Ruthless Sentinel

by Burke, Lynn

  The blood drained from my face. “There’s nothing to tell him.”

  “Mr. Stone isn’t the man for you, Giada.” She offered a sad smile.

  “As if I don’t know that,” I said with a snorted exhale. Story of my fucking life. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Mother. I’m stuck here, bored out of my skull—can you blame me for finding entertainment where I can?”

  Her lips pursed. “Perhaps it’s time you looked elsewhere.”

  We sat in silence and finished our wine.

  I didn’t ask after Father who hadn’t made an appearance all day. A visiting nurse had come onboard fulltime to care for him, thank fuck, since I would have loathed having to do so.

  “Well,” Mother said while pushing up from the couch across from me, “I’ve had just about enough for the day. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  I nodded and offered my cheek when she bent to kiss me goodnight.

  She would tell Father—of that, I had no doubt.

  Creeping upstairs a few minutes later, I strained my ears, listening for Father’s raised voice, and I didn’t stop until an hour had passed, and I lay in my bed, burying my face in the pillow Logan had used the night before.

  I decided once more, regardless of Marisa, I needed to get away, the sooner the better.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stone

  Even though we still had the hit out on Arturo, Vigil had Devil anonymously send the FBI everything we had on Arturo Martínez and the threats he’d made on Judge Burtonelli.

  The media played the attempted murderer off as a left-wing nutjob. The judge’s campaign manager made a little speech outside the hospital a few hours before Burtonelli got released, stating that he would be back on the campaign trail in a matter of days, that nothing and no one would keep him from making Massachusetts a better state.

  “Nailing his own fucking coffin shut,” Greed muttered to me before taking off for a few hours.

  Putting his remaining family in the ground with him, I couldn’t help but think while starting my jaunt around the property before settling in for the next eight hours. While I couldn’t blame the judge for not backing down—can’t let a fucker like Arturo win—my gut didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.

  His daughter owned my goddamn soul. No question.

  Fuck, just the sight of her when I finally walked through the front door stole my damn breath. She hurried through the archway on the left, her hair in a messy bun, no makeup, a soft-looking sweater hanging off one shoulder, skinny jeans, and fluffy slippers.

  My dick took interest—until I lifted my focus back up to her face. She didn’t bother trying to hide the pain she felt.

  “You okay?” I asked, dropping my overnight bag on the floor and meeting her halfway across the foyer.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she peered up at me.

  Christ, this woman...

  Unable to help myself, I pulled her against my chest, my own aching with the need to make things right for her, to make her smile so I could bask in the beauty of it.

  “Marisa?”

  “Stable.”

  Thank fuck. “Your dad?”

  “Miserable bastard,” she muttered, pulling back enough to peer up at me. “He’s still eating breakfast in the dining room, and I had to escape.”

  Voices raised from deeper in the house, but my spidey-sense lay quiet. “I don’t blame you.”

  I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, brushing along her jawline with my thumb, but she stepped back, shoving her hands in her pockets before I could kiss the sadness off her downturned lips.

  “Mother knows,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “That you spent the night in my room. One of the guards told her.”

  Shit. “Your dad know?”

  Giada shook her head and rubbed her lips together while glancing away. “Mother hasn’t told him yet—but she will. Or maybe that’s what all the bitching in there is about.”

  Another muffled holler reached us.

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Giada blew an unsteady breath past her parted lips. “You’d be better off leaving—accepting the fact Father fired you guys after the shooting.”

  “He apologized to Warden while at the hospital,” I told her. “Thanked him, even, for sticking with him overnight.”

  Giada blinked, her eyes widening. “I’ve never heard my father apologize for anything.”

  My lips twitched. “Guess he had enough of a scare to set his head on straight.”

  She snorted. “Won’t last.”

  Mutterings and shuffling sounded from the archway announcing her parents’ arrival, and Giada offered me a quick smile before fleeing upstairs.

  I grabbed my bag and slipped into the control closet, taking off my jacket to hang across the back of the chair. A quick look at the screens showed Giada disappear into her room—and the judge enter the foyer, his wife at his side.

  She fussed with his sling.

  “Leave me be!” he barked, his voice echoing through the cavernous foyer and closet door I’d left open.

  I stepped out to greet him.

  Burtonelli’s lips thinned as he noticed me, his cheeks mottled, rage in his eyes.

  “Sir,” I greeted him. “How are you feel—”

  “I pay you good money to protect my family, not fuck my daughter!” Spittle flew from his lips.

  “It isn’t—”

  “You’re nothing, do you hear me?” He raised his finger, pointing at my face, and I fought to keep from fisting my hands at my sides. “Nothing! Low class.”

  The Burtonelli’s head of security appeared at the top of the stairs, his brow furrowed as he glanced between the judge and me.

  I turned back to the judge. “Sir, if you would let me explain—”

  “You’re not a good enough man for a Burtonelli—even if she is a rebellious whore!”

  “Do not call her that.” I shot back, having had enough.

  “She’s my goddamn daughter, I can call her whatever the hell I want!”

  Fuck it. Warden might be my best friend, my brother, but Giada came first.

