Wicked Ever After

by Shayla Black

  That made sense in a way nothing else did.

  Given Brea’s upbringing, she’d be looking to get married ASAP so the good people of Sunset wouldn’t think she was a “fallen woman” or some other antiquated notion. Every time he’d taken her to bed, he’d been too fucking impatient to wear a condom. Since she’d been a virgin, he doubted she’d been on the pill.

  It all fit.

  Oh, holy shit.

  Had she conceived when he’d last taken her to bed three weeks ago? Would she even know yet? Granted, he was no expert, but One-Mile doubted it. That meant she’d conceived in August—three fucking months ago.

  “You okay, man?” Zy asked, gripping the neck of his cold one. “You look shaken. Friday treating you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he managed to reply…but his head raced.

  He pictured Brea in his bed, her belly rounding with their child. He imagined holding her hand while she birthed the life they’d created together. He envisioned feeding his own son or daughter sweet potatoes and looking into his or her cherubic face with a smile.

  Everything inside him both roared in celebration and quaked in terror.

  After the shithead example he’d grown up with, what did he know about being a father?

  “Hell of a week, huh?” Zy prompted.

  You could say that. “Yeah.”

  Why the fuck hadn’t she told him?

  Because she’d never intended him to be anything but a good time? No, that wasn’t Brea. She didn’t have a snooty or conniving bone in her body.

  But after he’d seemingly walked away from her following his stupid-ass confrontation with Montilla, what had she felt were her options? Especially when she’d convinced herself he didn’t love her anymore?

  Cutter Bryant was her backup plan.

  The question now was, how did he convince her to have faith again and choose him instead?

  “Look, I know you’re probably not thrilled that I want to grill you about why you decided Trees is the asshole around here but—”

  “You hear that Cutter got engaged last night?”

  Zy blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “Um…yeah. I overheard the bosses talking about it shortly after quitting time.”

  “Did they say why?”

  “Cutter popped the question? No.” Zy clapped his shoulder. “Look, I know you had a thing for the girl but—”

  “Not anymore.” He didn’t dare tell anyone how he really felt about her, especially if she was having his baby. Time to compartmentalize his shit, get down to business, then figure out how to corner Brea again—alone—and wrest the fucking truth from her. “Never mind. Let’s talk through the evidence.”

  Zy scowled at the abrupt change of subject. Then he shrugged. “I’ve talked to Trees about the night you were taken from the parking lot in Acapulco. He said you told him to leave.”

  “Yep. But I expected him to put up a little more of a fight, bring backup—something. He just drove off.”

  “What would you have done in his shoes?”

  “Shot a motherfucker or two.”

  Zy scratched the side of his head as if he was scraping for patience. “You know his specialty is computers and tech. He doesn’t have your gift with a gun. Pretty much no one does, man.”

  He’d had this same argument with Hunter while he’d still been in the hospital. Maybe they were right. But something still felt off.

  “Okay, but he didn’t come back or call anyone for hours, did he?”

  “You didn’t realize your food had been drugged?”

  Is that what Zy thought? “Why do you say that?”

  “Trees made it to the parking lot of the police station about a mile away and passed out. Some cop woke him up, like, ten hours later. He didn’t even remember driving there. I assumed you’d figured out that you’d been drugged, too.”

  Was it even true or just Zy covering for his bestie? “Since they beat my fucking skull in and I passed out, I didn’t get that chance. Why didn’t Trees tell me himself?”

  “He’s felt so fucking bad about what happened to you, man… He didn’t know what to say.”

  Maybe. And maybe it was all bullshit. But if Brea was really pregnant and planning to marry Cutter so she’d have a father for his baby, he couldn’t care about EM Security’s internal mole now or wait for Montilla to come to a fabricated local safe house.

  He was going to have to wrest his future back now. He was going to have to take the fight to the drug lord.

  “Well, if you can prove Trees innocent, then I’ve got no hard feelings. If you can’t, tell your pal to keep looking over his shoulder. Someday, I’ll be there.”

