by Evelyn Glass
“Angel,” Breaker cut me off, his voice kind but firm. “Give yourself a minute. You have the whole rest of your life to do this, but you need to deal with what happened to you first.”
I sat up on the couch, and stared off at the wall opposite us. He was right, of course. Funneling all my energy into the task force and getting rid of the last remnants of Thaddeus’ gang had been cathartic for me, but I knew I was carrying scars from what had gone down in that place, scars that I knew weren’t going to fade without time and energy and effort on my part. This had been a way to distract myself from the inevitable, from the knowledge that I would likely never walk the streets alone again without glancing over my shoulder to check on who was following me. Breaker put an arm around me, and pulled me down close to him, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
“Besides, I need someone to keep an eye on things for me,” he joked, and I managed a smile. “Make sure they’re not going to sell me out down at the station.”
I giggled, and lay my head against his again, relaxed. He was right. I knew a lot of people down at the station still didn’t trust Breaker as far as they could throw him, and they were probably right to feel that way. I know I would have, in their position.
As a way to avoid a prison sentence, he’d come on board as an informant, and was currently working his way into one of the gangs all the way across town, one that we were trying to investigate for sex trafficking based on the tips we’d received from some of the women my father had spoken to. After everything he’d seen– and all he’d seen me go through – he was as committed to taking down these sorts of criminal rings as I was.
His reputation preceded him, and he told me that he still had people asking him how he’d managed to “tame” me into the docile little creature that so many people had seen at the club. He found it hysterical, and would often recount the lies he told people to convince them of my obedience. I looked forward to taking them down, and showing them precisely what a good girl I was when I was slapping them in cuffs. It was the perfect life, for him, as he got to mesh the part of him that still craved a more deviant lifestyle with the one that didn’t want to end up in prison. The one that wanted to be with me.
“You’re right,” I sighed. “Again. Fuck, I hate when you pull off shit like that.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to take down every bad guy in the city once you’re better,” he assured me. “Your father would want that. He’d want you to take care of yourself first.”
“Yeah, and I doubt he’d want me dating an ex–con like you, so I don’t think we should linger on that thought too long,” I shot in his direction. He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.
“Well, pinch of salt,” he replied, and leaned in to kiss me. Our lips met, and I smiled into the embrace; even after all these months, he still made me burn like no one else on this Earth. He pulled back and smiled at me softly, his eyes gentle and deeply un–Breaker like for a second.
“I love you,” he murmured.
“I love you too,” I replied, and, not being able to resist, added his real name. “Jacob.”
“Ugh, don’t call me that!” He protested. “You know I hate it.”
“Then you should never have told me what it was,” I pointed out. He grabbed me by the wrists and kissed me again, and this time with a lot more heat. He pushed me back into the couch, pinning me to the soft cushions, and ran his teeth over my neck.
“I’ll teach you what to call me,” he warned playfully, and I wrapped my arms around him and happily lost myself to his touch once again.
That was the thought I allowed myself to get lost in as I sat and waited for Rose to appear on the other side of the glass. Breaker and me, me and Breaker. What we had found together. I had never thought I would fall for someone like him, let alone let myself move in with them and consider everything else that came afterwards – marriage, children, all the things my mother had been making noises to me about ever since she first met him a couple of months ago. I knew she approved, and that she thought I was getting a little old not to be pumping out a few kids, and now that I had found a nice man, well, what was stopping me? Her support was much appreciated, even if I couldn’t exactly tell her how we’d met or what he’d done before we got together.
I drummed my fingers on the desk in front of me, glancing around at the other visitors who were quietly waiting for their prisoners of choice to appear. If someone had turned to me and asked me why I was here, I wasn’t sure I could give them an answer. It wasn’t as though I was her sister, her lover, her mother, even her friend. I was the daughter of one of the many, many people she’d killed, and, honestly, I still couldn’t be sure why I gave her the time of day. But yet here I was, compelled once again to just keep going, to come back time and time again to try and find something with her. I knew no–one else was going to bother. Rose had refused to tell us anything about her friends and family from before she was taken, and none of them knew she was in prison. Just us, the people who’d put her there, had any knowledge of where she was these days.
The door at the other side of the glass clicked open with a loud, ungainly squawk, and a handful of women in matching orange jumpsuits made their way through. Rose looked over at me for a moment and paused, as though she wasn’t sure whether or not to approach me. But, after a couple of seconds, she did, taking her place opposite me and picking up the phone on her side of the glass. The guard at the door kept a watchful eye on her; if he had any idea what she was capable of, he would have known he was right to. I had assumed that she would end up in all kinds of trouble after she got locked up, but she had mostly kept her head down, much to my surprise. I picked up the phone, and spoke.
