by Nicole Helm
He looked exactly like Nina remembered him. Like he hadn’t aged, like he hadn’t been affected at all by jail.
He smiled as he approached. Nina no longer felt weird holding Cody’s hand. It was a lifeline and a reminder Ace couldn’t do anything to her in this moment. Because she had Cody.
“Well, son. Isn’t this a nice reunion?” His gaze turned to Nina. “What’s it been, Nina? Seven years?”
There were many plans in place. They’d gone over them ad nauseum last night. Pretend they were back together. Pretend Brianna didn’t exist. Pretend Cody didn’t know anything about why she’d left him in the first place.
So much pretending made her tired, but it was the only option. She shifted her gaze away from Ace and to Cody. Cody withdrew his hand, because he was acting like he didn’t know Ace had met with her all those years ago. But also pretending to Ace that he wasn’t affected by the pretend bombshell.
God, she wanted a nap. To be far, far away from Ace’s dark stare.
“Well, if you were trying to prove to me that you have power even locked in a cell, I’m not very impressed,” Cody said. He didn’t even sound rehearsed, though they’d all discussed their opening line, edited it until it felt perfect.
Or as flawless as it could be in this situation.
“Do you think everything comes back to you, Cody?” Ace asked, tilting his head and smiling at his youngest son. “That you’re singular somehow in my attentions, we’ll call them.”
Cody only smiled blandly. “I’m the one who put you here, Ace. I almost took your life.”
“But you didn’t. Because you don’t have it in you.” He sighed gustily, giving Nina a look that seemed to say kids these days. “Which is a shame. The only one of you brave enough to kill me is the only one fit to take my legacy and make it yours.”
“None of us want what you have, Ace. No one wants to be a murdering evil psychopath. So you’ll have to devise a new plan.”
“I haven’t killed anyone, Cody. I have no idea what I could have done from here to make you think I’m trying to prove I have power.” Ace held up his hands, some attempt to look harmless—honest. What a crock. Nina supposed it only failed because they both knew what Ace was so capable of. “But it’s so nice to see the two of you together. How did that happen?”
“You tried to kill her. I saved her life.”
Nina was amazed at the way Cody could sound smug, when she knew he wasn’t. Amazed that he could come off a shade too cocky and sure when she knew he wasn’t any of those things in this moment.
Ace’s expression went sheepish. “Sorry, son. I’ve been locked up for weeks now. Perhaps you should see a therapist. I hear they’re very helpful in curbing obsessive disorders. You and that little group of yours seem to have quite the obsession with me. What were they called? The North Pole?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. But delusions are your MO.”
“Now this one...” Ace turned his gaze to Nina and smiled again, ignoring Cody’s words completely. Nina had to fight the urge to look in the opposite direction from his empty, evil gaze. Ace scared her to her bones, but she had to face him. “Did she ever tell you about our little visit in Sioux Falls?”
“Of course,” Cody snapped. Again, Cody’s acting amazed her. He appeared both frustrated with the question and vaguely distrusting of her, all while putting on a certain veneer as if he was attempting to fool Ace.
Ace rested his chin on his palms and stared at Nina. Her hands shook, so she shoved them under the table where he couldn’t see.
“And what did you tell Cody, sweetheart?”
“I told him w-what happened. That you came to the coffee shop.”
“And when I told you to run, you ran. Right?”
Nina looked at Cody. She wasn’t nearly as good at acting as he was, but she hoped her true desperation at the situation translated to a despair about what Ace had just said.
“You see, unlike your brothers, Nina has always done what I told her to do. It’s why I like her so much. In fact, I downright approve of this little romance.”
“You like anyone you can control, Ace,” Nina shot back. Though she still shook, and fear still felt like ice in her gut, it also made her mad. This was the man who’d cheated her out of so much. “But I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“No, you’re not. Are you? But on the subject of little girls... I suppose we should discuss yours.”
* * *
“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” Cody demanded. Ace wasn’t giving him anything he didn’t already know, but Ace’s MO was also to wait until the person’s weakest point. Until everything fell apart. Then strike.
Cody had to fake falling apart, no matter how it galled him to act weak in front of his father. It was an act. Nina had told him everything.
He hoped.
“How’s Gigi?” Ace asked, changing the subject with an easy grin. “Jamison getting good and bonded with that girl who will come crawling back to the life she was born into once she has a choice?”
“Gigi will never crawl,” Cody replied, letting emotion bleed into his voice. His father would see emotion as a weakness, a place to strike. “Least of all to what we saved her from.”
Ace’s smile made Nina shiver next to him. “Come on. You know everyone comes crawling back to what they know. Everyone.” He turned his attention to Nina, studying, calculating.
Cody wanted to jump in front of her. He wished she’d never come. But here she was and they couldn’t give away more than they wanted to.
“Sweet, quiet Nina. What have you been up to?”
“Nothing,” she said a little shrilly. “Nothing except getting shot because of you. I killed your lackey, you know. He’s dead.”