  That pissed Zy off. “Wanting your pound of flesh?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Zy couldn’t say no without making himself a liar. “I get it. But I’m telling you, it’s not Trees.”

  “Are you convinced it’s not him because you have a shred of proof or because you don’t want him to be guilty?”

  “Stop being an asshole. Trees and I go way back. I know because I know.”

  One-Mile sneered. He’d seen people sell their own family out for a buck. Exchanging a co-worker no one liked for a pile of cash was nothing to lots of folks. And if that resulted in the death of the drug lord’s wife, too bad.

  “Sure. Whatever. I’ve got to go.” He stood.

  Zy grabbed his arm. “I’m not done fucking talking to you.”

  He glared down at the thick fingers wrapped around his arm, then back into Zy’s angry blue eyes. “What are you looking for here? You want me to believe Trees is innocent because you said so? I don’t work that way.”

  The Efron lookalike released him and sighed as he sank onto his stool again. “I just want you to listen.”

  This fucking game was annoying him, but the guy wasn’t going to let it go. “For shits and giggles, let’s say you’re right. Trees is a choirboy. But we have an internal mole, no question. It’s not me or any of the bosses. We know that. It can’t be Josiah or Cutter. Neither of them had the memo with the address and schematic of Valeria’s house in St. Louis. I passed that on to Trees to see what would happen. Then I waited. And what do you know? Company came, ready to kill. If it’s not your pal, who do you think is the guilty fuck?”

  Zy fell silent for a long moment. “Maybe someone hacked his email.”

  “Maybe you’re grasping at straws.”

  “No, I’m looking at every potential possibility to explain what happened. But let’s be real. If you hadn’t decided to go all cowboy on us, Montilla’s crew would never have killed a handful of cops and he would never have gotten away.”

  Yeah, that had been his life for the last two weeks. It would fuck his future, too, if he couldn’t make everything right. “Don’t deflect blame. I know what I did. But even if I snuff Montilla, we’ll still have a mole who will be susceptible to the next son of a bitch who comes through with a pile of cash and a desire to shut us down.”

  “I know. But I’m telling you, man, it’s not Trees.”

  This argument was going nowhere.

  “There’s no evidence his email was hacked.” And no one else on EM’s payroll One-Mile hadn’t already considered, except… “What about Tessa? She’s the only other person I sent Valeria’s address and home schematic to. Maybe she passed it on to Montilla.”

  Zy recoiled. “What? No. Hell no. How would she have ever met a monster like him anyway?”

  One-Mile shrugged. “Maybe he found her.”

  “You’re wrong. She’s too sweet to sell anyone out.”

  “You only think that because you’re fucking her.”

  “Fuck you! I’m not. When it comes to the bosses’ nonfraternization policy, I have not stepped one toe over the line.”

  One-Mile wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Yeah, it was possible Zy had never touched the pretty blonde. But even if he hadn’t fucked her physically, he’d done it mentally at least a thousand times.

  Elbow on th
e bar, One-Mile leaned in. “Listen, either your best friend or your girl is our traitor. You better figure it out before the blind spots in your vision cost someone around here their life. And now I’m leaving.”

  Zy snarled a curse, jaw clenched, and cast a furious glance away. Then he froze. “Holy shit. What is this?”

  One-Mile followed the other guy’s line of vision and glanced at the TV. He nearly rolled his eyes in disgust at the tabloid program on the screen. Why should he give a shit that very famous bombshell Shealyn West was kissing some random dick who clearly wasn’t her co-star and reported off-screen lover, Tower Trent? Except…this wasn’t a scene from a TV show and it wasn’t a mere press of lips. It was a full-on, ravenous invasion of her mouth as the mystery man wedged her against a car with his body and tongue-fucked her ruthlessly.

  One-Mile peered closer at the profile of the man steeped in shadow on the screen. Even if he hadn’t known whose body his teammate was supposed to be guarding, a glance told him exactly who that random dick was.

