Savoring Mila (Angels Halo MC Next Gen & Rockers' Legacy Book 3)

by Terri Anne Browning

  It looked like a warrior holding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other while he stood on the back of...a beast? Grabbing my phone, I did a quick search of the picture depicted on the medallion.

  Saint Michael.

  As I read about patron saint, my heart melted a little. Someone had given me a talisman, to protect me. It was exactly what I needed with Daddy freaking out every day and sweating bullets. I’d felt unsafe ever since he’d come home one night, demanding to know if we’d seen following us lately.

  Needing to know who had given it to me, I picked up the paper again and started reading.

  Monroe,

  Wear this and nothing will ever harm you. I’ll always know if you are safe or in danger. Please, precious, don’t ever take it off so I can sleep peacefully knowing you are out of harm's way. But do not tell your parents. I can’t protect you if they keep me from you.

  Your protector,

  G

  I read it three times, memorizing every word before finally refolding the paper. I don’t know why I didn’t take the note and necklace down to show Mom. I had no idea who ‘G’ was, but instinctively I knew he wouldn’t harm me. If it was a he. Heck, it could have just as easily been a woman, someone who wanted to watch over me in a maternal kind of way like Aunt Raven did with all of us.

  But no, I really didn’t think it was a woman. The handwriting wasn’t all curvy and pretty like every other woman’s writing I’d ever seen, my own and Mila’s included--and Mila’s handwriting was atrocious if she was in a hurry.

  Placing the paper under my mattress for safe keeping, I put the necklace around my neck and tucked the medallion under my shirt. As soon as the cool metal settled over my heart, a sudden calmness settled over me. All the anxiety I’d felt since that first night Daddy came home sweating and asking weird questions began to fade.

  My hand covered the medallion. “I don’t know who you are, G, but thank you,” I whispered.

  Three months later…

  My heart was pounding against ribs so hard it hurt, but I knew if I stopped running, even for only a moment to catch my breath, they would get me.

  “Help. Please, someone. Help me,” I gasped, running as fast as I could. But I wasn’t athletic like my brother. Running was not something I enjoyed, even if it was one of Mom’s favorite things to do when she was stressed and tried to get me and Mila to run with her often. Mila went regularly, but I was all too happy to watch them run around the block from the comfort of my bedroom window while reading a good book.

  But I was running for my life and knew if I didn’t I wasn’t going to survive this.

  Daddy had calmed down the last few weeks so Mila and I were allowed to go to and from school on our own if we wanted. Today, Mila had rode home with a friend. They’d asked me to come with them, but it was a pretty day out and I wanted to enjoy the sun and the slightly cool breeze, so I decided to walk. It wasn’t far, just under two miles, so I’d waved them off and started walking.

  But it seemed that no sooner had my sister and her friend were out of sight a van had pulled up beside me. Creswell Springs was so small, everyone knew everyone else. Strangers stuck out like a sore thumb, and these guys were definitely strangers.

  “Hey, beautiful,” the driver had greeted as he rolled down his window and leaned his arm out. His eyes were bloodshot and the smell of weed floated out of the vehicle, making me gag. His hair was dirty and shaggy, curling at the ends. When he grinned, I saw that his teeth were stained yellow and in a few places, a dark brown. The second guy, I couldn’t see clearly from where I was standing but I heard him muttering something to the driver. “You need a ride somewhere?”

  Instinctively, my hand had covered the medallion under my shirt. It was something I always did when I felt scared. Holding onto it always calmed me, but right then it didn’t do anything for the sudden shot of fear I felt looking at the guys in the van.

  “I’m good,” I told them and started walking again. Opening my phone as I walked, I started to text my dad. But even as my fingers were flying over the keys, I heard two doors opening and slamming shut behind me.

  A voice in the back of my head told me to run, and I dumped my backpack, knowing it would only weigh me down, and took off running. The sound of their feet rushing after me made me cry out in fear and I ran faster, clutching my phone in one hand like a lifeline.