Ace laughed. “If I knew what you were talking about, and I of course don’t, I’d have to make it clear how little I care what happens to any flunky who can’t follow directions.”
Cody watched his father’s expression carefully. Of course it was no outright admission of guilt, but what it did tell Cody was that screwing up was not Ace’s plan, as Cody had thought it might have been.
But it made sense the man Nina had killed had failed. Ace had to know how protected the ranch was. He wouldn’t have wanted Nina to move there.
Ace’s plan had actually backfired. He wasn’t quite so powerful from jail as all the Wyatt brothers half believed he could potentially be.
“Must be hard to find good help when your second-in-command gets blown to hell,” Cody offered. He tried not to relish the killing, because it would make him too much like Ace, but he felt no guilt for being part of the team that had set explosives that took down Tony Dean and a slew of Ace’s other top men in the Sons.
“Yes, isn’t it funny how you caused the death of numerous men with your explosives, yet I sit in here.”
“I find it hilarious,” Cody returned, flashing a grin. “Especially when I think about the condition of those twelve girls I saved from the men I blew up. The difference is I can admit that I did it, because the law is on my side, Ace.”
“The law.” Ace snorted derisively, shifting in his chair. Cody was getting to him. “Morons write laws, and mindless weaklings enforce them. That I raised such spineless, pointless fools is my greatest regret. I was created in the ashes, in abandonment, and I thrived in an unforgiving land devoid of law.”
Cody sat back while Ace went off on his tirade about how he built himself from nothing. How their mother had failed them with her inferior genes, and if he’d known he would have killed them all in the womb.
It was downright boring to Cody, slightly satisfying that he’d worked his father up into such a lather. But when he looked at Nina, he watched horror and pain chase over her face. That gave him no pleasure.
“Maybe you can wrap this up in under ten minutes. We do have things to do.”<
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Ace’s eyes were manic and bright, but when they landed on Cody that cold chill of foreboding that had preceded a beating in his childhood stole through him. Cody held as still now as he had then.
“When am I going to meet my granddaughter, Cody?”
“Never,” he spat.
It was when Ace grinned that Cody knew that momentary high of getting to his father had just cost him getting anything else. Because he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know about Brianna, or that there was a rift with Nina over it.
Cody stood abruptly. Better to get out than give his father anything else. Better to retreat and let his father think they were weak. “We’re done.”
“When did she finally tell you? After she got shot? When she had no choice?” Ace made a tsking sound. “Your mother tried that on me too. Look where it got her.”
Cody all but hauled Nina to her feet and started moving her toward the door. He wouldn’t let his father poison her.
“I’ve watched her all along,” Ace called after them. “I have baby pictures, Cody. Do you?”
Nina made a pained noise, so Cody basically pushed her out of the room, following quickly behind. She sagged against the wall, and he wasn’t in much better shape himself.
“He won. He did. He got the better of us,” she said, sounding close to tears.
“Maybe at the end, but we got what we came for.” He had to hold on to that instead of his own idiocy.
“How?”
“We know that he meant to kill you and take Brianna, but the man he sent failed. He failed. You and Brianna have moved to the ranch, which is ten times safer than anywhere else you’ve been.” He took her hands, waited for her to look him in the eye.
The blue of her eyes was vibrant with tears, and it made him feel even weaker himself. When he spoke, his voice was rough.
“You saved her, and yourself. That was no accidental scare tactic. Everything you did that day saved Brianna. If nothing else, you should take some pride in that.”
She swallowed. “How can I—”
“Baby, you are the reason you’re both alive.” Though he shouldn’t, though it broke something inside of him he’d been building for probably all these past seven years, he wrapped her in his arms and held her close. “Now I’m going to keep you both safe. No matter what.”
Chapter Eleven
The words echoed in her head as Cody went through the rigmarole of getting them back to his car. Nina felt mostly numb.
Everything Ace had said at the end erased any satisfaction in the little piece of information they’d gained. It even erased any pleasure she might have gotten from knowing she’d saved Brianna’s life.
Ace had pictures of Brianna. He’d watched them. Nina had left everyone she’d loved for nothing.
Nina buckled her seat belt in a painful fog. She didn’t dare look at Cody. She’d cry again, and she was tired of crying. Tired of hurting—physically and emotionally.
“I know what he said... I know that hurts, Nina,” Cody said as he turned on the car. “But he wants you to hurt. He’s twisting the knife on purpose, and he’s an expert.”
Cody gripped the wheel, and she could see the tension in him despite how gently he spoke.
“What would have happened? If I hadn’t thought I could keep Brianna a secret from him. What would we have?”
“You can’t think like that. Because it didn’t happen that way.”
Nina looked out the window, desperately blinking back tears. Just because it didn’t happen that way didn’t mean she didn’t ache over those what-ifs.