  Cutter Bryant.

  “Son of a bitch…”

  “You’re seeing this, too, right?”

  Yeah. “Impossible to miss.”

  “We both know who that is. I’m not hallucinating?”

  “Nope.” It was fucking obvious.

  “Lucky bastard. Damn…” Zy muttered. “But I feel sorry for his new fiancée. He’s never looked at Brea like he wanted to do that to her.”

  Because Cutter didn’t. And Brea didn’t want him to. This was just more evidence to support his theory that their engagement was one-hundred percent fucking fake.

  “Oh, I feel sorry for her, too.” Because One-Mile was determined that, no matter how ugly the truth was, they were going to have it out tonight. “Bye.”

  “Where you going?” Zy called after him.

  He didn’t answer, just walked out the door.

  Chapter Six

  One-Mile drove around Brea’s neighborhood a few times. Nothing suspicious, so a couple of blocks from her house, he parked the SUV he’d borrowed from Caleb to make sure he evaded any possible tail of Montilla’s, then ran for her house.

  Her white compact wasn’t outside.

  It was one o’clock in the morning. Cutter was in California sucking face with a TV star, so where could she fucking be? Montilla couldn’t have zoned in on her already, right?

  That possibility made him break out in a cold sweat.

  The cottage she shared with her dad was dark. Around the back of the house, he found a window unlocked and took a chance the preacher had never bothered retrofitting this old, small-town place with an alarm system. Sure enough, when he raised the pane, no shrieking pealed to alert the whole street—or the cops—that he was breaking in.

  He eased onto the hardwoods inside and closed the window behind him. On silent footfalls, he crept through the house. Without a floor plan, he wasn’t sure which direction he’d find Brea’s room.

  His first trek took him to the master. Empty. That didn’t surprise One-Mile much. He thought he’d seen Brea’s father’s practical brown sedan parked at a house a few blocks over. Jennifer Collins’s place? That was his guess. At this time of night, that probably meant the preacher was banging the lonely widow…

  So where was Brea?

  Through the dark, he doubled back to the living room to investigate the other side of the house. Behind the last door, he found another tidy bedroom. It had to be hers. It, too, was empty. Since her room wasn’t visible from the street, he flipped on a small desk lamp and gave it a visual scan.

  The walls were a pale lavender. A simple white quilt covered the bed, accented by gray sheets with little white flowers. She’d tossed a purple and gray throw at the bottom, over the simple white footboard. The furniture looked like a relic from her childhood. An area rug that matched her walls warmed the floor beside her bed. On the other side, gray curtains that matched her sheets gaped wide open, overlooking their small but meticulous backyard.

  The room looked like Brea. Smelled like her.

  But where the fuck was the woman herself?

  Her absence prompted more questions. It incited panic. He wanted some goddamn answers.

  He booted up the computer sitting on her desk. While he waited, he prowled through her drawers to see if she kept a calendar or list of appointments.

  Maybe he should feel guilty about invading her privacy. He didn’t. This was about her safety, his sanity, and their future. Scruples weren’t going to fix any of that shit.

  His search dredged up only notes from her beauty school days, a small stack of bills with due dates written neatly on the front, and a few pictures of years gone by, mostly of her and Boy Scout Bryant.

  With a scowl, One-Mile replaced everything where he’d found it, then did a quick dive through her dresser across the room. He found prenatal vitamins under a stack of her very modest underwear—and had to tell his suddenly pounding heart to take a rest. Not every woman who took these horse pills was actually pregnant. She might have them merely because her body needed a major supplement.

  He felt behind the dresser and found a gap in the cardboard backing, toward the bottom. Tucked inside was a large envelope with the name and address of an ob-gyn in Lafayette, along with a reminder card for an appointment a month from now. More circumstantial evidence, not proof. After all, women often saw a doctor for female-related things at least once a year.

