by Sybil Bartel
“Jesu-fucking-cristo. No. We’ve got extra cargo.” André glared at Talon.
“Whole reason we’re here.” Talon shrugged.
André stilled. Then he looked at me. Really looked at me.
I didn’t know exactly what he was thinking, but I got the gist of it. “Do it.”
The frown lines in his face deepened, and he glanced at Hero. “What’s the building made out of?”
“Wood frame,” Hero answered calmly.
A round of bullets hit the SUV, and one of the motorcycles caught fire. I couldn’t look to see if Candle was still alive. All the bikers were prone and firing or kneeling and firing from behind their bikes. I couldn’t tell who was dead or alive, and I didn’t want to. I just wanted this to be over with.
“Damn it, André,” I snapped. “Do something!”
“Fuck.” André slammed his fist into the side of the door.
“Back seat, come on, come on.” Talon grabbed my shoulder and practically dragged me over the center console then he shoved my ass into the way back. “Get down!”
André got in the front passenger seat and leveled Hero with a warning glare. “You one-hundred percent in?”
Hero didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“If you’re not, I’m going to torture you so fucking slow, you’ll wish—”
Hero stepped on the gas.
I was thrown back against the third row of seats as Talon yelled out, “Brace!”
The SUV slammed into River Ranch’s main building.
Metal scraping, wood cracking, roof falling, men screaming, bodies flying, Hero floored the Escalade until he cut through the small reception area and crashed through River’s office.
Everything went slow motion.
André systematically aiming and firing, killing River’s guards. Talon yelling out an elongated warbled war cry and spraying bullets. Hero reaching for his rifle and shooting to injure, but not kill, as he fired at his own brothers.
My heart pounded like it was caught in a slow-motion loop, and the ringing in my ears intensified when Alex barreled into the building in André’s second armored SUV.
Seconds later, but a lifetime in the making, it was over.
Dead bodies, dust rising, utter chaos, Talon and André opened their doors like the second coming.
Lights flickered, a beam overhead fell, and the broken glass from the windows shattered all over the debris-covered floor.
My lungs filled with dust and gunpowder, and I watched in shock as River slowly stood from behind his huge wooden desk.
His arms were up, his mouth moved, but all I heard was a high-pitched ringing and the distant garble of a voice through water.
With their weapons trained on River, dust floating up around them, Talon and André looked like soldiers of death.
I didn’t realize I was out of the SUV or that my foot landed on an arm buried in rubble. I didn’t notice that my gun was in my hands. I didn’t even register André’s mouth moving in slow motion.
“Chhhhi-caaaa, noooo.”
My father’s forehead lined up with my sights.
Then the cruel mistress that was life took away its blanket of slow motion, and Hero’s hand slammed down on my gun.
My elbows locked, my arms fell in front of me, and I was forced to drop my aim.
Hero single-handedly raised his rifle and pulled the trigger.
River Stephens’s head exploded into a million pieces of stolen justice.
BLOOD SPLATTER DECORATED HER FACE a split second before sheer horror twisted her features.
My chest fucking constricted. “Chica.”
Kendall stumbled backward, and her asshole ex caught her. Wrapping one arm around her, he said something I couldn’t fucking hear over the ringing in my ears.
She threw his arm off and spun. Staggering, falling, she tripped over a dead body and rushed for the gaping hole in the front of the building.
“Tyler.” I tipped my chin toward her. “Grab her.” I needed to fucking contain this and get everyone out.
Tyler nodded. “On it.” He followed Kendall out.
I turned toward Kendall’s ex. Hating him, not wanting to fucking think about his motivation, I still gave him an out because he did Kendall a favor by not letting her pull that trigger. “It was self-defense.”
Hero stared at the dead body of River Stephens. “He was unarmed.” Expression blank, his gaze cut to mine. “Get your men out. These were my people. I will handle it.”
Neil and Dane stepped through the missing front of the building, followed by Candle.
