The Redemption Saga Box Set

by Kristen Banet

  And for that, Quinn felt the rage he knew was building in Sawyer, deep in her heart. He’d caught glimpses of it. Now he truly understood. How dare this Magi do this to his pack’s leader, his friend, his brother. Vincent belonged to him, not this other Castello. Vincent belonged to her.

  No. He wasn’t okay with all the pain Vincent felt just because his littermate walked free. Being born of the same bitch didn’t mean he should be allowed to have so much power.

  And Quinn was tired of having to tell Vincent that Axel didn’t matter. He had brothers. He didn’t need Axel.

  “You have a pack. Put that male out of your head before I start getting pissed off. I’m tired of him hurting you, Vincent.” The words were growled out and angry. “I told you. He isn’t your brother. I am. Jasper, Zander, and Elijah. We’re your family. Sawyer is your mate. Forget that male. He’s just the enemy.”

  And he’s a dead one. If Sawyer didn’t get the chance, Quinn decided he would. No male deserved the right to live if he could continuously inflict this sort of pain on those he was supposed to be in a pack with. No male deserved to have a brother or a son if this was what he did to them.

  “One day, I’ll get annoyed with you for giving me that speech,” Vincent responded softly. “But I’m always grateful for it.”

  “I just don’t understand why you hold on to him and you let him cause you so much pain,” Quinn said with exasperation. “I don’t understand, Vincent.”

  “I know.”

  Quinn frowned at Vincent’s simple answer, something about it annoying him. He reached out, took his cigarette and threw it. There was nothing it could set on fire. Then he took a handful of Vincent’s shirt and pulled, forcing the man to follow him inside, ignoring how the Italian demanded that he stop. He noticed that Vincent didn’t sublimate and get away, though.

  He dragged Vincent inside and straight to Sawyer.

  “This is yours,” he said. “You can deal with it.” Then he left Vincent with her and went to find Elijah, or anyone else. He heard her clear laugh as he walked away. His wolves wondered where he was going. He didn’t have an answer.

  He didn’t stop until he was in the back classroom. There was no Elijah, but Zander was there, grinning as he taught youths only a decade younger than the team.

  “And everyone, meet Quinn. He’s the one who brought the wolves.” Zander pointed him out. “What are you doing back here? Figured you’d play with the little ones all day since they want to play with the puppers.”

  Quinn managed an uncomfortable smile as everyone turned to him. “I got annoyed with Vincent so I left him with Sawyer. I was hoping to find Elijah, actually, so I’ll-”

  “Stay! You can help me.” Zander jogged to him at the door from the front of the classroom. He threw an easy arm over his shoulder. “They’ve been asking me about things, like what sort of shit we do with the IMPO.”

  “Oh. We catch murderers, and bust…white-collar crime, like fraud and things like that.” Five years before, he wouldn’t have even known what white-collar crime was. “Well, most of the IMPO does that. We’re Special Agents. We deal with serial killers and larger crime organizations. Sometimes a legend.”

  “See, Zander said the same thing, but you guys work with Sawyer!” one young female said, her eyes bright with curiosity. “She’s always been, like, a major badass but she never told us that she, like…killed people. That’s fucking wild.”

  He looked at his redheaded friend and raised an eyebrow. He only received a sigh in response. He focused back on the young adults. At their age, he was a father, or about to be. A few were his age when he’d walked away from his old life. They were so different from him. It was why he preferred the much younger children. He could relate to them, in a way. There was an innocence in the children that wasn’t in these older ones.

  “She’s a predator,” he started, hoping he could relate how it was working with Sawyer. “She’s focused on the hunt, whether it comes with a kill at the end or not. She’s intelligent and knows how to use every available resource for the task, including those around her. She’s dangerous, but she’s not. She knows when it’s called for. You all know she’s capable of violence. I’ve heard stories about what she’s done to protect you. So has Zander. Working with her is like watching it in action.” He saw the oldest look away, like he was remembering something. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

  “She dealt with some problems for me. More than once,” the young man answered.

  “She’s dealt with some problems for me too. More than once.” There was no shame in it.

  Zander nodded next to him, agreeing, but not jumping in.

  “She killed my father the night we met. He was beating me, I thought I was going to die, and she was suddenly there. In a matter of moments, I wasn’t being kicked into the ground and my father was…screaming for help. I didn’t get up for him. It all happened so fast. There’s no describing it, so I never tried.”

  Everyone turned to look at the oldest boy in the group now.

  “Liam, are you serious?” the young woman asked, her mouth gaping.

  “How do you think I ended up living with her and Charlie until I went to college?” he asked back. “I have a brother, but he’s not stupid enough to come back and bother me. She saved my life that night. I’ll never forget it.”

  Quinn smiled as the kids started talking about how they each met Sawyer. That was better. He didn’t think she wanted them to be talking about the darker spots of her life. She might have hurt a lot of people bringing this pack together, but in the end, this was her bright. This was her good half. The passionate, the fearsome, the protective.

  “Thanks,” Zander whispered to him. “They’ve been bothering the shit out of me, but I haven’t found a way to get them diverted off of knowing more about how she was Shadow.”