  The rest of the room netted nothing except to give him a sense of what her life within these four walls was like. She’d been coddled, adored, and sheltered. She’d grown up quiet and dutiful and kind.

  As far as One-Mile could tell, falling into bed with him was the only time she’d ever done anything her father would disapprove of.

  For her to defy what she’d been raised to believe, what would her feelings for you have to be?

  Unless he missed his guess, she’d loved him. Since she wasn’t flighty, he’d bet some part of her still did. But she’d gotten spooked when he’d told her they needed to take a step back.

  More and more, Brea being pregnant fit. He just needed to find her to confirm.

  After righting the rest of her room, he sat at her desk. Her computer wasn’t password protected, so with the touch of a button, he was in. He did a quick prowl through her emails, but they netted nothing of interest. Ditto with her electronic calendar. But one other icon in the dock along the bottom stuck out.

  He clicked the green circle. Up popped the app to locate her phone. Bingo.

  Seconds later, the system prompted him for a password. Shit.

  He clicked until he found a list of her passwords. The one to find her device was dangphone1. With a grim twist of his lips, he typed it in.

  Within seconds, he had her location. An apartment building on the north end of Lafayette. Why the fuck was she wherever this was?

  One-Mile zeroed in until he had an address, then he cross-referenced that with her contacts.

  Cutter’s place. Why would she go to the Boy Scout’s apartment in the middle of the night? It wasn’t for a booty call since the son of a bitch wasn’t there.

  One-Mile jotted the address and was about to shut down the device when another icon caught his attention. Pictures. They were worth a thousand words, right? Maybe they would tell him something…

  She hadn’t snapped any images since Friday morning. The last few were of a client’s freshly auburned hair with a cascade of reddish curls down her back. That’s it. The afternoon before was more along a similar theme.

  Yesterday morning, however, she’d taken a forty-two-second video. It seemingly started on a small, sterile room. A doctor’s office?

  He clicked on the clip.

  “You ready?” The camera reflected a young, professional blonde in her early thirties, dressed in a pair of pastel scrubs.

  “I think so.” That was Brea, and she sounded nervous.

  “This is going to be cold.”

  The camera jiggled and jostled for a sec
ond until it panned down to Brea’s belly. She’d pulled her leggings down to her hips and lifted her T-shirt up above her ribs.

  And he saw the slight bulge that hadn’t been there before.

  One-Mile’s entire body pinged electric. She was pregnant—and not just a few weeks. He’d fucking been right.

  Heart racing and palms sweating, he watched as the blonde in the video smeared some clear gel all over Brea’s little bump, then set a rounded implement low on her belly.

  A crackling noise filled the air, followed by a sound that seemed like something in a vacuum. Then…he heard it, a faint but rapid whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

  His breath stopped.

  “Is that it?” Brea sounded on the verge of tears.

  “Yes, that’s your baby’s heartbeat. He or she sounds strong.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Brea sniffled, then fell silent and listened.

  That soft sound was the best fucking thing he’d ever heard. That was his son or daughter, conceived with the woman he loved.

  “Amazing,” Brea breathed, her voice catching on emotion. “Wow…”

  The electronic heartbeat filled his ears for a few precious moments more, strong and reaffirming his will to claim all that belonged to him.

  Then the video ended.

  One-Mile played it again. He wanted to memorize every sight and sound. He wished like fuck he’d been there with Brea, holding her hand as they’d listened to their baby’s heartbeat together.

  All too soon, the video quit, jolting him back to her empty bedroom.

  With a curse, One-Mile texted the clip to himself, then deleted the electronic trail. Next, he shut down her computer and stood.

  Resolution burned in his veins.

  He’d had plenty of reason to fight for Brea before. But now that she was having his baby? He would stop at nothing, burn down the world—whatever it took—to remove the obstacles between them until he called her his for good.

  One-Mile tucked himself in the shadows outside Cutter’s door less than twenty minutes later, the visible puffs his breaths created in the chill the only sign he was there at all.