Justice: A Billionaire Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

up with that."

Chapter Four
Riley
    I looked at my suit , which I hadn't worn fully in nearly a year, with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. After the physical ass-kicking Carter had put me through that morning, I wondered if I was ready to go back out on the streets yet.
    "Sweetie?"
    I turned and saw Mom coming up the stairs to the Bell Tower. Even though Sophie Bylur was in her late forties now, the practical side of me said that Mom was still a beautiful woman. "Hey Mom."
    "What're you doing?" she said, then saw me with my outfit. Different from Andi or Carter's, who favored color motifs that barely broke up the dark blacks and grays of their suits, mine was mostly color, although as a nod to Dad's insistence on stealth above all else, the majority of it was midnight blue. The speckles of white throughout the side panels and back were just part of what earned me my nickname of Blizzard . "Oh, I see. How are you feeling for tonight?"
    "Worried," I said. It's funny, but Mom is the one person in our household that I've never tried to bullshit or not tell the total truth to. With everyone else, there was always this sort of unspoken need to not show any concern or fear. But with Mom, I never even considered it. "Carter kicked my ass this morning."
    "I know, I saw," she said. When I blinked in surprise she laughed. "I can still move around silently when I want to, Riley. I figured you and Carter would have some honest conversation, and I didn't want to interrupt it. When I saw you struggling with the bar, I knew to stay back."
    Mom grew serious, not allowing me to respond. "I know you're worried. I was too the first time I ever went out on a mission. It scared the hell out of me."
    I'd never heard about this before, and set my suit down to listen more carefully. She had an intense look on her face that I’d never seen before, and I knew whatever she said next would be important. "After rescuing me, Mark and I were trying to just run from the Confederation when we got a call from Tabby. She'd been taken hostage, and was being held at a night club, the same club that Mark and I met at, in fact. We ended up saving her from six or seven men. I hadn't had any training yet, I wasn't in shape, none of it. But I still went."
    "That's because it was Tabby," I said. She and Mom had always been closer than sisters, and you could tell that the reason the Bylurs and the McCafferys still lived in the same house was because of them. "You would take on the devil himself for her."
    "And my family would be right beside me,” Mom reassured me. "What I'm trying to say Riley, is that despite Carter's misgivings, I know you. You're my son, and I know more about how you feel than perhaps anyone. You're a lot like me, and I know that your heart is in the right place. You'll do fine tonight."
    Mom gave me a hug, and I felt comforted. "Thanks, Mom. I'll do my best."
    "You better," she said. "I don't want you getting hurt before you bring your girlfriend by for dinner. I only talked to her for a little bit that night of the party, but she seems like a nice girl."
    "She is, Mom. And I know you'll like her too."

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    I was nervous a week later as I waited outside Janet's house in my old Mercedes. It was a refitted job, so the self-drive wasn’t part of the original setup. As such, the steering wheel and controls were still the classic size, although there was a computer shunt in the system that disabled them unless there was an emergency. I could’ve afforded a more modern car, hell I could have bought a brand new Bentley. But, as I was officially a Bylur, that meant I had to live like my family didn't have a billion plus dollars in our bank accounts.
    Not that it mattered. Sure, it took the occasional jump through an extra hoop to make it look legitimate, but I had never worried about it. Tabby and Patrick were great about it, and inside the house we lived as one large extended family. Carter and Barbara were as much my siblings as Andrea was.