by Anne Malcom
Who’d protect her.
He was sitting at church with him there, and it pissed Cade off that it didn’t feel as wrong as it should’ve to have him sitting at that table with his brothers.
“I want something concrete,” Cade growled. “I want something we can do to take this fucker down.”
“Well, I’ve got a friend who knows a guy who can get his hands on some rogue nukes,” Gage said, dead fucking serious.
Cade stared at him. “I can’t believe I have to say this, but no fucking nukes, Gage.”
Gage shrugged, carving at the table with his knife. “Offer’s there. They’re just going to waste.”
“No nukes,” Cade repeated.
He was about to continue when Gwen burst in the door, holding both of their children in her arms.
It was late, and she was meant to be at their place with Rosie. He immediately checked his babies for injuries. Nothing. But they weren’t crying, and they should’ve been, being woken up and dragged to the club when they should’ve been sleeping. They should’ve been crying.
But they weren’t.
They sensed something in their mother. Something that terrified them enough to keep them silent.
Cade was out of his chair before anyone could speak, Kingston in one arm and the other one around Gwen and Belle. He sucked in a breath, inhaling the smell of his family, just to tell his thundering heart that they were there, alive.
“Baby,” he whispered. And fuck, he couldn’t do anything but whisper, he was that terrified. It was like those shadows he’d been staring at every night had come to life and he couldn’t breathe around them.
“They took Rosie,” she sobbed. “They came into the house, they pointed a gun at Belle, and Rosie went with them. She knew they were going to kill her, but she went with them because they pointed a gun at our daughter.”
Cade’s blood went cold. Ice cold. Every part of him froze. He stared at his daughter. Took in her wide green eyes. Her little nose. Her red lips. The locks of her hair.
She’s okay. She’s okay and she’s here and your world isn’t falling apart. Keep your fucking shit together. For them.
Gwen stopped sobbing and her eyes went blank. “They pointed a gun at our baby, and now we have to kill them all.”
Luke
“They took Rosie…. She knew they were going to kill her but she went with them.”
Luke heard nothing but that on a replay reel.
Twenty-three hours and thirty-six minutes. That’s all he heard. He couldn’t hear Rosie. He tried. Every moment that he sucked in ash instead of air and his heart shredded in his chest instead of beating, he tried to conjure up her throaty voice telling him she loved him.
Tried to remember the way her mouth tasted, the way her pussy tasted. The way she screwed up her nose when she was frustrated. How her smile lit up a fucking room whenever she was happy, which was a lot these days. How perfectly she fit in his arms.
He fucking couldn’t.
It was as if someone had come and stolen away all of his memories of Rosie, just like they’d stolen her.
He barely kept it together. Fucking barely.
Cade was eerily calm. He’d been making orders, calling in markers to get in touch with someone who could tap into the fuck’s location. Police came and went because they wanted every set of eyes out there looking for Rosie.
Luke barely noticed their glances at him, staring at the side he was standing on, the outlaw side.
He didn’t see any of that. He just saw the last time he’d kissed Rosie.
“I don’t like it.” She pouted.
“What, me going to the clubhouse and trying to figure out how to kill the man stalking you while you drink wine?” His hands found her waist, then traveled lower to her perfect fucking ass. His cock hardened.
She smiled.
His cock hardened even more.
“No. Well yes, I like that because the menfolk are doing all the work.” She winked. “But I had plans for us tonight.”
Luke pulled her into him, smelling her perfume. Smelling her. “What was that?”
She bit her lip and his cock twitched. Her lipstick was bright pink today. Her hair was piled atop her head and she was wearing a bright pink dress. Tight as shit and too short, but he loved it. Her heeled boots were pink too. She was in a ‘pink mood,’ she’d said that morning after he’d told her he liked her outfit. He’d actually showed her. By bending her over the sofa the second she’d emerged from the bedroom.
