by W Winters
“Good thing I won’t be around Monday.” I start thinking about all the possible outcomes of that meeting and I don’t like a single one of them. I could never rat Marcus out, he’d kill me. And even if I did, Romano would kill me for following someone else’s orders. I have protection from no one and enemies everywhere.
“Did you tell her?” Carter changes the subject abruptly. “Does she know you killed them?”
I shake my head, wishing all of this was a nightmare I could wake from. All of it but Chloe. “I had to lie to her, but it’s never felt like that,” I tell him, confiding in my best friend one last time.
“Felt like what?” he asks me.
“Felt like I was hurting her by lying to her. I’ve never wanted so much from someone and to give her so much in return.”
He smiles a genuine but sad smile that reaches his dark eyes. “I knew you loved her,” he says lightheartedly. Brushing his thumb against his nose, he peeks behind him. It’s darker now than it was before, not a single star in the sky to cast light down on us.
“I think it is love,” I tell him and kick the rubble on the broken concrete.
“It’s all right to say it,” he jokes, “I won’t make fun of you.”
“I only just got her. I can’t lose her, Carter,” I confess to him. If it wasn’t for her need to run away from here, I’d stay for him.
“Go ahead, I’ll be all right,” he tells me, and I want to believe him. “Hey, do you have that stuff though? Before you go?”
It takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about the sweets. I have the last vial in my pocket and I know Chlo is never going to want to take it again, so I hand it over to him.
He’s quick to slip the vial into his pocket. “Thanks, man. It’s been rough sleeping.”
Giving him a nod of understanding, I wonder if I should tell him that Chlo thinks some of her paranoia is from the drug, but I think she’s wrong. She was right the entire time. Call it fear and intuition maybe.
“I hope it helps you sleep,” I tell him and then glance back at the car.
“Get out of here, man. Get out while you still can,” Carter tells me and it fucking hurts that I’m leaving him, but I have to. I have to get the hell out of here and take Chloe far away.
I have to reach out and hug him, pulling him hard into my chest. And he’s quick to give me a hard pat on the back, followed by a grip I’ll never forget.
There’s no way I’d have made it out alive without him. I know that much.
Before the tears can show, I pull away from him, the only family I’ve ever had. “She can’t stay here,” I tell him as if I’m begging him to understand, but he already knows.
She’s never belonged here.
“Come with us,” I plead with him one last time even though I already know his answer.
“I have to stay.” His voice is calm this time like he’s resigned to his fate.
Epilogue
Two weeks later
Chloe
The cool wind flows through my fingers as I rest my hand against the window. We’ve been off the highway for a little while now, still venturing into the unknown.
It’s odd how the unfamiliar can offer so much comfort. How easy it is to leave everything behind and start a new life.
Countless times I’ve felt the fear of what could be waiting for us if we ever went back. And almost as if Bastian can read my mind, he asks me every time we stop somewhere new, “How about this place?”
“I can be a butcher anywhere. Or anything. We can be anything,” he keeps telling me. “Just don't leave me.” He says that a lot. As if I’d ever want to. One day, I think he’ll know in every way that I’ll never do that.
In every beat of my heart, I know I was supposed to run away with him. And he was supposed to run away with me.
We should have left when we were only children. We shouldn’t have stayed in that place as long as we did. When the lights around you flicker and dim, it’s a sign to run. To run far away and toward light and hope. It’s an innate feeling I knew deep in my gut, but I swallowed it down and nearly let the darkness choke out what little life I had left in me.
It’s only taken days of being away with Bastian at my side, holding my hand as we drive farther and farther away to know that’s true.
I can smell the salty ocean air as the sun kisses my skin through the window. We’re close to the ocean.
A line springs to mind and I jot it down in my notebook. It’s half-full already, with ideas for a book so close to what I’ve been through. Some changes here and there because it’s hard to write about the truth. It’s hard to imagine what people would think of me if I told them my story. It’s even harder for me to write it all down and to be okay with everything that happened. Because of what happened in my life, the things that were done to me and the things I did… well, it will never be okay, but maybe it would make a memorable tale.
“Do you want to stop here?” Bastian asks, pointing to the left at a sign for a burger place.
My shoulders lift easily in a contented shrug. With my cheek resting against the headrest, I ask him for the tenth time since we left, “Where do you think we’re going?” I need answers to what we’ll become. I know I love him and I only want to be with him, but the stirring in my stomach that this is too good to be true hasn’t let up.
Bastian’s large hand wraps around mine as he pulls my knuckles to his lips to kiss them one by one. The car idles at the stop sign and he looks me deep in my eyes.
