Then she jolted upright quickly, her eyes wide open and on the door, panting like she’d just sprinted a mile. When she realized the door was closed and there was no one in the cabin, she leaned against the wall and let her breathing return to normal.
I sat up and watched her.
Her hand moved over her chest like she had a stitch in the muscle. Her fingers slid through her hair next, taking a long time to bring herself back to a state of calm.
I didn’t know how to comfort her. She was against the wall like she wanted to get as far away from me as possible. Her eyes didn’t turn my way, like my existence didn’t make her feel better either. After a final deep breath, she started to breathe normally, to drop her gaze from the door when the danger was really over.
Without having to ask, I knew exactly what her nightmare was about.
Alix had stormed in here and stripped all her clothes away before parading her outside, taking away all her dignity as if he had the right to claim it for himself. My power wasn’t enough to keep her safe—not in that instance. If Fender hadn’t randomly entered the camp and shown his loyalty to me, her fate would have been unspeakable.
A tear formed in the corner of her eye and streaked down her cheek, illuminated like a liquid diamond. She was calm now, so the tear must have formed previously but didn’t have the weight to fall.
It was hard to look at her, hard to see the strongest woman I knew break down from her fears. “That will never happen again, Raven. You’re safe.”
She turned her body so her back was completely against the wall, and she crossed her arms over her chest like she was somehow cold in this summer heat. “As long as I’m here, I’ll never really feel safe.”
At nightfall, I waited at the gate.
The sound of approaching hooves announced Fender’s arrival. One of his armed guards shouted over the fence to let us know they were there. They turned the lock on their side of the door, and then I turned mine.
I pulled both the doors open and let the horses pass through. Fender was in the center and in the lead. He was in his typical jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt because it was a bit cooler that night than usual. The guys behind him turned off their flashlights once they were in the lit-up camp.
My brother got off his horse then removed his gloves. The men immediately moved in to take his things and lead his horse away to the stables without making a single noise. There was no greeting. No questions. Fender stepped farther into the camp and scanned his surroundings, as if a simple observation was enough to gauge the progress of the work happening in his absence. He looked at the clearing for a few seconds before he glanced at the edge of the fence, his paranoid mind needing assurance of safety with his own gaze.
I came to his side. “Do you want to talk tomorrow?” I noticed that he hadn’t brought Melanie to the camp again. That seemed to be a one-time thing. I wondered what she was doing while he was away. Did she have the liberty to go anywhere she chose? Like Raven did?
“No.” He moved ahead, crossing the space between the cabins toward his at the rear of the camp. The man was never tired, despite the long journey it took to bring him there.
I walked with him.
“Alix giving you any trouble?”
“No. I’m the one giving him trouble.”
“Well, don’t kill him. Executioners are hard to come by.”
I suddenly felt sick. Men volunteered to do the dirty work because it wasn’t the kind of job you could simply assign. You had to possess a special kind of evil to be able to stomach that kind of violence.
Fender asked me about production and our status with the shipment to Spain. “Were you able to negotiate a deal?”
“I did. But it’s considerably more expensive to do it this way, which means we’ll need to raise our prices.”
“Done.”
“But this will make it much riskier. Not sure if it makes sense to pursue it.”
Fender stopped and turned on me. “It’ll increase our revenue by fifty percent. Tell me, how does that not make sense?”
I stared at my brother’s hard face, seeing a man so focused on the past and the future at the same time. He turned to money as the answer to all his problems, the cure to his nightmares. But it was driving him mad. “I think continuing an existing successful business takes precedence over higher profits. Fender, you’re already wealthier than all other wealthy men—combined. What is it gonna take for you to be satisfied?”
He stared at me a bit longer before he continued forward.
I joined him.
He looked ahead as if I hadn’t asked a question at all. “I will never be satisfied. Don’t ask a question when you already know the answer.” He reached the cabin and stepped inside. His meal was already on the table, along with a decanter of scotch and a glass. Everyone knew of his visit to the camp that evening, so they were all prepared.
Fender fell onto the couch and immediately started to eat.
I stayed by the door. “Goodnight.” I turned to leave.
“No. I have something to say to you.”
With my hand on the door, I stared at his back. His muscles shifted and moved as he ate his dinner, staring at the opposite wall. I could see all the good and all the bad instantaneously, and I knew my brother wasn’t just the wealthiest man I’d ever known but also the stubbornest. I released the door and joined him on the couch.
Fender took a drink of scotch before he looked at me. He held my stare for a long time, processing the words in his head before he spoke them aloud. “Raven is free to leave the camp.”
I heard what he said because there could be no confusion at all, but I continued my blank stare because his words entered my ears but not my brain. The stubbornest man in the world had changed his mind.
“Next time you return to Paris, take her with you. And leave her there.” As if he had finished saying everything he wanted to say on the matter, he dropped his chin and looked at his plate so he could continue eating his steak and potatoes. After a long journey on the road, he always wanted a good meal on his table.
For a minute, I was speechless. I’d begged for her release many times, and every request was denied. I didn’t want her to be here a moment longer, to wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the door like someone was about to break through it to take her. She was so joyful in Paris, and that was what I wanted for her every day. “Thank you.” It didn’t matter why he’d changed his mind. I got what I wanted, and I was grateful.
“I didn’t do it for you.” He finished chewing before he set down his fork and grabbed a drink. He tilted his head back and poured a good amount into his mouth before he set down the glass once again. “I did it for Melanie.”
“Then I guess you two made up.” Last time I saw them together, she’d slapped him across the face before she’d stormed into the house.
“I asked her to marry me.”
With a non-blinking stare, I looked at my brother, never expecting him to say something like that. Time had passed strangely for the last few months, but that was all it had been…a few months. A woman he hardly knew had stolen his affection, and he was so obsessively blinded by her beauty that he became irrational and impulsive. It wasn’t like him at all. Sometimes his greed made him do stupid things, but a woman had never made him do stupid things.