Stepbrother's Debt Read online

  Biting into his pizza, he wouldn’t look away from the door. Luiz, Tonio, and Jake kept up the conversation, leaving him out of it.

  The moment she entered, Donnie tensed, and the conversation at the table went silent.

  He frowned. She wasn’t with anyone. Her fingers working on the catch of her bag, she pulled out a purse, going toward the line of sandwiches.

  “Where are her bitches?” Luiz asked.

  Donnie didn’t look away as she was shoved from behind by Chantelle and Leanne. The two girls were giggling, but Paige didn’t do anything. She grabbed her sandwich and paid for it at the counter. The woman looked at Paige with sympathy, and then he watched as his stepsister walked right out of the door. She’d not looked around for him, hadn’t told anyone about him.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Tonio asked.

  “I don’t think Paige is going to a problem for you, Donnie,” Jake said.

  “No, she’s going to be my problem all right.”

  Taking his pizza he made his way toward the door. He ignored the girls who stepped into his path. Donnie didn’t like how he was becoming intrigued by a girl he’d not known existed a day ago.

  Chapter Three

  Sitting outside turned out to be okay for Paige. Not many people were around because she’d picked the worst bench in the whole of the school yard. She sat on the cleanest side of the bench and pulled out her book, along with the sandwich she’d just bought. Opening up the wrapper, she started to look through her math problems, and it was like looking at a bunch of foreign letters. She just couldn’t make anything out. This was what it had been like for her throughout the whole of her math life.

  Her mother never helped, but her father was great at math.

  “What the fuck are you doing out here?”

  She looked up to see Donnie invading her space and sitting on the opposite corner of the bench. Swallowing past the lump in her throat she saw Luiz, Tonio, and Jake crowd around the table.

  Don’t look at them.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She took a bite of her sandwich, tugging the book closer to her, and trying to ignore the three scary guys who were intent on destroying her lunch.

  “You could have sat with us.”

  She looked up then. “Why?”

  Luiz chuckled. “Is she for real?”

  “What is your problem?” Donnie asked.

  “I don’t have a problem. When it’s warm outside, I eat lunch out here. I’m not doing anything different. You, however, you’re changing. What are you doing out here?”

  “Where are your friends?” Jake asked.

  She looked up at the least threatening of all the guys. “I don’t have any.”

  Paige had never been able to make friends easily. It wasn’t something she liked to advertise to the world.

  “None at all.” This came from Tonio.

  “What’s the problem?” She looked at all three of them before settling on Donnie.

  “We’re related.”

  “No, we’re not. My mom’s screwing your dad. We’re not related. What? You think because we share a home now that I’d suddenly start cramping your style?” She glared at him, slapping her math book closed. Any appetite she’d had disappeared.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Why? Because everyone else you knew would just be dying to get into your good books? Newsflash, Donnie. I’m not interested in becoming your friend or even getting close to you. I’m not going to use anyone, not even my supposed stepbrother.” She stomped toward the trash bin and threw her sandwich in the trash. On the way back, she snatched up her bag. “I’m not so desperate for friends or to be part of your world. I didn’t have a choice in moving in with you. I didn’t know about our parents, and to be honest, Donnie, I wish my mother had never met your father.”

  With that, she hiked up her bag, and started to walk away from him. She was so angry. Pissed off and angry.

  “Hold up,” Donnie said, chasing after her. Spinning on her heel, she glared at him.

  “I don’t want anything to do with you, Donnie Martinez. I’ve heard the rumors about you, and I just know they’re true. No ordinary family has bodyguards outside of their home. I don’t want to be part of this world. I don’t want to be living in your house. I don’t want any of it.”

  “You’re part of that world now.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m Paige Jones.” She held her hand out, pointing at herself. “I’ll never fit in your world, and I’ll never want to. My mom, she thinks she knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t have the first clue who she’s messing with.”

  “Is this what your father told you?”

  “My father didn’t tell me anything. He wanted me to get a college education, but he left without a word. It’s not like him at all.” The memory of her father’s absence brought tears to her eyes. “I’ve got school.”

  She stepped around him, taking deep breaths to stop the tears falling down her cheeks.

  I can do this.

  The rest of the school day went by uneventfully. She didn’t walk around looking for Donnie, nor did she go searching for him. In the library at the end of the school day, she was surprised when Chantelle and Leanne sat at her table.

  “Hello, stranger,” Chantelle said.

  Glancing around the classroom, Paige wondered why they were sitting with her. The teacher was talking to the librarian, and everyone else was talking amongst themselves.

  “What’s going on? Paige asked.

  Leanne chuckled.

  “We want to know why Donnie was talking to you earlier,” Chantelle said.

  This was one of the reasons why she wanted to avoid talking to Donnie or have anything to do with him.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, there has to be something. Donnie doesn’t go chasing after anyone, and yet he was chasing out of the lunchroom for you.”

