The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  Some things just were what they were. This was one of them.

  Rafe sighed and leaned back against him, and as the wind lifted and aspen leaves fluttered overhead like gentle wings flapping, they watched Georgia Humboldt’s ashes travel downstream.

  Your anger issues will never go away, Cheyenne. Not until you deal with their origin. If you cannot find it within yourself to do that, you will be angry every day for the rest of your life.

  Phil, that SOB, was right. Because this morning, Cheyenne had woken up…happy.

  Happy.

  Sore and aching, dotted by bites and love bruises and razor burn. And hungry for more. Freaking thrilled to be alive.

  It was strange, not being angry. Not at anyone….well. Maybe not anyone. She’d like another shot at Red, and maybe one at Malik, although time would tell with that one… But she wasn’t pissed off. Not even at Georgia. In point of fact, she was grateful. Because for all the damage Georgia had done, all she could have done, all she’d tried to do…Cheyenne had won.

  She had Rafe. She had Will.

  Precious, priceless gifts, ones she would not have without Georgia’s machinations. It couldn’t matter, what the endgame was, what Georgia had been trying to do…what mattered was the end result, one Cheyenne would not trade for any other. And one for which there was only one person to thank.

  You must forgive her.

  Olga’s words echoed in Cheyenne’s head as she stood watching Georgia’s ashes slip farther downstream. Rafe rested back against Will, his small body warm next to hers, and Will’s arm was tight around her waist. She felt…home. Like this was exactly where she was supposed to be. And while she’d rejected Olga’s advice every time the words whispered through her brain, Cheyenne knew the time to listen had come.

  Rafe needed to witness a little forgiveness. He needed to see her make a conscious effort to forgive his mother, so that someday he might be able to do it for himself. Cheyenne could see the hate eating away at him, as caustic as acid. His rage, as clear to her as a line of thunderheads on the horizon. His pain, which stabbed deep and made her heart hurt.

  She was going to have to be the example.

  “Balls,” she muttered, and Will pressed another kiss to her hair, as if he knew. Since last night, he’d spent a lot of time kissing her.

  Last night.

  When she’d leapt, mindlessly, into the fire. When she’d decided to indulge in a little harmless physical pleasure—only to have it be her heart he touched. Her soul he’d taken. Her life he’d changed.

  Getting hitched.

  The man had lost his marbles. And she hoped they were never found.

  “Well, hell,” she said and sighed. “Georgia Humboldt, I forgive you.”

  Rafe’s head snapped back. He stared up at her. “You do?”

  “Yeah.” Cheyenne nodded. “I do.”

  “Why?” Such darkness in that question. Such fury. “She don’t deserve it.”

  “It’s not for her. It’s for me.” Cheyenne ran her hand through his silky hair. “She ended up with nothing. I ended up with everything. I can afford to be generous, sweet pea, because I have a future. She doesn’t.”

  “I don’t care. What she did….” Rafe shook his head. “I’ll never forgive her. Ever.”

  “Maybe someday,” Cheyenne said.

  He said nothing, and Cheyenne knew he didn’t believe that, but she hoped—for his sake—it was true. Will pressed a kiss to her temple, and she knew he understood, even if he wouldn’t forgive, either.

  Cheyenne didn’t blame him.

  They’d talked late into the night, until her throat was raw, and the sun was rising, and then he was inside her again, taking her with slow, relentless thoroughness, making her cry out as the birds awoke, and the first light of dawn bathed them in gold.

  “I don’t want to,” Rafe declared, his voice harsh.

  “You don’t have to,” Cheyenne replied calmly. “But I’m going to.”

  “Why?” Angry again, as if it was a betrayal.

  “Because I spent the last decade hating her, and that was ten years too long. I can’t forget, Rafe, but I can forgive. It’s time.”

  “She don’t deserve it,” Rafe said again, his voice tight.

  “If you spend the rest of your life hating her,” Will said quietly. “She wins.”