  Finally I saw my house up ahead and I tried to pump my legs faster, but there was that dang crack in the sidewalk that Mom was always complaining about, and I tripped. Skidding across the concrete scraped the skin off my palms and my bare knees exposed by my jean shorts. Without looking I knew I was bleeding and I could feel pieces of dirt and rock lodged in the torn skin.

  Tears blinded me as I turned over, too stunned to be able to get to my feet as the two men stopped right in front of me and grinned. The second guy was right there beside the driver. His hair was even more greasy than the other guy’s if that was possible. He had a gold cap over one of his top front teeth, and with the way his eyes were looking at me, all I wanted was to hide.

  Fear had nausea roiling in my stomach and I kicked out, trying to defend myself. That only made them laugh and I tried to scoot back away from them as they inched toward me menacingly.

  This time of day all my neighbors were still at work, the other kids my age still at school for whatever practice they had. Maverick was no doubt walking River home, and Mila was still out with her friend. I should have gone with them. I should have…

  The sound of screeching tires had the two men’s heads jerking around. Through my tears I saw the door of a nondescript black car open and a guy dressed in black pants and with the hood of his shirt pulled up over his head. He was larger than life, taller than my dad, wider than my uncle Bash. And the danger that oozed off him reminded me of both men, yet I wasn’t scared of him in the least until the two men standing over me. A roar left him, and he charged toward the two men.

  They were too stunned by his sudden appearance to move and he tackled them both to the ground right in front of me. The sound of a skull hitting asphalt echoed in my ears as the new guy punched the one he was on top of over and over in the face, yelling at him in what sounded like Italian.

  I desperately blinked back my tears, trying to figure out if what I was seeing was real. That was when my eyes focused on the guy right in front of me. It was the guy with the gold tooth. He was staring straight at me, but his gaze was vacant and he laid there unmoving.

  Cautiously I kicked my foot out and nudged him, but he didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink, and I realized he was...dead.

  My terrified scream filled the air and stopped the newcomer from pounding on the guy on the ground who seemed unconscious, his fist still raised as if he were going to drop it like an anvil on the driver’s face again.

  The newcomer turned, and I got my first look at his face. There, over his left eyebrow, was a scar that went down to his cheek and through my continued tears I found myself wondering how he was still able to see out of that eye or if he even could.

  Seeing the fear on my face, he stood and bent, lifting me into his arms. “It’s okay, precious,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my temple, and I felt oddly comforted. “You’re safe now.”

  “I-I… That guy,” I whispered, burying my face in his chest, breathing in deep and taking his scent into me. His smell calmed me further and all I wanted was to have that scent in my nose forever. “He’s dead.”

  “Yes,” he growled, the sound almost animalistic, making me shiver.

  “Did you mean...to kill him?”

  “He’s lucky I didn’t slit his fucking throat,” he rasped, walking purposefully toward my house.

  I shuddered, but clung to him as he climbed the steps to my porch.

  “Keys, precious.”

  I bit my lip and lifted my head. “They’re in my backpack. I-I dropped it.”

  His jaw clenched but he gave a single nod. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it an
d return it to you.” Setting me down on the top step, he stroked a finger down my cheek, wiping away a few of my tears. I saw the cuts on his knuckles, the bruises already forming from where he’d beat the driver unconscious. “Call the cops and your mother. I will get your things back to you.”

  I watched him turn and walk back toward his car, but before he could get to the bottom of my driveway, I found myself calling after him. “Th-Thank you, G.”

  His wide shoulders stiffened, but after a moment he gave a single nod and kept walking. I waited until he was in the car and drove away before calling the sheriff and then my mother.

  Four years later...

  Gian

  Where the fuck is she?

  My heartbeat pounded against my temples, making it close to impossible to think clearly as I tore through her house, searching for some sign of my precious one.

  It was empty of course. No Monroe, or her sister. No brother or parents. The house felt soulless without Monroe within its walls to fill it with life. Just as I’d felt since I realized I couldn’t hear her breathing.

