Savage Protector: Outlaw Justice

by Gayle, E. M.

  I wanted to rail and scream at him to get out and never come back, but I couldn’t. There was literally no point in saying anything to one of my father’s many bodyguards. Not only would they not help me in any way, they would immediately report to my father I had become a problem.

  I knew what Frank Mazzeo did with his problems.

  Instead I turned my head and said, “Yes. Can you ask my father for a few minutes more and then I’ll be right out?”

  From the grim expression on Angelo’s face it was obvious he wanted to protest. No one close to Frank wanted to risk displeasing him. Too bad. I wasn’t ready and I doubted if I ever would be.

  After my father had declared this union necessary and for the good of the family, I had resigned myself to go through with it. That didn’t mean I was happy about it, but I had hoped to make the best of it.

  Now I wasn’t so sure. Well, that was kind of a lie. Ever since the night of our engagement party, my stomach revolted every time I thought about my fiancé getting near me let alone touching me. The things I’d witnessed…

  Bile rose in my throat and threatened me. How could I walk down the aisle and face him or my father? They were both sick and depraved.

  You should run.

  The voice in my head sounded like my mother’s, although that was impossible. She’d been gone for years now and this was not the first time I’d heard her voice.

  I thought of her often and sometimes a forgotten conversation we’d had popped into my head and ran through my mind as if it was happening all over again.

  Still. The nagging idea that my mother wanted me to run had taken hold and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I rubbed at my tight chest with sweaty palms, struggling to breathe. If I ran, my father would send his people after me and I’d be dragged back and punished.

  I shuddered, hands clutching the edge of the vanity. After what I’d seen him and Marco do to that girl in his office, I wasn’t sure I could count on any mercy. Especially from my father. He never gave mercy. Said it went against his very fiber and made him look weak.

  I should have seen it coming. The writing had always been on the wall, even before my mother left me alone with him. Her death had created a vacuum, a void where my father’s heart had once resided.

  But even before, things had not all been well. There had always been fear no matter how hard we tried to hide it. Right up until the end.

  My beautiful, perfect mother who tried to survive living with a monster. Only I didn’t realize he was a monster back then. Or perhaps I’d chosen not to see it.

  Instead I saw my mother’s fight against a disease I didn’t understand slowly consume her. I believed in the kindness my father displayed while dismissing the strange look that sometimes came into her eyes. I only recognized it now because I saw the same haunted look in my mirror when I dared to really see.

  Fear.

  Lost in the memories of a woman I missed with everything inside me, I didn’t hear anyone approach. Not until the door slammed open, causing me to scream.

  “What in the hell is going on in here?” my father seethed as he stormed into the room. “My guests have been waiting for almost an hour. This is unacceptable.”

  His guests, not mine. We both knew this was a show he was putting on for someone else. None of which I understood. It was all for the business he’d explained. As if that justified every deplorable thing he’d ever done.

  “I can’t go through with this, Daddy. I don’t want to marry that man. This feels wrong. He feels wrong.” I pleaded, almost cowering as I uttered the truth. Maybe just this once I could get through to the man he used to be. “Or maybe I just need more time to prepare. I could still go to college and then settle down with a man we both found suitable.” If he could see my side, maybe a compromise wasn’t out of the question.

  He stalked forward, grabbed my arm and jerked me around to face him. “I don’t give a fuck what you want to do.” His grip dug painfully into my arm and immediate tears welled in my eyes.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake. Grow the hell up, Isabella. You aren’t a child anymore and you’ve been coddled long enough. You have responsibilities to this family to live up to and that’s all that matters.”

  The cold and menacing shell of my father standing in front of me sent a hard shiver up and down my spine. After all this time I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the change. I also couldn’t seem to stop hoping that I could get through to him.

  “I’m an adult. I should be able to make my own decisions. Plus, I’m scared of him.”

  My father laughed. The bitter, mean sound I’d come to know all too well felt like barb wire wrapping around my heart and squeezing tight.

  “Good. Being scared will make you smarter. Remember that when you think about defying your husband. Marco won’t be nearly as forgiving or lenient as I have been. This will be good for you.”

  “But—”

  “Enough.” He squeezed my arm tighter as the pooling tears streamed down my face. “I won’t have you embarrass me any longer. After today, I’m officially washing my hands of you. Now clean up the mess you’ve made of your face and get your ass out there. You have five minutes. If I have to send someone to come and get you again, not only will you be dragged in by your hair, I’ll make sure that Marco understands exactly the kind of brutal punishment his new wife needs to be happy.” A sick, twisted smile crossed his face. “That should make for an interesting wedding night, wouldn’t you say?”

  Fresh fear seized my insides, making me feel like a coward all over again. I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. I’d always known the horrible mistakes of my past would be used against me. Again.

  The memories and the guilt that came with them never stayed away long. They were always there just under the surface along with my mother’s voice on what had become my worst day…

  “Don’t worry my little Dove, momma will always find a way to help you.”

