That was the big question Ian had been rolling over and over in his mind for the past three hours. He’d been livid when Tahira had quietly told her parents she’d fallen in love with her rescuer, during their ordeal over the past several days, and they were now engaged. Ian had reacted without thinking it through and let his anger get the better of him. Tahira’s parents had been equally stunned but, surprisingly, not mad or upset. Amar had just raised his eyebrows at Ian in a “what the fuck?” reaction but had kept his mouth shut.
Now, as Ian gave his wife a short summary of the day’s events, something felt off. He’d known Darius for years, working side-by-side with the man in some of the biggest hellholes on Earth. His employee and teammate had always been a stand-up kind of guy, one you could trust when shit went down. Which was why Ian was now thinking he was missing something.
“I don’t believe it.” Angie rubbed her round belly as she shook her head. “Darius would never take advantage of a woman like that—especially Tahira. You drilled it into everyone’s head at Trident that she was off limits, no matter what, and you’d fire them if something happened. I vaguely remember a threat about letting King Rajeemh castrate them too. The contract operatives you get from Chase? Yeah, there’s a couple I could see doing something like that—not many, but there are a few—but not anyone on Alpha or Omega. If you trust them with my life, then you have to trust them with Tahira’s.” She sat on the couch next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Something’s wrong with this whole scenario, Ian. Why would he ask her to marry him out of the blue like that? Maybe they did fall in love out there in the jungle. Stranger things have happened when two people are thrown together in unexpected situations.”
Mulling Angie’s words in his head, Ian knew she was right about one thing—something was definitely wrong with the entire sequence of events.
“Any news from Lady Cara?” Angie asked, changing the subject.
Ian nodded. “Yeah, she called me earlier. Her sister’s friend is back with her family, and Cara is making sure she gets whatever help she needs. Said she owes us one. I’ll be saving that card for when we really need it.” Cara Webb was what the black-ops community called an information broker. She was also a member of the BDSM community. She had underground connections that would someday prove handy, no doubt. Ian wasn’t going to waste her IOU on something trivial.
Leaning over, he brushed his lips across his wife’s mouth. “I’ve got to run out. I’ll pick up some takeout from Donovan’s on the way home, okay?”
“You’re going to talk to Darius, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m not promising anything, but before I go through with firing him, I want all the facts. He just better be willing to give them to me.”
When he stood erect again, she held out her hands for him, letting him help her up out of the couch. She wrapped her arms around his waist, her baby belly between them. “He will. Just don’t threaten him with the castration thing again. And text me when you want me to call in the order to Donovan’s, because I don’t know what I’ll be craving yet.”
He kissed her forehead. “I will. Love you, Angel.”
Sitting on his couch, a half-empty bottle of beer in his hand, Darius stared at the big screen TV that took up an entire wall in his living room, having no clue what channel it was on. It could’ve been a Spanish soap opera, and he wouldn’t have even noticed. Cain and Tristan had left a few minutes ago, after unsuccessfully trying to get him to tell them what in the hell was going on. While Ian and Devon knew part of it, and it wouldn’t be long before the news spread, especially since Tahira’s parents now knew they were engaged, Darius hadn’t been ready to talk about it with his teammates.
He’d known Ian was going to be pissed, but honestly, he never expected the guy to fire him. Dev said he would talk to his brother, but Darius wasn’t sure his former lieutenant was going to hire him back. He’d betrayed their trust—well, at least, they thought he had.
Now, he had to figure out what he was going to do next for a job. He could call Chase Dixon at Blackhawk Security, but he and Ian were good friends, and Chase wouldn’t go behind Ian’s back and hire someone the man had just fired.
After showering again and changing into sweatpants and a T-shirt, Darius had called the hospital to check on Tahira. He’d left without saying goodbye, and he didn’t want her to think it was anything she’d said or done. She’d been sleeping when he’d gotten through, and Amar had taken the call at the nurses’ station. While Darius had expected the head of the royal security team to ream him like Ian had, the man had sounded friendly, telling him he’d have Tahira call him back when she woke up. He’d also said the king and queen had retired to their estate in Clearwater Beach to catch up on some much-needed sleep as well. Darius took that as not to bother them today, but at some point tomorrow, he was going to have to meet with them—after all, they were about to become his in-laws. And wasn’t that a fucking kick? Damn, he really hadn’t thought this whole thing through, but it was too late to back out now.
