by Stacey Lynn
“Finn! Finn! Come play with me.”
I scowled. “I don’t play, kid.”
He reached out and tugged my hand from my hip, pulling me forward in surprise. “I’ll teach you.”
“Sorry,” I snapped. His smile disappeared and twisted into a frown. A strange ache hit my chest and I exhaled a calming breath. “I gotta job to do, kid. Can’t be distracted by playtime right now.”
He tugged my hand again, mollified slightly by my quieter voice. “Come down the slide with me? Just once?”
I looked up and caught Meg’s eye. She had that damn lip sucked in between her teeth again and looked like she wanted to save me from him.
Or him from me.
An odd, heated spark shocked my hand when Brayden tugged again.
“Please? Mom doesn’t like the slides and Pete and Ryker always do it with me. They go faster.”
“Brayden,” Meg said, a cautious hint in her tone.
I caught her wary eyes and her voice—like she was almost scared for me.
And fuck that.
I didn’t need saving or protecting.
“All right,” I said and let him pull me forward. “Just once.”
The mixture of Brayden’s cheerful shout and tiny hand tangled around mine twisted a sharp knife to my gut.
Like he was digging nails into my skin with his kindness and sweetness.
It made me want to vomit.
“Head first.” He pointed when we got to the slide.
My eyebrows arched. “Sitting.”
He pouted. “Ryker always goes head first.” He arched his own brow to match mine and crossed his arms over his chest.
Jesus. It was like he knew challenging me against one of my brothers was the easiest way to talk me into shit.
I could be tougher than a kid on a fucking slide.
But then his damn foot began tapping impatiently, silently daring me to not be cool like Ryker.
Fuck that. No way was word getting back to the club that I couldn’t do some stupid shit a five-year-old could do.
“Fine.” I sighed.
I lay down at the top of the slide, the narrow curved edges so small my shoulders almost got stuck.
“Hands straight out,” Brayden sang from behind me.
“I know how to use a damn slide.”
“You shouldn’t say that word.”
I snorted. The amused sound escaped my lips before I could stop it. This kid was a smart-ass.
“Fine.” I complied and stuck my hands straight out. I began pushing myself forward and right as I was fully inclined down the slide, barely catching Meg’s look of amused wonder at the end, her fingertips covering lips I knew were smiling and holding back a laugh, I grunted when a large weight hit my lower back.
“What the hell?”
“That’s a bad word, too.” His butt bounced on my back and I grunted again. “Go, Finn!”
I imagined him with a flogger, whipping me like a horse and shouting “giddy-up!” The small kid was fucking heavy on my back.
But I went. The sooner I did what he wanted, the sooner I could take them back home. Then I could sit out on the back deck drinking beer and ignoring them the rest of the day.
“Weeee!” Brayden squealed on our short but fast glide down. At the last second, I braced my hands into the mulch and didn’t prepare for the sudden stop.
“Yay!” I heard, and the weight on my back disappeared. “Oomph.”
My head snapped up and I saw Brayden, three feet in front of me, flat on his back. His hands covered his eyes.
“Holy shit.” I scrambled to my feet, taking a second to untangle myself from the odd position and the too small slide. “Are you okay?” I asked, crouching over him.
Brayden removed his hands from over his eyes.
And hell if his smile and bright, laughing eyes didn’t punch me right in the chest like one of Daemon’s sucker punches.
“Again!” he shouted.
“Maybe you should take a break,” Meg said softly, crouching on the other side of Brayden. He jumped to his feet.
“That was awesome, Mom!” Mulch went flying as he brushed it off his hands and clothes. Pieces were still lodged in his hair.
Meg smiled. “You okay?”
His eyes widened. “That was the best!” He turned to me and grabbed my hand.
I had to jump to my feet so I didn’t face-plant into the mulch he’d just been lying in.
“Let’s do it again!”
Somehow, I found myself following him, a grin threatening my lips the entire time.
* * *
“I have to do this.”
“You don’t.” My hands curled around Piper’s biceps and I flinched. My little foster sister was skin and bones. Her eyes were more sunken in than they’d been only a week before. The only weight she had on her was in her small, protruding belly.
She didn’t move when my fingers dug into her skin. Her glassy eyes widened, but she couldn’t make eye contact with me. They darted around, paranoia setting in as the drugs worked their way through her already trashed-as-hell system.
“You were supposed to come to me for help, not do this fucking shit again.”
My eyes stayed on hers even as she tried to pull away. I couldn’t look down, couldn’t risk seeing her small stomach.
She was killing herself and our kid, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help except try to get her clean.
The problem was that Piper was a fucking mess. Always had been, but somehow I’d always wanted to wrap her in my arms and keep her safe. Get her clean. Set her up with a good life.
A better life than either of us had ever had.
Except my worthless old man was right.
I couldn’t do shit right.
I had watched this girl’s innocence and purity be drained from her. Fought her as she struggled to get over it, knowing she couldn’t on her own.
What I had never expected was that she’d fall this deep. Become this dead and buried even as she still walked the earth.