  I had looked up into my mother’s sky blue eyes and blinked. I didn’t know how she could have helped me. I’d gone way too far to ask for forgiveness.

  “What’s he going to do? It’s all my fault. I did this. It should be me who is punished.”

  She’d cupped my cheek and I’d leaned into it. “Shhh. It’s all going to be okay, I promise. Your father will talk to me first and I will handle it.”

  Despite her spoken assurances and soft touches, I didn’t believe her. Not with the echo of my father’s rage still at the forefront of my mind. I was right then and I was right now.

  She couldn’t help me. These were my battles and I was on my own to figure out a way to win against him.

  “You were stupid then and you’re being stupid now. You should have learned your place then, but you certainly will now.” I was too numb from the sudden onslaught of memories to fully assess my father’s condemnation.

  “Aww, Isabella, I’m your mother. Of course I understand. I may be older now, but I remember full well what it feels like to be sixteen. If someone like that boy lived in my childhood home, I would have fallen for him too.”

  Her words only made the guilt all that much worse. I wasn’t anything like her. She envisioned me as a sweet young girl infatuated with a boy. I wanted to shake my head and confess. It wasn’t like that between us. We were just friends. Things just got carried away. But I knew the words would never come out right…

  “Five minutes, Isabella. You know you don’t want to test me.” My father left the room laughing as I slumped against the countertop and wrapped my arms around my waist. He was right. I didn’t want to test him ever again. The pain from the last time never fully went away.

  I pressed my fingers to my throat now, feeling the memory of a hand wrapped tightly there that night. A lover’s tight grip.

  At first it had been exciting. We’d been more like animals than lovers. It had created a fierce but short flash of pleasure that did more than rob me of breat
h and send my head into the clouds. It made me wild too.

  I couldn’t breathe, yet I wanted more.

  I dropped my hands and turned away from the mirror. I didn’t know what would have happened if my father hadn’t found us and ripped that boy away from me. Maybe he would have stopped and maybe he wouldn’t have.

  The troubling part of all that, was that I hadn’t cared. Not then and maybe not now. My mother had been slowly dying for years and the hatred that I’d seen in my father’s eyes that night had already been born in my heart.

  Stop. Little Dove. Stop doing this to yourself. You deserve love, not pain. You are young and you deserve the freedom to discover who you are on your own time. It’s time to change your future. Go now before it’s too late.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out the words in my head. But even as a figment of my overactive imagination they were running on an endless loop.

  Clearly I needed to listen. This was it. The window of opportunity I’d been waiting for and likely the last one for a very long time.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the door. Angelo would be back any moment and then it would be too late. I had a feeling Marco would prove equally as ruthless as my father and my imprisonment would continue. Probably until I died.

  I glanced around the room as if I would find something to grab before I left, but I’d brought nothing with me but the wristlet I took everywhere and the clothes on my back.

  So I did the only thing I could.

  I grabbed my small purse, gathered the long skirt of my dress in my hands, yanked the door open and without looking towards the chapel, I ran.

  Chapter Three

  Houston

  Houston entered his parent’s house as uneventfully as he left it. It was exactly as he remembered. Except instead of the stale, dust covered time capsule he expected, the house was clean with a lemony fresh scent. He shook his head. Another club thing. Probably one of the old lady’s ideas. He’d bet if he went in the kitchen and opened the fridge there’d be cold beer and sandwich fixings too.

  The club took care of their own and the fact that he’d worn a Wrath cut only briefly, didn’t matter. He was family. No, as his dad liked to remind him growing up, he was the Wrath prince and as such destined to run it all.

  His answer to that? Fuck destiny.

  Houston rubbed his sore leg as he walked toward the bedrooms. There wasn’t shit about him that was princely. He’d opted to leave all of this behind and never look back. He had a wild notion he wasn’t anything like his father and the best thing he could do for his life was leave and never return.

  That worked for a cool decade. A decade in which he’d gone from smart mouthed teenager looking to prove a point to stone cold killer who liked to spend most of his time alone on the side of a mountain, in a jungle hole with a view, or anywhere he had a rifle in his hands and a job to do.

  As far as he was concerned there was nothing worse than having nothing to do.

  He pushed into his bedroom and looked around. Hard to believe this tiny ten-by-eleven room held so many memories. He dropped his bag on the bed and followed it down. Surprisingly, the little house didn’t make him nearly as sad as he expected. His mother’s violent death marred some of the memories, but there was a lot more good to remember than bad. He and his brother spent a lot of years trailing Pops and JD to the clubhouse and back again.

  They all worked on motorcycles together many weekends and there were a shit load of parties hosted in their backyard or at the mill. Houston looked down at the keys still clutched in his hand and remembered Axel’s instructions to check the garage.

  Might as well…

  He passed through the house again, quickening his pace a fraction as he passed the living room. Maybe that one spot still freaked him out a little.

  Resigned to take whatever came next with a grain of salt, he opened the garage door and flipped on the light.

  Holy Shit.

  His baby.

