by Harley Wylde
“How far are we from my car?” I asked.
“Few hours walk.”
It hadn’t seemed that far at the time.
“And by car?” I asked.
He glanced at me over his shoulder, his brows lowered. I heard the clank of a dish in the sink, then he was drying his hands and turning to face me. His hands braced on either side of him on the counter, and he waited.
“If someone sees my car, can they find me here?” I asked. If there was even a chance that Sebastian would come here, I needed to know. The last thing I wanted was for that man to find me.
“Not easily, and with all this snow it would be a while before they could reach us.”
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Then I’m safe,” I said in a near whisper.
“Safe from what?” he asked.
“Not what.” I licked my lips. “Who.”
He didn’t move, didn’t blink, and I knew he wanted me to say more. I supposed I owed him that. He had saved me, after all, and was taking care of me.
“My mother married Carl Rossi three years ago. I was only sixteen and still in high school, and no matter how much I tried to talk her out of it, she was adamant.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because we were poor,” I said. “And my mother wanted a better life. The Rossis are rich, far richer than anything we’ve ever known. She didn’t care about the rumors, she only saw dollar signs. They’d been dating for a long time, and I guess he finally popped the question.”
“And your dad?”
Pain pierced my heart. “Killed in action. He was a Marine. My parents were never married, so my mom didn’t receive any benefits from the military when he died. We had to move out of the apartment he’d rented for us.”
“When?” he asked, his voice tight.
“Ten years ago,” I said softly. “He was part of an elite team. He wouldn’t say more than that about it, but I know he was sent on special missions. One of them didn’t go according to plan.”
Something flashed across his face, but it was gone so fast I thought I’d imagined it. Guilt. I couldn’t imagine what Rocky would have to feel guilty about. My dad had died so long ago, and there was no way this hunk of mountain man had anything to do with it.
“Why are you running from the Rossis?” he asked.
“Because my stepbrother, Sebastian, has never made it a secret that he wants me. And now he’s decided he’s going to have me, whether I’m willing or not. He broke into my room and…” My lip trembled.
“Did he hurt you?” Rocky asked gruffly.
“He tried.” My gaze met his. “I had an old knife that had belonged to my dad and I started sleeping with it at night, the more persistent Sebastian became. I didn’t feel safe in that house. When he started tearing my nightgown from my body, I grabbed the knife and stabbed him with it.”
He grunted, but I thought it was in approval of my actions.
“I’d been thinking about running and had packed a bag the previous week. I snatched some clothes and shoes, grabbed my bag, and ran. I hid in the house long enough to dress and see if they were looking for me, then I snuck out to my car.”
“And ended up crashing on my mountain,” he said.
“Yes.”
Rocky watched me a few minutes, then turned to finish the dishes.
“You should go get warm by the fire,” he said.
Knowing I’d been dismissed, I stood on shaky legs and left the kitchen. I collapsed onto the couch near the fire in the living room and stared into the flames. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew my mountain man was thinking hard. Probably wondering if I was worth having under his roof if the Rossi family was looking for me. No one wanted to make an enemy of them. I had my suspicions they were involved in criminal activity, but I’d never seen proof.
With a sigh, I curled into the arm of the couch and wondered what I’d do if he threw me out. With no car, there was only so far I could go. And I knew that I’d be caught, and then there would be hell to pay. Sebastian might have wanted to claim my body before, but now he’d be after so much more. I knew the price for stabbing him and running would be steep, far steeper than I ever wanted to pay.
Chapter Two
Rocky
Christ! I’d come to this mountain to hide, to forget the past. Not that I could ever forget, but the quiet made things more bearable. I’d tried going back to civilization, had tried to stick it out, but sometimes the voices in my head couldn’t be drowned out until I came to the mountains. I’d been up here almost a year this time, and hadn’t had any plans of returning anytime soon. And then Thomas O’Malley’s daughter had to crash on my damn mountain. I’d thought her eyes looked familiar, and when she’d said her last name, I’d thought it merely a coincidence. But the fact she said her daddy was a Marine who died ten years ago, that cinched it.
I had thought I was safe here, that the tragedies of the past wouldn’t touch me. I’d been safe the other times I’d taken refuge up here. Whenever I couldn’t take it anymore, when the guilt weighed me down too much, I came here. I’d been coming here off and on since I left the service. But I’d been wrong this time. It had come crashing down my mountain and was now lounging on my couch. As much as I wanted to run, or send her packing, I knew I couldn’t. She was in danger, and I owed it to her old man to take care of her. I’d known Thomas had a kid, but since the man had never married Mara’s mom, the military hadn’t been able to help me track down the family. Fuck, no one had even known her name, or her mother’s. I couldn’t remember a single time Thomas had flashed a picture of either of them.
I didn’t understand why Mara hadn’t received benefits, though. As Thomas’ kid, she was entitled to them, even if her parents hadn’t tied the knot. While he hadn’t shared a lot about his daughter with his team, the military had to have known about her. It was a puzzle I’d have to figure out later. Right now, I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the woman invading my home. Despite her battered condition, I’d gotten hard looking at all those soft curves of hers, and then felt like an asshole for noticing. Now I felt even worse. I’d known she was young, but she was only nineteen. At thirty-nine, I shouldn’t even think of her as anything other than a kid. But she damn sure didn’t have the body of one.
