by Sybil Bartel
Hero dropped his hand. “Now you are free.”
“My flesh is branded by my past.” I would never truly be free.
“Your past will either define you or motivate you. It is a choice.”
It was my turn to stare at him, and the man he’d become. “When did you get so smart?”
“I was never ignorant.”
I fought a sad smile and lost. “No, you weren’t.”
“But that still did not make you want me.”
I was trying to decide if it would it be crueler to remain silent or give him affirmation when he spoke again.
“Nor did you ever want Tarquin.”
“My heart is my own,” I lied.
He saw right through me. “You gave yourself to the marine.”
I exhaled in frustration. “I’m alone in a hotel, Hero.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “An expensive hotel.”
It wasn’t an accusation, but a question of judgment. We grew up with nothing, and the old me would have seen this place exactly how he was looking at it. An overindulgence at best and a shameful waste of resources at worst.
I told him the truth. “The FBI had a reward for information leading to the arrest of critical River Ranch members.” I didn’t take my eyes off him, because I wasn’t going to be ashamed about my decisions. “Did you know about it?”
He surprised me by nodding once.
I told him the rest before I lost my nerve. “After the raid, after River had held me hostage and cut me, he then threw me out to save himself. The Feds caught me and I told then everything they wanted to know.”
“Not everything,” he corrected.
Defiance bled into my tone. “Everything I knew, I told them, and they gave me that reward.” I’d earned it. “I haven’t spent a dime of that money, but now I am.” I was going to spend it all. I turned toward the kitchen.
“You didn’t tell them about me.”
I stilled. Then I gave Hero the truth he’d come here for. “You were mine. Not theirs.” Hero was the one person I’d left out of every conversation I’d ever had with the ATF.
“Decima, turn around.”
“I’m not her anymore.” The protest flew off my lips, but I would always be his Decima. For the short period in my life that he’d had me, that he’d protected me, I’d been true to him. But that life was gone, and I didn’t want it back.
“Turn.”
The command—quiet, simple—was anything but. In a testament of who I was raised to be, I obediently turned.
His eyes met mine. “The land is yours.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “What?”
“The land. I am deeding it to you.” He pulled papers from his cargo pocket and carefully unfolded them. Then with his eyes on me, he held them out.
Unable not to look, I glanced down. Then, for the third time this morning, my heart jumped to my throat, and I stepped back. “That says my name.” Kendall Reed. The name the ATF had given me. The legal name they’d given me. Right above River’s unmistakable signature, signing his entire life’s worth over to a Callan Anders in the event of his death.
Hero nodded. “I asked the marine.”
I stared at the paper, not sure why that made me feel betrayed. “Who is Callan Anders?”
Hero didn’t reply.
I looked up.
“I was not born on compound,” he quietly explained. “Callan Anders is my birth name.”
A twisted sickness gripped my chest and made me feel even more betrayed. While I’d been living three years of hell with a bounty on my head, he’d been kissing River’s ass and getting him to sign over his entire legacy to him? I’d thought Hero was my protector. “Keep your fucking deed, I don’t want it.”
Moving slow, as if he didn’t want to spook me, Hero set the paperwork on the table. “The land belongs to you.”
Anger, impotent and irrational, grew into a storm the size of three years of hell. “What the hell is wrong with you? You actually think I want that land?” I threw my outstretched accusing finger toward the door like my self-righteousness would make any kind of a difference. “Get out!”
Hero didn’t move. “I was his best hunter. He made me his counsel after… you were gone.”
What the fuck? “So that justifies you kissing his ass to get the compound?”
“I neither asked, nor expected anything in return for my duty. That deed was a final manipulation he thought he could control. I will not be controlled anymore. I am giving you what is yours. Sell the land. Take the money.”
My mind racing, I tried to wrap my head around the most words Hero had ever given me at once and make it false, but it kept coming back as the one thing I didn’t want it to be. Logical. “That’s why you killed him.” My anger dissipated somewhat as I realized Hero had been his prisoner just as much as I was, but I couldn’t help but think, unlike me, Hero could have left anytime he’d wanted. He was strong and armed and knew every way to get in and out of River Ranch.
Hero said nothing.
My head hurt, my stomach hurt, and my heart hurt.
I couldn’t do this anymore.
I grabbed the papers off the table the shoved them into his chest. “Congratulations, you’re the new owner of River Ranch.” I walked to the door
He tucked the papers back in his pocket and walked right up to me. “I did not ask for this.”
“Good for you.” I didn’t look at him.
“I was not born into this.”
I hated how I selfishly felt so goddamn alone when I should’ve been glad he wasn’t born on the compound, but it was just another fact that brought home how little he’d shared with me and how much trust I’d stupidly given him. “Awesome. Get out.”
His heavy boots did not move out of my line of vision. “There is no one left.”
“I’m sure you’ll have no problem carrying the torch and finding new members.” Even though I’d hated River with every fiber of my being, I felt so fucking betrayed that a father who should’ve loved me not only wanted me dead, but chose the person I’d been closest to as his heir.