Holding his previously wounded shoulder, blood soaking his shirt, Candle glanced toward Stephens’s body. “Good, he’s fucking dead.”
It wasn’t a conscious thought.
I lunged across the rubble, and my fist made solid contact with his face. Cartilage cracked, blood splattered and I started pounding. I got three good punches in before fucking Talon pulled me off.
“Patrol,” he barked. “Go take care of your woman.”
Enraged, I kicked Candle.
His hands came up, and he spat. “All right, I fucking get it, asshole. But he’s dead, which is more than you were fucking doing.”
Holding me by the arms, Talon yanked me back a foot so I couldn’t kick him again. “You fuckin’ taunt him again, and I’m gonna let go of him just so I can kick you myself.”
“ATF is on their way,” Neil stated.
“Come on, Patrol.” Talon dragged me toward the passenger door of the trashed SUV. “Let’s roll.”
Vega silently got back behind the wheel of the second armored SUV and started slowly backing out.
“I need to contain this,” I said to no one.
“I will handle it. Leave,” Neil ordered.
“My prints, my guns, my vehicles, I’m all over this fucking thing.” My head was so fucking scrambled by the look on her face, I couldn’t fucking think straight.
As if he knew I was useless, Talon shoved me into the SUV’s front passenger seat. “Let Vikin’ do his thing.” Talon rounded the vehicle, got behind the wheel and the Escalade shockingly reversed out of the trashed building.
“Tyler.” My voice cracked. “Where is she?”
“Cemetery out back,” he answered quietly through comms. “But she’s—”
“On my way.” I glanced at Talon.
Talon nodded. “Gotcha covered.” He cleared the building, swung the SUV around the side of it, and pulled up to a cemetery straight out of a horror movie.
But that wasn’t the half of it, not even close.
In my fucking stupor, I hadn’t noticed her ex walk out of the building. But I was fucking noticing him now. Kneeling behind Kendall, his arms wrapped around her, he held a sobbing Kendall as she wept in front of a grave marked by a crooked wooden cross.
Like he knew I was watching him, the asshole looked over his shoulder and nodded at me. Then he swept an arm under her legs, scooped her up, and stood. Her arms wrapped around his neck and her head went to his chest.
He carried her to my SUV.
Talon silently got out and opened the back door.
Hero set her in the back seat then gently pulled her arms off him.
I watched the woman I’d come inside curl into a ball and fucking fall apart.
Hero shut the door, and Talon got behind the wheel.
I didn’t even get out of my goddamn seat.
I STOOD ON THE HOTEL balcony staring at his condo because I was pathetic. I sipped my disgusting in-room coffee as the breeze lifted the edge of my white nightgown, and I fantasized about André walking out on his balcony.
But he never did.
For three weeks, I’d been staring at the same view. I didn’t give a shit that I was free. This was worse. I could do anything, go anywhere, but I was in an oceanfront hotel in Miami Beach that I’d paid cash for, up-front, for a month.
Four weeks.
That’s how long I was giving this.
I didn’t even know what the fuck
this was. Just that I needed to stay here one month and see. Maybe he’d come after me, maybe he wouldn’t. I didn’t make it easy. After we’d gotten back to his condo from the compound, he’d coldly said he’d needed to go to his office for a couple hours.
I watched him walk away without so much as a backward glance. My heart fucking imploding, I’d dumped my cell, called a cab, and gone to the airport. I’d booked the first available flight, but when the plane stopped in Atlanta on its way to New York, I’d gotten off. I bought a piece of shit beater car off a used lot and paid the guy extra not to report the sale for one month. Then I’d driven here, to a fucking hotel in Miami Beach with a perfect view of André’s penthouse because I was so lost, I couldn’t breathe.
And what had three weeks netted me?
Two glimpses.
And not even of him.
Just two nights, late as hell, I’d seen a light go on in the master bedroom then off a few minutes later.
That was it.
That was all I’d seen of the man who’d risked everything to give me my freedom.
Fuck André Luna.
