Blinded by Fate (The Ugly Roses Book 3)

by Harlow Stone

  “Yes Matty, somewhere where you can have a dog.”

  I fight the tears behind my eyes at something so simple, yet incredibly huge to him. I watch as Ryder removes himself from the table, most likely calling Cabe, pointing his men to Matty’s apartment to see what they can find. I don’t move from my spot beside my new friend, grateful that he’s the kind human being he is, resenting myself for fearing him for the past year.

  Of course he’ll never know what I thought of him, but I’ll spend the rest of my life giving him the respect he deserves and being the family he never had.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ryder

  I watch as Elle looks at herself in the mirror. Once again her face is a mess of bumps, bruises and stitches. Her left eye is half swollen shut, her cheekbone twice the size it should be. Her temple and forehead have a long cut; fifteen stitches in total. She’ll have a scar, and if it bothers her I’ll find the best doctor in the country to fix it.

  I put my hands on her bare shoulders in the hospital bathroom and kiss the back of her neck. “It’ll fade, beautiful. Not sure about you but I’m just happy you’re here, bruises and all.”

  She leans into my touch and I move her toward the shower. I’ve already shed my clothes, against hospital policy I’m sure but no way in fuck was I letting someone else wash my woman. I’m perfectly capable and more than happy to do so.

  Guiding her under the spray, I make sure she stays far enough out that it won’t hit her face. I take care of washing her from top to toe. I don’t wait for her to be embarrassed, nor do I give her another option as I sit her down on the stool in the shower and shave her legs.

  Elle’s always looked after herself, and I know it probably bothers her not to be able to do this on her own. I also know she won’t ask for help because she’s too damn stubborn. So I had Laura bring whatever Elle would need when she came to visit today. Now here I sit, shaving the love of my life’s legs and not giving one fuck what anyone thinks about it.

  I love her legs, and every other part of her.

  “Tell me what happened in the basement Ryder, after I passed out. You guys were beating around the bush today but Laura told me there were reporters outside the hospital. She also told me there’s been a flurry of activity in and out of Jimmy’s shop. I’ve given you all day and you haven’t brought it up. But I need to know. With details Ryder, I need to know because I find it odd that I haven’t been questioned by the cops since I woke up. The doctor didn’t even mention them being here.”

  I blow out the breath I was holding. “Cops will be in Elle, but I asked them to give you some time.” She gives me a look. I knew this was coming. I don’t want to talk about it but she deserves the truth. She deserves it all. She’s the one who lived in fear for so long and she deserves to know how that fear ended.

  So I tell her, letting out what happened from the time I left Jimmy’s apartment to the time I left the basement.

  “The window’s open, she went out the fire escape!”

  I don’t bother looking at the open window; instead I jog down the steps to Jimmy’s shop, calling Cabe on the way.

  “Boss,” he answers.

  “Track Elle’s phone, where is she?”

  I jog out the back door to my SUV, Denny, Ivan and Jimmy on my heels.

  “No signal Boss, last tower ping was from where you are now.”

  “Fuck!” What the hell has she done? Why the fuck would she leave?

  “Keep on it Cabe, call me the minute it gets back on!”

  I stop at the SUV and face Jimmy. “Where would she go?”

  He paces for a minute. “Only place she ever went was the cemetery, but usually when it’s dark and she always took Norma. She’s not there if Norm’s here. I’d say she got a wild hair and went to her old home but that ‘aint right either. Let’s do a drive by there but I know I’m not wrong, just don’t want to rule it out.”

  We all hop in my SUV, driving at breakneck speed toward her old home. Jimmy points to the left, then right before we end up on a small street where the lawns are kept clean and the houses are looked after.

  The kind of place you raise a family.

  “Fuck,” he says.

  “What? Talk to me Jimmy.”

  “Her fucking car’s gone. Shit, this is not good.”

  I slam my hand on the steering wheel. “Little more explanation would be good!”

  “It’s her car, the-fuckin’-car. Her dad found it for her. She hasn’t driven it since the attack. 1969 Chevelle. If she got in that car she was in a fucking hurry. Never even closed the garage door. I’m telling you, it’s not good.”

  I turn in the driveway, hopping out I yell to Jimmy, “you drive!”

  Jimmy pulls back onto the road, heading back the way we came. “What do we know Ivan? Denny? C’mon guys think of something. What about that fuck’s house? Is it still there? In his name?”

  Jimmy shakes his head. “Not in his name, run down and been for sale since the attack. Nobody will buy it.”

  Can’t say I blame them.

  We drive toward town, hoping, waiting for Cabe to call. We make a loop past the cemetery just in case, but she’s not there. We knew she wouldn’t be but I couldn’t just sit on the side of the road and wait.

  Thirty minutes later my phone rings. “Tell me you got news.”