“I wouldn’t have finished my internship,” Cody said into the quiet. “I wouldn’t have worked for the past six years to dismantle the Sons, which means it’s very possible Ace wouldn’t be in jail right now. Gigi would still be stuck in the Sons, or worse, dead or trafficked. Liza and Jamison would sure as hell be dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Not for sure. But I don’t know the opposite to be true either.”
“My sisters won’t even talk to me.”
“They were there last night.”
“Because of you.”
“Because of you and Brianna. Don’t wallow. We don’t have time for it.”
She scowled at him. “Wallow? I lost seven years of my life I could have given Brianna, and she would have been safe. And happy. Don’t wallow? How dare you.”
“See, if you’re ticked off, you’re not sad.” He smiled at her, and there was a hint of the boy he’d been. A hint of what they’d had.
As much as she’d loved Duke and her sisters, she’d never felt like they fully understood her childhood pain. Looking back now, she realized they probably had, but they’d all been young and self-absorbed and sure in the belief they were unique and alone.
But Cody had always seemed to understand. After all, so much of his childhood had mirrored her own. Negligent, dangerous parents. Fear and death. Then a loving, overwhelming family neither of them could always believe was real.
“I just want to go home,” she said on a sigh, closing her eyes and wishing for some kind of respite from all this.
“You mean the ranch.”
She shifted uncomfortably. She already thought of it as home. Even though she hadn’t lived there growing up, it had been a part of her childhood. She liked Grandma Pauline cooking Brianna breakfast. She loved having the Wyatt brothers as part of the fabric of Brianna’s life.
But it wasn’t permanent, was it?
“I need ibuprofen, a nap and my daughter.”
“Will do.”
“Then what?” she asked, a fresh wave of exhaustion bringing back the threat of tears.
“We keep you both safe and see what we can do to figure out how Ace is getting messages to the outside. If we can cut him off completely, then we have nothing to fear.”
Nina didn’t say what she thought about that, because the truth was she’d always have something to fear. Jail wasn’t permanent and cutting off ways of getting messages wasn’t either. There was no conclusion to this that wasn’t temporary.
Except Ace dead.
She thought over what Cody had said—that he’d had a chance and hadn’t taken it. She wondered what she would have done in that position. Could she have ended someone’s life when it wasn’t strictly self-defense?
To protect her daughter from a lifetime of fear... She thought maybe she could.
Would Cody have done something different if he’d known about Brianna?
She pushed those thoughts away, because Cody had one thing right. There was no use wishing things had been different when they weren’t. There was no way to change the past. Only ways to survive the future.
She let herself doze, but an odd noise from the car woke her with a start. She glanced at Cody, whose face was grave.
“Don’t panic,” he said, his voice too deadly calm to be any kind of comfort.
“Don’t panic about what?”
“Someone’s tampered with the car,” he said through gritted teeth. “I need you to call Jamison.”
“Cody, I—”
He had a death grip on the steering wheel and she realized that, whatever was wrong with the car, he was fighting to keep it on the road. “Call. Now. Tell him exactly where we are and that someone’s following us.”
A million questions piled up in her brain, but she understood this was no time for them. She fumbled through her purse and grabbed her phone. She had Jamison’s number programmed in, but when she tried to dial the call failed.
“No service,” she said. “I’ll keep trying.”
“Text instead. It might go through eventually if you try to text. Give him our exact location, say the car has been tampered with, and a white Ford F-150 is following us. I can’t make out the plate or the driver.” He swore as the car jerked and made a
n awful grinding noise.
Nina did everything she could to type a clear message, but the car was shuddering now. Her fingers shook no matter how she inwardly scolded herself.
“Whatever you’ve got, hit Send and hold on.”
Nina did as she was told even though she hadn’t finished the car description. She hit Send, grabbed on to the arm of her seat.
Then they were flying off the road, and all Nina could do was squeeze her eyes shut and pray.
* * *
CODY FELT SOMEONE pulling at him. He heard the faint sound of a woman’s voice.
Nina.
His eyes were open, he thought, but he couldn’t see anything. Everything was a dim kind of gray. His head throbbed, and he realized the side of his face was wet. He was pretty sure with blood.
He couldn’t move his body at first. Couldn’t seem to fully find himself in the present moment. He tried to speak, tried to tell Nina he was okay even though it was very much not true.
He’d crashed. That much he could determine. He took stock of his body. He was still in the car, he was pretty sure. His body hurt, but nothing seemed broken. Except he couldn’t see.
“Cody. Cody. Please talk to me.”
“I can’t see,” he finally managed to say, though his voice was raw, and speaking sent a wave of pain through him. He leaned back and away from the air bag that had deployed.
“What?” she breathed. She had to be close. Her voice was soft but audible. He couldn’t see. He didn’t know where he was. But Nina was talking so she had to be okay, right?
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“No.”
She was lying. He didn’t have to see to hear it in her voice. “Nina.”
“Nothing serious. Nothing like... You’re covered in blood, Cody. You need help. Serious help.”
“I’m fine.”
“Cody, you’re not looking at me.”
There was no point trying to hide it from her. “My eyes are open, aren’t they?”