  Rafe scowled, but he didn’t say anything else. Cheyenne could see him turning Will’s words over, considering them. Will only waited, ever patient; he was a good man, one who would love Rafe and protect him and teach him. Cheyenne knew she couldn’t have asked for anyone better to be a part of Rafe’s life. Of her life.

  And she wondered how it had happened. Why. Was it just crazy coincidence? Fate? That dumbass fake rabbit’s foot on her keychain? Did it really matter?

  “Nope,” she whispered, and Will squeezed her hip.

  “I can’t do it,” Rafe said softly, his voice intense, and when he looked up at her, those dual-colored eyes were in turmoil. So much older than his decade of life that sometimes she wanted to cry. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”

  Cheyenne slid an arm over his shoulder. “Okay.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Will said.

  For a long moment, none of them spoke. Rafe was tense, but the longer they stood in the shade of the pines, watching the water flow by, the more he relaxed. Finally, he sighed.

  “We can’t tell Sasha about this,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Sasha?” Will repeated.

  “Why not?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Whitney’s kid,” Rafe told Will. He looked at Cheyenne. “We can’t tell her because she’ll try to drag me out here. That’s not happening.”

  Cheyenne arched a brow. “Why would she do that?”

  Rafe only shook his head. “Trust me, she would. So we’re not gonna tell her. Okay?”

  He was serious, waiting on her promise, and Cheyenne wondered what had happened between the two kids. They’d spent a good hour together when Whitney visited, but they’d been out on the deck, and Cheyenne had no clue what passed between them.

  “Okay,” Cheyenne agreed. “My lips are sealed.”

  Rafe looked at Will, who held up his hand.

  “Scout’s honor,” Will said.

  “Good.” Rafe stepped away, urn in hand and turned to look at them. “Thanks. I just…really needed to do this.” And then he walked back down the trail, Lucky bouncing along behind him.

  “We did that wrong,” Cheyenne said, watching him.

  “There’s wasn’t a right way.” Will hugged her, his cheek rough against her scar. “We did okay. He’ll work it out, eventually.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not,” Will agreed. “Either way, we’ll be here if he needs us.”

  So pragmatic and simple. Cheyenne sighed and turned in his arms. He immediately pulled her close, breast to thigh, and she smiled as she thrust her hands into his hair.

  “Such a practical man,” she said softly. “How will you ever keep us grounded?”

  Those pale eyes studied her, lingered on her mouth. “I’m your tether.”

  The truth in that statement struck deep. Her smile faded. “You are.”

  “And you’re mine,” he said. “It works both ways, baby. We hold each other to earth.”

  Cheyenne stared at him and felt too many things: hope, terror, giddiness, an awareness of something much larger than herself at work. But most of all, she felt love. Weird, breathtaking, wild and powerful. Far more potent than her rage had ever been.

  Goddamn irony.

  “I’m strong,” she warned him. “I can stretch and bend; I won’t break. You’ll never be rid of me.”

  “Promise?”

  Her heart skipped a beat at the seriousness in him. His hand cupped her jaw; his thumb brushed her scar, traced the fullness of her bottom lip. White heat simmered in her veins.

  “Promise,” she whispered.

  Then she kissed him.

  * * *

&nbs
p; THE END….Until next time.

  Thank you for reading.

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  * * *

  For a sneak peek at Sam and Lucia’s story, The Getaway, keep reading…

  The Getaway

  Lucia Sanchez has stolen two children. Two children who don’t belong to her; two children she will do anything to save. Driven by a bloody past and determined to change an ignoble future, Lucia will make any sacrifice necessary to be certain history doesn’t repeat itself. She has given everything she ever was, everything she would ever become, and nothing will stop her from completing her mission.