I went back into the suite and dumped the shitty coffee, then grabbed my bikini off the towel bar in the bathroom. It was small and white like most of my new wardrobe, but more than that, it showed off my branding. I’d thought about having the scarred skin covered, adding to it, doing something to change it, maybe inking over it, but even the thought pissed me off. I didn’t want to have to alter myself anymore for the asshole who’d robbed me of more than twenty years of my life.
Yanking the nightgown off and reaching for the suit, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and it made me pause. I’d gone to a salon in Atlanta and had my hair put back to almost its original color. It was close enough that the inch it’d grown, you couldn’t tell there was a difference. A light, warm brown, it was the color of my eyes on a cloudy day. I looked younger… and innocent. I hated it, the innocence part, but this was the new me. The new old me.
I twisted my hair up and put on the bikini. My skin had turned golden brown from swimming in the ocean every day, and I almost looked like who I once was. Grabbing my white, see-through cover-up, I’d just started for the door when a knock sounded.
My heart jumped and an ingrained fear I didn’t know if I would ever overcome jolted my nerves. Sucking in a deep breath, a hand over my heart, I told myself it was only housekeeping, but I still looked through the peephole.
Then every muscle in my body froze.
Even with his head down, there was no mistaking who it was.
I opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
His hair combed and pulled back into a partial ponytail, cargo pants covering his long legs and a collared shirt tight across his chest, Hero stood in front of me, larger than life, in civilian clothes. “Decima,” he said quietly, scanning my face then dropping his gaze to my bikini.
I didn’t move because I didn’t know what I was feeling. Anger, joy, grief? Of all the people I’d thought might find me, he was the last I ever considered, but he should’ve been the first. Hero was a hunter. As sure as I could smell his soap and musk, he could sniff out my scent. “Kendall,” I corrected, finally finding my voice.
His chest rose and fell three times as he stared at me. “You will always be my Decima.”
I swallowed back memories and asked a question I had no right to ask. “Yours?”
He nodded once. “You were mine.”
I had to ask. “Why did you do it?” I silently prayed he’d had his own reason to kill River, not just that he was saving me from myself. Guilt had been eating at me for three weeks, but I didn’t know if he’d want to hear an apology or a thank-you from me. He’d made a sacrifice for me I could never repay.
“River Stephens was not a good man.”
Simple. Honest. The statement belied the violence that had ended my father’s life. “That’s it?”
Nothing in Hero’s guarded expression changed. “Yes. Do not give it any more thought.”
The turn of phrase was one Hero had used on me before. I had no choice but to take him at face value. Then, as one problem was knocked out by another, the other thing I’d been obsessing over tumbled out of my mouth.
“You never gave me children.” I’d spent three weeks remembering every second of André’s body in mine. Not that it mattered. André had never come looking for me, and I wasn’t pregnant. I certainly couldn’t go back to being the girl who’d once slept in this hunter’s bed, but I kept thinking about what Hero had done for me all those years and what he hadn’t. “You never said why.”
Hero studied my face for a long moment. Then he glanced at my hair. “I like you this way.”
Feeling suddenly overexposed, I crossed my arms. “I asked you a question.”
“You made a statement. May I come in?”
Did I want him to come in? Could I refuse him? I could shut the door and ignore him, but I knew what really lay disguised under those clothes. Hero was a hunter. A hunter who still hadn’t answered my question, and now I had another. “Why are you in civilian clothes?”
This time he didn’t hesitate to answer. “I am a civilian.”
I inhaled as guilt festered like an open sore. I was glad River was dead, so fucking glad. I didn’t even have nightmares anymore, but I’d put Hero in a horrible situation. Despite what he’d just told me, he’d lost the only life he knew, and he’d have to deal with his own guilt. But nothing would change who Hero was at his core. “You’re a hunter.” Always was, always would be.
“Today, I am not hunting wild deer.”
The way he said it, I knew what he was implying. “You’re hunting me.”
Unashamed, he nodded once. “For three sunsets.”