  “I wasn’t planning on diverting them. I was going to tell them until they were scared as shit of her, and make them regret it. And Sawyer would probably have been upset with me, but a healthy dose of fear is sometimes good.” He shrugged. “This was luck.”

  Zander began to chuckle, leaning into him to hide it from the teenagers.

  “Are you okay?” He didn’t like how Zander’s shoulders were shaking as hard as they were.

  “Oh, man, if only they knew what case we were on right now,” he finally said, gasping for air. “I shouldn’t be laughing, but it’s the only proper response to how fucked up it is.”

  Quinn looked around again. At Zander, at the teenagers, at Sawyer in the main room with Vincent. The Italian was finally on the ground, with a kid on his lap, smiling as the child appeared to be telling him something. Shade and Scout were keeping a close eye on their leader. Elijah and Jasper finally walked out of the back with Charlie, laughing about something.

  Sawyer’s new world. The one she made for herself.

  And they had to put the old one to rest. These kids wanted to know Shadow and they didn’t know she was in the building, right behind those dark eyes. Always just beneath the surface. Sawyer was hunting. When she looked up and noticed him, he caught just a flash of it, that focus, then she smiled and waved, the feeling disappearing.

  First they had to let Shadow rest. They had to make sure that persona wasn’t always haunting them in the back of her eyes.

  10

  Sawyer

  “Charlie, I need to talk to you privately,” she said quickly, grabbing him before he went anywhere else. Now that Vincent was settled, enjoying the company of a six-year-old on his lap, she could handle this. He needed to know that she was going to put protection on him. Just in case everything went sideways.

  “All right,” he responded, waving a hand. She thought they would go to his office, but instead, he led them all the way up to the old apartment. He locked the door behind them and pointed to the dining room table. It felt like old times, like she was about to be checked over and berated for getting as hurt as she did. It felt like the last time they had a private
talk about Axel.

  She sat down obediently. There were times she just wanted a father like Charlie, and she figured he knew that. She just wanted to be the young one, the one who needed some advice, some guidance, and even a telling off. She hadn’t realized how much she genuinely missed sitting at this table, knowing she was about to divulge a secret she could only tell him.

  He didn’t sit with her immediately. He wandered into the kitchen and got them each a glass of water. He pulled out two of her favorite premade salads, which surprised her, and brought everything over to the table.

  “We’ll feed your men and the children junk food,” he said casually, putting a salad in front of her. “But I’m trying to bring my weight back down and I know you don’t like eating trash.”

  “Worried about your health, finally?” she asked softly, watching him pop open the salad.

  “It’s about time. With you dealing with the IMPO, there’s only me and Liam here with all of these kids. He’s too young to be on his own, I think. I never had kids. You and he are all I have left of me when I go. I want to stick around until I think you’re both ready.” He smiled sadly at her. “James was my age.”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah…”

  “He loved your men like sons. He wasn’t ready to leave them here, I think.”

  “I know.”

  “You and Liam are the children my wife and I always would have wanted.”

  “Damn it, Charlie.” She couldn’t touch the glass of water. Her hands were shaking too badly for a moment as tears flooded her eyes.

  “What’s so important that you needed to tell me alone?”

  “We discovered Axel escaped from prison,” she whispered, hoping there weren’t already bugs in his home. She hadn’t checked. She should have. “I…”

  “They want you to catch him again.” His voice was strained, his face tight with an emotion she couldn’t yet identify.

  “They want me to kill him, and I’m going to. They’ll pardon me if I do it. They were going to pardon me for the Triad situation, but then we found out that Axel was free and…” She finally grabbed her glass and took a long swallow of water. “I’ve spent the last few weeks digging into everything I can about him. No leads yet, but when they come, I have a feeling things are going to get wild.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I’m going to put protection on you. Don’t argue with it, please.” She knew there was a possibility. “Please, Charlie. I can’t let him come after you. I couldn’t handle that.”

  “Why would he?”

  “To hurt me. To knock me off my game. Maybe even just to get revenge against you. You publicly admitted you’re the reason I’m alive after…”

  “Okay. I’ll accept the protection. I’m going to keep Liam here too, so he’s protected.”

  “I’ll have one of our agents follow him to class and shit,” she promised.

  “I wish I could say I can’t believe or understand it. Why would our government do this? Why would they ask this of you?” Charlie leaned back, dropping his plastic fork, shaking his head. Anger, that was the emotion on his face. He looked so upset for her.

  “But you do understand, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he admitted softly. “And when it’s all over?”

  “I don’t know. I plan on living through this, Charlie. I plan on them living through this. I don’t care what I have to do to succeed, but no one is going to die for this. Not you, not them. Not me.” She gave an aimless shrug. “But I don’t know about when it’s all over. Where I’ll be, what I’ll do. I can’t think about that yet. First I need to do this, ya know?”

  He frowned, going back to his salad. She started eating her own, letting the silence grow longer. She didn’t think about after. She couldn’t. She needed to stay focused on the task. She needed that. She had so much to do and things would get missed if she wasn’t completely dedicated to them right now. The future was just that. The future. She wouldn’t worry about it, not yet.

