“Then what were your orders?”
To say I’m skeptical would be an understatement. I wish I had thought to bring my gun with me before coming here. I don’t like the ominous feeling hanging in the air between me and the yellow lettered alphabet soup assholes that are messing with my life.
“To make sure you see Agent Daniels first.” He responds, all amusement gone, a serious expression taking its place.
“Liz? I need to see Liz first?” I ask, extremely confused at this turn of events.
“Red tape, Mr. Cummings. Red tape.”
There’s that fucking saying again. I hate it more and more each time I hear it.
“Is she even awake yet?”
“No, but trust me when I tell you that you’ll want to see her before you see your lady. You’re welcome to wait in her room until she wakes up. Doc says it shouldn’t be long now.”
He pushes open the door he was guarding, and then steps to the side, permitting me access to the woman who has loved and protected Remi for most of her life.
Crossing the threshold to Liz’s room feels like a betrayal to the woman across the hall, the one I came here for. To see anyone before I see with my own two eyes that my little wolf is okay feels wrong on so many levels.
However, regardless of why the FBI wants me to see Liz first, I know it’s what Remi would want anyway. She’s always put herself last, I have no reason to believe that would start to change now. And now with the last of Liz’s family being taken from this world, she deserves to have someone sitting in that chair when she wakes up.
Even if it’s not the person she would have wanted to see.
“We’ll be outside if you need us.” The older one says before closing the door, sealing me inside with the beeps and clicks of the machines being the only noises filling the air.
I take a seat in the empty chair beside Liz’s bed, the chair that should have been meant for Henry. I sigh, hating that she has no one else in her world that could be here to provide her any form of comfort. Hating that I’m going to have to be the one to tell her that her father was murdered.
Fuck, sometimes this life takes too much from the people who least deserve it.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I open my heavy eyelids and try to blink away the blurriness that always comes when you first wake up.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Twinges of pain race up my back and neck, reminding me that I spent the night in the world’s most uncomfortable bedside chair. Goosebumps race across my skin as the chill of the hospital room seeps into my bones.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” A ragged voice calls out.
Slowly, my eyes travel up the bed and only stop when two tired and bruised pale blue ones stare back at me.
Liz gives me a small, yet tight, smile. “My dad didn’t make it out did he?” She asks, trying to hold back her tears.
Guilt floods me at how small her voice sounds. I know there was nothing I could have done to save Henry, but I feel guilty all the same. I should have forced his ass out of town instead of trusting the girls to handle it. I should have done more before those assholes came to town.
“I’m so sorry, Liz. By the time we found them, it was too late for him.” I swallow down the lump in my throat, hating that such a good man was taken from these girls. Knowing the girls in our family will be hurting almost as bad, makes the guilt burn even worse.
“The minute they showed up, I worried that none of us would make it out alive. There were so many of them. But I foolishly thought that if I made it out alive, then maybe he did too.”
She adverts her eyes long enough to try and hide the tears that are falling.
“You don’t have to hide your pain from me, Liz. It’s okay to hurt. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. None of you did.”
“I mean no offense when I say this, Brody, but I’d rather share my pain with Remi when I finally get to see her. I know you knew and liked my dad, but Remi loved him as much as I did. We need to grieve his loss together.”
I nod in understanding, suddenly feeling like I shouldn’t be in here. I shouldn’t be the person to sit in this chair. She needs more. More than I can give because we’re only two small steps up from strangers at this point.
I scrub a hand down my face, unsure where to go from here.
“I can go if you’d prefer. I haven’t been in to see Remi yet. The fuckface feds outside of your door told me their orders were for me to see you before I see Remi. I can leave if you’re uncomfortable with me being here.”
The guilt I’ve been choking back since I opened my eyes is reflected back at me in her eyes, leaving me confused and in desperate need of a Redbull.
“You need to stay.” She says, barely above a whisper.
“I need to?”
She nods without saying a word. Instead of speaking, she takes several deep breaths as if to steady herself. To prepare herself for whatever reason that I needed to be in this room in the first place.
“What’s going on, Liz?”
For several moments she stares at me. Silently, unblinking, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Just when I don’t think I can take the silence any longer, she finally speaks.
“Every case we work on has a code name, did you know that?”
I shrug in response, unsure of what the hell we’re even talking about anymore.
“Remi’s case was ‘Cross Roads’ because since the day I met her I was always telling her ‘we’ll cross that road when we get there.’ Sometimes, with cases like hers, with so many unknowns, that’s all we can do. We can’t always make long-term plans. We can’t always prepare for what might come. There were always so many… variables. All we could do was tackle what was happening at that moment.”
She clears her throat, eyes falling to the covers on top of her lap, fingers twisting a loose thread. Nervous energy surrounds us as she gathers her bearings, leaving me hanging in suspense as I try to piece together what she’s saying.
