over my decision, the more I realized the crazed stalker and I had much more in common than I cared to admit. We were both obsessed with the same woman, and we were both willing to cross the lines of sanity if it meant having her.



Chapter Twenty
    Skye
    There was something I didn’t reveal to Damon and Jerome when we had the discussion in the office, and the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. I still had a father out there somewhere who’d gone AWOL. What if he got wind of my newfound success and decided he wanted a piece of the pie?
    When you came from nothing, money did strange things to a person. It changed you, and no one was immune to the lure of it. It could be for better or worse, but once you were tempted with the prospect of attaining it, you changed. If you came from poverty, it was easy to justify using deception to obtain it. My father had never been a man of high morals, and I wouldn’t put it past him to try and strong arm me to gain access to my newfound success.
    I wasn’t exempt from the changes success brought; I can already see how money has changed me. I made a conscious decision to let it change me for the better by helping my mother and younger brothers and sisters.
    What if my father got wind of just how well off my boyfriend was, and he planned to use me to get to Damon’s millions. The thought that I could be the cause of Damon being in any kind of danger appalled me.
    I wasn’t in the habit of using anyone to get anything. I had worked for a living all my life. I didn’t mention my biological father was a possibility because, to be honest, it was embarrassing.
    The whole time I was growing up, he treated us like we were dirt. I remembered how, when he was there, he drank away every dime of money my mother made cleaning rich people’s toilets. I could still vividly remember all the nights she had to go down to the bar and pull him off some hussy he was buying drinks for with her hard-earned money.
    The best thing he had ever done for us was walk out of our lives. If he was trying to come back for greedy gain, slithering around like the snake he was, I was going to be beyond pissed.
    I was embarrassed that my worthless father might be the one causing problems. Even though I was ashamed to tell Damon what I suspected, I needed him to find out where my father had gone when he disappeared. I felt like I was forced between two decisions, and neither was one I wanted to make.
    I would keep my suspicions to myself for now and try to do some research on the Internet. The last thing I wanted any man to think was that I was using him for money. I would get a job flipping burgers before I gave up my dignity. I have always been independent, and loving Damon wasn’t going to change the way I was innately wired. If I could find out where my estranged father was without Damon’s help, I would. I didn’t want him sinking thousands of dollars into hiring a private investigator if I could do it by myself.
    The Internet was a wealth of information, even for a novice such as myself. The biggest problem was that it was entirely possible