Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series)

by A. T. Douglas

  Jack’s smile fades as his gaze dips to the cup of tea he’s holding. “They found the house.”

  It physically pains me to hear these words. I loved that house. It was the perfect place for our family to begin. It was secluded and more than we could have ever dreamed to have for ourselves had Jack not stepped in to help us. The thought of the police and FBI tearing it apart makes me livid inside.

  “Can they trace it back to you?” Leo asks worriedly.

  Jack shakes his head, still staring at the cup. “You’re lucky you got out of there when you did.” He finally looks back up to our faces with a deathly serious expression. “I probably don’t have to tell you this, but it’s going to be almost impossible for you to contact Robert and Cindy now.”

  Leo’s hand immediately finds its way to my free hand in my lap. Though I’ve known the reality of what Jack’s saying since the moment Leo got the call from my dad, it’s still hard to hear the words out loud.

  “I think it would be best if we got you three far away from here.” Jack’s clearly not in a mood to sugarcoat any of this for us. “Think about where you want to live. Pick anywhere in the country, but the further away, the better. I’ll help you find a new home there.”

  I look down at Dante for a moment before finding Leo’s eyes. I feel lost, more so than I have ever been. It hasn’t even crossed my mind where else I would want to settle down with my family. The Southwest has always been home to me. We have the entire country to choose from, and I don’t even know where to begin.

  “What about Maine?” Leo suggests.

  I stare at him blankly. To me, Maine means lobster, and that’s about it. I don’t even like lobster. That is the full extent of my knowledge of Maine.

  Leo seems thrilled about it, though. “It’s as far as we can get from here in the continental U.S. We could find a secluded place, a small house in the woods.”

  My body stiffens, and my eyes go wide. Just the thought of being back in a cabin in the woods makes me shiver.

  When Leo sees my reaction, he rubs my arm soothingly, lowering his voice. “Sorry. That was a stupid idea.”

  “It’s okay. I just…” I pause, desperately searching for the right words. “I don’t even know where to begin this conversation.”

  “You don’t have to decide at this moment,” Jack interjects, “but we shouldn’t wait too long, either.”

  I nod at him as I look to Leo and then to the baby happily feeding at my breast. I don’t know why, but it seems at this instant my body has finally decided to give in. The tears I’ve been holding back come crashing down on me, but the sobs remain at bay. These are the silent, petrified tears that have been forced out of me by the uncertainty that surrounds us and the worry that we’ll be caught and my family will be taken away from me. They’re the acknowledgement of the painful truth that I may never see my parents again.

  Leo cradles me to him. Even through all of this, he’s still my rock. He brings me back, whispering comforting words in my ear and rubbing my skin until the tears and shivers subside and I am back to center again. Dante has fallen asleep in my arms, and seeing him in peaceful slumber makes me want to join him. I’m ready to turn off, to let my mind and body rest so I can process all of this better at another time. It’s pushing off the inevitable, but it’s what I need.

  “I just want to sleep for a little while,” I mumble, my brain feeling almost too far gone to get the words out properly.

  Jack sets down his tea cup on a side table and motions me to follow him. “I’ll show you to your room.”

  Before I can even stand up, Leo’s hands are already sneaking underneath the sleeping bundle in my arms, pulling Dante to him with a smile. I’ll never tire of the proud, glowing expression on Leo’s face when he gazes upon his son.

  “I’ve got him. You get some sleep,” Leo says encouragingly as we both stand up. He kisses me briefly on the cheek before he begins his slow rounds around the room, observing Dante in his strong arms and whispering his own fatherly versions of sweet words and lullabies to him.

  Over the next day I seem to do a lot of resting, which I’m grateful for, but at the same time it makes me uneasy. I’d like to know that I’m actively doing something to move us forward to get us out of this mess. Remaining idle is something I can’t do anymore since reentering this existence of living in fear and the unknown. In the times I’m awake, I get nervous, often pacing around the house lost in my own thoughts and worries. Jack and Leo both scold me constantly for forgetting to drink enough fluids and not eating a lot at meals. I can’t help it, though. My body and state of mind are no longer conditioned for this kind of life.

  Back in the beginning when everything in my life changed at the prison, when I was only responsible for myself, I could handle the uncertainty and face the danger with steadfastness and determination. I was willing to take risks, often throwing caution to the wind and almost flippantly disregarding any concern for my own safety, making plenty of stupid decisions in the process. I stood up to Mark and his bullshit, and even though I paid for it, I was the only one paying that price.

  Then there was Leo. When the lust between us turned into something more, he wasn’t just another one of my captors in that prison. He was someone I cared about, someone I wanted to help get out of there just as much as I wanted to be freed. I had to factor him into my decisions and keep his safety in mind, and that made everything harder. My decisions affected him, and I couldn’t afford to make the wrong choices. I had to do what seemed right to help us both.

  Then there was Dante, the only person who is truly innocent in all of this and the one who could be destroyed the easiest. If the authorities find us, they’ll take Dante away before they can even get the handcuffs around our wrists. Being separated from Leo again would be hard enough, but I cannot even fathom being separated from my baby. The thought of Dante growing up in a foster home calling strangers his parents absolutely guts me, and I can’t get past it. I will not let it happen. I will do absolutely anything to keep us together as a family.

