Free Criminal Love: A Billionaire Romance by Monique Hodge Page B

do
without the rush). If Hadley had any say in it she wanted to make sure this was
their last heist because they succeeded past their wildest expectations, not
because they were arrested or killed.
    She thought of
her nieces. She thought of them having to visit their mother behind bars. She
thought of her twin brothers, still being home schooled but forgoing homework
in favor of petty crime. Even if she couldn’t save her parents and sister, she
thought she might still be able to save them.
    Only now Hadley
had doubts this heist would succeed, and they were still barreling towards the
end as if it were any other heist. If the last five days had taught Hadley
anything, it was that they had finally met their match.
    Her dad stood in
front of the cabin door. “Let’s get going,” he said. “Piper will pursue the
target directly; Tanner and Tucker will make sure she isn’t followed; your mom,
Hadley, and me will tail Piper and the target to his cabin and sneak in when he’s
distracted.”
    Everyone in
Hadley’s family gave an affirmative. They were a unit, except for Hadley, who
followed her family out the door reluctantly. Piper winked at her sister as the
door shut behind Hadley, holding the dress in hand, ready to steal some time
with Jackson before she had to hold a gun to his head.
    Hadley didn’t
like how jealous she was that Piper was the one to be able to seduce him. That
she would even be able to do it.
    But she was also
glad.
    I don’t know
if I could handle the way he looked at me, Hadley thought.
    She made her way
to the upper deck to situate herself in one of the hallways. Because she was a
good shot, and she looked less suspicious than her hardened parents, she was to
be Piper’s primary backup. As it was, she could see the door to Jackson’s suite
from where she stood. She could almost imagine herself walking through those
doors…
    Hadley
absently-mindedly read her family’s chatter in their group message on her
phone. She saw Piper’s eagerness as she wrote of her approach to Jackson. Her
brother’s observations of the two as they spoke.
    She wanted to be
down there in the slinky dress, even though Hadley knew she hadn’t worn a dress
in her entire life.
    A passenger in a
tulle gown passed by, likely heading to the same Cabana bar that Jackson and
Piper were probably dancing away in. Hadley frowned at the woman’s perfect
kinky curls and dark skin. She was the sort of woman Jackson probably went for.
The woman gave Hadley an unimpressed roll of the eyes as she passed.
    Hadley knew she
stood out, and not just amongst the intricately carved wooden walls of the upper
deck. Nor just on the cruise ship. Hadley didn’t belong anywhere, even in her
own family. She picked at her denim shorts. At college she was just a normal
girl studying for the MCAT, but college was temporary. Her real world was
entirely different.
    Her gun was
strapped to her holster and it was rubbing the skin underneath her blouse.
Hadley scratched at her side, wanting to remove it from her body. The gun was
hidden from view, but she worried that someone on the ship, maybe one of the
two bodyguards or Jackson himself, would realize she was packing heat.
    Hadley read
about Piper’s ongoing seduction with a pang in her heart on her cellphone’s
screen. It was almost time. Everything could change in an instant, and they all
had to be ready… including Hadley.
    “I’m in
position,” she typed. “Nobody but passengers on my end.”
    Her father gave
an affirmative and she read the rest of her family’s final messages as they
started to prepare for the ambush. It all appeared to be going according to
plan until Piper’s new message arrived on the screen.
    “He doesn’t
like me,” Piper wrote. “He said he was hoping for someone else.”
    Hadley’s
brothers responded with an ill-timed LOL , and she felt a great burden
lift off from her shoulders. Although she couldn’t help but wonder who Jackson
was waiting for.
    Me?