by Malcom, Anne
So he had to keep control, otherwise he’d keep a trail of bodies in his wake.
Keltan knew to an extent about this, Lance was sure. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew what he was hiring.
But Keltan was also perceptive as fuck. The man obviously saw that this case was different for Lance. Fuck, he couldn’t hide it.
That was something to rectify after.
“Okay,” Keltan said after a beat. His hand left his shoulder. “Let’s go and get this kid.”
Elena
I wasn’t pacing.
Or crying.
Screaming.
Pulling the wallpaper off the walls with my bare hands.
Upending the coffee table and smashing every single glass in this place.
I felt like doing all of those things.
My body and soul were crying out for some kind of outlet, some kind of destruction, pain to distract me from just sitting here, waiting.
The second I realized Robert had taken Nathan, after I threw up in the school’s parking lot, I knew a lot of horror lay ahead of me. Because it is every parent’s worst fear realized. And parents spend too much time thinking about situations like this. Because after giving birth, tired, in pain and feeling like the lower half of your body now resembles the Grand Canyon, you are given the whole world to balance on your chest. To take care of.
You are given the most beautiful thing in the world and entrusted to keep it safe. You are introduced to a love that you didn’t know was possible for a body to contain. And fear. Fear goes along with that, because it is impossible to love without fear. Loving someone is giving away a part of your sanity to something vulnerable. Something fragile. My child had all of me.
I thought of every possible scenario, nightly, I tortured myself with it at the start. SIDS, choking, meningitis, dropping him, him being allergic to something. And someone taking him from me.
I thought I’d explored those scenarios in my brain.
But I hadn’t.
The most horrible part of it all was something I hadn’t even considered. It was the waiting. The torturous spread of seconds against the hour, dragging over my skin like sandpaper. I felt older. Empty. Sucked dry of all that made me human.
It had almost been twenty-four hours. One day.
One day didn’t used to mean much.
One day was a blink of an eye in my world, Nathan waking me up at five in the morning for a dance party. It was getting him ready for school, and telling him, no he couldn’t just wear his underwear even though “all the important things were covered,” it was dropping him at school, hurrying to the diner for the breakfast rush. It was the blur of full plates, empty plates, the smell of grease, sore feet. It was picking Nathan up from Karen’s, a friend’s or taking him back to the diner with me, and then making dinner. Playing with him, arguing over bath time, putting him to bed, cleaning the house and passing out forgetting about dinner or changing out of my uniform.
Every second of my day was filled, busy.
Now, the lack of anything was bursting from my skin, it felt stretched, bloated, ready to explode.
The power of the utter helplessness in this situation was intoxicating, drugging me with feelings of inferiority and self-hatred. I was relying on strangers for the safety of my son. Strangers with pretty, kind and kick-ass wives to be sure. Strangers with kind eyes and calm voices. Strangers with a glint in their eyes that told me they were more dangerous than anyone I’d come across in my life.
But strangers nonetheless.
Somewhere, right now, they were getting Nathan back. That’s what Keltan told me, at least when he’d come here a couple of hours ago. Was it two? Or three? You think that for someone who was focusing on nothing but the time dragging on, I’d have a grasp on the specifics. But it was all melting into one, just a collection of seconds where I hadn’t seen my son.
Keltan said they found him. That they were going to get him. That everything was going to be okay. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. The touch was kind, human, something else telling me that this was not just another job to the owner of Greenstone Security.
I had somewhat of an inkling that of all the people I could have stumbled onto, I’d hit gold. So somewhere in the midst of my son’s kidnapping, I’d been given some kind of luck or fortune to walk in here.
It wasn’t comforting.
Polly was sitting next to me, silently.
Where most other people would be trying to speak, reassure me, keep my mind busy. Lucy and Rosie had definitely done that. But Polly seemed to understand at this point, there was nothing left.
“I should’ve left,” I whispered, still staring at the beautiful painting on the wall, wanting to dive into it. “After Robert came, I shouldn’t have had all those stupid thoughts about trying to fight, trying to beat him. I shouldn’t have been so naïve. I should’ve taken Nathan, gotten out of there. If I did, none of this—”
“Stop,” Polly said gently.
I met her eyes.
They were hard and soft at the same time. “The first thing we do when something so horrible we can’t comprehend happens is try to find someone to blame,” she said. “I don’t know why, it’s human nature. It’s also human nature to figure out a way to blame ourselves for other people’s actions. Good people that do that. People that want to believe the best in others who have done the worst to them. But I’m telling you right now, that your son being taken is not on you. Not even a little bit. I know me saying that isn’t going to mean shit until he’s here, but it’s the truth. You don’t have to believe it right now, but I just want you to hear it anyway.”
She squeezed my hand. Took a breath.
“I promise that this horror will stop being this bad,” she said. “I can’t promise it will ever be truly over, because when people like us, those deep feeling good people, experience something that punctures to our bones, the horror kind of stays. Even when it’s covered in joy and happiness in love, it’s always there. Like a root we’re unable to pull out. I’m not going to lie to you and say you’ll forget this time. It will haunt you forever. But I can promise you that flowers grow and bloom even over the most rotten of roots.”