  His bike.

  He knew she’d be here waiting for him, but he wasn’t expecting her to be gleaming and ready the moment he arrived. He stepped forward and ran his hand across the chrome handlebars. Truth be told, she was the real reason he came back. The nineteen eighty-eight Harley Sportster his father bought him on the day he was born had become a piece of him over the years.

  They’d spent hours and hours in this garage customizing her until she held little resemblance to the machine from the showroom floor. It was this bike that taught him everything he needed to know about motorcycles and it was on this bike he’d learned to ride.

  “Son, you need to remember this if nothing else.” His father pressed his hand down on his shoulder. “It’s not the bike that makes the man. It’s the man who makes the bike. It doesn’t fucking matter if your bike is worth twenty large or a lousy hundred bucks. You make the bike yours and she’ll be there for you as long as you take care of her. Even bitches can come and go but you and the bike, you go on.”

  Houston straightened, familiar bitterness rising inside him. That might be the only piece of wisdom he’d ever keep from his old man. When his father had been arrested for accidentally shooting his wife during the fight with JD and charged with manslaughter, Houston stopped talking to him and refused to visit him in jail.

  As for his bike, he looked at her now as the life preserver he’d been looking for. Or maybe the anchor that would help life make sense to him again. Either way, he planned to figure out the right answers on the open road. He strode back into the house and dug his leather jacket out of his bag. He grabbed a smaller backpack and shoved a few necessities inside before returning to the garage.

  From the moment he saw the bike he knew what he was going to do. There was still one place where the world didn’t matter and he was free. On the highway with the wind at his back.

  Houston swung into the saddle of the bike, flipped the switch to start the engine and reveled in the rumbling steel underneath him. Oh yeah.

  With only a vague destination in mind, he pointed the bike west and returned the way he arrived. He decided the obscurity of the big city’s waterfront was exactly what he needed.

  He had a feeling not answering the Wrath summons would cost him dearly down the road. But it wouldn’t stop him tonight. If and when he returned to Sultan, he'd deal with the bitterness in Axel and the consequences with JD.

  But tonight…tonight he would be free.

  Chapter Four

  Isabella

  With the thunder of blood rushing in my ears, I grabbed onto the door handle and fought not to open the cab door and fling myself out of it. My heart raced and my chest ached as panic rushed through me. I might have made the impulsive decision to run at the last second, but I couldn’t escape the feeling I would be caught any second.

  A quick look outside the car window and I had to be free of this small space right now. “Stop the car.”

  The cab driver looked at me in the rearview window for a few quick seconds before swerving to the side of the road. “We’re still a couple of blocks away from the Edgewater Hotel, ma’am.”

  “I don’t care. This is good.” The meter read sixty-five dollars and some change. I definitely wasn’t far enough away. But I needed to get the hell off the streets and out of sight before someone caught up with me. I dug through my purse and pulled several large bills from the roll of cash stuffed inside. “I’ll give you an extra hundred dollars if you swear you'll admit to no one you saw me tonight.”

  “Lady, I don’t even know who you are.”

  I raised my brows and smirked at him. “Trust me. Someone is going to ask and my life could depend on your answer.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  When I didn’t respond to his question he continued. “Fine, I never saw you. Happy?”

  I met his gaze in the rear view mirror. “There’s no such thing as happy. Only pain and utter disappointment.” I pressed the bills into his palm and hurried from the cab before he
questioned me further. I’d already said too much and every second I wasted on a stranger meant a chance of being caught.

  A few more minutes in the cab to the hotel would have been the smart move, but with a panic attack threatening, I had to get out. I crossed the street to the waterfront and race-walked down the semi-deserted pier. The few stragglers still hanging out in the infamous Seattle mist watched me from the corners of their eyes. Maybe seeing a woman walk down a pier in the poofiest princess wedding gown wasn’t a normal occurrence. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was getting some fresh air and slowing down the speed of my racing heart.

  I was free. For the first time in years I didn’t have an escort or some asshole watching my every move. And yet, fear still gripped my insides, trying to claw its way out.

  I reached the end of the pier and grabbed the railing, stuck my head over the side and took deep breaths while staring down at the water.

  How long had it been since I was allowed to do something as simple as breathe without worrying about what someone thought or what someone wanted?

  As my heartbeat returned to a slightly more normal pace, I lifted my head and stared out at the horizon. A ferry was approaching from one of the many islands that dotted the Puget Sound. I’d practically grown up in and around Seattle and not once had I visited any of those islands.

  My family consisted of roughneck businessmen who were not related to me by blood and who cared about little else besides power and money. Their jaded women were no different considering they did nothing more than bitch about the whores their men spent time with and shop.

  God how they loved to spend money.

  They weren’t the kind of people who did normal things like go on vacations to pretty places. I almost laughed out loud at the mental picture of my warped version of family on a beach. Except laughing implied happiness and there was nothing but emptiness inside me. My whole life all I had was my strange, albeit dysfunctional, family to hold onto.