“Hey,” I greeted her, managing to put a smile on my face. “How…uh, how are you?”
“I’m okay,” she nodded cautiously. I could still see the burn scar on her hand where she had grabbed that white–hot door handle, and it made me flinch every time I remembered it was there. “How are you?”
“Yeah, pretty good,” I replied, the smile turning more genuine when I remembered the news I had to deliver to her. “Uh, actually, really good.”
“Oh yeah?” She cocked her head, her voice lilting slightly. I wondered how long it had been before she came here since she had a conversation that didn’t revolve around her murdering someone for cash. She still didn’t seem that used to this, and it was kind of endearing to watch a woman as powerful as her tiptoe her way around the conversation as though it was a bomb that was about to go off at any second.
“It was the court case this week,” I went on. “They all got put away. Every one of them.”
“Really?” Her eyes bugged out of her head. “All of them?”
“That’s right,” I nodded proudly. I had last seen her when I’d come to take her statement about the case, and I could see then that she was doubtful that it was going to turn out the way we both wanted. I supposed, that’s what happened when you spent the last ten years getting beaten down at every turn. She raised her eyebrows and looked down at her hand for a moment, as though trying to center herself.
“How long?”
“Probably more than a century between them,” I replied, and the two of us exchanged a look; I wasn’t sure quite what it meant, but I knew it was something. An understanding. Both of us had been through the same thing, to some extent or another, and now both of us were out the other side of it. Yes, we were at different sides of the glass right now, but she was getting better with every day that passed. She already looked younger, with the pitch–black dye growing out of her hair in chunks and her eyes devoid of the heavy make–up she used to slather on.
“That’s amazing,” she blurted, and immediately clamped her lips shut. She wasn’t used to expressing that much emotion. I paused for a moment, letting her gather herself again, before I went on.
“And it was…your testimony, that was a big part of it,” I went on gently. “Between that and my father’s old file, we’ve got enough to keep them
away for a long time, and hopefully take down some more people once we get our hands on them, too.”
She flinched at the mention of my father, but I didn’t. I spoke his name with pride, acknowledged everything he’d done without a second thought. Because he deserved it. I knew she was flinching more for me than for herself, worried that coming out with the word would be enough to send me down a spiral of sadness. But I had seen too much in the last few months to believe that sadness got you anywhere. I needed to act. It’s what my father would have done, and it’s what he would have wanted me to do. Rose smiled at me, nervously.
“That…that’s incredible,” she murmured, the crackle of the phone hiding the slight waver in her voice. “I wish I could have done this all sooner, Angel. Before everything with your—“
I held my hand up. I didn’t need to hear another apology from her. She had offered me enough over the course of her arrest and sentencing, and the mere fact that she had handed herself in and helped finish up my father’s work was enough for me to find some way to forgiving her. She stopped dead in her tracks, already knowing what was going through my mind. I couldn’t find it in my heart to hate her for all of this, no matter how justified I was in doing so. I’d felt the fear she had in the moment I woke up in that place. God knows what I would have done if I thought it would have given me some agency back. I didn’t even want to consider it.
“What’s been going on with you?” I asked, changing the subject. I placed my chin in my hand, and cocked my head at her, and for a second it felt as though we were far away from here – a coffee shop, maybe, or a bar, catching up like a pair of old friends. And yeah, as Rose began to outline the work she’d been doing in the prison kitchen, I knew that we would never have a conventional friendship. But what in my life was conventional now? Instead of the beat cop I’d been trained to be, I was heading up taskforces to end sex trafficking. I was dating an ex–con and police informant who seemed as set on ending the horrors in the darker corners of the criminal world as I was. And here I was, talking to the woman who’d killed my father, because I had found somewhere in my heart to put my forgiveness for her. Life went on, that was all I had learned. Just not always in the way you thought it would.
THE END
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HIS BABY’S KEEPER: Desert Marauders MC
By Evelyn Glass
I’LL KILL ANYONE WHO LAYS A FINGER ON MY DAUGHTER.
Someone hurt my baby girl.
And I’ll tear down heaven and earth to find out who it was.
But I need someone to watch Ella while I’m on the warpath.
And the sexy social worker fits the bill nicely.
Mona thought she was knocking on my door for a simple welfare check.
But when she stepped inside, she stepped into my world.
And the rules are a lot different here.
Because I won’t be content just to watch her care for my daughter.
Not until I have a taste of her for myself.
She can try and resist me with every excuse in the book.
I’m too rough.
Too brutal.
Too close to the edge of the law.
She may be right.
But none of that’s going to stop me.
I’m coming for what’s mine.
And I won’t leave until I’ve had her mouth.
Claimed her body.
And put a baby in her belly.