I blinked rapidly at her. The poetry of her words. The pain in them. It was that pain I held onto. It was incredibly selfish of me, to be happy to see some of her hurt exposed so I didn’t feel so alone in mine, but it was a life raft. And I was clutching it.
Because I’d drown otherwise.
So I held onto this kind woman’s hands and the evidence of her suffering and pain.
* * *
I snapped up the second I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I wanted to run to the door and thrust it open but my legs were frozen in place. Terror stuck me to the spot. Fear that it would be someone opening that door with news I would not survive.
So I stayed, frozen, listening to those footsteps, straining to hear smaller ones, the sound of a familiar voice.
I couldn’t hear over the dull roar in my ears.
Then the handle turned.
I held my breath.
“Momma!” my little boy screamed, grinning with a beam that speared into my soul. “Captain America came to get me.”
My vision blurred and I struggled to stay up with the weight of my relief. My utter joy. Nathan was here, standing in front of me, wearing strange pressed and beige clothes but he was clean. Safe.
He was frickin’ smiling.
I’d been so certain I wouldn’t be able to handle the bad news I didn’t consider that the good news—the best news that could ever exist—would hit me just as heavily.
Nathan’s small hand was engulfed in a much larger one, clinging to it.
I followed the hand, the muscled arm upward to dead eyes.
Not dead, no, something else.
The aggressive, violent man who I’d been so sure ate puppies for protein was holding my son’s hand.
It was jarring.
For about half a second.
&
nbsp; Because there was only one thing important to me at this moment.
It was the little human being grinning at me like there was no reason in the world to be unhappy.
He ran at me at the same time I sank to my knees.
Nathan’s little body hit mine, and I wrapped my arms around him, inhaling strongly.
“I missed you, sugarbear,” he said into my chest.
“I missed you too, honeybun,” I choked into his hair, willing myself to keep the promise I’d made to not break down in tears.
I inhaled deeply, pressing my face to his head.
“Are you smelling my hair?” his little voice asked, muffled from how tightly I was holding him. I couldn’t physically loosen my grip. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to loosen my grip again.
“Only because it smells so good,” I replied, my voice still thick and choked with unshed tears.
There was a pause. “Well, Mommy, I’m sorry to say that you don’t smell good. Did you forget to shower again?”
There was a choked giggle from behind me.
When I’d thought—in this very room, mere hours ago—that I’d never smile again, my little boy made me smile.
Keltan had kept his promise.
I had my son back.
Chapter Four
Lance
He should’ve left them.
The second the tiny hand released his, he should’ve walked out of the room. Then he should’ve kept walking, out of the office, down to the parking lot and onto his bike. Then he should’ve driven. A long fucking way away from here. To the ocean. Where he could smell the salt and nothing else.
But he didn’t.
He just stood there, watched Elena sink to her knees as she lost the ability to keep herself upright. Watched as the kid ran full force into his mom.
The way she clutched him hit his gut. She held him like his little body was the only thing tethering her to this earth. He could fucking taste the emotion in this room. Him. And instead of it bouncing off the hard shell he’d grown over himself, it got in. Sank under his skin.
Just like the way the kid had.
He hadn’t intended on having any real contact with him, or her ever again. He intended on making sure they were back together, safe, and never laying eyes on them again.
No, that was a lie. He had already planned on watching her house, the kid’s school—once he talked to the dipshit teachers—and her work. For how long, he didn’t know. Until he was satisfied.
But he didn’t plan on her seeing him. On those golden eyes touching his, searing into him. No fucking way.
But then they got in the house. Somehow, the kid found his way to him. Walked right up to him, in the middle of the chaos around him.
“Hi sir,” the little boy with caramel skin and green eyes greeted him. He was holding a battered rabbit by the ear. “You’re very tall,” he commented. “And muscly.” There was a pause as the kid inspected him. “Are you Captain America?”
At this point, Lance almost fucking laughed. Him. He hadn’t even cracked a smile in a decade, hadn’t laughed in recent memory, but this kid, who’d been essentially held captive by a stranger claiming to be his father, was seemingly unrattled by strangers around him.
“No, kid,” he replied. “No way am I any kind of superhero.”
The kid furrowed his brows, focusing with an intensity that a five-year-old definitely shouldn’t have.
It was cute.
Lance didn’t think anything was cute. He’d never used the word in his life, never fucking thought it. But now here he was, thinking it when he’d been sure he’d be in here restraining his urge to kill, not to fucking laugh.
“You’re here to take me back to my mommy, aren’t you?” the kid asked after a beat.
Lance was shocked. Another thing that never happened to him. People were reasonably predictable, the shit they said was rarely shocking—Rosie was not included in this—he was bored and detached from most useless babble.
But fuck. This kid.
Lance nodded once.