He fucking loved that. Waking up to a different Rosie every day. But the same in all the ways that mattered. He loved that she would never be happy stationary. That to her, everything in her life was fluid, except the people she loved. With Rosie, that was forever.
“Well,” she said, “I was making room for some more of my clothes and I found a rogue pair of handcuffs.”
Luke’s cock pulsed again and he hissed out a breath.
Her eyes flared. “Yeah,” she whispered, feeling his cock pressing into her stomach. “Now you get why I don’t like it? We don’t get to use them.”
Luke yanked his mouth to hers, kissing her like he wanted to fuck her: hard, rough, and with no mercy.
She blinked dreamily when he stopped, her face flush.
“We’re gonna fuckin’ use them,” Luke growled. “I promise you that.”
She smiled again. “I’ll hold you to that, Crawford. And I’m thinking I get to do the handcuffing.”
She winked and sauntered away. He watched the sway of her ass, his balls crying out to him to fuck her brains out. Now. But he didn’t. Because he had shit to do and she’d be there later on.
But she wasn’t. And now Luke might never get to fuckin’ see her bite her lip, watch her face flush after he kissed her. He wanted to rip his own skin apart for how trapped he felt inside his own body.
“Son.”
Luke’s head snapped up. He’d been sitting in a chair in church, on his own, head in his hands in a rare moment of stillness. He cursed himself for getting lost in that, even if it was for a few seconds. That was a few seconds he would never get back. That was a few seconds that could mean everything to Rosie.
His father stood in front of him, face unreadable. He looked very old all of a sudden. It was strange. He and Rosie had just seen the man and the lines on his forehead hadn’t been there. He hadn’t looked like that.
Luke stared at his father. “I failed,” he choked out. “I swore, since that day in the car, I swore I’d protect her, and I fucking failed,” he hissed, not caring that his father wouldn’t remember the very day he decided to bring down the club to protect Rosie.
And now the only chance Rosie had was the club.
Luke’s father walked in unhurriedly, clapped his son on the back. “No, Luke, you didn’t fail her,” he muttered. “You givin’ up?”
“Fuck no,” Luke said fiercely.
“Then you haven’t failed her,” Bill said firmly. “You know she don’t need protectin’. You know she’s strong. She’s gonna be whole and well when you find her. You’re gonna find her, Luke.”
His father’s voice was firm, but there was something beneath it. Desperation. Because Luke knew his father understood that if they didn’t find her, he’d lose his son forever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rosie
They kept me in that house for twenty-four hours.
Fernandez was true to his word. No one touched me. They fed me. Gave me water. Bathroom breaks.
Very polite kidnappers, all in all.
But then again, they didn’t need to starve me or beat me. Physical violence only went so far. They landed the deepest of blows without touching a hair on my head. Those photos worked better than anything else would have.
I got snatches of sleep, for handfuls of minutes. Then I saw Belle’s beautiful locks, matted in blood. Gwen’s sightless stare. Bex enduring more horrors. Bull meeting the Devil truly, without anything to bring him back.
But when Fernandez came back in, I was wide awake, ready.
“Ah, I’m glad to see you’re looking so refreshed,” he greeted warmly.
I glared at him.
“So you’ve considered my proposition?” he asked pleasantly.
“What do you want?” I hissed. “You went to all the trouble to kidnap me, surveil my family, threaten them. You’ve shown me how large your dick is, I get it. What’s with the theatrics?”
“I hear you are a rather… unpredictable young woman,” he said.
I snorted.
“I just need assurances that, on your next holiday, you do not choose to come to my country,” he said smoothly.
“Ah, so you want to make sure your business isn’t disrupted again,” I spat.
He nodded once. “We are in understanding.”
“Yeah, asshole. Congratu-fucking-lations.”
He shook his head, smiling. “Unpredictable, brave, or stupid? I’m not sure which.”
“Well you think on that real hard. Till your head explodes, even,” I invited.