As he took another swig from the bottle, someone knocked on the front door to his condo. At first, he was going to ignore it, thinking it was someone else from the Omega Team wanting to talk, but whoever it was kept pounding, harder and harder. Slamming his beer down on the coffee table, Darius stood and strode to the door. Yanking it open, he barked, “What?”
He was shocked to find Ian on his doorstep, holding a six-pack of beer. “Hey, twatopotomus, I brought a peace offering and a new nickname. You gonna let me in or just stand there.” The guy wasn’t smiling, but he also didn’t look like he wanted to rip Darius’s head off.
“Are you going to try to hit me again, because this time I’ll fight back.”
Ian snorted and pushed his way into the foyer, forcing Darius to take a step back. “I might, but that’s still up in the air. It depends on you.” His boss ambled into the living room, put the six-pack on the coffee table, took one for himself, then sat in the recliner.
“Whatta you mean?” Darius asked, retrieving his own beer and returning to his spot on the couch.
Ian glanced at the TV. “What is that? A Spanish soap opera? Damn, you spent too much time in South America, didn’t you?”
Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, Darius shut off the TV, then waited for the other man to state why he was there. Seconds ticked by before the question he didn’t want to hear was thrown at him.
“What happened in Argentina?”
He took a drink from the bottle and swallowed. “You read my report.”
“Yeah, I did. I want to know what you didn’t put in the report. Don’t fucking lie to me again, Batman. You and I go way back. I didn’t blink an eye when you tossed your name into the hat for the Omega Team. I also took one look at the name on your resume and automatically put it in the hire file without reading the rest of it. I trusted and respected you like a brother—still do, if my suspicions are correct.” Ian leaned forward, staring at Darius with those piercing blue eyes of his. “So, let’s try this again. What wasn’t in the report? Something happened to Tahira before you got her out of there, didn’t it?”
Biting his bottom lip, Darius didn’t respond. As much as he trusted the man, he’d also given Tahira that same trust. It was killing him to have to decide which one he had to betray.
Leaning back again, Ian sighed. “I figured out quite a while ago Tahira only flirts outrageously with the single men she trusts not to take advantage of her. That, and learning more about her and the religion and customs of Timasur, made me realize she was still a virgin. But that’s changed, hasn’t it? And not because you and she had a jungle fling.” When Darius remained silent, Ian pushed again. “Damn it, Batman. I might be a little slow on the uptake now and again, but I’m not fucking stupid. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong and I’ll let it go. But if I’m right, it won’t leave this room—I would never, ever do anything to hurt that girl. She’s like a little sister to me and Angie. I care about her�
��I care about you too—but I can’t help both of you if you don’t talk to me.”
Taking a deep breath, Darius let it out slowly and made his decision. His friend had pretty much taken the choice away from him by being too damn perceptive. Darius also knew this conversation would never be repeated if Ian said it wouldn’t be. “There’s nothing you can do about it. When I got to the cell area to help the girls escape, I didn’t know she’d been taken upstairs by Secada. After leaving Costello and Romeo there to get the rest of them out, I ran upstairs, but I—I was too late.” He cleared the frog that had suddenly taken up residence in his throat, while picking at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail. “I killed the motherfucker, got her wrapped up in a blanket—she was still unconscious from the drugs—grabbed some clothes for her, then got her the hell out of there. By that point, everything had gone to shit.
