Cade regarded the fire. “No, kid. You did not get that shit from her. Or even Dad.” His eyes met mine. “You got that shit from you. You were born with somethin’ that no other human being has business having inside them before bein’ able to speak. Born with chaos. Swear to God, I saw it the moment I looked into your eyes, a day old. Fuck, even as a kid, I looked at you and knew it.”
I blinked away my blurry vision at the beautiful and heartfelt words coming from my brother.
“You’re an exceptionally good man, Cade Fletcher,” I whispered.
“Exceptional runs in the blood, just like trouble. Only thing we inherited from that bitch.”
I screwed up my nose, trying to match the bitterness and hate in Cade’s tone with the memories of my mother.
I couldn’t.
In my fuzzy memories, she was the one smiling, dancing, laughing. Turning the music up so loud my teeth chattered. Letting me wear leopard-print cowboy boots with my ballet uniform. As I grew older and she visited less, those memories were all I had to cling to.
Today was my first real glimpse of the truth.
The ugly one.
“Was she really that bad?” I asked.
Cade’s face softened. “Roe, no. She loved you. In her way. She just didn’t know how to love herself, so she couldn’t do it right. She did you a favor by leaving. I don’t like to think how fucked up you’d be if she’d stayed.”
I grinned. “You mean even more fucked up?” I faked a shiver. “Me neither.”
There was a long silence—well, immediate silence. The low hum of heavy metal and grumbled conversation carried from the wake that had now turned into a party.
“You okay, Roe?” Cade asked softly.
“No,” I admitted. “Not at all.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
I looked over the shadows, past Death who was staring right at me, grinning that toothless grin, to my man. To Luke, holding his beer, chatting easily with the men who, up until a year or so before, he would’ve loved to have put in a prison. Now he partied with them.
He was doing that, and would be doing that forever.
For me.
And then Death wasn’t in front of me anymore. He was still there, but behind Luke. Behind Luke’s shield.
“But we will be okay,” I whispered.
Cade’s gaze was glued on Gwen. “Yeah,” he agreed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“She’s turning into a little human being,” I whispered, playing with Belle’s long curls.
Cade had forbidden Gwen to cut them, so they were tumbling all the way down to her little booty.
“They do that,” Gwen whispered back, smiling at her daughter.
She was beautiful, even as a toddler. Her green eyes, when they were open, were always sparkling, radiant against her tanned skin and dark hair. She had all of Gwen’s beauty and softness with Cade’s edge. All tumbled into a little girl.
“Cade’s going to shoot so many teenage boys when she grows up,” I said, giving her curls one last stroke before I stepped out of her bedroom.
Gwen followed me, shutting the door quietly. “Oh, I don’t know, I think she’s going to have him wrapped around her little finger when she’s a teenager, considering she does already,” she said, grinning.
I grinned back, happy that Cade had this to come home to, life and love and happiness to shake off that feeling of death. He had his family, the girls who he adored and his son who already worshipped him.
“You doing okay?” Gwen asked as she walked us to the living room littered in family photos. “You and Luke finally getting together, you getting shot, and your mom turning up in that way….” She handed me a much-needed glass of wine. “It’s a lot for one person, even you, babe.”
“Yeah,” I said, sipping my wine. I thought for a second. “No, I guess I’m not, actually.”
She sipped her own. “It’s okay to not be,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Is it bad to say I’m happy for you?” she asked. “Despite being hunted by a human trafficking ring and all that jazz.” She waved her hand. “But that’s just another Tuesday for you,” she teased. “But you and Luke, you’re finally what you were both meant to be. You’ve got it.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”
“Kind of feels like the ugliness of the world can’t really get there, right into you, not when you’ve got him, right?”
I smiled. “I don’t even want to punch you for saying something that corny because it’s true.”
She sipped her wine. “I know, and I don’t even care about what an idiot I sound like. I’m a happy idiot with two beautiful children—who did not ruin my vagina, thank Lagerfeld—a husband who’s hotter than Hades, and girlfriends Carrie Bradshaw would kill for.”
And it was in that moment that Belle padded in, a toy bunny dangling from her chubby fingers, eyes thick with sleep. I grinned at my niece, knowing she would have some of her aunt’s rebellion about bedtime, and about other things. The grin froze on my lips when I saw the man following her, pointing a gun to the back of her tiny head.
Gwen shot up, wineglass flying from her hand and shattering to the floor. She was about to run to her daughter when the man stopped, grabbing Isabella’s arm so she dropped her bunny, but not tight enough to alarm her.
“Don’t move,” he commanded, voice flat. “Unless you want this to be your daughter’s last day on earth.”
I was standing by that point too, and both Gwen and I froze in absolute horror. Helplessness washed over me like acid.
Belle was still blinking away sleep, still not aware of the situation, thank God.
“My husband is going to kill you. Slowly. I’ll make sure he lets me play with you first.” Her voice was thick with fury and promise.
I was struck frozen.
“He won’t, I don’t think,” the man said. “Not once we’re done, at least.”
“What do you want, asshole?” I hissed, fury and terror pulsating through me. “Whatever it is, you can have it. Let her go.” Despite everything I’d been through with the club, laws we’d bent and broken, we’d never experienced this. We never hurt children.
He would die. If it was the last thing I did.
The empty gaze went to me. “So nice of you to ask, Rosie,” he said with a familiarity that made my skin crawl. “It’s you we want.”
I stepped forward immediately, before he even finished speaking.
“Done,” I said.
“Rosie, no,” Gwen choked, torn between her need to get her daughter out of harm’s way and her worry for me.
I ignored her. “Take the barrel of your gun off the four-year-old girl, motherfucker,” I hissed.
For the longest and most horrible moment, I thought he wouldn’t. I thought the finger resting on the trigger was going to squeeze and I’d watch the most sickening thing that could be done, a real-life nightmare. Something we’d never come back from.
Then the gun moved and I exhaled as it rested on me. I snatched my beautiful little girl, sniffing her hair one last time before I handed her to Gwen, tears in her eyes.