by Sybil Bartel
“Everything is status quo,” Tyler answered. “Except there are six new clients that made it through the vetting process.”
“Push them all out a week. I’ll look at the files when I get back.” I vetted my clients, always. Because some shit wasn’t worth getting involved with. I glanced at Kendall and hoped to God I wasn’t making a fucking colossal mistake.
“Copy that,” Tyler confirmed. “I’ll check in once I talk to Candle. And boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Have a nice vacation.” Tyler chuckled and hung up.
Kendall snorted. “You going to ask me what I want to do about all of this?”
“No.” She was in my world now. I dialed Neil Christensen. We’d both served in Afghanistan, but he’d been in the Danish Royal Army. He was hands down the scariest motherfucker I’d ever met. Silent, deadly, taller than a damn Viking, he could level you with his lethal stare, but I trusted him like a brother.
“Ja,” Neil answered in Danish.
“It’s Luna. I need a favor.”
Silence.
Damn it. “You there?”
“Ja.”
Cristo. “You going to be using your Largo house or the Cobalt for the next week?” It was the best place I could think to hide on short notice, not to mention I knew he kept weapons in the house as well as on the boat.
“No. You have the keys.”
Just like he had keys to my place. In fact, he’d built the building my penthouse was in, because he’d become a commercial contractor after the military. “Thanks.”
“Business or pleasure?” he asked.
I glanced at Kendall, but she was staring straight ahead. This wasn’t business because I wasn’t getting paid, but it sure as hell wasn’t pleasure either. I never knew from one minute to the next if this girl wanted to jump me or cut my dick off. I gave the only answer I had. “It’s complicated.” Two words, and I sounded like a damn pussy.
“Women always are.”
I didn’t comment. The bastard had a sixth sense like no one I’d ever met. “You in town?”
“Ja.”
Fuck, I hated to ask another favor, Neil had his own business to run, but there weren’t many people I trusted. “I’m leaving the business unattended for a week.”
Neil didn’t hesitate. “I will check in once a day. Tell the employees.”
I exhaled. “Will do. Thanks. I’ll touch base later in the week.”
“Do not wait to call if there is a problem.”
“Copy that.” I hung up.
Kendall picked up where we’d left off. “I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want a Cuban coffee, then I want to go to the beach.”
Frowning, I glanced at her. Kendall was a lot of things, but a beach babe wasn’t one of them. She was the palest chick I knew. Her skin wasn’t fair, it was fucking ethereal. “You want to go to the beach?”
“Yeah, then I want to eat at the rooftop restaurant Indigo, check into the Setai and have a massage, then hit the clubs in South Beach.”
My eyes narrowed. “You want to go clubbing?” Was she fucking insane?
She nodded. “Then tomorrow I want to go to Vizcaya Gardens and have lunch in Little Havana.”
It sunk in. She wasn’t giving me some random agenda to fuck with me. She was reciting a damn bucket list. She thought she was going to die. “Chica.” I took her hand. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
Hazel eyes full of resignation looked at me. “I’m already dead.”
I FOUGHT THE RISING SURGE of bile and panic churning in my gut and focused on the only thing keeping me from having a heart attack. Warm brown eyes full of strength and kindness stared back at me, and for a split second, I wondered if I might actually make it out of this alive.
Then reality kicked in. “I’m already dead.”
“Chica,” he said quietly, squeezing my hand. “Same as mine, your heart’s beating.” His thumb stroked across my knuckles. “And I’m gonna make sure it stays that way.”
He couldn’t help me. No one could, not even Candle, because nothing would save me from my father. “Café Cubano. That’s all I want.” I pulled my hand back as his cell rang.
“Luna,” he answered.
Tyler’s voice boomed through the speakers. “We have a situation.”
“Report,” André demanded.
“I’m at the airport. There’re two Harleys parked in front of Roark’s plane. The door’s open.”