Not that it mattered. Once she knew about my past, who I was, what I’d done… she’d never want anything to do with me. Her father’s blood, as well as those of the entire team, was on my hands. If I’d reacted faster, had gone with my gut and gotten us the hell out of there, then she’d still have her dad and would have never ended up on Sebastian Rossi’s radar. So, no matter how much I wanted to run, I wouldn’t. I’d help her. Protect her. I just had to get the message to my dick that we weren’t going to fuck her.
I stayed in the kitchen as long as I could, but knew I had to face her sometime. We were safe in this cabin for now, but if Sebastian Rossi was after her, it was only a matter of time before he came knocking. My cabin was the only one within fifty miles, which meant when they found her car, they would come here sooner or later. While my cabin was hidden by the trees, the smoke from the fireplaces would alert someone that a house was here. For the most part, people left me alone. But a guy like Rossi wasn’t going to back down, not without good reason.
I knew what I needed to do, but fuck if I wanted to. I’d come here to hide and lick my wounds. But whether I liked it or not, it was time to face the world once more. While I could protect Mara, she would be a lot safer if I got her out of here. Far from here. Back to my brothers. This cabin had been my refuge, and I’d come here often over the years, but I knew I couldn’t stay forever. Especially now. I might have hidden out here a few more years, if the assholes at my club didn’t bug the shit out of me about coming home, but Mara needed me. And knowing I was her only hope was enough to get me down off the mountain.
Gusts of snow slammed against the windows, and I wondered how long we’d be snowed in. They were predicting at leas
t three feet, but the way the storm was blowing out there, I was expecting more. Even if I wanted to get her as far from the fucking Rossi family as I could, it wasn’t going to happen right away. It would take at least a few days before I’d be able to get down the mountain, maybe a week if the snow didn’t let up by morning.
I made my way into the living room and found her curled in the corner of the couch, staring at the flames. She looked so damn small, and completely helpless. I had no doubt if Sebastian Rossi got his hands on her, he would completely destroy her. The man was a complete monster and he’d beat her down, physically and emotionally, until there was nothing left. What the hell had her mother been thinking? Everyone knew that the Rossi family were criminals. Maybe not your basic criminal, but Carl Rossi was part of the Italian mob, just like his father before him, and he was training Sebastian to take over the family business one day.
It made me ill to think of those people raising Mara. She should have been with her father’s family, and I wondered why she wasn’t. I knew that Thomas O’Malley’s mom would have taken in her granddaughter without any question. When I’d asked Wilma O’Malley where her granddaughter was, she hadn’t seemed to know what I was talking about. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out that Thomas never introduced his family to Mara, but I couldn’t understand why. He’d had a loving and supportive mother, and it seemed unusual that he would have kept Mara from her. All of my digging had never produced any answers, and since I’d never known Mara’s mother’s name, or Mara’s for that matter, the trail had run cold pretty fast.
“Mara, do you remember a man in uniform coming to your home when your dad died? Someone who would have given your mother the bad news?” I asked, knowing damn well no one had. Or rather, they had, but someone else had moved into the apartment by then. The military had only had two addresses on file for Thomas O’Malley. The apartment we’d assumed he shared with Mara and her mom, and his mother’s house.
Her brow furrowed. “No. Mom woke me up one night and said we had to leave. She packed a bag for each of us and left everything else behind. It was the dead of night when she said we had to go.”
So, they’d been on the run, but from what or who? I had a feeling we might never know, not unless Mara’s mother volunteered the information, and since she was deep in Carl Rossi’s pocket, that wasn’t likely to happen. I didn’t know what type of relationship Mara had with her mom and didn’t want to press. Something didn’t feel right, though. That sixth sense that had never steered me wrong said there was way more to the story. Mara’s mother must have had a reason to run out in the middle of the night.
“You think she’s been hiding something, don’t you?” Mara asked.
“I think there’s a lot she hasn’t told you,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense that you would have had to leave in the middle of the night and leave all your things behind. And how did she know your father was dead if the military hadn’t shown up yet to tell her?”
Mara opened and shut her mouth a few times before shrugging. “I was too little to really understand what was going on. I just know she told me that my daddy wasn’t coming back ever again. I cried that night and every night after. A few months later, she told me that my daddy had died.”
Months later?
“Mara, do you remember what month it was when you moved out of the apartment?”
“It was still summer because school hadn’t started yet. I had to start a new school after we left because we moved to the other side of town. The bad part.”
Summer. They’d fucking left during summer and her mom had said Thomas wasn’t coming back? We’d reported for duty in May, and Thomas had died in the fall. So, what had made her mom think Thomas wasn’t returning? Why would she vanish in the middle of the night? Mara’s mom knew something. I’d always thought our mission was fucked to hell, and now I had to wonder if we’d been set up. But by whom and for what reason? And had Mara’s mother had something to do with it? I didn’t think she could have, but the fact she’d moved so fast -- and months before Thomas died -- left me suspicious.