  Gritting her teeth, Paige glanced down at her book. “It was nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing, and I want to find out what,” Chantelle said. “I want him, and I always get what I want.”

  “Look, nothing is going on between Donnie and me.” She laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. The last thing she ever expected was for her to be denying any association with the mafia prince. “I don’t know why he wanted to talk to me. You’ve got it all wrong.” The bell rang, and Paige packed away her books. She’d never been so thankful for the bell as she was in that moment. Grabbing her books, she made her way out of the room. She practically ran for the gates of the school.

  Keeping her head down, she started to walk in the direction that she did yesterday.

  “You’re a fast little thing, aren’t you?” Jake asked.

  She looked up to see Donnie’s friend standing in front of her. “Would you please leave me alone? I’ve got a year of school left, and I want to get through it without anyone trying to hurt me.”

  “No one is going to hurt you,” he said.

  “You don’t know that. There are two girls in my year who want Donnie.”

  “Chantelle and Leanne?”

  She didn’t say anything, simply stared at him.

  “Ah, yes, the two little sluts who love to fuck anything. We know about them.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” she said.

  He started walking beside her, which only served to annoy her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m keeping an eye on you. It’s what Donnie wants me to do.”

  “And you do whatever Donnie says?”

  “Pretty much.”

  She growled in frustration, trying to leave him several steps behind her. He didn’t slow down his pace, keeping up with her without breaking a sweat.

  At first, she ignored him, but she just couldn’t be rude.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Jake burst out laughing. “I wondered how long you’d take until you caved.”

  “I don’t like being rude.”
>
  “This situation is all new to you then?”

  “You have no idea. One moment I’m sitting in our ratty apartment, worrying about when the bills were going to come in, and now, my mom is talking about this guy, and we’re living there.” She glanced down at her cell phone to see she had a couple of hours before she was at the diner for work.

  “What happened to your father?”

  “I don’t know. Mom told me he left one day while I was at school.” She shrugged. “It has been hard. I guess she’s moving on.”

  “You don’t know anything about him or what happened?”

  “No, nothing.” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “Why are you asking?”

  “No reason. If your mother intends to marry Donnie’s dad, I just wondered how that worked with your father.”

  She didn’t speak for the last of the way into the front of the house. One of the guards nodded toward Jake. Paige saw Donnie, Luiz, and Tonio waiting, and all three of them were leaning against the car he’d taken to school.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,” Donnie said.

  Ignoring them, she made her way into the house where she heard her mother in a state she really didn’t want to. She was begging and screaming for him to fuck her harder.

  Rushing back out the door, she took a seat on the steps while the guys’ laughter drifted up. Holding her bag tight to her chest, she felt the sudden urge to cry.

  “I did warn you.”

  “No child should have to hear that kind of stuff.” The sounds were going to be forever burned on her eardrums. That was the kind of sound nightmares were made of.

  “You’re going to have to get used to those kinds of sounds,” Donnie said.

  She looked toward him. Opening her mouth to say something, she decided against it and just stared at the ground.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She gripped her bag tighter to herself, wishing for the time to pass.

  Dad, where are you?

  She didn’t want to give up hope. He was her only father. People who disappeared turned up eventually.

  Twenty minutes later the door opened, and Donnie’s father came out the door. He didn’t look like he’d just been fucking her mother. Without waiting for permission, she ducked under his arm, going into the house.

  Her mother was there, tucking her hair into a bun. “Honey, how was school?”

  “Fine.” She headed toward the stairs.

  “Paige, come and talk to me.”

  She turned on the stairs, looking at her mother. There was a time she’d have sat with her mother, talking for hours at a time. The pristine person that stood in front of her was no longer her mother. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

  Sharon tensed up but didn’t say anything as Paige walked upstairs.

  ****

  Donnie hung out in his room with his friends, and they were all making plans for the night. His father had given him the order to keep working on Paige. When he walked in the door, he’d heard her turn down the opportunity to talk with her mother. She didn’t want to be around the woman who gave her birth.

  “She doesn’t know her father is dead,” Jake said.

  “How did you find that out?” Donnie grabbed four sodas out of his fridge, tossing them around the room.

  “I talked to her about it. She didn’t have a fucking clue what her mother was doing. One moment it was the two of them, the next, it was the four of you. She’s shit scared of everything that’s going on.”

  Donnie let out a sigh.

  “She’s surprised me,” Luiz said.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never known a girl to turn down the chance to be with you. Even you have to admit, she’s a bit of a mystery.” Luiz opened his soda, taking a sip.

  Donnie couldn’t argue with Luiz’s assessment. Paige was a mystery to him. She didn’t expect anything from him, nor did she appear to want anything from him. “I don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” Tonio said.

  Donnie went to say something, but his cell phone ringing stopped him. He saw the call came from one of the guards on the front gate. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know who to call because we don’t have orders, but your stepsister has just left the house.”

