Redek (Barbarian Bodyguards Book 2)

by Isadora Hart

  Her real name was Carla and she'd been born to Monica and David Scott.

  Maddie had read her real name and expected an identity crisis, but it had been easier to dismiss than she'd thought. She only had to think of all the times Redek had said her name to know it was the one she wanted to keep, even if Damien had given it to her.

  There hadn't been much information online about her parents for her to find, beyond the fact her father was alive, and where she could find him. She found real articles about her mom's murder, and in them it was written that she'd been murdered, too. They'd supposedly found her body two days after her dad had come home to the bloody scene of her dad's murder. She didn't want to know whose body it really was, or who had had to die because of it. The case was officially marked as unsolved.

  Now, sitting in the back of the cab, she didn't know if she was making the right decision. Her father had thought she was dead for over seventeen years. Would he even believe her? Would she even be able to prove it?

  She didn't know if she could take being rejected by him.

  Redek laced his fingers through hers. "It's okay," he said, and it worked a lot more in calming her down than she thought it would.

  "I should have told him before I just showed up," she replied, knee bouncing faster. "It was selfish of me to want to do it in person, wasn't it?"

  "Of course it wasn't. You're doing the right thing. I've got two weeks off work. There's more than enough time for you to properly see him and get to know him beyond the shock of him first seeing you."

  "I suppose." She was struggling to calm her pounding heart.

  Then the cab stopped, and she had to remember how to breathe. Redek pressed his card against the scanner to pay, and the door clicked open.

  The street they’d arrived on was in the suburbs of the small city, and was filled with low rising apartment buildings. Redek went to get the apartment number from his phone, but Maddie said, "It's 402, block F."

  He laced their fingers together as they walked along the block.

  "This one." She went to the door and saw the buzzer. "Oh, we have to ring a buzzer. What do I tell him? Do I tell him now? That's not any better than on the phone, is it?"

  "Don't tell him now, just ask if you can see him. Say it's important. I can do it, if you want."

  She shook her head. "No. I want to do it." She pressed the button and flinched as it buzzed.

  "Hello?" someone on the other end asked. She could see the camera above the door, and knew he'd be able to see her. Did he recognize her? She'd been so tiny when he'd last seen her. "Can I help you?"

  "David Scott?" she asked to buy time, because her thoughts were racing.

  "Yes."

  "I'm Maddie. I wanted to talk to you about something. It's important, could you buzz me up?"

  She shifted her weight and tried not to look suspicious. It was a weird request, she knew, and she wouldn't blame him if he didn't want a stranger coming into his house.

  Redek was huge, too. He was intimidating.

  There was a long pause, and then the lock on the door to the building opened. She smiled. "Thank you."

  In the elevator, Redek asked, "You okay?"

  She nodded, putting her hand to her mouth to stop herself from chewing on her lip.

  Her dad was standing in the doorway of his apartment when they stepped out of the elevator, and her feet were rooted to the floor for a moment. He looked like her, she realized. He actually looked like her.

  "What is it?" he asked, folding his arms and looking at her with a skeptical expression. "How can I help you?"

  "I—" she started, but couldn't find the words. How could she possibly tell him everything that had happened?

  Redek tugged on her hand a little, and she allowed him to guide her. "Maybe we could come in," Redek suggested. "This is going to be a long talk, I think."

  Her dad looked him up and down with clear reservation on his face, but when he looked at Maddie again, he relented. "Come in."

  They took their shoes off in the entryway and took a seat next to each other on a couch. His apartment was small, but well looked after. She thought it was quaint. It seemed like he lived alone, which made her sad, but she pushed that away.

  "Drink?" her dad asked.

  "Something warm, please," she replied, with a small smile. It was taking everything not to hyperventilate.

  "Just water, please," Redek said.

  Her dad nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Redek squeezed her hand. "Just tell him the truth," he urged. "He'll be over the moon, I'm sure. Just say what you're thinking."

  "Okay." She could do that. She'd spent so long trying to come up with a script that she'd overthought it. Maybe Redek was right. The words would just come when she started speaking, and if her dad rejected her, that wasn't her fault. It was Damien's fault they'd never had a relationship in the first place.

  It wasn't that she'd done anything wrong.

  Her dad returned and passed her a mug. He sat down in a chair across from them, and seemed to ignore Redek. He was staring at Maddie like he was trying to figure her out. Maybe he noticed the resemblance, too.

  She cleared her throat to try and get rid of the lump in it. "I was looking for you for a long time," she began, holding the mug tightly even though it was too hot on her hands. "I was taken when I was six years old and kept away from the world. I didn't know who I was until I escaped. I... I was born Carla Scott," she said, flinching at the name as she waited for his reaction.

  Her dad only frowned, shaking his head. "It's not possible," he replied. He stood up abruptly, turning his back on them. "It's not possible. My daughter is dead."

  Maddie did her best to explain everything. She didn't wait for his responses or questions, but told him everything that had happened to her, from what she remembered about her mom's death to Damien and why he'd kidnapped her, to how she'd escaped and found him and ended up sitting in his living room just now.