  When I closed my eyes, the sound of her heartbeat was absent and my own heart had stopped, thinking that something was wrong. I’d had a break in my busy day and as always, I’d found myself opening the app on my phone that connected me to the chip in her necklace. There was a GPS and microphone in the Saint Michael medallion I’d given her years before. The microphone was so sensitive it could clearly pick up a whispered conversation from fifty feet away from the person wearing it.

  And when it was quiet, I could hear Monroe’s heartbeat as easily as if my ear was pressed against her chest. At night, as I lay in bed, unable to shut off the noise of the past, the sound of her heart beating so steadily soothed me to sleep. I couldn’t rest without the sound filling my senses.

  But it wasn’t there earlier when I opened the app to listen to what she was doing. There was no background noise of a television set or even the annoying drone of one of her teacher’s voices. She’d graduated the week before, so I wasn’t expecting to hear them, but I was waiting for one of her siblings or her parents to say something in the background. Or for her to speak to me, as she sometimes did when she was alone.

  She couldn’t have known I could hear her, yet she spoke out loud to me at times. As if I were right there beside her, she would ask what I was doing, or how my day way. And when she was feeling particularly lonely, she would ask why I hadn’t come for her.

  It was when she asked that particular question I had to pick up a bottle and drink until I couldn’t think straight, or I would go to her. Take her away from her loving family, and hide her away from everyone but me. I was selfish where my precious one was concerned. I wanted all her time, all her smiles, all her love. But I knew I couldn’t have her. Not yet, maybe not ever.

  But I could have a part of her life every day, even if it was stolen. The medallion allowed me into her life, gave me peace. She was safer without me pulling her out of her world and into mine, I would remind myself. Safe and loved and happy.

  Yet when I hadn’t heard her, or even her heartbeat, something snapped in me. A flip was switched and all I could think was that I needed to find her.

  Now.

  I ran up the stairs and straight into her room, the door banging against the wall in my rush to find a clue that would take me to her.

  What I found only had my heart pounding harder, making me gasp for breath as I lifted the necklace out of the box I’d given her all those years ago. Back then, I’d only wanted to protect her. After one look at her in the surveillance pictures my adopted father had shown me, I’d ached to keep her safe.

  Over the years, however, that need to protect her had grown into something else. Something...more. And while protecting her was still my number one priority, I would have sold my soul to have her for my own.

  If I still had one.

  But between my real father, Enzo Fontana, and my adopted one, Carlo Santino, they had destroyed it, making it impossible to bargain with.

  Under the necklace was a folded piece of paper. My fingers balled into a fist around the chain as I reached for the paper with the other. Seeing her pretty handwriting made my heart stutter for a moment before it began thumping wildly against my chest once again.

  G,

  I knew you would come when you realized I was gone. I’m not stupid, I knew there was a microphone in the medallion. How else could you always know when I was in trouble?

  Please, take it with you when you go. I can’t do this anymore. Having your necklace around my neck made me think I was yours, that maybe I belonged to you, but I’ve realized that’s a fantasy I’ve been feeding myself. If you wanted me, you would have already made me yours. My mistake. I’m sorry, I just didn’t understand before now.

  Maybe I am stupid after all.

  Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

  Take the necklace. Don’t worry about me anymore. I’m not your responsibility. I never was, although I’m thankful for all the times you saved me.

  Goodbye, G.

  Monroe

  The paper fell to the floor without me realizing as I stared down at the medallion hanging from the chain in my hand. She had realized there was a microphone.

  Which meant she really did know she was talking to me all those times…

  Fuck.

  And now I didn’t know where she was.

  I sucked in a deep, calming breath that did nothing to ease the tightness in my chest or the constriction around my heart.

  Unacceptable.

  I needed to hear her voice. Her heart beating. I needed to know she was safe. That no one had harmed her. No one had taken my precious one from me.

  I would find her.

  And I would take what was mine.