by Sybil Bartel
When I didn’t answer him, he began yelling at André.
“I paid double your fee to bring my daughter home safely, not beaten and bruised! What the hell kind of organization are you running here?”
“Mr. Loic,” André began. “I’m going to respect the fact that you’re upset, but I will not stand here and allow you to insult, nor bring into question, my business practices.”
My father pointed at me. “Your practices should be in question when my daughter comes home looking like that!”
Ty lost it. “What the fuck did you think would happen when you got in bed with the cartel? That your family would be safe? You’re lucky she’s alive.”
I placed my hand on Ty’s arm. “It’s okay.”
“It’s okay?” my father roared, glancing at my hand before looking back at me with pure rage. “You spend five minutes with this Neanderthal and you’re defending him?”
Ty’s hands fisted. “You watch how you speak to her.”
“Mr. Loic,” André warned, stepping toward him. “We’re taking this downstairs. Now.”
André took my father’s arm and everything went to hell.
My father swung at André, Tyler grabbed my father from behind and a woman flew into the apartment followed by a young boy and the tattooed bodyguard from the club.
“Tyce Armistead Asher!” the woman yelled, throwing herself and both of her fists at Ty. “How dare you!” Tears streaming down her face, she hit him. “How dare you.”
The impact of her fury and grief made Ty step back. “Mercy,” he snapped, wrapping his arms around her. “Calm down.”
The little boy, barely holding in tears, was furiously signing, what happened, over and over.
“I thought you were dead,” Mercy wailed, hitting him again before locking her arms around his neck.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ty swore. “Calm the fuck down, Mercy. You’re upsetting Nash.”
Mercy.
Nash.
My father yelled at André, Tyler told him to calm down, Ty barked at the woman—it all faded to background noise.
Mercy and Nash.
The first two names Ty had said after he’d come to in the ambulance and made that phone call.
Still holding Mercy, Ty went to one knee and held an arm out for the boy. The boy with brown hair and big brown eyes.
My heart constricted and my stomach bottomed out.
Mercy and Nash. They were his.
I wasn’t his.
I didn’t belong to that man.
They did.
They were his family.
He’d lied. He’d lied to me. He had a family. A family that was grief-stricken and terrified by his absence. And he had a little boy who he signed to. That’s how he knew sign language. That’s why the one time he’d signed to me it’d been so quick and proficient.
He had a son.
My head spinning, my arm throbbing, feeling hot and cold all at once, I slipped away.
My feet moving, my heart crushed, no air in my lungs, I made my way out to the hallway unnoticed.
Then I made it down the corridor.
My hand pushed and pushed at the elevator call button.
Everything falling in, I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t. Tears mixed with every single thing that had happened since I’d stepped out of my father’s Town Car, and it was too much.
I needed to get out of here.
I needed to get away from him.
I needed to breathe.
I needed to—
“Ma’am, wait.”
The elevator door slid open and I choked on a sob as I stumbled inside barefoot.
Barefoot.
Still without shoes, in borrowed boxers…
Oh God.
The man attached to the voice who’d been behind me stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed. “Miss Loic,” Tyler began, holding my purse out to me. “We recovered your bag, and there’s a replacement phone in there for you as well.”
Another sob escaped as I blindingly hit the lowest call button inside the elevator. I didn’t care about my purse or my phone. I didn’t care about any of it. Ty had lied to me.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay.” Tyler took my injured arm.
Pain exploded and I cried out.
“Whoa, babe.” Letting go of my arm to take my elbow, Tyler frowned. “Have you had this looked at?” He gently touched the inflamed skin around the wound. “This looks infected.”
Ty had a son. He had a son. “Take me home,” I rasped, feeling dizzy.
“Okay, no problem. But let’s get Talon to look at this first.”
“No.” Oh God, I’d slept with Ty. “Take me home or I’ll call a cab.”
“Ma’am,” Tyler admonished. “Your skin’s feverish and the wound’s inflamed. With all due respect—”
“NO.” I spun on him and opened my mouth to let him have it but the dizziness reared up and grabbed me. Stumbling back, my vision tunneled. “No,” I barely managed as spots danced in front of me.
“Oh, shit.” Tyler dropped my bag and reached for me just as my knees gave out.
It was the last thing I remembered.
LYING IN MY BED, SHE looked too small and too damn vulnerable. “How long’s she gonna be out?”
Talon glanced at me over his shoulder. “Trauma doesn’t come with an instruction manual.” He took her temperature again. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened.”
“You know as much as I do.” I was never gonna tell a soul what had happened to her at the hands of that sick fuck, Dante. If she wanted to say shit to anyone, that was her prerogative. “Tyler said she passed out in the elevator. He called you, then called me, and we brought her here. You showed up, stuck her with a needle and now she’s still not waking up.”
“Jesus Christ, Trigger. I gave her antibiotics. The wound on her arm’s infected. I wasn’t just stickin’ her to stick her.”
“You better not have been,” I warned.
“Or what?” Talon chuckled. “You gonna fight me?”