“We’re going where we’re supposed to go. Together.” His words are a balm to my broken soul. It’s the only word that matters. It’s the only word that’s ever mattered. Together.
With tears pricking my eyes, the tears I wish would go away, even if they are from a happiness I never thought I’d feel, I whisper, “I love you.”
He braces his hands on either side of my head, stealing a ravenous kiss from me, taking my pain away like he did so many years ago. But the pain now is minuscule and it’s because of him. He’s taken it all away. And I’ll spend my life making sure I do the same for him.
With a bruising kiss, I can hardly breathe until he pulls away from me, letting the tip of his nose brush against mine. His eyes are still closed, his hands still tangled in my hair as he tells me, “I’ve always loved you. And I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll always choose you.”
Sebastian
Years later
About two weeks after we got in the car and sped away as fast as we could, I got a call from Carter’s brother, Daniel. I didn’t let her see as I broke down against the bathroom door of the motel we’d stayed in for the night. We’d move from one place to the next, constantly on the go until we found a spot on the West Coast, far away from Crescent Hills. A local bed and breakfast was looking to hire a butcher for their farm and also in need of a bookkeeper for the inn. Fate gave us our opportunity to stay, to find a new home, and we did. We grabbed it with both hands and didn’t let go.
That night in the motel though, it almost didn’t happen. The first few days we were on the road, everything changed with a single phone call. I almost got into the car and drove back to that hellhole when Daniel told me what happened. I would never have brought Chloe, but she wouldn’t have let me leave her behind either.
The Talvery crew almost beat him to death the night we left. Carter nearly died for selling on the wrong turf. Daniel told me not to come back, that my name had been marked now, and I knew what that meant. If I went back, I was dead.
When I talked to Carter, I knew I’d made a mistake letting him stay. He had no one anymore, and everyone to provide for.
If I could go back, I would.
I’d never leave him behind.
It took over a decade before I dared show my face in that city again. Years of the phone calls coming less and less often. Years of building a life with the girl I always loved, while the memories of my past faded to bad dreams.
Life is a compromise. I left behind a
friend, destined to stay, and be held captive to a city that had no mercy.
It would force him to become a brutal man I didn’t recognize.
The Carter I abandoned in Crescent Hills, died that night I ran, and I’ll never forgive myself for it.
The End.
Carter’s story, Merciless, is available now!
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Sneak Peek at Merciless
From USA Today bestselling author W Winters comes a heart-wrenching, edge-of-your-seat gripping, romantic suspense.
I should’ve known she would ruin me the moment I saw her.
Women like her are made to destroy men like me.
I couldn’t resist her though.
Given to me to start a war; I was too eager to accept.
But I didn’t know what she’d do to me. That she would change everything.
She sees through me in a way no one else ever has.
Her innocence and vulnerability make me weak for her and I hate it.
I know better than to give in to temptation.
A ruthless man doesn’t let a soul close to him.
A cold-hearted man doesn’t risk anything for anyone.
A powerful man with a beautiful woman at his mercy … he doesn’t fall for her.
Chapter 1
Carter
War is coming.
It’s something I’ve known for over two years.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
My jaw ticks in time with the skin over my knuckles turning white as my fist clenches tighter. The tension in my stiff shoulders rises and I have to remind myself to breathe in deep and let the strain of it all go away.
Tick. Tock. It’s the only sound echoing off the walls of my office and with each passing of the pendulum the anger grows.
It’s always like this before I go to a meet. This one in particular sends a thrill through my blood, the adrenaline pumping harder with each passing minute.
My gaze moves from the grandfather clock in my office to the shelves next to it and then beneath them to the box made of mahogany and steel. It’s only three feet deep and tall and six feet long. It blends into the right wall of my office, surrounded by polished bookshelves that carry an aroma of old books.
I paid more than I should have simply to put on display. All any of this is a façade. People’s perceptions are their reality. And so I paint the picture they need to see so I can use them as I see fit. The expensive books and paintings, polished furniture made of rare wood… All of it is bullshit.
Except for the box. The story that came with it will stay with me forever. In all of the years, it’s the one of the few memories that I can pin point as a defining moment. The box never leaves me.
The words from the man who gave it to me are still as clear as is the memory of his pale green eyes, glassed over as he told me his story.
About how it kept him safe when he was a child. He told me how his mother had shoved him in it to protect him.
I swallow thickly, feeling my throat tighten and the cord in my neck strain with the memory. He painted the picture so well.
He told me how he clung to his mother seeing how panicked she was. But he did as he was told, he stayed quiet in the safe box and could only listen while the men murdered his mother.