The kid smiled. Big. Wide. It hit Lance in the gut. Just like those green eyes had. “Well, then, you are a superhero,” he decided. Then, he held out his hand.
Lance stared at it for a second, not quite sure what the kid wanted from him. Candy? He didn’t carry around loose Werther’s Originals in his fucking pockets.
But then he realized. The kid wanted to take his fucking hand.
And he didn’t even hesitate to take it.
Him. Who abhorred and avoided all human contact, especially with children.
But he did that.
And he took the kid’s hand, then, and when he held it out to him once they’d gotten out of the SUV they drove here in, Lance led him up the stairs of the offices while he chattered on about how he “didn’t know superheroes had offices, but it made sense.” The kid had cracked up every member of the team. Charmed them all.
Everyone was on a high.
They’d hoped for the best. But they were trained, they’d seen some horrible shit, some of the most horrible shit humans could do to each other, they’d seen it happen to people they loved. So they were hopeful, as hopeful as people could be knowing that the worst-case scenario was more common and horrifying than anyone thought.
But they got something rare.
They got the absolute best-case scenario.
The kid didn’t have a bruise on him. He was clean. Seemed to be well-fed, didn’t show any signs of emotional trauma, not one fucking tear. Lance wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes.
And the kid was something.
Not that that was surprising given his mother.
Everyone recognized it.
Everyone wanted to protect this kid and this woman because they dealt with so much shit, they knew when something real, good and rare came along.
Hudson had caved like any bully would when confronted with someone tougher and more powerful. It wasn’t surprising, given what a fucking coward he was. The footage of him with multiple prostitutes getting fucked up the ass with a dildo also helped. Plus the evidence they had against his father helped if he decided to get Daddy involved.
It seemed the senator had been a naughty fucking boy himself, with embezzlement and money laundering among the list of crimes that would put him away if they took it public.
Why was it that all these people that thought they were better than everyone were usually doing worse shit than the criminals?
Lance didn’t care. The bloodlust that he’d been so sure he’d be choking on dissipated with the small hand in his.
So maybe that’s why he stood there, watching the mother and child embrace, because of that lack of constant fury that he was so sure would be permanent. It was gone around them.
And when he heard the kid’s muffled comment about Elena’s smell, it happened again, he wanted to laugh. Or at least smile.
The need was almost as strong as the one to kill.
But he overcame it.
Polly, who was standing behind the mother and son, let out a giggle as tears poured down her face.
Lance didn’t tear his gaze away from the small dark head and the larger one with thick hair for long.
He watched until Elena finally let the kid go, framing his face with her hands, eyes roving over it as if she were needing to commit it to memory. Lance had expected her eyes to be wet, tears streaming down her face.
But nothing.
He knew how deep she was feeling. It was painted all over her. In every part of her body, the way she held herself, the way she fucking breathed. It was painful to watch. She was experiencing it, without shedding a fucking tear.
Even Rosie had leaked from her eyes when they got the kid back.
Rosie.
But Elena’s eyes stayed dry.
“How come I had to stay with that guy?” the kid asked. “He said he was my daddy. Is that true, Mom? Because it sounded real true. And he even had the sa
me eyes as me, and a badge, just like you said my dad had. He promised me that it was okay. Did I do wrong by going with him? Is that why Captain America came to get me?”
Something in him clenched.
Something in his chest area.
No matter how often he’d tried to correct the kid when he’d referred to him as ‘Captain,’ he hadn’t let up, not even when he tried to snap it at him.
He seemed immune to the demeanor that had ensured most of the population avoided him at all costs.
The way he liked it.
Elena paused with the question. “No, honeybun, you did absolutely nothing wrong. And yes, that was your daddy. He just didn’t tell me that he was taking you for a sleepover. And I got so worried I had my friends come to pick you up.”
“I didn’t know you were friends with superheroes, Mom! That’s so cool.”
Elena grinned, it was sad, tight, full of exhaustion and sorrow. But it was beautiful. She was. Even in the same, wrinkled clothes she’d been wearing since the previous day, her hair knotted and tangled, her eyes bloodshot and paleness to her face that wasn’t natural. She was stunning. It attracted him even more, all that pain changing her. He liked it when ugly things brushed beautiful things.
Except that bruise. That fucking bruise that had only gotten worse since the previous day. It was shades of black and purple, the skin raised and it covered almost half her face.
The fucker must have put all his strength behind that punch. Everything he could give.
He didn’t give a fuck what Keltan said, about Elena’s wishes, he was going to end that piece of shit. Not today, or even tomorrow. But one day, when all of this had blown over, when he was least expecting it. He’d nurture this feeling, this toxicity in his bones looking at her beautifully bruised face, looking at the years shaved off her life worrying about her son.
It would happen.
“What happened to your face, Mom?” the kid asked, moving his small hand to gingerly brush it over the violence his father had wrecked on his mother.
She smiled. Tight still. “I was silly and forgot about being careful,” she replied.