  When they were both done, she played dutiful daughter figure and took all of the trash, tossing it out for him. She noticed his trash can was nearly full and pulled out the bag, tying it off. She placed a fresh one in. Tossing the old one over her shoulder, she stopped next to him before leaving.

  “Thank you for listening to me. Charlie, you are the first important thing I ever had after him. The first person I trusted, the first person I knew would never hurt me. The first person who taught me that sometimes we all fall and it’s okay to get back up, fighting back stronger and faster.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’ve defended me and I hope-”

  He stood up and wrapped beefy arms around her shoulders. She needed it. Of all the people who knew how Axel had left her, only Charlie got to see. Only he got to see for years the nightmares and the pain, and yet he loved her anyway. He was always there, watching out for her, dealing with her.

  “You can do this, Sawyer. I hate that you have to, but you can do it. I’ll be here on the other side of it, and will be for a long time after it. I promise I’ll always be in your corner, whether it’s Fight Night, or the IMPO, or the press. I’ve got you. Just promise an old man you really will do this and it’ll be the end. That I’m never going to have to worry about whether you come home alive or not.”

  “It’ll be the end,” she promised. She knew that much.

  “Take the trash out,” he ordered, trying to lighten the mood.

  He pointed to the door and she chuckled as she made the short walk back down the stairs and left through the back of the gym. She tossed her bag in the dumpster and stayed there for a moment. Damn that old man for breaking her heart and still being everything she ever needed from him. She could only wish she helped people as much as he helped her. He never had to hurt people. As a healer and a doctor, he knew how to do everything else. He put people back together. He put her back together.

  She went back inside and saw him finishing the climb down the stairs.

  “Let’s go order these boys some junk food,” he said, smiling.

  “Yeah.” She was smiling as they went back into the main section of the gym. She saw Vincent and frowned. He wasn’t as content as when she’d left him. He was pale and sickly as he walked away from the younger children towards her. “What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

  “I think I have guesses as to who Missy was,” he answered.

  “And?”

  “Too many people,” he said ominously. “I want to go see her.”

  “Vincent…” She didn’t think that was the best idea. “We promised to take the holidays off. This is work. She’s not going anywhere.” If anything, she felt Vincent visiting might just escalate Missy. So far, the prison had been doing really well at keeping Missy from harming herself. It helped that Missy hadn’t tried either, which boggled Sawyer’s mind. She would have thought Missy was loyal enough to her master.

  “I want to go see her, Sawyer. I’ll leave it to you to schedule. Not right now, but tomorrow. Make it happen.”

  She recoiled slightly at the order as Vincent turned on his heel and walked out the front of the gym. She watched him light a cigarette and enter his own world again.

  Pulling out her phone, she sent the text to Thompson. He would make sure Missy was ready for whatever Vincent had planned for her.

  Sawyer drove silently the next day. She was taking only Vincent to the prison, leaving the team to enjoy another full day with Charlie and the kids. Sombra would have the company of the wolves. She wasn’t going to put her big feline through another visit.

  She didn’t want to admit she was pissed off at the man next to her. He knew she had wanted some holiday time, but apparently that didn’t matter. Apparently, they had to catch Axel right now, or bother Missy or something. She didn’t know what he was going to get out of this right now that he couldn’t deal with in a week.

  Was catching Axel a priority? Yeah, it was.

  But she didn’t want it to overtake her lif
e. She was done with losing everything for that man. She wanted this to be another case, which was going to take time since Axel was already ten steps ahead of them.

  She had just wanted some peace for the last week of the holidays. The team had done nothing for Christmas. Couldn’t they at least have the week between that and New Years? Even just the last few days of the year?

  Apparently not.

  “Stop sulking,” he said softly, looking away from her like he had the entire drive. “We’ll do this, then get back to the guys.”

  Gritting her teeth, she resisted a very Quinn-like snarl. Sulking? Her? She wasn’t sulking.

  “Fine,” she snapped. She turned into the parking lot too fast, knowing Vincent wasn’t going to be ready for it. He swayed and hit the door, turning to glare at her when he regained his balance from it. She slammed the brakes a little too hard when they were in the parking spot, causing him to jerk forward.

  Sulking.

  “Someone’s in a bad mood,” he muttered, getting out of the car, her car, as fast as possible.

  She ran her hands over the steering wheel, considering the last time she and Vincent had been in it together. He’d been drunk and upset. She’d been exasperated.

  But she hadn’t been furious with him and he hadn’t been…whatever he was now. She knew what his problem was that night. She had no idea what was going on with him now. He would give her the same small, loving smile sometimes and others he would be completely closed off to her. This wasn’t Elijah, or any other time she had an issue with one of the guys.

  This was Vincent Castello, and she knew he was being torn up inside but she had no idea how to get him to tell her. She had no idea how to tell him to open up so she could help or find someone who could. She didn’t even know the source of his issue yet. Was it that Axel was free? Was it the fact that she had to execute him? Was he reeling that hard over James still? All of the above? None of it?