André pulled into the underground parking of his condo. “Stand down. Let it play out. I’ll call you back in thirty seconds.” He hung up and dialed another number.
“Yeah?” The Irishman answered.
“I hear you’ve got company. Tyler’s on standby. Should I send him on board?”
“No.”
“Lone Coasters?” André asked.
“Yep.”
André pulled into a parking spot. “They know anything?”
“I’m still on schedule. I’ll call you when I’m in the air.” The Irishman hung up.
André called Tyler back. “Roark’s good. Wait till they deplane, then board. Make sure you’re not seen.”
“Copy.” Tyler hung up.
André scanned the parking garage, then cut the engine. “New plan, chica.”
“Let me guess, no coffee.” I used every ounce of sarcasm I had to hide the anxiety crawling across my skin like a thousand fire ants.
A smile that came too easily to be real broke out across his handsome face. “Give me two hours, chica, and I’ll make you all the café Cubano you want.”
I could be dead in two hours.
He pulled the key from the ignition, checked the garage again and gave me a stern warning look. “Wait for me to come get you.”
In another lifetime, I would’ve loved the scene for what it was. A hot-as-shit alpha protecting me. And if I was being honest, it wasn’t that André Luna was Cuban or tall or had gorgeous brown eyes. It was that he was unfailingly optimistic, quick to smile, had more muscles than any of the men I’d grown up with, and he breathed each breath like he loved life. I didn’t know how to love life. I wanted what André had. I wanted to feel, just once, what it felt like to be on the inside of a smile like his.
He opened my door, and his scent became stronger as he offered a hand to me. “We’re gonna make this quick. Straight to the elevator, then we’ll change in the condo. You got any pants in this bag?” He tipped his head toward my duffle bag on his shoulder.
For the third time this morning, I put my hand in his. It was the most I’d ever held someone’s hand. “Most guys want to keep me out of pants.” I regretted the stupid flippant comment as soon as I said it.
His throat moved with a swallow, and his voice turned quiet as he pulled me out of the SUV. “I’m not most guys.”
No kidding. He was the only man who actually pretended he gave a shit about me besides Candle. But Candle only cared out of duty. He was driven by guilt, and we both knew it.
I kept my mouth shut as André ushered me to the elevator with one hand on the gun at his waist and the other firmly pressed between my shoulder blades.
He punched in a code once we were in the elevator, then stepped a foot away from me as the doors slid shut. “You need everything in this bag?”
My head spun as the elevator shot up twenty stories. “What?”
“For a week, can you pare down what you have in here?”
If I had a week. That’d be lucky, beyond lucky, not to mention a whole week with a badass ex-marine who smiled like an angel? Even luckier. Maybe I’d live another seven days, maybe I wouldn’t. I’d told myself three years ago that every sunrise I was still breathing was a gift. I’d made it long past what I’d ever hoped, so this was all gravy, right?
“Chica?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I can trim it down.” I didn’t need anything in that bag. I grew up wearing the same damn outfit for years. I never had makeup or shampoo or deodorant or underwear. I never eve
n had a change of clothes I could call my own. Trimming down the clothes I’d thrown in the big duffle was nothing.
“We’re gonna share a backpack,” he explained as the doors slid open. “I’ll give you the bulk of it, but let’s keep it light.” He took two strides and used a keypad to unlock his front door as he kept talking. “Essentials only. We’ll pick up anything we need later.”
I wasn’t listening to him anymore. I’d followed him into his condo, and I was staring at the stunning view of the ocean from the floor-to-ceiling windows that I hadn’t seen in six months.
I loved this view.
Six months ago, I’d wanted to live for this view.
I’d wanted to wake up every day of my life and stare at a piece of the world that was so far out of my reach, it was comical. But this kind of life didn’t happen for people like me.
“Five minutes, chica,” he warned. “Then we need to be on the road.”
I touched a finger to the spotless glass. Despite the morning sun coming through, the window was cool to the touch.
