In truth, he couldn’t be happier for the guy. A little jealous, maybe. But happy as hell.
You can still have that, too, you know. Just have to be open to the idea, that’s all.
The thought no more rang through his mind when Cera’s beautiful face flashed before him. Without conscious effort, he slid his cursor to the file containing a digital scan of her driver’s license.
He studied her picture, his chest tightening as he imagined someone as sweet and young as her being forced into such a shitty situation. He’d seen it time and time again.
Some fucked-in-the-head bastard sees a pretty girl and becomes obsessed. He might know her. Might not. They may have dated in the past, or she could’ve done something as simple as smiling at him as they passed each other on the sidewalk.
Guys like the one messing with Cera played by no rules. They didn’t follow the law or worry about which lines to cross. They saw; they obsessed. Plain and simple.
And sometimes, if they weren’t stopped in time,they killed.
Like so many times before, his youngest sister’s smiling face filled his mind’s eye. Ivan’s eyes burned at the corners, and he had to blink quickly to keep the words on his screen from becoming distorted and blurry.
I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him, Nina. So fucking sorry.
Running a hand over his face, Ivan took another sip of beer and cleared his own personal ghosts from his head. There was still a lot to investigate where Cera was concerned, and revisiting the past wasn’t going to do him—or her—any good.
Accessing the file from the Durango PD, Ivan gave it the same attention as the other. Once again, he found everything to be exactly as she’d stated.
Some prick really had been stalking her. The cops in those other cities really had lacked the evidence to do much about it. Although, after giving each file a second reading, Ivan concluded they could have done more.
We can always do more if we’re willing.
It was one of the reasons he and Jax liked the P.I. business. There were still rules to be followed but not nearly as many as the police. But it was a hell of a lot easier for guys like him to break those same rules.
With that, he and Jax were on the same page. If it came down to their safety or the safety of others, all bets were off. Rules or not, legal or not, if some idiot came at them or those they’d sworn to protect, you’d better believe the gloves came off.
Same thing was going to happen once he caught up to the man he was after now. Because Cera was right. Their guy was escalating, and from what he’d seen in her motel room, he was moving closer and closer to a physical attack.
Touch her and you’re a dead man.
Ivan didn’t bother wasting time analyzing the lethal vow, because he didn’t have to. Cera wasn’t his, and he wasn’t pretending differently. What she was, was his client. One he’d promised to keep safe.
It was too late for his sister, Nina. Too late for his unborn baby. But Cera was still here. She was alive and breathing, and he’d do whatever it took to keep her that way.
For her.
For his daughter.
I do this for you, Nina. Always for you.
Saving the files he’d already gone over into a new, separate folder on his desktop, Ivan continued with his search on Cera’s background. Not because he didn’t trust her. So far, she’d given him no reason not to.
He’d learned long ago, the more you know about both sides of the ring, the better prepared you are to fight. And when it came to protecting the innocent, there was no such thing as being too prepared.
Over the next two hours, Ivan learned all he could about sweet, troubled Cera. Starting with her birth certificate, he gave each new document he uncovered the same in-depth read he had the others.
A birth certificate from the state of Missouri. Vaccination record from both Missouri and, in her older teenage years, the state of Kansas.
Cera had two high school transcripts. One was from a small rural school in Wichita, the other in Oklahoma City. But what Ivan found odd, was the one in Oklahoma stopped when she was seventeen.
He looked again, but the second search rendered the same results. From what he could see, Cera never graduated from high school.
A few clicks later, Ivan found a copy of a G.E.D. certificate in her name. In and of itself, a G.E.D. was no big deal. Loads of people either chose to go that route or, for whatever reason, were forced in that direction.
Cera, though…Cera hadn’t gotten hers until she was twenty-two. Four years after she should have graduated high school.