  He didn't turn and look at her the whole time she spoke, but she watched his back get stiffer and stiffer. She was terrified of what she'd see on his face when he eventually showed it to her.

  She almost wasn't expecting the tears that streamed down his face.

  "You're really my Carla?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  He sat in the chair and took a deep breath. "That was the only reason I let you in. You look so much like my wife."

  Maddie managed a half smile. "I'm so sorry I put all this on you at once. I didn't know what to say."

  Her dad stood up again and held his arms out. She passed Redek her mug and accepted his hug, wrapping her arms around his middle. It was strange, she didn't know the first thing about him, not really, but it felt like a father's hug. Damien had hugged her once or twice, but it had never been like this.

  Finally, she cried, too. She sniffled as she hugged him tighter.

  After that they sat down and just talked. The conversation flowed easily, and Maddie's only problem was that she had so much that she wanted to tell him and ask him, and not enough time to do it all in. He asked about Redek, too, and her proudest moment of all was when she got to brag about how perfect he was to someone else for a change.

  "I'm going to be here for a couple of weeks," she said when the sun had been set for hours and her yawns were so frequent she could barely get her words out. "So we can catch up more and you can show me around."

  "I'd like that."

  They hugged again and exchanged contact information so they could get in touch in the morning.

  On the doorstep, her hands were on her stomach. She couldn’t resist leaving without asking him the biggest question she had. “I’m having a girl,” she said. “And I wanted to name her Monica, after my mom, but I wanted to ask you if that was okay. I wouldn’t want to—”

  Her dad only beamed at her, tears sparkling in his eyes once more. “It’s perfect. I love it. She would have too, your mom. She’d be so proud of you.”

&n
bsp; They hugged for a final time and then he shut the door, leaving Maddie and Redek alone.

  He rested his hands on her stomach. He always tried to resist doing it in front of people, but when they were alone he couldn’t keep away from it. “I’m so happy for you,” he said.

  "I can't believe it," she stood on her tiptoes and pressed kisses on each of his cheeks between words. "I can’t believe I really met my dad.”

  He laughed. He'd come alive since leaving the compound. She never saw his emotionless mask anymore, not even when something was wrong. He was completely open with her. "He seems like a good man.”

  "Thank you for taking the time off to come with me. I know it wasn't easy for you to convince them to let you."

  He wrapped arms around her and kissed her lips hard enough to make her cheeks burn. "I'd do anything for you."

  Want more Maddie and Redek? Read another sexy, sweet, and free epilogue to meet Maddie and Redek’s baby girl, and a free 23,000 word novella, when you sign up to my mailing list here. Each new release will have an exclusive epilogue for mailing list subscribers!

  Missed the first book in the series? Read about Cassie and Vikram here, or a preview below:

  1.

  CASSIE

  Cassie peered out of the window at the media frenzy as Archie brought their little ship in to land.

  Their corvette, built for just five people, was tiny compared to the yachts most of the politicians attending the conference had brought to the space station. "Maybe we won't have to deal with too many cameras," she said to Archie, who cut the engines on the ship.

  "We want to deal with the cameras. We need media coverage just as much as the people we're standing against."

  She knew it was true, but the media aspect was one aspect of being part of such a contentious charity that she wasn't looking forward to. She'd joined the Universal Rights Foundation to help people on the ground originally, but had been quickly ushered up the chain of command and was now the second to Archie, one of the faces of the foundation. She'd only been at the foundation for ten years and already she was being groomed as a negotiator, and attending the biggest conference on universal rights in years.

  Archie stood up and stretched, peering out of the window again and straightening his tie. "I'll get them over here when we walk out," he decided. "Stop chewing your lip. We're confident, not worried. How you appear is the most important thing about this whole conference. Even if someone says something that completely destroys one of our arguments, you smile, say something back, and move on. You can never let someone know they've beaten you. Especially not when all you're doing is leaving your spaceship on the first day."

  She chuckled, redoing the top button of her blouse she'd undone for comfort on the flight. "Okay. Straight face."

  "Slightly bitchy straight face," he advised. "You're good at that one."

  Archie had been her mentor for four years now, and they were close. She'd gone from not being sure she wanted to be out of the on-the-ground support at all to hanging off his every word. She’d loved being a medic in combat zones. It had been immediate validation that you were helping someone. But, he was so intelligent and passionate that she wanted to be just like him, to inspire the same hope and certainty that they were fighting for the right cause in everyone she spoke to.

  "I think the bitch face is going to be a lot easier to keep on when we get into the conference. The moment I have to play polite with people advocating for torture it's going to be hell trying to smile."

  Archie leaned against the console, watching a delegation leave one of the bigger ships to manic flashes of cameras. "We can't compete with the Agalaxian Crown Prince. We'll wait until he's gotten inside. And stop seeing them as people, and see them as potential boyfriends. You've got to woo them to your side, not batter them." Prince Qugrom was one of their biggest opponents at the conference. Agalax was a large, wealthy trade planet with seemingly infinite natural resources—they paid a lot of tax to the Intergalactic Union, and held a lot of sway.