  U.S. Deputy Marshal Sam Steele is tired. Tired of chasing fugitives and protecting turncoats. Tired of breathing. When he’s drawn into the kidnapping plot of a woman he has no desire to help, it’s just one more nail in his coffin. But duty calls, and Sam knows his duty. When the plea of a close friend makes it impossible to walk away, Sam must make a choice—to follow the rules and play it safe, or to follow his heart and risk everything.

  She will give everything to win; he wants only to keep them alive. Thrust together in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Sam and Lucia must set aside the desire and distrust that flares between them and work together if they want to free two children from a sickening legacy and out-maneuver a man who will hunt them to the ends of the earth…

  Prologue

  “He’s going to kill you.”

  Lucia Sanchez said nothing.

  “Did you hear me? You’re dead.”

  Her gaze flickered to the rearview mirror. The boy sat in the middle of the Nova’s sagging back seat, his features schooled into the remote mask she’d come to expect. Pale green eyes stabbed into hers, as hard and opaque as the jade they resembled.

  “I am not afraid to die,” she told him softly.

  “Everyone is afraid to die.”

  How dismissive he sounded. How callous. It never failed to appall her.

  “Even the ones who pull the trigger themselves,” he added cruelly, purely for spite.

  A direct, piercing hit, but Lucia didn’t flinch. The boy was like a shark in bloody waters; any weakness would be devoured. No matter the chaos that churned within her, she must be unwavering. Steadfast. And so she only turned her gaze back to the hypnotic, dotted line of freeway. The vibration of the uneven pavement made the steering wheel shudder in her hands, an echo of her fiercely pounding, terrified and angry heart.

  Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

  Be calm, she told herself. Destiny is not for the weak. But deep within, she knew better. Deep within—ay, yai, yai, chica, what have you done? Muy estupido! You should have waited, should have planned, you will pay—they will pay—and now there is no going back—because four hours and three hundred miles lay behind them, and the lights of the city had faded long ago. To the east, the first rays of sunlight were creeping across the desert scrub brush, and the wheels she’d set in motion were spinning far beyond her control. But the panic that sat in her chest like a lead weight was nothing compared to the fury that burned in her veins, so hot and caustic and volatile she knew she could not allow it escape. Enough damage has already been done. She had jumped; it was too late to worry about landing now. No matter the furious, frantic beat of her heart.

  “You know he’ll come,” the boy continued, and his tone might have been flat with resignation, but his eyes…they glittered at her in the mirror, a bright, dizzy sheen of fear he couldn’t hide.

  She had pushed him with this action, right to the edge. He stood beside her now.

  “Sí,” she acknowledged.

  He growled, a low, rumbling sound few would believe him capable of. “Then why are you doing this?”

  Lucia took him in: chiseled bones, hinting at the man he would become, a strong jaw and stubborn chin. Pale, jade green eyes lashed with thick ebony crescents; a tiny beauty mark kissing his right cheek. Only ten years old, but already so beautiful that sometimes just looking at him hurt. “Because someone must, mijo.”

  “Not you,” the boy said, and there was something in his voice that made her squeeze the steering wheel until the worn plastic abraded her skin. He looked down at the small form sprawled across his lap. “You aren’t…enough.”

  An infuriating—if accurate—assessment. But it changed nothing. She would have to be enough. A grim reality, and not something she could change. She’d tried.

  “You can’t win,” he added, as though it were fact. What goes up must come down.

  Which only fed the fury that threatened to blind her, so toxic and unstable, something she must not allow to control her. But Lucia was sick to death of being told her limits, her place, of being relegated to someone else’s definition of her existence. It had taken years to carve a path out of the madness of her childhood; blood, sweat and tears to travel that path. No one would tell her what she must accept, what she must allow. Not any longer. Because the monstrous present had raised the equally grisly past, and she would not stand idly by as it repeated itself before her.

  No.

  Perhaps this rash, dangerous act would change nothing; perhaps the evil men did was already written, something no one—her least of all—could change. But she refused to be complacent, to be silent. To watch it happen again. Others might turn away, but she would not. Because for her, evil was not merely an idea. A stranger she had never met. No, malevolence was an old enemy, one with whom she had been long acquainted. One she was introduced to in childhood, whose shape and form and scent she knew intimately.