  “Just forwarded the address to your phone. Keep heading in the direction you’re going for ten more miles and turn north when you hit highway twenty-one. Elle got a text to her phone. She just forwarded it to me and wrote ‘I’m sorry’. It has a picture of you boss, with and ‘x’ on your head.”

  “FUCK!” I bash my fist on the dash.

  “She was told to head to Haraldson, and that she had two hours to get there. Once she got there she was forwarded the house address. I have screen shots of her texts. You’re about thirty-five minutes behind her from where you are now. House address is on your phone, drive fast boss and you’ll make it in twenty. I don’t feel good about this. At all.”

  “That makes a fucking truck full of us.” Grunts and groans and a few curses agree with me as I disconnect from Cabe. I don’t need to tell him to stay on it—he knows.

  “Where’s the nearest law enforcement detachment from there, Jimmy? You familiar with the area?”

  “We drove past one five minutes ago. Haraldson doesn’t have its own; nearest major town on the other side of that would be thirty minutes away, at least. It’s not so much a town, just a name.”

  I curse, hating this fucking place already. One minute, I’m in a city at court. Fifteen minutes out you’re in a smaller town, and then boom you’re in a fucking cornfield. Thankful for the straight paved highway, we top out the speedo on the SUV at a hundred and fifty, hoping to hell livestock doesn’t decide to cross the highway, but prepared to plow through to get my woman.

  “Left in two, boss.”

  I nod over my shoulder at Ivan, thankful he’s paying attention and Jimmy makes the turn. This road is gravel so he slows down, watching the numbers pass by until we come closer to our destination.

  ***

  I don’t know how Maverick pulls this shit off. My ghost of an employee always manages to keep us hooked up wherever we go. I pull the two glocks out from underneath my seat and watch my men do the same. Jimmy doesn’t have a gun nor do I know if he knows how to shoot one. He’s also not as trained as we are, but I hand him one of my own.

  “Know how to shoot?”

  He pulls the clip out, checks the safety and holds it comfortably as we edge up the driveway toward the house. Two flank left, Ivan and I take the right.

  I note my woman’s badass car in the driveway, but nothing else. There’s a shed and a barn in the distance, but with the only light coming from the house we head there first. I take the back, looking in the windows, closing in on the door.

  “Noooooo!” a male voice from inside wails, and Ivan and I waste no time, bursting through the back door as Denny and Jimmy come in the fro
nt. I hear a thump come from below and search for the stairs. Ivan rushes through, opening up the door and I charge ahead, not at all prepared for what I’m about to see, but willing to kill.

  Elle is lying on the ground, blood pouring from her forehead, eye swelling shut, pants down to her knees and Detective fucking Braumer has his hands around her throat.

  “YOU FUCK!” I roar, moving my gun to my left hand and grabbing him by the back of my shirt with my right. I toss him across the room and he lands with a smack against the concrete. It’s not enough; I want to hear bones break. I want to hear flesh rip.

  I need to make him bleed.

  I need to make him suffer.

  I ignore the half-limp male body on the floor, watching as Ivan tries to haul him up. I briefly register my woman yelling ‘no’, but all I see is red.

  All I smell is death.

  “Get her outta here, Denny.” I say quietly, among the chaos and heavy footsteps. I’m surprised he heard me but I watch him lift her gently and carry her up the stairs.

  I put my gun in the back of my pants.

  I don’t need it, not for him.

  I notice a knife on the floor, old and rusted. “That was Gary’s. I work on Elle’s car. It’s been in the toolbox he gave her for years,” Jimmy says.

  Fitting, I think.

  Gary O’Connor deserves justice, as does Elle, her mother, and her daughter. This is the fuck who has caused her pain, and what better way to return that than with an old, rusty knife.

  The duller, the better.

  Braumer scrambles along the floor, his gun is about six feet away but Jimmy kicks it with his boot to the other side of the room. I look to Ivan, watching as he hauls Andrew’s brother in a fireman’s carry and takes him up the stairs, nodding at me as he goes.

  Respect.

  Understanding.

  Loyalty.

  I’d tell Jimmy to go too, but that’s his call.

  I watch the unfit fuck lose purchase a few times before he finally gets to his feet, pulling his pants up along the way. “Move out of my way, or I’ll have you arrested!”

  For the first time since Elle went missing, I laugh. How the fuck could I not?

  “You’re not a cop anymore Braumer. So tell me, who’s going to come in here and save your ass after you tried to rape and kill my woman?”

  “It’s my word against yours!” he shouts.

  I shake my head in a condescending way. “No, it’s your word against Callaghan Security and an alive and breathing good woman. But you won’t be around for that, so really it’s just our word.”