  But what can I really do? Our faces are plastered across every social media site, news program, and police station all across the country. People are outraged that we as two fugitives from the law decided to bring a child into this world.

  I wish I could respond. I want the world to know that we love our son and that we’d do anything for him. I wish they could understand that even though this was my choice and I couldn’t imagine life without Dante now, he wouldn’t have been a thought in our minds if it weren’t for Mark and his plans to steal me from Leo to create his own child. Asking Leo to plant his seed first was the hardest decision I ever made, but it was also the best one. It was a choice made sooner than I would have liked, but I’m so glad I made it. I wouldn’t have that part of our lives be any other way.

  It’s the rest of our lives that I wish I could change right now.

  “Come sit with me,” Leo offers, settling in on the couch and patting the cushion next to him. He’s got that sly grin on his face like he’s up to something, and I can’t help being a little excited to find out what it is.

  I have a feeling it may be something that requires some privacy though, so I glance around the open floor plan of the house just to make sure Jack’s not around. I hear his muffled voice from down the hallway. He’s been closed up in his office most of the day on the phone with his attorney, the man who helps work Jack’s magic when it comes to securing secluded places to live, getting fake identification papers created, and accessing Jack’s abundant funds in hidden bank accounts.

  He seems occupied enough, and Dante is happily sleeping in a laundry basket serving as a makeshift bassinet in one of the spare bedrooms, so I give in and take the offered seat next to Leo.

  He pulls me to him so that my back is against his chest and my head rests comfortably on his shoulder. His strong arms wrap around me, consuming me with warmth and balancing out the worry within me. I rest my hands over where his connect in my lap an
d I let him hold me with my eyes closed for a few minutes.

  One of his hands ventures away from mine and sneaks under the lining of my bra to cup my breast. My eyes open and I inhale sharply at his touch. His other hand finds its way beneath the lining of my underwear, tickling me all the way down between my thighs where he rubs me gently, igniting my body like a firework.

  “Leo…” I begin to scold as I turn my head toward him, but he finds my mouth with his lips and interrupts any further attempts at speech.

  He doesn’t hold back, and neither do I. We’ve been physically close since arriving at Jack’s house yesterday, but not intimate like this, and the built-up desires pour out of us now to take us away from all the fear and uncertainty, at least temporarily. Our lips and tongues connect rapidly and with such force that I can feel my lips swelling already. I shift my body so that I’m straddling Leo on his lap as he continues to feel me and squeeze me and rub me in all the perfect ways.

  The excitement that we’re doing this out in the open and could be caught at any moment becomes too much for me, and I can’t hold back any longer. My head falls back and my mouth opens in a silent cry as my body is thrown into a state of untouchable pleasure.

  It takes me some time to come down from it and be back in Leo’s arms. When I’m finally there, I look back at him and note the pleased grin on his face. He removes his hands from my bra and underwear leaving wetness behind in both places.

  “Take me to the bedroom,” I whisper.

  Leo doesn’t question or argue as he scoops me up in his arms. I bite my lip as he carries me past the closed door to Jack’s office where we can still hear him talking inside. Leo peeks through the crack in the door to the spare bedroom where Dante is sleeping before continuing to our bedroom. He sets me down on the center of the bed and closes and locks the door.

  The passion in the room is so palpable between us that if my body wasn’t still recovering from childbirth, I know he’d be inside me within seconds. He lifts his shirt over his head, letting me appreciate the beautiful spread of tattoos that covers his arms and chest while he sheds the rest of his clothes.

  Leo approaches me naked from the bottom of the bed to pull my shorts and underwear down my legs. Once they’re discarded to the floor, he positions himself over me, straddling my waist with his hardened cock pressed up against me as he removes my shirt and bra.

  His eyes narrow in on the breast he was massaging minutes ago. He lowers himself to it and licks up the traces of milk that still remain on and around my nipple before he seems overwhelmed by temptation. He secures my nipple between his lips and sucks forcefully, drawing the milk out with a moan of ecstasy from deep inside him unlike I have ever heard. He sucks again and again, cupping my breast between his hands like it’s the most coveted object in the world.

  He pulls back from it with a thoroughly satisfied sigh and looks me straight in the eyes. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do that. God, you taste amazing.”

  My lips turn into a grin and my face flushes with heat, but I don’t know why. Leo has sucked on me like that countless times before, but the fact that he’s actually getting some part of me out of it makes it different in some strangely embarrassing way.

  It also makes me intensely hot for him.

  I grasp Leo’s hips and pull him closer to me. “I wish you could be inside me right now.”

  He lowers himself to his arms on each side of me so that our chests are touching and slowly begins to grind against me. “Six weeks of recovery. Doctor’s orders,” he whispers.

  He starts a long line of kisses from my forehead down to my lips, then down my neck and rapidly breathing chest. I catch only a glimpse of his hand tightening around his cock as he slinks back on the bed, continuing the kisses to my belly and lower abdomen until his mouth is between my legs.