  “You ought to be proud of that girl,” I said, stepping closer, allowing him to see my rage in my eyes. “She’s worked her ass off to make a name for herself in the fashion industry, living a fake-ass life just like every politician chasing their dream, bent on gaining people’s admiration and support.”

  The judge sputtered, but I wasn’t done.

  “That woman is strong as fuck. She chose to make her own money rather than ride the coat tails of the one man who should have been there for her. Supported her. Encouraged her to seek out her dreams. Giada is self-motivated. Driven. That woman has bigger balls than you,—”

  “Get. Out.”

  “—Judge Burtonelli. Perhaps you ought to step back and reevaluate the gift of her.”

  “Get out of my house right now!”

  The guard came down the stairs, and I kept an eye on him in my periphery. “Stone,” he said quietly.

  “I’m not leaving here until I speak with Giada.”

  “You have any contact with my daughter,” Burtonelli spit, “and you can forget about that little deal I made with your president.”

  I didn’t give two shits about that deal Vigil had made with the asshole in front of me, but nothing good would come from an altercation. I had Giada’s cell number—I’d never used it, but that would change.

  Without another word, I grabbed my bag and jacket off the back of the closet chair and started toward the front door.

  “You tell Drew Tellier I’m no longer in need of his services,” Burtonelli said as I pulled open the door.

  A conversation I did not look forward to.

  I slammed the door shut behind me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Giada

  I heard every word—heard Logan slam the door behind him. My throat swelled tight, and I eased my bedroom door shut, resting my forehead
against it.

  No one had ever stuck up for me in the way he had. No one had sung my praises beyond my beauty and ability to move in front of a camera.

  What Father saw as stubborn rebellion, Logan saw as positive traits. He saw the real me, the motivated woman driven to live her own life. He hardly knew me, but he knew me.

  And yet he left at the mention of a broken deal made between my father and the Vipers.

  Obviously, his feelings for me weren’t enough to trump the brotherhood he’d been a part of for over ten years. A sob caught in my throat as twin tears slid down my cheeks.

  “Giada Burtonelli!” Father’s voice sounded outside my room, and I jolted back from the door, wrapping my arms around myself. He pushed into my room without knocking.

  “You’ve gone too far, young lady!”

  I swiped away another tear I couldn’t keep from falling. My chest ached—fucking hurt like hell.

  “Sleeping with that man!” Father actually spit on my bedroom floor as Mother appeared in the doorway behind him. “He got what he wanted from my daughter the whore and left without a fight. Used you like the piece of trash you are.”

  I shut Father out, refusing to let his words heap atop the hurt Logan’s leaving had caused—nothing could hurt worse than that. Father cursed me a few dozen times, reiterating all the negativity I’d been fed my entire life.

  Worthless. A stain on the Burtonelli name. Facts I fought against every minute of the day.

  “You will stay away from that man—those Vipers, am I clear, Giada?”

  I sank onto the edge of my bed and nodded just to shut him the hell up. Logan had made his choice, so obeying that order would be easy.

  “I so much as hear a whisper of the Burtonelli name attached to that outlaw gang because of you, and you’re gone, do you hear me? You’ll no longer be a part of this family. I’ll disown you. Strip you of your inheritance.”

  I nodded again.

  He spun away—thank fuck—and I held up a hand as Mother rushed toward me.

  “Don’t.”

  She pulled up short, her eyes welled. “Baby—”

  “I want to be alone.” My heart lay dead in my chest, unmoved by the emotion wrinkling her face. My mother, the one who should have protected me, who should have stood up for me with the mother’s love I’d seen her show for both Cristian and Marisa.

  She could have kept quiet about what the guard told her. She could have chosen to let me find some happiness while being forced to live under their roof. She could have loved me enough to choose me over Father just once.

  Instead, she’d chosen him—same as always.

  The door snicked shut quietly behind her, and I let out one hell of a big breath.

  There was no way in hell I could stay. It was time to revisit my teenage years, the wild days of learning how to be sneaky as hell in getting what I wanted.

  Freedom.

  It would come at a cost, but one I was more than willing to pay.

  ****

  Fab, the doll, agreed to help me out. He’d heard all about the hellish home I’d grown up in, and we’d bonded over similar treatment in our childhoods. Upon coming out, both his parents had ridiculed him, called him a sinner, told him he would rot in hell. He’d escaped the day he turned eighteen and hadn’t ever looked back.

  Time for me to do the same.

  I waited until my parents left to visit Marisa in the hospital—leaving one guard to watch over me and the entire house since Tellier Security had been sent on their merry way. Needing to pack light, I only stuffed one duffle bag with clothes, my eReader, and vibrator—and chargers for both.

  Sneakers tied tight and hair in a ponytail, I nibbled on a fingernail while adrenaline rushed through me. I peered out my bedroom window on the second floor overlooking the estate gate and driveway. Fab pulled up in his BMW a half-hour later, and my chewed-to-the-quick fingernail stung like a bitch.

  “Here we go,” I said, breathless and pulse thrumming.

  He pressed the buzzer, and I waited, pulling my duffle bag’s straps over my shoulders like a backpack.