“Later, when bits and pieces started coming back to her, and she figured out what’d happened, she freaked—understandably—but it was more than that. She told me she’d been a virgin and, if she wasn’t one on her wedding night, she’d be disgraced. Apparently, in their country, it’s not unheard of for assholes to tell the world their bride wasn’t pure on their wedding night and demand a divorce. It would’ve destroyed her parents and her reputation. Despite being a princess, many would treat her as an outcast—not her immediate family, but she would lose her respectability and everything she’d ever worked for—all her charity work would crumble. She’d be publicly humiliated.” He took another sip of beer. “She was so lost, so heartbroken, man, I couldn’t let her go through that. So, I came up with the plan to marry her; then, when it wouldn’t cause a scandal, we’d get a divorce. If she married again after that, the virginity thing wouldn’t be an issue. No one would know that we never had sex during the marriage, and she’d be safe.”
“Remind me again why you think you’re not a Dominant?” When Darius rolled his eyes, Ian said, “No, I mean it. Okay, so you’re not into whips and chains and some of the darker shit, but it’s so much more than that. If you’re really serious about this marriage thing, and there’s nothing I can say or do to change your mind . . .” Darius shook his head—the whole thing sounded crazy, even to him, but he couldn’t retract his promise to Tahira. “Then down the road, maybe sooner than you think, you should consider using aspects of the lifestyle—the milder ones—to help her through this. She’s going to need counseling—Doc Dunbar would be ideal—but there are things you can do to help her too—non-sexual things. Dev and I can mentor you.”
Darius had met Dr. Trudy Dunbar several times. She was a psychologist who The Covenant used to counsel its members if they needed it, and she was also on the government’s approved list to treat veterans from the special-ops community for PTSD. Those guys had a lot of sensitive intel in their heads, so the shrinks had to be fully vetted in order to help them. Cowboy was one of those vets and had been seeing Trudy since joining the Omega Team.
After downing the rest of his beer, Ian stood and put the empty bottle back into the six-pack carton. “Think about it. In the meantime, you’re hired again. But don’t be a twatopotomus next time. Tell me what the fuck is going on, so I don’t feel the need to punch your lights out.
“Now, I’ve got to go get my wife and unborn kid some dinner from Donovan’s. Get a good night’s rest—you earned it. I’ll meet you at the hospital at oh-nine-hundred. We’ve got some security details, among other things, to work out with Amar.”
The man had finally said something Darius agreed with one hundred percent—he needed at least twelve hours of sleep before he could feel human again. Getting to his feet, he walked his boss to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ian smirked. “Be prepared for the Trident women to take over your life once they hear you’re getting married. Five words—bridal shower and gift registry.” He shuddered dramatically, almost making Darius laugh. “Enough said.”
19
Darius jarred awake as his cell phone came alive on the nightstand next to his bed. Red digital numbers on the clock on his dresser announced it was 0210 hours. Without turning on a light, he grabbed the phone and checked the screen. An unrecognized local number was his only clue to whomever was calling. Stabbing the connect button, he then put the phone to his ear. "Knight."
“It’s Amar. I’m sorry for the late hour—”
"Is Tahira okay?" He tossed aside the covers and swung his legs off the bed to sit up.
The head of the royal guard sighed. "Physically, yes. But I’m afraid she awoke from a nightmare and is very upset. She threatened to scream if they tried to sedate her. She is asking for you and ordered me not to contact her parents. Can—"
"Tell her I'm on my way." Getting to his feet, Darius reached for the T-shirt he'd been wearing earlier and a pair of jeans from a pile of clean laundry he hadn't put away yet.
"Thank you, my friend. I will see you shortly."
Disconnecting the call, he tossed the phone on the bed and quickly got dressed, securing his holstered weapon at his lower back and letting the shirt cover it. His wallet went into his back pocket before he snatched up his phone and car keys. He'd only gotten about four hours of sleep, but years of being in the SEALs had taught his body how to regenerate itself quickly during combat naps. While he could still use another solid eight hours, he was awake enough to safely drive to the hospital.
Tahira had asked for him—needed him. For some strange reason that sent a jolt to his heart, causing it to pound. Butterflies took flight in his gut. What the fuck? The woman was a battered rape victim and yet his body was acting like a horny teenager who was going on a date with the head cheerleader. Get a grip, Knight.