My stomach soured, and rage filled me. All those lives lost. What if it could have been avoided? If we’d been set up, I wasn’t going to rest until I knew the truth and brought the people responsible to justice. Thomas wasn’t the only one who’d lost his life that day. Other families had been broken apart, and while I’d always blamed myself, maybe it really hadn’t been my fault. Yes, I’d thought something felt off about the entire thing, but my commanding officer had forced us to go in. I hated to think he might have been in on it too.
Mara’s hand reached over and lightly touched my arm. There was concern in her eyes, and something else. I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding my emotions. I’d thought I needed to keep my past a secret from her, at least, for a while longer. But if I truly wasn’t responsible for the death of Thomas and all the others, then I no longer had a reason to hide.
I pulled up the sleeve of my shirt and showed her the tattoo on the inside of my forearm. She gasped and reached over to trace it with her fingers.
“My daddy had one of these.”
I nodded. “Devil dog. I was with him when he got his.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked at me. “You knew my dad?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. I knew Thomas O’Malley. We served together. I tried to find you when I came back stateside, but you were gone. I never knew your mom’s name, or yours, and couldn’t find you no matter how hard I tried. The last name O’Malley isn’t exactly rare.”
“Why did you ask when we moved if you already knew?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t know. Not for certain. But I can tell you right now, your mom knows something. Your daddy wasn’t dead when you moved. So why did she tell you he was never coming back?” I asked.
Mara paled. “Did my mom have something to do with daddy dying?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out. How long after you left did she hook up with Carl Rossi?”
“Maybe a month or two, but they seemed really close from the start. It’s possible she knew him longer. They didn’t get married that fast, though. At first, they were just dating. I couldn’t understand how she could move on so quickly. My heart was still broken, but she acted like she hadn’t a care in the world. We were living in the slums, the worst part of that area, but she carried on as if nothing was wrong. Even when I was starving, she was still going out at night with a smile on her face, leaving me alone in the rat-infested apartment.”
The more she told me about her mother, the more I wanted to kill the bitch. Even if she hadn’t had a hand in Thomas’ death, the way she’d treated her daughter was enough reason for me to take her out. Killing women had never been something I enjoyed, but this time, I’d make an exception.
“I need any information you can give me on your mother, sweetheart. I’m going to have someone do a bit of digging to see what we can find. And once this snow lets up, we’re out of here. I’m taking you far from Colorado.” I frowned. “What the hell are the Rossis doing here anyway?”
“Ski trip,” she said. “They come every year. Carl Rossi has homes all over the place. Colorado, California, New York, the Hamptons, Florida. He even has some outside the US, but I’ve never been to them. My daddy was from a small town just outside Los Angeles, but I guess you already know that. I think my mom met Carl Rossi during one of his trips out that way.”
I grabbed a pad and pen off the table, where I’d left them earlier when I was making a supply list. Handing them over to Mara, I waited while she wrote down her mother’s information, or what little she knew. When she was finished, I pulled out my phone, took a photo of the pad, and sent it to Wire. If anyone could track down information on Sara Rossi, it would be Wire. The man was a genius when it came to computers, and he could hack into anything.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now we wait. Wire will get something to me as soon as he finds it, and we’re stuck until the storm
passes. It will likely take a few days for the drifts to melt a bit so we can get out. I have four-wheel drive, but even I can’t get through over three feet of snow. Not unless we took a snowmobile.”
She nodded and settled back into the corner of the couch.
“What was my dad like?” she asked softly. “I remember him tickling me until I cried. Remember him tucking me in at night, the times he was home. He was gone more often than not, though. His smile… it always made me feel special when he smiled at me, probably because he didn’t smile a lot. And I remember his scent. Fresh pine, like he’d just been out in the woods chopping down trees.”
“He was a good man,” I said. “An honorable one. And he talked about you, Mara. Everyone knew he had a kid he wanted to get home to. Some of us thought it a little odd he never called you by name, but he talked about his little angel waiting at home. He never talked about your mom much, but you… you were the light of his life. His face would light up every time he told someone about his awesome kid. He never said much, but there was pride in his eyes when he spoke of you. He was a dedicated Marine, and one hell of a man. He was my friend. My brother-in-arms. And I will do whatever it takes to avenge him. If he died for no fucking reason, you’d better believe I’m going to make someone pay.”
“Good,” she said softly. “I want them all to die. They took away the only person who ever loved me.”
“I will make them pay. Every last one of them. I won’t stop until they’re dead or behind bars.”
She nodded her acceptance and went back to watching the fire. The more I looked at her, the more I could see Thomas. A more delicate, feminine version, but his features were there just the same. And it seemed she’d inherited his bloodthirsty sense of justice. He’d be proud of her.
“You have a grandmother,” I said. “Her name is Wilma O’Malley. Your dad’s mom. She didn’t know anything about you. When I asked about Thomas’ daughter, she said the only granddaughter she’d had died as an infant. I knew that couldn’t be you, but I didn’t know why she hadn’t met you before.”