“Since I met Remi all those years ago, my entire life has been devoted to protecting her and keeping her safe at all costs. For a long time, I never took on another case, making her my one and only priority. I refused to let anything take my focus away from her. I was able to keep that up for a long time. But one day, there was another case that came along. A case that intertwined with hers.”
She finally glances up, taking a deep breath before she continues.
“You wanna know what the code name for that case was?”
I nod, my eyes scrunched in confusion.
She audibly swallows before answering.
Two words that I’ve grown to hate are spoken, changing my entire fucking life in the blink of an eye.
“Red Tape.”
No. No!
No. Fucking. Way.
All at once, I feel wide the fuck awake. The anger in my body taking over so fast, I physically feel the heat flood my system. Adrenaline courses through my veins with such intensity, I’m afraid I might not be able to contain it.
“Liz, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then I don’t think it’s safe for me to be in this room. Correction, I don’t think it’s safe for me to be in this fucking building, anywhere near you right now.”
She nods as if she expected as much. To be honest, she damn well should have. To keep this secret from me for so long…
It’s cruel.
“Everything I’ve done was to protect Remi, Brody. I know it hurts to hear this, but I had no loyalty to you. My loyalty has always been to her. I owed you nothing. There wasn’t a sacrifice I wasn’t willing to make to keep her safe. I know you understand what that feels like. But unlike you, it was my literal job. As mad as you might be right now, that anger should only be directed at me. Never at her. She didn’t have a say in the matter. I took that choice from her because it was the only way I could protect her.”
“You had more than one girl to protect!” I scream, jumping out of my seat so fast that the chair flies behind me, crashing against the wall. “I could have kept her safe! I could have kept both of them safe!”
This. Can. Not. Be. Fucking. Happening.
“I want to see her!” I demand. “I want to see both of them!” The roar of my voice shakes the crappy pictures hanging on the wall, no doubt altering the fuckface feds outside the door.
“Now that it’s safe, you can. That’s why I’m telling you all of this. But I wanted you to know the truth, that it was my decision, that Remi had zero control, zero power, over this situation. Until the threat was eliminated, she couldn’t say anything.”
I shake my head at her words, refusing to hear her excuses. With a calm I don’t fucking feel, I walk over to her bed and lean over her battered frame until we’re nose to nose.
“You say you were protecting them. But who can protect a child better than their own fucking father?” I spit out. “You robbed a child of her father for three fucking years, letting me believe she was dead. Mark my words Elizabeth Daniels, I will make you fucking pay for every second of every day that you kept her from me.”
She says nothing, which only serves to piss me off even more. I can’t stand to look at her a second longer. Each time her machine beeps along with her heart, all I can think of is ripping it out of her chest so that she can experience even a minuscule amount of the pain that she’s forced me to suffer in, completely alone, for the last three years.
I make my way across the room, needing to get away from her. As my hand touches the doorknob, I turn to face her, needing her to feel my pain.
“When all of this shit went down yesterday, I couldn’t understand why Henry had to die. Couldn’t understand why the world would be so cruel as to take something else away from Remi when she had already lost so much. But I get it now. The world didn’t take Henry from Remi. The world took Henry from you. Now you’ll be the one that has to live with the pain of not having a father for the rest of your life. The same torment you chose for my daughter. Let’s touch base again in three years and tell me what it feels like. Fuck you, Elizabeth Daniels. You didn’t deserve Henry.”
I turn to look at her face, watching the tears stream down faster than she can swipe them away. Her pain feels like a small slice of vindication. I swallow my need to throttle her, the need to dig the knife in a little deeper.
“And your bullshit about the threat being over shows how unfit you were to be the one who got to take care of my girls. The threat isn’t over. One of your own sold you out. And they’re still out there. So now it’s my turn to do what you never could. I’ll take care of my girls from here on out. And you… You can stay the fuck away from my family.”
I slam the door behind me, shoving my way through the feds in the hallway, needing to see Remi.
Three years.
Three. Fucking. Years!
Red tape, red tape, red tape. My daughter was the red tape they had to keep from me.
All at once, I find myself pissed off at so many people. I knew Shane was up to something when he intentionally kept us held up at the police station.
‘Holding out for the red tape.’ That’s what he said.
He fucking knew and he didn’t say a word to me!
My daughter has been alive all this time, and no one told me. Remi has been back in my life, lying to my face every single day, intentionally keeping more secrets that I damn sure deserved to know!
Fuck this. Dex was right all those years ago. I’m fucking done with Remi’s bullshit. She’s got a lot to answer for, and she’s gonna do it right this second!
Chapter Twenty-One
Remi
I’m pulled from a blissful dream by the constant buzzing that seems to grow louder with each passing second. My second phone, my burner phone that I use to communicate with Liz, is knocking against something in the bedside table, amplifying the sound.
As quietly as I can, I unravel myself from the hold Brody has wrapped me in, snag the phone, and tiptoe into the living room to answer the call.