“Brave, I think,” he surmised. “But brave or not, it’s not you I kill if I hear of you being unpredictable again. I’ll kill all of them.” He nodded to the photos.
“I get it, Hannibal Lecter,” I seethed.
He glanced at his hundred-thousand-dollar watch, bought with stolen innocence. “Ah, they should arrive soon.”
I didn’t answer.
“Your family is quite effective,” he continued. “I didn’t expect them to discover this location until later.” His eyes moved over me with the first show of real interest since this thing began. It made me sick to my stomach. “Pity,” he said. “But oh well. It has been a pleasure knowing you, Rosie. May we never meet again.”
The sound of gunshots and frenzied yells echoed in the distance.
I glanced toward the closed door where the two men guarding it, lifted their semiautomatics, preparing to use them on whatever the source of the noise was.
I looked back to the monster in front of me, feigning disinterest. “That’ll be my brother and my boyfriend here to pick me up. It’s the strangest thing, they don’t approve of me going on unscheduled playdates with human traffickers.” I shrugged in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “I hope you’re not too fond of your frontline men. I’d say most of them are already dead or at least maimed right now. But I’m sure you post them that way, least liked to most, for these very situations, no?”
His gaze didn’t move to the door, didn’t even flicker from where it was focused. On me. “You are a very strange woman,” he observed, tilting his head in a way I didn’t like. The way a cat regarded a mouse, deciding whether to play with it for a time or just not bother with the façade and eat it whole.
I didn’t let my unease show. “Fuck you,” I said with a smile.
The doors burst open, both Cade and Luke running point, side by side. Their eyes found me and their guns found the man in front of me. In any other situation, it would’ve been comical, among other things. My brother and his once archnemesis teaming up and pointing their guns at a common enemy instead of each other.
Brought together by me.
That was what I’d always wanted, wasn’t it? Granted, the situation was a lot more fucked up than I’d planned.
But if it wasn’t a major Fuck-Up, it wasn’t Rosie.
Bull, Lucky, Gage, Asher, Dwayne, Brock, and Steg came in after them. Bull took care of one guard with the butt of his gun in a practiced and effortless jab. Gage, grinning and somehow covered in blood that I both guessed and hoped wasn’t his own, plowed his fist through the face of the second guard. The crunching of bone traveled through the air.
I turned so my back was to Fernandez, a gesture of trust that I hoped wasn’t another Fuck-Up that would land me in the grave. I made sure I stood in front of him, which meant in front of the guns pointed at him.
Both my brother’s and Luke’s eyes bulged in panic and fury.
“Rosie, get the fuck out of the way and over here. Right now,” Cade barked.
I shook my head.
“Baby,” Luke said. The softness of his voice was louder than Cade’s furious yell.
It hit me every place it could. Every ounce of my being wanted to go to him. But that was selfishness. That would get some of my family killed, if I was lucky. All of them if I wasn’t.
I wouldn’t let one of them get hurt because of me.
Luke was right, I was their shield.
But I wouldn’t let him die being mine, either.
“You’ve come to save me, I guess?” I asked with a false lightness that took everything in me to conjure. “The men riding in to rescue the damsel. You know, I love fairy tales as much as the next girl, but you also know I leave them where they belong. In the book. The one I never do things by. I don’t need saving. I got this.”
I didn’t add that I was the one saving them. Both because I didn’t think alpha males much appreciated such things being said to them at any moment. In ones such as this, I guessed it was much worse. Also because I was only saving them because I was the one who’d put them in this situation in the first place. Kind of a double negative.
“Rosie, this isn’t the time. Get out of the fuckin’ way,” Cade clipped, losing patience. Not that he had much to lose anyway.
Luke was somewhat different. He regarded the situation with a lot more than the blind rage of my brother. I could see it, taste it, simmering around amongst the other, its particular brand more familiar to me than that of my own blood. Something else was working there, other than anger. He was putting it together.
You can take the cop out of the man….
“Fuck,” he breathed. Then he lowered his gun, as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
His eyes never left mine.