It was the story he gave me with the box he offered to barter for his life. And it reminded me of my own mother telling me goodbye before she passed.
Yes, his story was touching, but the defining moment is when I put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger regardless.
He tried to steal from me and then pay me with a box as if the money he laundered was a debt or a loan. William was good at stealing, at telling stories, but the fucker was a dumb prick.
I didn’t get to where I am by playing nicely and being weak. That day I took the box that saved him as a reminder of who I was. Who I needed to be.
I made sure that box has been within my sight for every meeting I’ve had in this office. It’s a reminder for me so I can stare at it in this god forsaken room as I make deal after deal with criminal after criminal and collect wealth and power like the dusty old books on these shelves.
It cost me a fortune to get this office exactly how I wanted. But if it were to burn down, I could buy it all over again.
Everything except for that box.
“You really think they’re going through with it?” I hear Daniel, my brother, before I see him. The memories fade in an instant and my heart beat races faster than the tick tock of that fucking clock.
It takes a second for me to be conscious of my facial expression, to relax it and let go of the anger before I can raise my gaze to his.
“With the war and the deal? You think he’ll go through with it?” he clarifies.
A small huff leaves me, accompanied by a smirk, “He wants this more than anything else,” I answer him.
Daniel stalks into the room slowly, the heavy door to my office closing with a soft kick of his heel before he comes to stand across from me.
“And you’re sure you want to be right in the middle of it?”
I lick my lower lip and stand from my desk, stretching as I do and turning my gaze to the window in my office. I can hear Daniel walking around the desk as I lean against it and cross my arms.
“We won’t be in the middle of it. It’ll be the two of them, our territory is close, but we can stay back.”
“Bullshit. He wants you to fight with him and he’s going to start this war tonight and you know it.”
I nod slowly, the smell of Romano’s cigars filling my lungs at the memory of him.
“There’s still time to call it off,” Daniel says and it makes my brow pinch and place a crease on my forehead. He can’t be that naïve.
It’s the first time I’ve really looked at him since he’s been back. He spent years away. And every fucking day I fought for what we have. He’s gone soft. Or maybe it’s Addison that’s turned him into the man standing in front of me.
“This war has to happen.” My words are final and the tone is one not to be questioned. I may have grown this business on fear and anger. Each step forward followed by the hollow sound of a body dropping behind me, but that’s not how it started. Y can’t build an empire with blood stained hands and not expect death to follow you.
His dark eyes narrow as he pushes off the desk and moves closer to the window, his gaze flickering between me and the meticulously maintained garden stories below us.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” his voice is low and I barely hear it. He doesn’t look back at me and a chill flows down my arms and the back of my neck as I take in his stern expression.
It takes me back years ago. Back to when we had a choice and chose wrong.
When whether or not we wanted to go through with it meant something.
“There are men to the left of us,” I tell him as I step forward and close the distance between us. “There are men to the right. There is no possible outcome where we don’t pick a side.”
He nods once and slides his thumb across the stubble on his chin before looking back at me. “And the girl?” he asks me, his eyes piercing into mine and reminding me that both of us survived, both of us fought, and each of us has a tragic path that led us to where we are today.
“Aria?” I dare to speak her name and the sound of my smooth voice seems to linger in the space between us. I don’t wait for him to acknowledge me, or her rather.
“She has no choice.” My v
oice tightens as I say the words.
Clearing my throat, I lean my palms against the window, feeling the frigid fall beneath my hands and leaning forward to see Addison beneath us, Daniel’s Addison. “What do you think they would have done to Addison if they’d succeeded in taking her?”
His jaw hardens but he doesn’t answer my question. Instead he replies, “We don’t know who it was who tried to take her from me.”
I shrug as if it’s semantics and not at all relevant. “Still. Women aren’t meant to be touched, but they went for Addison first.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Daniel says with indignation in his tone.
“Isn’t it better she come to us?” My head tilts as I question him and this time he takes a moment to respond.
“She’s not one of us. Not like Addison and you know what Romano expects you to do with her.”
“Yes, the daughter of the enemy…” My heart beats hard in my chest, and the steady rhythm reminds me of the ticking of the clock. “I know exactly what he wants me to do with her.”
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Sneak Peek at Something to Remember
Prequel to Forget Me Not
I had nothing left. Only a child, and I’d already given up. My father wanted it that way.
He tore me apart bit by bit until I was nothing. And then he did the worst thing imaginable. … he gave me her.
From USA Today best selling author Willow Winters comes an emotional dark romance.
Something to Remember is a 5,000 word prologue to the standalone, Forget Me Not.
Chapter 1