After taking a quick trip to the bathroom, he stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a cold bottle of water from the refrigerator on his way out the door. At the late hour, it only took him ten minutes to reach the hospital. He parked in the lot and hurried inside. When a skinny, male security guard sitting at the front desk tried to tell him that visitors weren't allowed at this time of the night, Darius pulled out his wallet and flashed his Trident Security identification. "I'm with the detail on the fifth floor, private wing."
The pimply-faced guard, who couldn't he more than twenty years old, sat up straighter in his chair and nodded. "Uh, sure. Go on up."
Darius frowned and leaned forward. "Don't you want to check my name against the list of approved people who are allowed in that wing?"
The kid's Adam's apple bounced several times. "Uh . . . um, yeah." He shuffled through some papers until he found what he was looking for. This was the best security the hospital had at night? "Um, w-what's your name again?"
"Darius Knight.” He held his ID closer to the guard’s face. “And if I catch you allowing anyone up on that floor without checking the list, I'll guarantee it will be your last shift here. Understood? There's a reason that's a private wing."
His eyes widened. "Um, y-yeah. Sorry, sir. It—it won't happen again." He ran his finger down the list of names of the royal guards, TS operatives, Tahira's parents, and a few members of the king and queen's trusted personal staff who'd accompanied them to Florida. "Um, h-here you are, Mr. Knight. Y-you can go up."
Glaring at the guard a moment longer to make sure he'd gotten his point across, Darius finally dipped his chin once and put away his wallet. Without saying anything further, he strode toward the elevator. Arriving at the fifth floor, he stepped out into the hallway. Travis "Tiny" Daultry, the head of security at The Covenant and occasional TS bodyguard when needed, was stationed at the door to the private wing with one of the royal guards. Both men were on high alert, their holstered weapons in full view of anyone wanting to challenge them. While the six-foot-eight, former professional football player towered over his companion by a good seven inches, Darius was sure the man from Timasur could hold his own if the two sparred.
A smile spread across Tiny's face as Darius approached. "Morning, Batman. This is Haji Mellouk." He gesture
d between the two men. "This is Darius Knight."
Darius wasn't offended when the other man didn't offer a hand. Instead, they each gave the other a curt nod before Mellouk's attention returned to the quiet hallway. Amar’s men took their responsibilities seriously, even more so since the kidnapping.
Meanwhile, Tiny opened the door to the private wing for Darius. "Amar told us you were coming. He's waiting for you in the princess's room."
"Thanks. When's Henderson due in?" Doug "Bullseye" Henderson was the head of the Private Protection Division at Trident and, in this case, Tiny's superior.
"Said he'd be here at eight to check on things." The big man's eyes narrowed. "Something wrong?"
"Tell him to talk to the head of hospital security and get that kid at the front desk off the overnight watch. He's young, green, and useless, and would probably pee in his pants if shit went down. Tell him not to get him fired but put him where he won't have to confront anyone, like monitoring the security cameras or something.”
"You got it."
As Darius strode down the hall, the heavy wooden door shut behind him. While it was still quiet in that area, there was some activity going on. It appeared someone else had been admitted to the private wing because a uniformed Florida state trooper stood outside one of the previously-unoccupied patient rooms. Darius didn’t bother to ask about who the new patient was, since it was highly unlikely he’d be given the information.
At the nurse's station, two women and one man, all dressed in scrubs with their identification tags hanging from lanyards around their necks, were working their way through their shifts. There were only four patient rooms in this section of the hospital, but they were more like five-star hotel suites. Each had a full bath and attached living rooms where family members had access to refrigerators, small convection ovens instead of microwaves, coffee machines, large screen TVs, couches, and recliners. The rooms where the patients recovered from their illness or trauma were soothingly decorated in soft earth tones, with expensive art on the walls. The wider beds were the nicest ones Darius had ever seen in a hospital, but they still functioned like their commercialized counterparts.
Forty Days & One Knight: Trident Security Omega Team Book 2 Page 12