“Fuck you. Make her better.”
His expression sobered. “Workin’ on it.” He studied me a moment. “Heard you took out half the local cartel to bring her home.”
“You heard wrong.” I didn’t even put a dent in the cartel’s numbers.
“This gonna come back to bite you?”
What did he care? “No.” Maybe. Who fucking knew? There was a captain left alive and a couple of caretakers on that island I never laid eyes on, but that didn’t mean they didn’t see me.
Talon nodded slowly before looking back at her. “Antibiotics are kickin’ in. Fever’s coming down.”
Good. “When will she wake up?”
He looked at me again. “I’m only gonna ask one more time. There anythin’ I need to know about besides her arm and her bruised face?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Inhaling, Talon stood and tipped his chin at the supplies he’d left on my dresser. “Antibiotics startin’ tomorrow, make sure she takes them. Change the dressin’ a few times a day. Wash your hands and use the antibiotic ointment. Don’t let the wound get wet till it starts to heal. A couple days at least. Give her Advil for pain if she needs it.” He looked at me. “And take her in immediately if that fever spikes or isn’t gone by tomorrow. Don’t fuck around. You don’t want her gettin’ sepsis, you copy?”
“Yeah, I copy.”
“Good.” He slapped me on the shoulder, then smiled his pretty-boy smile. “Who would’ve thought Trigger’d land himself a Loic.” He paused for effect as his grin amped up. “After he threw her overboard in Key West.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled.
“No fuckin’ way. Next to Rower and his viral video with a certain Hollywood bombshell, this shit is gold.”
Rower was Talon’s nickname for Tyler, and I was insulted as fuck. “I’m nothing like Tyler.” I didn’t do shit that made me fodder for the paparazzi.
“No fuckin�
�� kiddin’.” Still smiling, Talon grabbed his medical kit. “Keep it real, Marine.”
Whatever the fuck real meant. I tipped my chin, and Talerco walked out.
I pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat.
Then I stared at her.
Real wasn’t a classy as hell woman in my bed, a bunch of dead cartel fucks, and a pissed-off banker with more money than God who wanted his daughter back.
But here I was.
In the thick of all that real.
MY HEAD SWIMMING, I OPENED my eyes.
I smelled him before I saw him.
His soap, his cologne, the slight smell of smoke, it was all over the covers surrounding me.
Then his voice blanketed me in longing. “How are you feeling?”
Heartsick and horrible. “Where am I?” I knew where I was. I just didn’t know if they were here also—his family. The woman who should be in his bed instead of me.
“My place.”
The bed shifted, and I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
I turned my head to look at him.
Oh God. Why did he have to be everything I’d ever wanted?
Waning twilight cut sharp angles across his strong features and bare chest. Lying on his side, his head propped on one fist, his dark eyes bored into mine. “Hey.”
“I shouldn’t be here.”
Inhaling, he drew his eyebrows together, but he didn’t deny it. Instead, he rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling. “You changed your mind.”
I fought not to lash out at him in anger and hurt. “That’s irrelevant.” I didn’t have a wife and child.
“Right,” he clipped, rolling up and out of the bed in one graceful movement. “Fucking perfect.” His muscles flexing and bunching, in nothing but formfitting boxers, he stalked to a dresser and wrenched a drawer open. Riffling through it in anger, he yanked clothes out and threw them on the bed. “Get out of that dress.” He practically sneered at me. “Or don’t.” He turned toward the door.
I lost my tenuous hold on what little dignity I had left and raised my voice. “You don’t get to be angry at me.”
He spun. “Don’t I?”
What the hell? “I didn’t do this. You did.”
“What did I do?” he demanded. “Besides get you out alive and save you from being raped? What did I do, Ludeviene?” he bit out, enunciating each word.
Anger squeezed my throat and burned my eyes with impotent tears as his words replayed in my head like a cruel joke. You’re it for me. You’re it for me.
“I’ll fucking tell you what I did,” he continued, raising his voice when I said nothing. “I laid my fucking heart at your feet. That’s what I did!”
I didn’t think I could break any more, but I did. “You lied to me.” My voice broke. “You lied about everything.”
Throwing his hands up, he yelled, “What are you talking about?”
“You’re married!”
“What?”
“Mercy and Nash,” I reminded him, choking on their names, horrified that they could be here in this house right now.
His hands went to his hips, and for one impossible moment he looked at me like I’d lost my ever-loving mind.
Then, calm and controlled, his voice low, he spoke. “Mercy is my sister. Nash is my nephew.”
My heart stopped.
Then started again.
I rolled to my side and burst into tears.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered a second before the bed dipped and impossibly huge arms snaked around me. Careful of my wound, he pulled my back to his chest. “Is that why you walked out?”
Crying, horrified, relieved, embarrassed, I couldn’t speak. I nodded.
His breath touched my ear. “You promised me words.”
“I can-can’t,” I cried.
His arms tightened. “Can’t what?”
“Give you words.” I just wanted to cry.
“All right, sweetheart.” He kissed my shoulder. “It’s all good for now.”