I couldn’t help it, I smirked. “It took you that long?”
“I found you on the first day after….” He trailed off. Hero never left a sentence unfinished.
“After?”
His gaze locked on mine, he didn’t answer at first. “I found you the first day I started looking.” He glanced around, as if indicating the hotel. “It is not a daisy, but still a flower.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or hate the fucking universe because we would never be right for each other. I would never be right for him. “The Orchid.” He was right. The hotel wasn’t called the Daisy, but it was still a flower, and a flower had changed my life.
I stepped back to let Hero in.
His huge frame brushed past me with a whisper of silence and grace only a man who spent his time not being seen could achieve. His familiar scent coasted by, and a headful of memories made me long for a simpler time.
He quietly moved to the view. “I watched you for two days.”
I noticed his use of the common term for day and wondered what had happened to him the past few years. “You always were a voyeur.” I didn’t used to mind because it was always me he’d been watching on the compound when he wasn’t hunting. It’d made me feel safe.
He didn’t pick up my comment. “You did not go to see the soldier.”
I didn’t pretend I didn’t know who he was talking about. “Marine, not soldier. Your point?”
He turned and his gaze traveled down my body, but unlike André, I couldn’t read anything in his expression. “You are not bound to him?”
I slipped my see-though cover-up over my head. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “You already know I’m not. Why are you here?”
His voice got quieter. “Are you bound to Tarquin?”
“No.” Definitely not.
“He came to save you.”
I was shaking my head before Hero finished the sentence. “Tarquin isn’t interested in saving anyone but himself. He was doing that out of duty because it was a member of his motorcycle gang that recognized my branding and the LCs were trying to kill me for the bounty. Tarquin felt guilty. Instead of telling his MC not to come after me, he was going after River.”
Hero was silent a
moment. “He had his own reasons.”
I nodded in agreement. “He did.” River had done a number on Candle.
Hero studied me. “The marine came to me a fortnight ago. He was looking for you.”
I held back my shock, but not the punishing longing I felt for a man I’d given my heart and body to on a boat in the ocean. “Two weeks and you’re just now deciding to come see me? Why?” Hesitation wasn’t in Hero’s vocabulary.
Instead of answering my question, Hero gave me the answer to another one. “I didn’t swell your body with my seed because you didn’t want me.”
I didn’t remember moving to the couch and dropping onto the cushions. I didn’t feel the soft fabric on the back of my legs. I didn’t notice a hunter’s intent gaze as he watched my emotions take a nosedive.
This was life.
Cruel and unforgiving.
You were born, you drew your first breath, then everything until death was an uphill battle. The weak didn’t survive. Life gave you everything you never wanted, then it took what you craved the most and threw it in your face.
Hero was right. I hadn’t wanted his children. But I never had a choice because he’d never come inside me. All those nights, all those years, Hero had never given me a choice and he’d never, not once, told me how he felt.
But the man whose smile shone with a joy for life and an understanding that happiness was everywhere you could grab it, the man who said he’d wanted to come inside me? He wasn’t here.
“You never said you wanted me to have your children.” I threw it back on Hero because I was angry at the world.
“I protected you.” Hero didn’t raise his voice, but the anger was there.
My shoulders dropped, and I hung my head a moment before I stood up. I couldn’t fight this fight. Not with him. He was right. He’d protected me from so much on the compound, and I owed him at least my gratitude. “Coffee?” I moved toward the small kitchen because I didn’t know how to begin to thank him.
His hand wrapped around my arm, and I froze.
“I never wanted you sad,” he said quietly.
I looked up into his stark blue eyes. “Prisoners are never happy.” And that’s what I’d been. I didn’t fully understand it until I’d been taken away by the Feds, but I had never been free at River Ranch. I’d dreamed about escape. I’d thrown frivolous words at Hero about running, but I was never going to leave on my own because I didn’t understand how not to be a prisoner. Hero had given me a taste of independence, but just like River, he’d never given me freedom.