Hero gripped my jaw in the expanse of his huge hand and whipped my head up, forcing me to look at him. For the first time in my life, I saw rage on his face.
“River Ranch is dead,” he bit out. “Your father is dead. The compound is destroyed because I made sure of it. This ends here.”
I swallowed back shock.
“I will unburden you of the land because that is what you ask, but do not ever mistake me again for a traitor to you.” He dropped his hold on me and wrenched the door open.
Tears filled my eyes, and I reached for him. “Hero.”
He yanked his hand out of my grasp and strode to the elevator.
“Callan?” The name sounded both foreign yet somehow appropriate, but one question was growing too big to ignore. “Did you always know?”
“No.” He hit the elevator button. “After he made me his counsel, he gave me my birth certificate, told me my parents were dead because they had not honored the doctrine of River Ranch.” His haunted gaze met mine. “Then he’d said he was my true family.”
The kinship I’d always felt for Hero came shamefully back, and I grabbed my room key. “Wait.” I walked barefoot toward him like the old days, but unlike the old days, I put my arms around him in public.
His body stiffened, and he made no move to hug me back.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I wish I had been there for you.”
His arms came around me, and the anger in his voice turned to clipped acceptance. “I am glad you were not.”
I didn’t take offense. I knew what he meant. “What will you do?”
“Sell the land.” The elevator dinged its arrival, and he released me.
I wanted to give him words that meant more than platitudes, but I didn’t know how to do that. “Be safe.”
His stark blue gaze held me for a moment. “Goodbye, Decima.”
“Goodbye, Her
o.” The doors slid closed.
I didn’t know how long I stood there staring at the closed door to my past before I turned to the stairs and went out to the beach for my daily swim.
WHAT A FUCKING CLUSTERFUCK.
I swiped a hand over my face and tried to concentrate on what the useless VA security guard was saying, but all I heard was excuses. I shouldn’t even be in the fucking VA hospital, let alone standing guard all night for some MMA ex-marine junkie, but here I was.
“Listen.” I fought for patience. “Just keep anyone from the circuit out.”
“How am I supposed to know who’s in the circuit?” the skinny kid asked.
Jesucristo. “If they look like they’re on steroids, tell them to fuck off.” I walked away because I was losing my professional edge. It’d been three weeks. Where the fuck was she?
And where the fuck was my client? He wasn’t even a paying client. Fucking Neil. Asking for a favor for his nephew Myles’s bandmate, Ben Stark. The drummer’s girlfriend had gone AWOL and we’d fucking found her, bruised all to hell, and now she was sitting in the VA next to her MMA brother.
But Ben had yet to show up. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Fucking rock stars. So here I was wasting my time, pulling double shifts. I should’ve been looking into what the fuck happened to the drummer’s girlfriend, but I wasn’t. I dialed Tyler.
“What’s up, boss?”
“You got ten minutes to get here and relieve me.” I needed to get the fuck out of here.
Tyler chuckled. “You finally admitting defeat? You’ve only been up thirty-six hours.”
“Get the fuck over here,” I growled. I needed to go work out, or shoot someone, or fucking forget Kendall and move the fuck on with my life because I swore to myself, I wasn’t fucking chasing her.
“On my way,” Tyler replied cheerfully.
I wanted to punch him for no reason other than he was fucking cheerful. “After your shift here, look into the drummer’s girlfriend. Find out what happened to her.”
“Talerco already asked. We’re on it.”
Jesu-fucking-cristo. “What the fuck else is going on that you haven’t told me about?” I demanded.
“Boss.” Tyler drew my title out like I was an idiot. “You been checked out for three weeks. You’re acting like you’re the lowest man on the totem pole, taking every shit shift, and pulling all-nighters. The ship needed a captain, so we all stepped up. We figured you’d surface once you got over it.”
I ground my jaw in anger. “What,” I enunciated, “do you think I need to get over?”
“Kendall.”
If he was standing in front of me, I would’ve taken his last breath from him with my bare hands.
He kept talking like I wasn’t about to jump through the phone and kill him. “Don’t worry, we got you covered. The business is solid, clients are good. Go get some sleep. I’ll call the VA and have a guard relieve you until I get there. I’m fifteen minutes out.”
I hung up before I fired him. Forcing some words out to the drummer’s girlfriend, I made an excuse to leave and took off. I was in my garage at the penthouse before I’d realized I’d driven there. Then I was in the building’s private gym. I didn’t remember sitting down against the wall, or pulling my knees up, or burying my face in my hands like a fucking pussy. Next thing I knew, I had a stiff neck and my phone vibrating was waking me up.
I didn’t even look at the display. “Luna,” I barked.
“She is at the Orchid,” Hero, or Callan Anders, that fuck, said without preamble.
My pulse took a flying jump off a cliff. “What?”
“Room 2901.”
I shoved to my feet. “You fucking knew where she was?” All this time? I’d asked that asshole weeks ago where she was. He’d fucking lied to me. “You talked to her?”
“I have spoken with her, and I did not know where she was until I looked for her.”