  Fab was far enough away I couldn’t make out his mouth moving in conversation with the guard who must be speaking with him through the intercom. He eventually climbed out of the car, slammed the door as though pissed, and leaned down to press the button, his free hand flying—proof he ran at the mouth.

  I actually giggled.

  He stepped back from the intercom, rounded the front of his car, arms crossed, as he stared down the house.

  Seconds later, the guard exited below me and stalked down the driveway toward him.

  I grabbed my coat and booked it downstairs and out the back, my heart in my throat, adrenaline rushing and shaking me like a leaf as my sneakers slapped the treads.

  No one sat in front of the monitors—and last the guard had seen was me shutting myself up in my bedroom after Logan had left me behind. Unless he watched back through the few minutes Fab had taken him away from the screens, I had a good few hours before my parents returned home and found me missing from my room—if they even thought to check on me.

  I sprinted through Mother’s manicured gardens, leaping over intentionally placed rocks and dried, brittle bushes. Cold air rushed into my lungs, and even though I only had a hundred or so yards to run, my legs burned before I reached the back of the property. I climbed the old pine in order to scale the wall surrounding my parents’ estate, but I’d done it enough times as a teenager that it came back easy.

  Up and over.

  Boom.

  The street lay a few yards away, and I shot Fab a text letting him know I’d made my escape. Two minutes later, my cell phone powered off and tucked away, my savior came around the corner. I tossed my shit onto his back seat and slid into the warm interior, sweat still beaded on my brow and between my breasts.

  I slumped, my head tipping back against the seat as I let out an enormous breath, the adrenaline still slamming my heart in my chest. “Thank you.”

  He giggled. “That poor man didn’t know what to do with me.’

  I chuckled, and turned my head toward him, still boneless although the adrenaline shakes took over. “You’re the best, Fab.”

  A quick wink of real eyelashes instead of fake slathered with mascara, and he squeezed my hand. “So what’s your plan?”

  “Bank first, then the airport.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m going to the one place no one would ever think to look for me.”

  “Your cousin’s?”

  “Oh fuck no!” I almost choked on a laugh. “Good one, though. No, I’m hopping the first flight to Vegas.”

  He snickered and turned onto the main road. “You hate Vegas.”

  “Exactly.” I closed my eyes and focused on breathing the shakes away. While excited over finally making a true escape, my heart ached over the whole Logan affair—even more so than leaving Marisa behind.

  I could eventually make contact with her, and perhaps, with time, I’d forget about the alpha biker who had rocked my world.

  Surely there were others out there—and having had a taste of that fairytale mc romance come to life, nothing else would do.

  I hoped another man could fill his shoes, but I highly doubted it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Stone

  After leaving the Burtonellis, I went straight to the club intending to have a few shots of whiskey—and swore when I saw Warden’s truck in the lot.

  “The fuck is he doing here this early in the morning?” I grumbled to myself while parking. I climbed out, slamming the driver door behind me. A gust of wind slapped me in the face, and I hunched in my jacket, hurrying to the club’s entrance.

  Only a handful of other vehicles sat in the parking area, two of which I knew belonged to prospects months away from getting patched in.

  Sin sat right inside the door, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed.

  “The fuck is going on?” I asked, shut
ting out the winter wind behind me.

  “Meeting in Vigil’s office,” he said, motioning toward the closed door with his chin. “Two prospects got into it with knives last night after you went home.”

  “The fuck for?”

  “One of the whores.”

  “Stupid fucks.”

  “Warden and I were on the way to meet up with a client when Vigil called him in.”

  Since I wasn’t a Viper officer, I couldn’t just waltz on in and interrupt their meeting. “Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand down over my face. “How long they been in there.”

  “Over an hour.”

  “Shit.”

  “The fuck you doing here?” Sin asked, righting his chair, frowning as though remembering at that second where I ought to be.

  “Burtonelli fired us.”

  “Thought Warden took care of that shit when he was in the hospital with the fucker.”

  I sank into a chair across from him. “That shit was. This is new shit.”

  One of Sin’s brows arched. “The fuck?”

  “I fucked his daughter. He found out. End of story.”

  “Oh holy shit!” Sin chuckled. “Greed said you had it bad for her—how the fuck you get in her panties?”

  I shot a glare at him, and his smile faded in a blink.

  The office door opened, keeping me from spouting off at my brother, and I hopped back up, eyeing the two prospects shuffling out.

  Warden followed on their heels. “Stone? Why the hell aren’t you at the Burtonellis?”

  I nodded him back toward the office. “We need to chat.”

  “The fuck is this?” Vigil said, getting up from behind his desk when he caught sight of me following Warden back into his office.

  “I made a poor fucking decision,” I got right to it like ripping off a goddamn batter while shutting the door behind me. “A mistake that cost you the favor Burtonelli owed the Vipers.”

  “Fuck.” Vigil glared while settling back in his chair. “Sit the fuck down.”

  I did as told, directly across from him.

  His glare reminded me of Pop’s, and I fought off the need to defend myself. “The fuck did you do, Stone?”

  “Fucked his daughter.”

  “Goddamnitalltofuckinghell...”