Six feet two inches of muscle stepped up beside me and dropped my bag at my feet.
“It’s beautiful.” Aqua waters, white sands, there wasn’t a place on this earth I’d seen that was prettier than Miami Beach.
“Can’t disagree with that.” He inhaled, then let it out slow as he turned to me. “Chica.”
The soft tone to his voice made me look up.
As if he sensed my hopelessness, he grasped my chin and made me a promise he couldn’t keep. “I’ll bring you back here.”
Emotions I didn’t want to have stuck in my throat. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
His voice dropped, but a desperate urgency laced his words. “Who are you?”
For the first time in my life, I wanted someone to know. And not just anyone, but a man who was practically a stranger. A man who’d unwittingly shown me more respect than anyone I’d ever met. I didn’t want to just tell him. I wanted to show him. I wanted André Luna to see every broken piece of me, and I couldn’t understand a single ounce of that thought, but it was pounding in my veins stronger than three days worth of whiskey.
I stared at a man who could destroy me with a single phone call, and then I did the stupidest thing I ever could have done.
I grasped the hem of my dress and pulled it over my head.
André sucked in a breath and his gaze dropped to my breasts for one fleeting moment. “Kendall,” he growled.
I dropped the material to the floor, and his mouth crashed over mine.
Hot and urgent, his tongue swept across my lips before plundering into my mouth as his huge hands sank into my hair.
A groan, his, mine, cut through the silent condo, and I forgot why I’d undressed. His body curved around mine, and suddenly, I was just a woman. Soft flesh and feminine curves to his hard muscles and uncompromising strength. I wasn’t a hunted entity with a past. I wasn’t a hardened bitch who pushed everyone away. I was a woman being completely and utterly dominated by a kiss that made me forget every other kiss I’d ever had.
His hands tilted my head, and his mouth moved to my neck. “Jesucristo, woman.” He growled against the sensitive flesh of my neck and gooseflesh raced up my spine. “You do this now?” His hips made a slow, sensuous grind against mine.
“Now?” I couldn’t think straight. I gripped the back of his thick neck.
A string of Spanish cascaded out of his mouth.
His ear near my lips, I sucked the bitable flesh and caught only a few of his words—timing, body, sweet. “Kiss me,” I whispered.
He slammed his mouth over mine and took me harder and deeper than before. Shoving a leg between my thighs, grasping my hip, swaying as if his head was full of music, he rocked against me as he thrust his tongue deep and groaned into my mouth.
Oh God.
Bending his knees then thrusting up, he rubbed his huge, hard cock against my pussy.
Oh my God.
His hand slid over my hip, then his fingers grazed my lower back.
I froze.
Reality hit me square in the chest, and I did what I should’ve done the second his lips landed on mine. I pushed him away.
“Chica?”
I stepped back.
The soft edge to his voice disappeared and dominance laced his next question. “What’s wrong?”
I studied him because I wanted to remember this very second. His shoulders proud, his lips wet from our kiss, his desire straining against his pants…. I sucked in a breath. “You wanted to know who I am.”
I turned around.
MOTHER OF GOD.
Holy Madre de Dios.
No.
Dios mio, no.
Two R’s. Back to back. One backwards, one forwards. Branded into her skin.
River Ranch.
The single most violent cult in the nation.
She’d escaped from River Ranch in the Everglades. No one escaped that cult alive. No one.
“Kendall,” I whispered, half in disbelief, half in fucking horror.
“Decima,” she corrected.
Fucking shocked, all I could do was stare.
She slowly turned around. “My real name is Decima.”
“Decima,” I whispered, hating how the name fit everything about her. Black hair, hazel eyes, high cheekbones, she wasn’t a Kendall. She was an exotic, deadly, unattainable Decima.
She nodded, just barely. “You can’t save me.”
No intonation in her voice, her statement was pure resignation. I asked the only question that seemed relevant. “Who else knows?”
“Candle.”
“No handler?”
