“Obsessed with you?” she offered when I couldn’t find the words to describe him. I nodded. “It can happen with something as simple as a glance,” she explained with a twist of her mouth. “Maybe he saw you staring at him when you were looking out your window and imagined you were just as emotionally invested as he was.”
“I’m just glad he’s gone now,” I told her before picking up a pair of Max’s jeans and folding them.
“Me too, sweet girl.”
The two of us worked together and attacked one room at a time, starting with the living room. Some of the pictures that had Max in them had been ripped in half, but Raven promised me it wouldn’t be any trouble replacing them. All she had to do was print most of them off her computer at home.
Everything in the kitchen had to be trashed. Raven told me that once we got the place cleaned up, the two of us would go shopping for new everything—dishes, fridge, and mattress, especially.
By the time we were finished with the kitchen, Max and his dad came upstairs to let us know they were going to the hardware store for a few parts. He told me his cousin hadn’t arrived yet but should be by with a new window for the shop before he returned.
Giving me a kiss, he made sure I didn’t need anything before following his dad out the door.
Between moving around heavy furniture and lifting all the trash bags we kept filling, my body was beginning to feel the effects, causing me to move slower as we started the cleanup of the bedroom. Raven was cleaning up the pillow and mattress stuffing with a shop-vac, and I was closer to the door, picking up the clothes and folding them as I piled them up next to me on the floor.
When a hand caught my ponytail, jerking my head back, I cried out so hard, I felt a sting in my throat. Startled by the sudden attack, I didn’t have time to react when I was forced to my feet and had something cold and hard pressed to my temple.
Raven
The dull ache in my back from having to clean up the mess caused by Garcia and his men was enough to make me fantasize about being the one to take the bastards out. My son popping them a few times with a bullet wasn’t nearly enough punishment in my eyes.
With the destruction they had caused, the fear they had put my newest daughter through, and the danger they had put other members of my family in, I wanted to make it long and painful. Poor Delaney was taking it all in stride, thankfully. Max hiding the darker side of our lives from her had been wrong on so many levels, but after she’d passed my first test—making sure it was love she was feeling and not something more nefarious—I hadn’t been worried that she would run screaming and crying in the other direction when Max’s true self was unveiled to her.
A noise caught my attention, and I turned to check on Delaney out of instinct. When my gaze landed on her standing there, a woman I knew from pictures to be her bitch Aunt June, who was supposed to have taken care of her the past eight years, pressing a gun to my newest daughter’s head, I had to stiffen my muscles so I didn’t immediately react.
Back when I’d gone with Kelli to look for Delaney, we’d learned a lot about Tony Garcia, but I had been more curious about the man’s wife. She’d been given sole responsibility for her brother’s daughter upon his death, and yet as many times as she’d been in gossip rags and other shit, never once was there a mention of her niece.
But those gossip rags and speaking to people who supposedly knew “the real June Garcia” had left me with the impression that June was possibly more dangerous than her vile husband.
After the fiasco of the night before, Bash had some of the MC brothers watching the house. A good thing, or they would have missed the men who had come with Garcia and Favre—the fucking French arms dealer himself, from what Lexa had told me when she and Tavia had picked up the kids that morning—and had been in hiding nearby. Ready to shoot the place up if and when bullets started flying.
Bash and the boys had taken them all out before they could cause trouble and hurt someone.
But they hadn’t mentioned June. And I hadn’t given the cunt much thought either.
I fucking should have, though.
“Tell me where Tony is!” June yelled, her hold on Delaney tightening.
I didn’t answer, knowing if I so much as opened my mouth with how pissed I was at this bitch already, I would say something that would put Delaney in even more danger.
My silence only made June angrier, though, and she started spewing her hate-filled bullshit. The way she called Delaney names, making fun of her, making it seem like she was stupid and worthless, made my blood boil. But I still remained quiet. My body locked as I told Delaney with my eyes to stay strong, not to be scared. I would figure out some way to get rid of this monster from her past and keep her safe.
Bash and Max had been gone a while. One of them would come upstairs when they returned. Or Reid would when he arrived…
Just as the thought of them filtered through my head, movement behind June caught my attention.
Kelli.
She hadn’t known about what went down the night before. After the wedding reception, Colt had said he was taking her home, and from the look in my brother’s eyes, I didn’t want to know what kind of kink they were going to get into. Bash had known about their plans too and hadn’t bothered them when he got the call about trouble. But I’d called my sister-in-law that morning to let her know what had happened, not wanting her to hear it from a third party.
I’d invited her over to help clean up the apartment, knowing she would appreciate the opportunity to spend time with her newfound family member. Noting the knives she must have picked up in the kitchen, I was eternally grateful for the forethought of calling her.
Delaney
Across the room, Raven stood motionless, her gaze locked with mine. I swallowed my fear, taking courage in the way she was looking at me, as if willing me not to freak out. I had no idea who held me, but I could feel from how they were pressed to my back that the person wasn’t large. I inhaled slowly, both trying to calm my racing heartbeat and to take in my captor’s scent.
When it hit my senses, I felt tears sting my eyes.
I would know that perfume anywhere. It was Aunt June’s expensive and overwhelming fragrance. The few times I’d been in the same room with her over the years, I was left with a headache because of how overpowering that aroma was to me.
From the vibrations against my back, I could tell she was screaming, but still, Raven didn’t react. She stood there, not even blinking at my aunt, her focus only on me and trying to reassure me that it was all going to be okay with just her eyes.
The inability to hear had never been more frustrating than in that moment. I had no idea what my aunt was saying. With my back to her and the gun to my head, I was powerless to know what was happening behind me and was completely unaware of what might happen next. But I forced myself to keep my eyes on Raven, to take my cues from her just in case.
A flicker of her lashes. It was barely a movement at all and one I was still questioning, but that was the only warning I had before I was suddenly propelled forward.
Breathing hard, I turned to find Kelli standing over Aunt June, who was facedown on the floor with a butcher knife sticking out of her back. Another knife was still in Kelli’s hands as she glared down at the woman who was supposed to take care of me for the past eight years.