  I haul back and punch the prick in the side of the head. Not hard enough to knock him out, or at least I hope not. I’d like to play for a while if I can keep the rage at bay. I watch as he stumbles to the right, loving the sight of dried blood beneath his nose because I know Elle fought back. He grabs the steel bench to regain his balance before standing back up and I notice the angry, red scratches on his arms. I know that Elle’s hands were tied behind her back and it can only mean that it happened when he held her down. Not being able to contain the fury, I grab him by the back of the shirt and slam his head down on the table.

  “Tell me you sick fuck, tell me what you did to my woman. Might make me kill you faster.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Grabbing his left hand I yank it up behind his back, twisting and pulling from the thumb.

  “Agghhhh!” he screams as I jab my elbow in his spine. He brings his right hand up, trying to push off the table and I drive the knife down into it until it hits the steel.

  “Tell me!”

  “Agghhh, fuck! I was gonna kill her! She killed my boy! She killed him, she deserves to die!”

  I pull the knife out of his hand and haul him up, spinning him around so his ass is against the table. Jimmy flies in from my right, slamming the cocksucker in the head with a punch that would make any man proud. He comes back with his left, nailing him in the ribs and follows through with an upper cut to the jaw.

  Braumer slumps down off the table, falling to the floor on his knees.

  “You were gonna kill her. Why rape her? You get off on shit like that? Women who don’t want to be touched? Or are you just so hard up you can’t find someone to give it to you?” I growl.

  He spits a mouth full of blood on the floor, coughing through his response. “Figured she must have had a golden pussy. Andrew was obsessed with her and the other one thinks she’s a fuckin’ angel or somethin’. She thinks she can get away with killin’ my boy? I was teachin’ her! No good, fuckin’ whore deserved to be put in her place after what she did!”

  I bend down, wishing I could drag this out longer but for the first time, I’m not able to check the fury.

  I can’t keep the rage at bay.

  “Know what I do to people like yourself, Braumer?”

  I watch his eyes go wide as I reach out to him.

  He doesn’t get a chance to answer.

  Some people say it sounds like a snap, some say it sounds like a pop. Either way, the feeling of someone’s neck breaking under my bare hands has never felt so fucking satisfying.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Elle

  I sit, dumbfounded listening as Ryder finishes his side of what happened last week. “After that, Jimmy nailed me in the face, twice. He said it was so it looked like I put up a fight, he’s not wrong, it did. But I let him do it Elle, because that man loves you, and if it weren’t for me what happened in jail wouldn’t have happened. That’s on me, and I have to live with that.”

  I watch as he takes the towel from the hook, we’re both long past wrinkled from the shower and he wraps it around my body where I still sit on the stool. After wrapping one around his waist, I grab his hand, silently asking him to help me stand up which he does.

  I don’t let him lead me out of the bathroom. I wrap my one good arm around his body and kiss his heart, keeping my eyes on his as he looks down at me.

  “I’ve tried. So hard I have tried to figure out how to say something that meant more than those three small words. Because they are small, and they don’t at all encompass the depth and meaning of what I want to say to you. I can’t come up with something else, maybe because I’m not articulate enough, maybe because there are only ways to show you but no other words. For now, all I come up with for words is nine of them, I love the fuck out of you Ryder Callaghan. You’re an incredibly amazing man and those words are still too small, but there they are. One day, when I’m not so beat up and fractured I’ll show you how much I mean them.”

  Shock.

  Envy.

  Longing.

  Love.

  All of those and perhaps many other emotions cross his face before his lips touch mine.

  “You already do, beautiful. You already do.”

  ***

  Walking through the front door of Ryder’s house is surreal to say the least. It’s been two weeks since I was attacked by Detective Braumer, and while in his basement I would have never guessed that two weeks later, this is where I would be.

  Many things were cleared up over the past few weeks, and as much as I’d like to know all that had happened, I decided to let go of a little baggage and allow Ryder to carry it for me.

  I learned some things, mostly from Matty. Shawn Matthew Flynn, to be exact.

  He told me hours’ worth of stories, from his time in foster care to his time with Andrew. I learned when he was forced to ditch his dream of working with animals in order to help Andrew with computer science assignments, he came across the number for Counselling on Campus. Andrew did most of the work but not surprisingly Matty is well taught when it comes to the computer. Sometimes he got upset when he couldn’t perform as well as he’d hoped to, thus started our conversations at Counselling on Campus. It broke my heart to hear that I was one of the few people in his life who gave a damn about him, but he told me our talks always brightened his day.

  When Ryder’s men searched Matty’s apartment, not on
ly did they find the money Andrew stashed—which was around fifteen thousand dollars—they also found Andrew Robert’s journals.

  Matty could have lived off that money for another year or so. When I begged Denny to tell me about his living situation he told me Matty had everything he needed but nothing more. The apartment was well kept. Matty didn’t like dirty places and even though the place was cheap, it was tidy. He also said there was food in the fridge and clean clothes in his dresser which put me at ease.