Chapter One
I ran my hands through my hair and inhaled deeply. I knew this part of the job was going to be far from fun, but I didn’t bet on it sending me into paroxysms of panic as soon as I was parked outside the door.
I reached for my phone, and found my fingers trembling a little—seriously? Was I being that much of a baby about this? I was supposed to have the safety of the kid at the forefront of my brain, not my own stupid sense of fear or panic. This was what I had trained for. I had nothing to be worried about—I just needed to pull myself together and get myself in hand. I dialed Amanda’s number, and held my cell to my ear, drumming my fingers distractedly on the steering wheel of the car.
I mean, it didn’t help that my first job had come on the same day that I heard that my apartment was being fumigated. I’d known it was coming, and yet I’d been too distracted to set myself up with a place to stay. I was looking at forking out cash for a hotel room, just because I’d been too busy to shoot off a text to one of my friends and ask for a couch. Idiot.
The phone rang a couple of times before she picked up, and as soon as I heard her voice down the line, I felt myself begin to relax. There was just something about Amanda, something that made me feel safe and at home and like I could take on anything. That’s what made her such a good supervisor, I guess, especially for work like this—if you couldn’t convince the staff that you were on their side no matter what, then the whole thing sort of went up in smoke, didn’t it?
“Hello?” She answered her phone expectantly, sounding at once as though she had been waiting for my call the whole day.
“Hey, it’s Mona.” I ducked my head so I could peer out the window and towards the house. “I just wanted to double-check that I had the right place. And the right details.”
“You know you can’t call me every time you go out on call,” Amanda reminded me gently, and I nodded, forgetting for a second that she couldn’t see me.
“I know, I know,” I agreed. “I just want to be sure. It’s my first time, cut me some slack.”
“Okay,” Amanda replied, and I heard her rustling about at her end of the line. “You should be at forty-eight Linwood Lane. The child you’re visiting is Ella, and you’re just doing a general check-up. The father has had some trouble with the cops over the years, and we want to be certain that she’s being taken care of.”
“Thank you,” I sighed. I knew I couldn’t put this off any longer. This is what I’d been trained for, and I couldn’t pretend that wasn’t the case any longer.
“Are you going to be okay?” Amanda asked, concerned. “If you feel like you can’t carry this out, I can find someone else who could cover—”
“No, no, I’ll be fine,” I cut across her firmly. I wanted to prove myself to her, and running away from my first assignment wasn’t going to make that happen anytime soon.
“If you’re sure…”
“What’s his name again? The father?” I asked, pinching my phone between my shoulder and my ear and gathering my stuff.
“Jasper, but he goes by Jazz,” Amanda answered, and I could hear the hint of incredulity in her voice—she wasn’t very good at hiding it, and I’d known her long enough to understand when she thought she was hearing something intensely stupid.
“Jazz?” I repeated. “Like the music?”
“Like the music,” she agreed. “He’s had some checks before, and nothing’s come of it—he’s been pretty good to the rest of the people we’ve sent down over the years, so you shouldn’t have a problem.”
“What’s his criminal record for, then?” I wondered aloud, then stopped myself. “No, I don’t want to know. I’m heading in now—thanks for talking with me.”
“Good luck,” Amanda replied, and I could hear her smiling down the phone. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was just relief that she wasn’t going to have to bail out one of her brand-new social workers on her first day.
I hung up the phone, grabbed my ID, and strung it around my neck. Okay, this wasn’t going to be that bad. He was a nice enough guy, by all accounts, and the little girl was meant to be a sweetheart. I just needed to get myself out of this damn car and go talk to them. So why did it feel as though my ass was pinned to the seat? I grabbed my clipboard and clutched it to my chest protectively, as though I could put that between me and the world and no one would ask any
questions.
It was only my first week on the job, and it had been a pretty steep learning curve. I mean, social work was never going to be an easy line of work—I had known that when I got into it all those years ago. And I had spent long enough tagging along with other social workers to understand that it was okay if things didn’t go exactly to plan as long as the kid was safe.
I was also reminded that not every parent was as open to doing shit for their child’s wellbeing as we were, and that was unnerving in and of itself. There had been some rough cases I’d borne witness to: fighting, screaming, swearing, parents high off their asses on various pills and potions. But this place—this was nice enough, middle-class and pretty and quiet. Not that that really meant anything, but hey, I could console myself with the fact that everything here looked completely normal.
Well, that was until I spotted the little girl clambering out of the window and sprinting off across the lawn.
I wasn’t sure that my instincts would kick in in the event of something bad happening—hell, I wasn’t even certain that I had any instincts in the first place. But as soon as I laid eyes on that little girl tumbling from the window and landing in a little pile on the ground, I was out of the car and on my feet, my blood pumping through my veins as I hurried across the street towards her.