“It’s the middle of the night.” I complain, stifling a yawn.
“You need to leave, now!” She hisses in my ear.
“Are you insane? I can’t leave.”
“You don’t have a choice, Remi. You need to leave, now!”
“I told you, I’m done. I’m starting a family. You promised I wouldn’t have to run anymore. You said the evidence we already have is enough.”
“Tell that to the five bikers circling your block right now.”
“Between the two of us, Brody, Abel, and Dex, we can take those five guys, Liz. We talked about this when you agreed to let me come to LA. You told me I could start a real life this time.”
“That was before your uncle got released from prison. I don’t know how he found you so fast, but he won’t stop until he has you. And my intel says that even though there’s only five on your block, there’s more on the way. We can’t take them all. It’s not about choosing a life with Brody or not, Remi. It’s about choosing to live at all.”
Hot tears burn my face before I even realize they’ve started to fall.
“I told you when I came to LA that I was choosing a life with Brody above everything else. I choose him, Liz. And now you expect me to run off in the middle of the night while I’m carrying his baby?” I whisper shout.
“I know what you chose. Between finishing building an iron-clad RICO case against all of the bastards that hurt you, and Brody, you chose him. And I supported that because I want you to have everything you desire out of life. But listen to me carefully, Remi. If they find you, they won’t just kill you and the baby. They’ll kill him too. I’m not asking you to give him up, I’m begging you to do the only thing you can to save his fucking life. All of your lives.”
”Don’t make me do this, Liz. Don’t make me give him up again. I’m begging you, let me stay!” I cry out, pleading with her. “I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ve always gone with whatever you’ve decided but this is different. This is my family we’re talking about here. We can stay and fight this.”
I hear her sob break out over the speaker, telling me how much she hates putting me in this position. She knows what Brody means to me, that he’s the only thing in this entire world that I’ve ever loved. The only person in this fucked up world that has ever loved me.
“If I could give it all to you, I would. You know that. Maybe one day soon we can fix this whole mess, but that day isn’t today.”
“What am I supposed to tell him? I can’t just let him wake up to find me and his unborn daughter gone. Even you have to see how fucked up that is!”
“You have a limited window to get out safe, Rem. That window is closing the longer we fight about this. So as much as I know it’s going to hurt you both, you don’t have another choice. This is the only way. Leave him a note if you need to, but make sure he doesn’t have a reason to come after you. If he tries to find you, he’ll lead them right to you and the baby. We’ll make a plan when I get you out of there safely, but time is of the essence, babe. You gotta get out, now!”
“Of course he has a reason to come after me. I’m fucking pregnant!”
“Then right now you have to lie and make him think that when morning comes, you won’t be pregnant anymore. I can leave a paper trail tomorrow to buy you some time, but none of that will matter if you die tonight.”
“You want me to tell him I’m getting an abortion?” I damn near swallow my own tongue at the thought. Even if it’s a lie, just the thought of making him believe I did something so heinous makes me sick to my stomach.
“Do you not understand that if you don’t do this that you all die tonight anyway? This way is the only way! This is how it has to be to keep him from following you. When all of this is over, you can tell him the truth. We’ll cross that road when we get there, but time is running out!”
&n
bsp; She hangs up before I can respond, knowing that she’s backed me in a corner. Knowing I have no choice in this matter.
I never have…
With tears burning a trail of misery down my cheeks, I do as my handler instructed. As I scribble out a note, my heart breaks with each word I write, with every lie I have to try and convince him of.
I know this is going to destroy him. I know I’m risking breaking him beyond repair with this. All I can do is hope that when the day comes and he finally learns the truth that he’ll be able to understand that I did what I had to do to keep our daughter safe from the monsters that would try to take her from us.
I’m doing this for all of us.
At least that’s what I tell myself as I place my engagement ring on top of the letter of lies that shattered my heart and will surely shatter Brody’s when he wakes up to find it in my place.
I quietly grab my go-bag from behind the hollowed-out panel I made in our closet when we first moved in. Just one more secret piled on top of all the others I’ve had to keep.
With the bag thrown over my shoulder, I creep around to Brody’s side of the bed and place one last kiss on his forehead. The need to feel his skin against my own, one last time, is too strong to ignore.
“I’m so sorry, my love. Please believe that.” I whisper, knowing that he can’t hear me, but needing to say it anyway.
Carrying all that I need, and nothing I want, I scurry out of the room and slip out into the night, stealing away the future that I promised to the only man I’ve ever loved.
The door clicks behind me, and the pain in my heart amplifies with each step that I take away from him. The distance I’m forced to put between us is a temporary salvation but hurts like hell nonetheless.
Talk about a catch twenty-two.
Leaving Brody, taking off with our unborn daughter, hurts worse than the basement of horrors I nearly died in. Stealing his happiness, obliterating our future together, feels like handing my uncle the victory he’s always been after.
Absolution Page 29