She shook her head. “No. No witness protection. I refused.”
It was probably the only thing that’d kept her alive. Anyone knowing where or who she was would’ve been a target. Adrenaline pumping, my pulse Mach one, I stared at her in complete fucking shock. This woman had just signed my death warrant.
My nostrils flared with an inhale. “Chica—”
“Walk away, André.”
I opened my mouth to say something I’d regret, but she beat me to it.
“You can’t stop this,” she warned. “Go back to work. Pretend you never met me. Deny everything.” She picked up her dress. “I’ll be gone before you get home.”
Rip had seen her branding, and he knew as well as I did what that meant. She wouldn’t just bring a two-million-dollar finder’s fee. She cement the LCs alliance with River Ranch forever. A heavily armed, violent cult and a ruthless MC partnership. Jesus Christ.
I ran a hand over my face. “I don’t even know what to call you.”
“If you call me Decima, you’ll be dead before you utter the last syllable.”
Jesus. “Rumor has it—”
“It’s all true.”
I grasped her left hand and held her arm out. The scar that looked like a line of Morse code ran from her shoulder to her wrist. “They say—”
“It’s all true,” she repeated.
My stomach bottomed out. “Where else?” Where else had they tortured her?
She pulled her hand away. “Stop.”
I couldn’t stop. I’d never stop. Especially now that I knew who the hell she was. She’d entrusted me with this. She may not have realized it yet, but that fucking meant something. Trust was earned. I didn’t know how Candle was involved, but that fucker knew, and he’d exposed her today. “Scott?” I asked. “Did he get you out?” I both wanted it to be true so I wouldn’t have to kill him, and not be true so I could justify open range on his ass.
She shook her head. “He was vanquished when he was fifteen.”
What the fuck? “Vanquished?”
“It’s akin to being excommunicated. It’s their version of getting kicked out.”
“Why?”
She looked up at me with guilt and remorse. “Because of me.”
My chest constricted, and I stared at her because I didn’t know what th
e fuck to say.
“He gave me a daisy,” she continued, her voice breaking. “A wild daisy.”
A fucking flower? “That wasn’t allowed?”
She shook her head vehemently. “They beat and tortured him for a week. You could hear his screams throughout the compound. Then when they thought he wouldn’t survive another sun setting, they cast him out.”
Jesu-fucking-Cristo. “How did he survive?”
“They dumped him in the swamplands. He woke up a few days later covered in dried, caked-on mud. He says the mud stopped the bleeding.”
I ran both my hands over my head. “But he survived. He’s out. He’s alive.” That had to mean there was a possibility she could get out too.
She was shaking her head before I’d finished my last sentence. “You don’t understand. They think he died. He lived off the land for two years and built his strength back up, then he hitchhiked to Miami to the nearest Army recruitment office. He’d heard about the Rangers. One of the elders was a former ranger. He’d told us stories. Candle thought he could become one and exact revenge. He didn’t understand how the world worked. None of us did. All we knew was the compound.”
“How did he enlist?” The military wouldn’t take an undocumented person, and I was sure as hell that no one born on River Ranch was in the system.
She looked like she was deciding how much to tell me. Then she just started talking. “He didn’t at first. He had no birth certificate, no social security number, he didn’t even know the real name of his birth mother, let alone which elder on River Ranch was his father. He told the recruiter who he was and how he wanted to become a ranger. The recruiter called his CO and the CO called the Feds. An hour later, Candle said two assholes in suits walked in and started questioning him. He was smart enough to negotiate a deal. He’d tell them what they wanted to know if they let him enlist. Six weeks later, he was at boot camp. Candle said, for the next few years, the Feds would occasionally get a hold of him and ask more questions. He said he knew they were planning a raid. The ATF wanted to confiscate River Stephens’s weapons and disband his organization enough so it wouldn’t be a threat to national security, or some shit like that.” She drew in breath. “So, when River Ranch reached three hundred members, that’s what the ATF did.”