“Crawford. What in the fuck are you doing?” Cade all but roared.
“I’m not pointing a gun at the woman I love,” Luke said quietly. “And she said she’s got this.”
Cade gaped at Luke like he’d grown another head. “She’s fucking Rosie. She ain’t got shit but a boatload of trouble.”
Luke’s eye twitched. “I trust her. You should too.” The words were forced out of him, just like his stationary stance. I could tell, more than anything, that he wanted to stride over, yank me behind his back and shield me from this. From everything.
But he knew he couldn’t.
Seeing that on his face was worse than anything that could’ve been dished out in that room. So, like a coward, I stopped looking at his face and instead took the easy route, taking the wrath of my brother.
“Trust me, Cade, I know what I’m doing. For the club. For my family.”
He glared at me, and continued to do so when, with an exaggerated sigh, Gage, of all people, was the first to lower his gun. Then Lucky, of course with a wink. Then Bull, with no expression because he was Bull. Brock shook his head with a shadow of a smile at the corner of his lips. Dwayne and Asher did it expressionless, and Steg was regarding me with twinkling eyes.
All of them, apart from Gage and Dwayne, had experience raising and using their weapons when their own women were in this exact situation. Or something very close. I knew they didn’t lose a wink of sleep at night over those expelled bullets or lost lives. I knew they didn’t because they had it. Their fairy tale. Or their violent, bloody, and painful version. The one they took out of the books.
This man had the power to take that away from them. I had the power to make sure that didn’t happen. If I first swallowed my pride.
It went down easily when I thought of all of those happy ever afters that would stay intact. My beautiful nephew and niece who wouldn’t have a family torn apart.
“Cade,” I whispered, my voice little more than a plead.
He didn’t move for a second, suspended in time almost. I knew it went against everything in him to lower his weapon. He considered himself my shield too. It was his job to protect me, and he took it seriously.
&nbs
p; But I wouldn’t let that mean he had to die for me like he would.
So I let out the breath I’d been holding when he lowered the gun.
The silence after that was toxic, suffocating.
A clap, harsh and ugly, cut through the air, and I turned to see the source of it.
“Wonderful. I see that one beautiful lady is all that is needed to stop any more bloodshed,” Fernandez said, menace haunting his harsh accent. “So good, so good we do not have to engage in hostilities. It would have been… most unpleasant.”
“We’re going to go our separate ways now, aren’t we?” I said, the words painful for me to utter.
“What the fuck?” both Cade and Luke growled almost simultaneously.
I glanced their way, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge them. “No hard feelings now that we understand each other, right?” I asked Fernandez.
He smiled. Or stretched his facial muscles, showing teeth in the mimic of a smile. “Of course, my dear, we are understood. You keep your business and I keep my own and we… how you Americans say it? We cool?”
I did my own mime smile, all the while tasting battery acid climbing up my throat. “Yeah, we cool.”
He nodded. “Well, I’ll be going, then.”
Cade’s jaw twitched.
“Cade, let him through,” I said.
“Are you fuckin’ joking, Rosie?”
Luke looked at me, then Cade. “Do as she says.”
“I’m not listenin’ to a fuckin’ cop when he tells me to let go of the man who pointed a weapon at my four-year-old daughter’s head in front of my fuckin’ wife,” he spat.
“But your family are all alive, are they not? Surely you would like them to stay that way,” Fernandez said blandly.
Luke caught Cade just before he lunged, Brock helping him to stop Cade from charging. He struggled with both of them, all logic gone from his eyes. Fernandez had just openly threatened his family. Cade’s reaction was kneejerk and deadly.
“You’re not listening to a cop because I ain’t one,” Luke hissed. “You’re not even listening to me. You’re listening to your sister who you need to fucking trust at this point in time. You know she loves your family with everything she has. You think she’d be making this call for anyone but them?” He had to yell over top of Cade’s struggles.