I couldn’t stop the tears. “I don’t feel good.” I was nauseous and my head was pounding and everything felt shitty.
He reached behind him and came back with a water bottle. “Your arm’s infected, you passed out, you haven’t eaten, and you’ve been through hell. I’d feel like shit too.” He opened the water bottle and held it to my lips. “Drink.”
With a trembling hand, I did as he said because suddenly I was the thirstiest I’d ever been in my life. The water soothed my dry throat and helped to stem the tears. After half the bottle was gone, I handed it back. “My arm’s infected?”
“Yeah. Talon, a medic who served with Luna, came by and fixed you up though. You’re on antibiotics for the next week and we gotta change your bandage a few times a day. And no getting the wound wet for a couple of days.”
That was going to make showering hard, but it didn’t seem like I had a choice. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry I let that happen,” he said quietly, like he was admitting to a sin.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Inhaling, he held me for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m gonna make us some food, then we can talk about your father.”
I didn’t want to talk about my father. I wanted to sleep for week in this man’s arms and forget about everything. “Maybe.”
“Would you rather talk about the fact that you believed I lied to you?”
I turned my face into his pillow that smelled like him. “Not that either.” But it reminded me of his sister and his nephew and the torment on their faces when they saw him. “Where are your sister and nephew?”
“Back home.” He glanced at his watch. “Mercy’s probably at work.”
“What does she do?”
“Nurse.”
“Your nephew’s deaf?”
“Yep.” He kissed my cheek and untangled himself from me. “Learned ASL for him. How about you?”
I rolled to face him as he got up. “It was an elective in school.”
He smirked. “Must’ve been some school. I had a choice between shop and weight lifting.”
It wasn’t hard to see which he’d chosen. “I’m betting you took the latter.”
He flexed his arms as the corner of his mouth tipped up. Then he annihilated my heart. He winked. “Yep.”
A sudden rush of heat flushed my face and swirled in my core. “It works for you.”
He smirked, then leaned over the bed and kissed my forehead. “Stay. Rest. I’ll cook.” He turned to leave.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Pausing with his hand on the door handle, he looked over his shoulder at me. “For?”
“Putting you at risk, taking you away from your sister and nephew…” I took a deep breath. “Not believing you when you told me you weren’t married.”
For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he tipped his chin and walked out.
I WAS PISSED SHE’D DOUBTED me.
Logically I knew it wasn’t a stretch. We didn’t know dick about each other and Nash looked enough like an Asher to be mine. I got the stretch. I got her reaction to Mercy’s outburst. But I was still pissed she’d doubted me because I gave a fuck what she thought and I’d never given a damn what any woman thought about me.
But more than that, having her in my bed was bringing home the reality of the situation. I was fucking livid when she’d walked away at L&A. That shit had contradicted everything we’d talked about, but if I was being a fucking man, I’d admit all that shit was rash on my part.
There was a reason I didn’t keep a woman in my bed.
Especially at night.
Staring at the meager shit I had in the fridge, I sighed. I was going to have to tell her about the nightmares. Sooner rather than later. If she wanted to walk, it was better she did it now.
“Are you all right?”
Startled that she’d snuck up on me, I spun. “Yeah, fine. Why?”
Wearing the T-shirt I’d tossed on the bed for h
er, she glanced at the open fridge door. “You were staring into the fridge.”
“Right.” I half laughed and turned back to the task at hand. “Not much here, sweetheart. We’re going with what I got.” I pulled out eggs, a pancake mix I kept on hand for Nash and a couple apples.
“Whatever you have is fine. I’m not picky.” She stepped up beside me. “Can I help?”
As natural as if she’d been by my side for years, I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I got it.”
She rested her head on my arm. “I don’t mind.”
Inhaling, I set the shit in my hands down and pulled her into my arms. “I have something to tell you.”
She stiffened. “Okay.”
I unloaded. “I have nightmares. They’re not fucking pretty. It affects my sleep, and if you stick around, it’s gonna affect your sleep too.”
“All right,” she replied quietly.
I waited a beat.
She didn’t add anything.
I went for broke. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I shoot people. Usually it’s bad people. Before I worked for Luna, I worked for a bad fucking guy and if he or the other pricks who used to work for him were alive to tell about it, I’d be in jail a thousand times over. In fact, Luna sent me after you because of who I used to work for.”
“Why?” she asked simply.
I gave her the truth. “Because I know how to navigate the circle Dante traveled in.”
“The cartel?”
Fuck. “Yeah. And that’s all I’m ever going to tell you, because anything more would put you at risk.”
“Are you at risk now?”
I was shocked she hadn’t pulled away from me. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”
She looked up at me. “What does that mean?”
I paused, memorizing every gorgeous inch of her face before I lost her. “I covered my tracks. Nothing should come back to bite me.”
“And if it does?” No intonation in her voice, she asked as if she were merely curious.
“I have no regrets. I’ll pay my dues.”
“Am I in danger?”
“Not anymore. Unless your old man decides to come after you.” I half smiled.