“What does the asshole want now?” I asked, lowering my voice.
Our foster father was a fucking work of art—sold drugs and pimped her out, all while attending regular church services with a pretty wife on his arm.
The dumb bitch had no idea the kind of man she lay down next to at night.
Or that she slept for hours alone, after he dosed her nightly cup of tea with sleeping pills, and then made his way into Piper’s room.
“You know what he wants,” Piper whispered, her bony, ghostly pale fingers trembling. “I have to do this.”
Sell and screw. It was why he’d kept us around for so long. We had always done his fucking dirty bidding, the shit he couldn’t get caught doing. I would have stopped years ago if it weren’t for Piper, who insisted that whatever he did to her—whatever he made her do—was better than living on the streets.
And the fucker knew I wouldn’t leave her.
Even screwed up, I felt a twisted sense of love toward the girl, even if I wasn’t always there to protect her.
Because I kept fucking failing.
“When?” I growled.
“Friday. I’m so sorry, Finn. I’ve tried,” she cried. Tears bubbled over her clouded eyes and fell down her cheeks. Black ink followed the tears and made her seem paler…even more broken than she usually did. “I’ve tried to stay clean. I know it’s important, but I can’t. I can’t think and I can’t function when he does this.”
“I know, baby,” I crooned and pulled her into my chest. My hand pressed against the back of her head, holding her to me as she sobbed into my chest, soaking my shirt. My fingers tangled in her greasy, unwashed hair, and I grimaced.
Piper hated showering, hated getting clean because she said being naked meant she had to look at herself and she couldn’t handle it. It was also because the dickhead had broken all the locks on the doors in the house.
She only showered when I was there, able to stand guard again
st the door, but we knew that didn’t help much.
I wouldn’t kill him now, and he knew it.
As I held Piper, I vowed that would change.
Someday when we were old enough to get out, to get away from this hell…someday when our baby was born…I’d kill the fucker.
Then we’d take off and we’d never look back.
4 Meg
“You understand what this means?”
I didn’t. I didn’t understand Ryker’s question at all, much less all he’d told me before it.
Maurice Moscoe was more dangerous than I thought.
I knew he was heavily involved in underground gambling and prostitution in New Orleans. I didn’t know he had a much farther-reaching drug-running business. He had his claws in the most despicable businesses from New Orleans to Texas to the Mexican border up to Kansas City.
The fact that his influence reached just nine hours away terrified me.
I had already driven twenty hours to escape his presence.
Now, if he ever found where I was, he could have someone to me or Brayden before I woke up.
Icy tendrils slid down my spine and I shivered from the realization.
“Meg.”
Ryker’s voice had me snapping out of my fear and I looked at him.
His eyes were soft, but weighted with concern. “You’re safe here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’ll be safe anywhere.” God, I hated the weakness in my voice.
I had always been strong. At least I tried to be. When Byron and I found out we were pregnant, and still not married, my parents disowned me. But we ended up married and made our relationship work, even though Byron was away for two-week stretches working on a deep-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
I’d been able to manage.
When Byron died, I still survived.
I did what I had to do because I was the only one I could depend on to get shit done. Maurice Moscoe’s visit letting me know of my husband’s gambling debt had even made me stronger.
I had gotten a job. Not a good one, but my receptionist job working for Todd had been respectable. It paid the bills after I had to forgo Byron’s life insurance policy that only made a dent in the debt Maurice believed he was owed.
The job allowed me to keep my house, my kid in mostly new clothes, food on the table, and continue making small payments to Moscoe every month.
And now, that had all changed.
“I’ll never be able to go home again, will I?” My throat clogged even as I spoke the words and my shoulders slumped forward.
I despised the defeat in my voice.
Faith wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me to her. My head collapsed onto her shoulder.
She’d been sitting next to me, inhaling quick gasps of shock, while Ryker let me in on everything they’d learned about Moscoe and his business dealings since my arrival in Jasper Bay three days ago.
Three full days.
Which meant Moscoe or any of his men could already be here.
I was no longer naïve enough to think I could hide from him. In the past, Moscoe had threatened me with injuring Pete. And if Moscoe knew of Pete, he had to know of Ryker—even if he hadn’t been around since last fall.
Now knowing the deep crap Moscoe was involved with, I knew he had to have heard of the Nordic Lords.
Ryker leaned forward. He was sitting on top of the coffee table, his knees spread wide. His hands were clasped together and he looked the epitome of relaxed and confident.
“We haven’t figured out how to handle this yet without creating more enemies, and the last thing I want is for our other charters to handle a mess, putting them at risk as well.”
I nodded, although I only vaguely followed along. I was being introduced into a whole new world of terminology and only understood half of it.
“But we’ll do everything we can to make it safe for you.” He reached out and clasped my knee. He squeezed it, offering me comfort.
But there was none to have.
“Yeah,” I said, looking around the room.
Finn stood by the fireplace, glaring at the back of Ryker’s head, and had been doing so ever since Ryker had told him to stay put when he got home from the club.