  One she recognized as if it were family. Family. Something she had not had in over a decade. Something that same evil had taken from her.

  And now it will take even more! Your future, your dreams, your life—

  But that would not stop her. She would not run and hide, not again. Not ever again.

  No matter the specter of death Alexander spoke of.

  “You underestimate me, mijo,” she replied finally, darkly. “You should never underestimate anyone.”

  “You’re nothing,” the boy said, certain.

  A roar filled her throat, begging for escape. She wanted to pound her fists against the ancient dash and make him understand. But that would only egg him on and—probably—crack the dash in half.

  “Everyone is someone,” she told him, calm, hard, equally as certain. “And anyone can change the world.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” he derided, his mockery honed to knifelike precision. “Changing the world?”

  She met the sharp glitter of his eyes. “Your world,” she said.

  His gaze dropped. He looked out the window, to where the sun was steadily rising in a fiery arc of orange and pink. Fingers of light speared across the road before them, highlighting the tar lines that held the pavement together.

  Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

  The old Nova sliced through the cold morning air at eighty miles an hour, shuddering in effort to meet the demands of her lead foot. The car smelled of aged vinyl and cigarettes, and a long crack arced along the windshield, shearing the pane in two. Traffic was light, the road littered with garbage and the occasional animal carcass.

  But no police. No Ivan the Terrible. Not yet.

  “When he catches us…” The boy shook his head. “Do you know what he’ll do?”

  Lucia knew; she didn’t care. Not anymore. That fear was useless, a waste of time she no longer had. “Sí.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  But she did. She knew exactly. And even if the knowing woke terror in her heart—because the man who would come, he would want blood, he would enjoy her pain—such a thing would not stop her.

  Nothing would stop her.

  “Some things,” she told him, “are worth the risk.”

  “Not this. Not to me.”

  Her heart fluttered painfully in her chest, like a panicked bird fighting
its cage. She only ignored it and watched the boy in the mirror, her resolve like steel, no matter his doubt. Her own. “No?” Her eyes fell to the child he held. “What about to him?”

  The boy wanted to hit her. She could see it flaring in his eyes, the suppressed violence that always simmered there, just below the surface. The hate and rage that lived within him like a second self.

  It had taken her eight months to understand. Eight months too long.

  “You can make choices for yourself,” she said. “But not for him.”

  “I can’t, but you can?”

  Such fury, like a whip snapping through the air, but she said only, “Sí, I can, mijo. I am.”

  The boy looked away. The stoic line of his profile and the hard, unforgiving line of his jaw where a muscle ticked uncontrollably made Lucia want to do violence. She’d known horror and pain and devastating loss; blood so thick it would not run, the sickening stench of death. The dreams still were, as they had always been, and she would not have believed it would become something she would embrace.

  Something she would use.

  She’d been wrong.

  A child should not know this pain.

  But Alexander wasn’t a child. He hadn’t been for a long time, certainly longer than she’d known him. His decade might as well have been a century. There was nothing at all child-like about him.

  That had been her first clue.

  “You don’t understand,” he muttered, a small crack in his cold reserve.

  “What don’t I understand, mijo?” Lucia asked. “What he will do to me? Or what he will do to you?”

  The weight of her question filled the car like a thick, sulfurous cloud. But she knew he wouldn’t respond.

  He never did.

  She had only her own conviction, the proof evidenced by her own eyes. The sickening truth she could not—would not—deny. Not even for him. She’d been too young the first time, too weak. Too ignorant and naïve and stupid. Not so now. And while she understood the boy’s silence, it wouldn’t stop her. Nothing was going to stop her—nothing but the death of which he spoke. No matter her mistakes, her panic, the regret eating at her, berating her for allowing her fury to control her, she would stop at nothing.