  Cassie pulled a face as she watched the scaled, reptilian body of Prince Qugrom as he spoke to the camera. He was flanked by two bodyguards. "That's going to be a tough one." Archie clapped her on the shoulder, and she frowned. "If you're about to make a comment on how I'm in dire need of a boyfriend and I shouldn't be picky, don't bother."

  He held up his hands. "I'd never say such a thing."

  "Yeah, sure you wouldn't." It was true that she'd not had a relationship the entire time she'd been working at the foundation, but she didn't have time to juggle work and a boyfriend, and work was infinitely more important. She'd deal with the fact she wanted a family at some point in the future. She still had a good few years left in her.

  The prince finally made his way through the glass door and into the space station's main building, leaving the media hungry to film the next arrival. "This is our time," Archie said. "You've got your memory card?"

  She felt the pouch she'd sewed into the inside of all her bras. The small piece of plastic and metal sat there, completely unseen to anyone who looked at her. "I've got it."

  Archie hummed. "You're right, you don't need a boyfriend if that's where you're keeping our trump card."

  "I like to think security aren't going be patting my under boob during my search. I don't want to know where you're keeping yours."

  "With these men, I wouldn't be surprised," he muttered. "You know how the Union is." He shook his head. "Anyway. We need to get out there. Miranda!" he called. "We're about to leave."

  Miranda was the assistant they'd brought with them to help with research and clerical issues. She trotted out of her bedroom with a grin on her face. "Ready!" She was quite a bit younger than Cassie, and always walked with a spring in her step, despite everything she'd seen on the ground.

  Archie looked from the window one last time. "Okay," he said. "Let's do this."

  They stood in formation behind the door of the corvette. Archie was in front, naturally, his back straight and his head held high. Cassie stood just behind and to his right, hands folded politely in her lap and her lips curled in indifference. Miranda was behind her, eyes downcast and disengaging from all the attention. She was just an aide, and the media wouldn't be interested in her. She needed to fade into the background.

  Archie pressed a button and the side of the corvette opened and lowered, creating a ramp for them to walk down on. Archie stayed still for a moment, giving the journalists a chance to get over to their ship and take photos and video of their disembarking.

  It was nothing like the frenzy Prince Qugrom had received, but a good semi-circle of cameras surrounded them, lights flashing.

  Archie walked down the ramp, and Cassie followed, their footsteps entirely in sync. It was hard not to get taken in by the architecture of the hangar. She'd never been to the Intergalactic Union's headquarters before, but it screamed opulence. Instead of glass or metal, the whole thing was made of brick, like the human castles of old. It was modern and ancient all at once, with a force field and all the mod cons necessary for space ships to dock and be repaired.

  She was enamored.

  But her bitch face remained until she could escape later and wander around the building, admiring it at her own discretion.

  They stopped in front of the cluster of microphones the journalists held out. Archie had been rehearsing his speech on the entire two-day journey to the Union. "This week we have the power to prevent further injustices to minorities in the Union." His voice was clear and crisp, passionate but controlled. No one could argue that he was just in his position for the money—he truly believed what he was saying. "For too long the Intergalactic Union has allowed unspeakable acts of torture to go unpunished—"

  Four gunshots rang out in the crowd, and all hell broke loose.

  Archie collapsed to the ground, his mouth still open on the last word of his speech, blood flowing from his lips. Cassie stared, wide-eyed, reactions delayed as the light in Archie's eyes dimmed. He couldn't
even focus on her, just stared at the roof.

  Before she could drop to her knees and hold him, she was faced with the barrel of a laser pistol. Lilac eyes met hers, and she froze. Her brain screamed to run, but it would make no difference.

  She flinched when a gun sounded, but it wasn't the one pointed in her face. What must have been a dozen followed it, all into the body of the assassin. She ignored him, though, and finally dropped to the floor beside Archie, taking his hand in hers and pressing the other to the side of his face. The wound was through his neck, and that he'd even held on this long to squeeze her hand was a miracle.

  He wasn't going to make it.

  "Archie," she whispered, voice choked. "Archie, you're okay."

  He moved his eyes slowly to her, and they were laughing behind the pain. He opened his mouth but no words came out. She knew he was saying "You're a terrible liar," in his mind.

  "You'll be all right." She was a terrible liar to herself, too. "Everything is going to be okay."

  "You'll be okay," he croaked, his whisper barely audible over the clamor going on around them. "You'll win."

  The pressure on her hand slipped away, and his head lolled against her knee. Blood seeped from his wound onto the floor around them, covering her pants.

  It was in a small moment of clarity that she began patting down his body, as subtly as possible in the face of the cameras, to try and find where he'd hidden his memory card. It must have been in there somewhere. He wouldn't have kept it hidden where he couldn't protect it.

  Someone pulled her away too early, though, and immediately his body was crowded by people, stopping her being able to see him. Several microphones were pushed in her face. "Who do you think it was?" someone demanded.