I waffled between embarrassed and pissed, although it made sense for my babysitter to know the extent of my trouble.
It still made me feel like a little child under the weight of his gaze that seemed to grow angrier by the second.
Especially since he hadn’t spoken to us since we left the park, days ago. Unless you counted the affirmative grunts and annoyed sighs he dished out when I spoke to him directly.
“But even if you do,” I said and pulled back from Faith, “I have a feeling you guys will handle this in a way that means if I ever return to New Orleans, I’ll always have to watch my back.”
“There won’t be blowback on you.”
“Or Brayden?” I asked, leaning in. “Can you promise me that, Ryker? Can you honestly sit here and promise me that no one Moscoe’s connected with would ever come after me or Brayden for whatever it is you’re going to do to him?”
“Meg,” he started.
I held up a hand, interrupting him. “You can’t.” I shook my head, feeling sweat beads gather at the back of my neck. “Unless we pay him the fifty grand I still owe, and even then being debt-free isn’t going to stop him.” I pointed to my chest. “He wants me.”
“I know that,” Ryker growled, “but we can take care of it.”
Behind him, Finn almost seemed affronted by my lack of trust in the club.
I scowled at him before returning my gaze to Ryker. “I came here because I knew you were the only one who could help me. And I trust that you can, but that doesn’t mean you can guarantee my future safety.”
“Can’t we just take care of it, see how it all plays out in the end, and discuss it later?”
He smiled softly, and I wanted to relax under the way Ryker had this insane ability to calm me down. To make me melt like butter and hand him my trust with no questions asked. He’d always been like that to me.
This time, there was too much at stake.
All the talking, all the explaining, and all the stress weighed me down and I was exhausted.
I pushed off the couch, my limbs heavy and my movements slow.
“I’m going to bed.”
“You can’t ignore this, Meg.”
My head snapped to Ryker. “I know that,” I hissed. “And I’m not. But you’re going to do whatever it is you guys do to handle situations like this, and I’m not going to like how it ends up.”
“It ends up with you being safe,” Finn said, speaking up from the back of the room for the first time. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Yeah?” My hands flew to my hips. “You can guarantee that when Ryker can’t?”
An icy chill burst through the air from his direction. Finn’s entire posture went rigid and his lips disappeared into a thin line.
A muscle jumped in his cheek, but he didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought,” I murmured and turned around, giving them all my back and distance as I headed up the stairs.
Tears began falling before I hit my bedroom.
Wiping them off my cheeks, I inhaled a shaky breath and quietly opened the door to Brayden’s room, where he’d passed out hours ago. We hadn’t done much that day, just hung out at Faith’s place. But he’d been quieter and more withdrawn than I’d seen him since Ryker had moved away last fall. It was as if he curled into himself, only laughing and smiling when he thought he needed to the longer we stayed.
It wasn’t the first time I wondered if he was old enough to understand the tension and stress.
I snuck inside his room quietly, careful not to disturb him.
Then I lay down next to him and smiled when Brayden curled his body into my chest.
“Love you, handsome,” I murmured against his cheek.
“Love you too, Mom.”
Then I fell asleep, wrapped around my son, the most important person to me in my entire life, while tears continued falling.
* * *
“Mom! Look!”
I crouched down and opened my arms at the same time Brayden flung his arms around my neck.
“Hey,” I said, squeezing him. “How was your day?”
Brayden pulled back and grinned. “Awesome. Except that dumb girl Maya pushed me in the back. I think it’s stupid that a girl can play football with us.”
He pouted and crossed his arms. I couldn’t help but laugh.
Standing up, I shuffled his messy and sweaty hair. Sand and grass went flying as I scrubbed. “Girls can play, too. Besides, I think she likes you.”
“Ew,” he mumbled and looked at his feet.
I noticed a card in his hand and pointed. “What’s that?”
His eyes widened. “Ohh…I found a birthday card in my cubby.”
“What?” I frowned, and my eyebrows pulled close together. Brayden had turned five a month ago. “Let me see it.”
I held out my hand, and he happily put the card in my palm.
It looked pretty unassuming, with a picture of a turtle superhero holding a sword and shield. “Happy Birthday, Cowabunga-dude,” it read on the front.
I opened it and screamed.
A full mouth of white fangs jumped from the card.
Blood dripped from the fangs.
A robotic voice slowly drawled, “I’ll take you or him. Choose…”
I jumped from the bed—my eyes wide open. My hand pressed against my chest and I gasped heavily.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. My heart pounded against my ribs. Drums thumped in my ears.
Sweat dripped from my forehead and my shirt was plastered to my body.
“It was a dream,” I told myself. But I still glanced around the room, looking for the offending fangs and shadows that could be hiding. “Just a dream,” I said more quietly, my racing heart slowing minutely.
I looked down at Brayden.
At least I hadn’t woken him up. He looked peaceful with his lips slightly parted, hair falling across his forehead. One hand was shoved under his cheek, and I reached out to brush the hair off his eyes.