  “What?”

  “I just watched her walk out without a care in the world. I’ve not been updated on my orders.”

  “I’ll handle it.” He needed to talk with his father. The truth was, he didn’t have the first clue what the real orders were when it came to Paige.

  “What is it?” Luiz asked.

  “Stepsister has left the house.” He walked out of the bedroom, aware of his friends following him.

  He found Sharon in the kitchen. She looked miserable, but it wasn’t his problem. This was the kind of life she wanted, not him. The woman in front of him had dragged her kid into the situation, and now Paige was making the most of a bad situation.

  “Where would Paige go tonight?” he asked, making her jump.

  “What?” Sharon looked at him, fear clear in her eyes.

  “Paige, your daughter, where would she go?”

  “Oh, I must have forgotten to tell her she no longer needed to worry about working. She works at the diner in town.”

  Donnie didn’t wait around. He left the house, going straight for his car.

  “Does she have a guard?” Jake asked.

  “No. I don’t think she has anyone tailing her.”

  “That shit is dangerous, Donnie,” Luiz said.

  “I know. It’s not my fucking fault.” Donnie turned the ignition over and pulled out of the drive. He knew the diner where she worked. It was the only one in town near where she lived. He’d been there a couple of times, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing her there.

  Why are you obsessing about her?

  He didn’t like how Paige was getting under his skin.

  None of them spoke while they rode toward the diner. He didn’t see her on the ride and could only imagine that she’d called a cab. Paige was turning out to be quite the independent little bee.

  Parking up outside of the diner, he saw her working already. She was wiping down tables, taking orders, and serving. There was a fake smile on her lips and Donnie was hit in the gut. He’d not seen her smile in the time he’d known her. Even her fake smile brightened up the whole of her face.

  Climbing out of the car, he made his way toward the door. He didn’t stop until he took a seat in her section. When she clocked him, she hesitated, dropping a glass of Coke that she held. She apologized and started cleaning away all the mess. He picked up a menu, glancing over it.

  Paige took her time to get to their table. Her hands were shaking when she finally did make it.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Why did you run out?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a job. I wasn’t going to be late.”

  “Look at me,” he said, snapping out the order.

  She glared at him. “What can I get you?”

  “You don’t need to work.”

  “I’m working because I like it. Are you going to order?”

  The silence stretched, and Donnie couldn’t believe it when his dick thickened underneath the table. He was getting so hot for his stepsister.

  We’re not related. I can get hot for her all I want.

  She’s sixteen.

  He was a patient person. He could wait.

  “I’ll have the cheeseburger with all the trimmings.”

  She wrote down his order, followed by his friends. “I’ll be back with your drinks.”

  Paige spun on her heel giving them the perfect view of her ass. Donnie noticed something else in that moment. Her work uniform molded to her body in sheer perfection. She had the perfect rounded ass that he wanted to sink his teeth into.

  “So, what do you have to do?” Tonio asked.

  “I’ve got to get Paige on my side and find out everything about he
r father that she knows.”

  “It’s going to hurt her when she finds out he’s dead.”

  Donnie didn’t like what he was doing. Paige was different and made him feel something, and that alone twisted his gut. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve not got a choice.”

  She came back with their drinks, leaning over the table to place his glass of Coke down. The uniform gaped open, and he got a good look at the curve of her tits.

  “I’m taking you back home.”

  “I don’t need you to do that.”

  “Here’s how it works, princess. I either take you home and to work, or you have a guard looking after you.”

  “I don’t need any of that. I’m happy to walk and do everything myself.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you want. We can fight this, or you can accept it.” He watched as she tilted her head to the side.

  “Fine, I’ll take a ride from you, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t take notice of me in school.”

  He and his friend laughed. “You’re trying to bargain with me?”

  “Chantelle and Leanne wanted to know why you were talking to me. I don’t want to have to deal with being the topic of conversation. You’re out of school in a couple of months. I’ve got a year to go.”

  “When do you turn seventeen?” he asked.

  “In three weeks, and then I’ve got another year.”

  “You know other girls would be bargaining for a chance to sit with me,” he said.

  “I’m not that kind of person. I don’t want or need attention.”

  Donnie didn’t want to agree with it. He didn’t see how he could bargain with her.

  You’re going to be tutoring her math.

  “Deal.”

  “Fine. I’ve got another five hours to my shift.”

  She left him alone, and Donnie couldn’t help but laugh. For an innocent she drove a hard bargain.

  “Wow, I have respect for her,” Tonio said.

  “You do realize she could know shit that could get her killed,” Jake said, bringing Donnie back down to earth.

  “I’ll handle everything.”

  It was what he did. He handled everything that was thrown his way.

  The rest of the night went by uneventfully. The diner became busy, but he and his friends refused to leave their position near the window. Donnie kept an eye on her, wondering what was going on in her mind whenever she served them. He couldn’t help but admire her curvy body.