The asshole talked like a robot, and my stomach fucking gutted at the thought of him in a hotel room with her. “And when the fuck was that?” Palming my keys, I pushed out the door.
“Three days ago.”
I unlocked my car and got in, but I could’ve walked to the Orchid. The damn hotel was down the street. “And you didn’t think to call me?” I couldn’t fucking breathe thinking about how many days he’d been in the hotel room with her.
“I am calling you.”
Pendejo. “She in her room now?”
“She is swimming in the ocean out front of the hotel. She does it every day in the morning, at the same time.”
My hand on the steering wheel, I stepped on the brake and threw it back in park. Sleep deprived as fuck, I still heard it. I heard what he wasn’t fucking saying. “You weren’t with her. You were watching her. What else did she do?”
He didn’t deny not being with her. “Coffee on the balcony in the morning, ocean swim, shower, lunch in the hotel restaurant, afternoon in the same chair in the shade by the pool, room service dinner on her balcony, where she sits until eleven o’clock at night.” He rattled off her routine like one of my men reporting in to me, and I took a breath of relief that he hadn’t been fucking her this whole time.
“She does this every day?” She’d been this close to me all along?
“The last three days that I watched her.”
I forgot about her purposely throwing me off by getting on a plane to NYC but not actually showing up in New York. “Why the fuck were you watching her for three days?”
“I was waiting for paperwork to come through.”
What the hell did that mean? “What kind of paperwork?”
“That is for her to tell you.”
The fucker was so unemotional, it was almost like talking to Neil. “Anything else I need to know?” Not that I expected him to tell me.
“River Ranch is gone. She should move on.”
She’d moved on three years ago, but I didn’t fucking clue him in, because he was doing me a favor. But favors in my world didn’t come without strings. “Why you calling me?”
“You said you protect her.” He paused. Then his voice got quiet as fuck. “She told me you tend to her.”
I didn’t speak cult, but I got what he was saying, and I couldn’t deny the truth. “She walked away from me, bro.” And he was the one who’d found her.
“I am not your brother.”
No fucking shit. “You know what I’m saying.”
Silence.
“I don’t have all day. I’m going to the hotel. You got anything else to add?”
“You could have found her.” His tone didn’t change, but it was still a fucking accusation.
He was right. I could’ve tried harder, but I was pissed the hell off and she could’ve not fucking run. “She purposely threw me off.” Curiosity got the better of me. “How’d you find her?”
“It was the only hotel named after a flower.”
As soon as he said it, the significance hit me. A flower. A goddamn flower. The fucking flower that changed her life. “You should be a tracker.”
“I am a hunter.”
Same difference. He was skilled at tracking. I didn’t know what the hell he was going to do now that his cult was dead, and if he was anyone else to her, I probably would’ve offered him a job. But I wasn’t that big a person. “Thanks for the call.” I put the car back in drive and took my foot off the brake. “I owe you one.”
“I do not intend to collect.” He hung up.
I fought midday traffic driving a fucking block. Then I threw my keys at the valet in front of the Orchid before he’d even gotten to my door. “Room 2901,” I barked, striding past him.
I bypassed the reception desk and skirted the restaurant and found my way past the pool to the beach access. I didn’t give a shit about getting sandy as fuck, but I paused on the walkway to look for her because I didn’t want her to see me before I saw her. I wasn’t gonna give her an opportunity to run again, no fucking way.
Standing
in the shade of a seagrape tree, I scanned the beach for black hair and black swimsuits. I was making my second pass when my fucking breath caught. A woman who’d cursed my dreams for months, a woman who’d made me angrier and more jealous that I’d ever had a right to be, was standing at the outdoor showers. But she wasn’t in a black swimsuit, and she didn’t have black hair anymore. A small-as-fuck white bikini clung to her gorgeous curves as she rinsed off golden brown hair that was longer than I’d remembered.
My heart fucking pounding, my pulse Mach one, I stepped up behind her. “Chica.”
“CHICA.”
My heart jumped, my stomach flew to my throat and my body responded. I was turning before I could process the tears in my eyes or the acute longing deep in my bones. My heart, my soul, it knew that voice, and there was no way I could turn away from it.
But I wasn’t prepared for the sight of him.
Eyes tortured with grief and exhaustion, tension straining muscles that looked three times bigger, there was sallow coloring where there’d once been golden-brown life. André Luna didn’t look like the man who’d walked into a bar full of bikers, determined to extract a woman who made him smile. He looked defeated.
I choked on a sob of guilt.
“Jesucristo.” He didn’t hesitate. He pulled me into his arms.
“I’m all wet,” I cried.
“I don’t care.” His arms crushed me to his body. “Jesus Christ, chica, you were here the whole damn time.”
Anger, wonder, relief, I heard it all in his voice, but I couldn’t respond. The lump in my throat swelled to impossible hope, and I was afraid to trust anything.
So I stood there, exactly where I’d wanted to desperately be for the past six months and three weeks, and I soaked his shirt with ocean and tears.
He pulled away enough only to capture my face in his hands. “I should’ve found you, not him.”