  He spreads me open with his tongue to get at my throbbing clit. Each time he licks it the shivers run up and down my body. His movements are the perfect chaos against it, touching it gently with the tip of his tongue then licking it with full force and trying everything in between.

  It’s impossible to be quiet now as his lips and tongue find every way to make me burn even more for him, and then I’m gasping out, brought to the brink of insanity and pleasure by his mouth and kept there by his touch as he sits up on his knees and empties himself all over my stomach.

  We’re both still gasping and writhing as Leo slows the movements of his hands on each of us. When he finally stops, I see the look of utter satisfaction and pleasure on his face. I’m sure my face shares a similar expression.

  He leans down to kiss me, whispering, “I love you. I can’t wait to make love to you again.”

  His face is still close to mine, so I grasp the side of his cheek and kiss him back. “Don’t tempt me. You know I’m stubborn about sticking to the rules.”

  A knowing grin crosses Leo’s face before he climbs off the bed. He grabs some tissues to clean me up before taking me to the shower.

  By the time we’re cleaned up, Jack is still on the phone and Dante is still sleeping. Leo and I find ourselves back in bed together, his arm wrapped tightly around me, providing me comfort instead of pleasure this time. His presence and warmth are too soothing, and it doesn’t take long before I’m taken away to the depths of sleep.

  It feels like I’ve just closed my eyes when they suddenly open at a familiar sound from the next room over, a singular cry that could be the precursor to a lot of upset baby time if I don’t get to Dante quickly. The lamp on the nightstand is on and Leo’s arm is still around me, but the sluggish haze in my brain tells me I’ve been sleeping for some time.

  I slink out of bed, causing Leo to stir slightly with my movement, but he remains asleep by the time I’m sneaking out the door.

  It’s dark in the hallway, so my hands feel along the wall until they reach the doorframe and then the door to the temporary nursery. My hand sweeps the door open all the way as I step into the room, and in the faint moonlight coming through the sheer curtains over the windows, I see a figure standing above the bed where Dante’s makeshift bassinet rests.

  “Jack? Is something wrong?”

  The figure turns around, and something is definitely wrong. My insides instantly hollow. My heart shrivels into dust. The air is swept so quickly from my lungs, I wonder if I’ll ever breathe again.

  Mark stands before me with Dante in his arms.

  He’s nothing more than a shadowed outline, but I know it’s him. I’ve seen him lurk through the darkness to find me. I know every sickening inch of him in shadow and flesh.

  Nightmares are meant to stay in dreams, visions of the past that the brain tries but fails to forget.

  My nightmare is very real, fully present before me, holding my future in his grasp.

  He lunges at me. My throat erupts into a piercing scream.

  I fight back with everything I have left.

  26

  Her Fire

  ∞

  There is nothing like the fire in a mother’s eyes

  when her child is in danger.

  The rest of the world turns gray.

  There is but one focus.

  She is driven, determined, perhaps insane.

  God help those who stand in her way.

  On one side, utter joy.

  The other, absolute devastation.

  She will carve a path of destruction.

  Conflagration fueled by unconditional love.

  She must try.

  She must succeed.

  Because there is no other way.

  ∞

  The moment I hear Morgan scream, I’m awake and grabbing for the gun in the nightstand. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing or what’s going on, but my body and mind are trained on one thing.

  I need to get to her. Now.

  I’m out the bedroom door looking around frantically in nothing but a pair of shorts. The hallway is dark and quiet for only a second before Morgan’s cr
ies call me to Dante’s room.

  In the brief moment that the sound registers in my brain, I contemplate whether I want to turn that corner and look in the room. If she’s standing there with a lifeless child in her arms, I know I will crumble. My heart will shatter in my chest and I will be no more. There will be nothing left of me.

  The door is wide open, and though it’s dark, I can make out some kind of struggle taking place on the other side of the room. There’s a second figure there, and my mind instantly turns to it being Jack, but why would Jack be fighting with Morgan in the baby’s room?

  I raise my gun and feel along the wall for the light switch.

  The light above turns on, and my life is turned upside down.

  “Mark.” The word is a vile whisper from my mouth, and for a moment everything stops.

  “So glad you could join us, son,” he replies calmly.

  I can feel every ounce of blood seeping out of my veins and into oblivion as I absorb the scene in front of me. Mark holds my child in the crook of one arm while his other hand is held tightly in a vise-grip pinch at Morgan’s neck, somehow holding her steady just above the floor as she kicks her legs and tries to claw at him. She is powerless against the absurdly large muscles bulging in his arms. I’ve never seen Mark in such good physical shape.

  In an instant he drops Morgan to the floor and draws a knife from his side. He wraps his arm around her and pulls her back against his chest with the blade close enough to her throat to draw the tiniest drip of blood. She coughs to catch her breath then stills at the realization of the danger at her neck. She looks from Dante to me, and instead of fear and terror I see unstoppable maternal determination burning in her eyes. There is no doubt in my mind that she will sacrifice herself for our child.

  I have to act quickly.

  “You’re supposed to be dead.” My voice is low but as unwavering as the gun in my hand. “I left you bleeding out in a burning house in the mountains. How the fuck are you standing here threatening my family?”