“Ah, so you want to make sure your business isn’t disrupted again,” I spat.
He nodded once. “We are in understanding.”
“Yeah, asshole. Congratu-fucking-lations.”
He shook his head, smiling. “Unpredictable, brave, or stupid? I’m not sure which.”
“Well you think on that real hard. Till your head explodes, even,” I invited.
“Brave, I think,” he surmised. “But brave or not, it’s not you I kill if I hear of you being unpredictable again. I’ll kill all of them.” He nodded to the photos.
“I get it, Hannibal Lecter,” I seethed.
He glanced at his hundred-thousand-dollar watch, bought with stolen innocence. “Ah, they should arrive soon.”
I didn’t answer.
“Your family is quite effective,” he continued. “I didn’t expect them to discover this location until later.” His eyes moved over me with the first show of real interest since this thing began. It made me sick to my stomach. “Pity,” he said. “But oh well. It has been a pleasure knowing you, Rosie. May we never meet again.”
The sound of gunshots and frenzied yells echoed in the distance.
I glanced toward the closed door where the two men guarding it, lifted their semiautomatics, preparing to use them on whatever the source of the noise was.
I looked back to the monster in front of me, feigning disinterest. “That’ll be my brother and my boyfriend here to pick me up. It’s the strangest thing, they don’t approve of me going on unscheduled playdates with human traffickers.” I shrugged in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “I hope you’re not too fond of your frontline men. I’d say most of them are already dead or at least maimed right now. But I’m sure you post them that way, least liked to most, for these very situations, no?”
His gaze didn’t move to the door, didn’t even flicker from where it was focused. On me. “You are a very strange woman,” he observed, tilting his head in a way I didn’t like. The way a cat regarded a mouse, deciding whether to play with it for a time or just not bother with the façade and eat it whole.
I didn’t let my unease show. “Fuck you,” I said with a smile.
The doors burst open, both Cade and Luke running point, side by side. Their eyes found me and their guns found the man in front of me. In any other situation, it would’ve been comical, among other things. My brother and his once archnemesis teaming up and pointing their guns at a common enemy instead of each other.
Brought together by me.
That was what I’d always wanted, wasn’t it? Granted, the situation was a lot more fucked up than I’d planned.
But if it wasn’t a major Fuck-Up, it wasn’t Rosie.
Bull, Lucky, Gage, Asher, Dwayne, Brock, and Steg came in after them. Bull took care of one guard with the butt of his gun in a practiced and effortless jab. Gage, grinning and somehow covered in blood that I both guessed and hoped wasn’t his own, plowed his fist through the face of the second guard. The crunching of bone traveled through the air.
I turned so my back was to Fernandez, a gesture of trust that I hoped wasn’t another Fuck-Up that would land me in the grave. I made sure I stood in front of him, which meant in front of the guns pointed at him.
Both my brother’s and Luke’s eyes bulged in panic and fury.
“Rosie, get the fuck out of the way and over here. Right now,” Cade barked.
I shook my head.
“Baby,” Luke said. The softness of his voice was louder than Cade’s furious yell.
It hit me every place it could. Every ounce of my being wanted to go to him. But that was selfishness. That would get some of my family killed, if I was lucky. All of them if I wasn’t.
I wouldn’t let one of them get hurt because of me.
Luke was right, I was their shield.
But I wouldn’t let him die being mine, either.
“You’ve come to save me, I guess?” I asked with a false lightness that took everything in me to conjure. “The men riding in to rescue the damsel. You know, I love fairy tales as much as the next girl, but you also know I leave them where they belong. In the book. The one I never do things by. I don’t need saving. I got this.”
I didn’t add that I was the one saving them. Both because I didn’t think alpha males much appreciated such things being said to them at any moment. In ones such as this, I guessed it was much worse. Also because I was only saving them because I was the one who’d put them in this situation in the first place. Kind of a double negative.
“Rosie, this isn’t the time. Get out of the fuckin’ way,” Cade clipped, losing patience. Not that he had much to lose anyway.
Luke was somewhat different. He regarded the situation with a lot more than the blind rage of my brother. I could see it, taste it, simmering around amongst the other, its particular brand more familiar to me than that of my own blood. Something else was working there, other than anger. He was putting it together.
You can take the cop out of the man….
“Fuck,” he breathed. Then he lowered his gun, as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
His eyes never left mine.
“Crawford. What in the fuck are you doing?” Cade all but roared.
“I’m not pointing a gun at the woman I love,” Luke said quietly. “And she said she’s got this.”
Cade gaped at Luke like he’d grown another head. “She’s fucking Rosie. She ain’t got shit but a boatload of trouble.”
Luke’s eye twitched. “I trust her. You should too.” The words were forced out of him, just like his stationary stance. I could tell, more than anything, that he wanted to stride over, yank me behind his back and shield me from this. From everything.
But he knew he couldn’t.
Seeing that on his face was worse than anything that could’ve been dished out in that room. So, like a coward, I stopped looking at his face and instead took the easy route, taking the wrath of my brother.
“Trust me, Cade, I know what I’m doing. For the club. For my family.”
He glared at me, and continued to do so when, with an exaggerated sigh, Gage, of all people, was the first to lower his gun. Then Lucky, of course with a wink. Then Bull, with no expression because he was Bull. Brock shook his head with a shadow of a smile at the corner of his lips. Dwayne and Asher did it expressionless, and Steg was regarding me with twinkling eyes.
All of them, apart from Gage and Dwayne, had experience raising and using their weapons when their own women were in this exact situation. Or something very close. I knew they didn’t lose a wink of sleep at night over those expelled bullets or lost lives. I knew they didn’t because they had it. Their fairy tale. Or their violent, bloody, and painful version. The one they took out of the books.
This man had the power to take that away from them. I had the power to make sure that didn’t happen. If I first swallowed my pride.
It went down easily when I thought of all of those happy ever afters that would stay intact. My beautiful nephew and niece who wouldn’t have a family torn apart.
“Cade,” I whispered, my voice little more than a plead.
He didn’t move for a second, suspended in time almost. I knew it went against everything in him to lower his weapon. He considered himself my shield too. It was his job to protect me, and he took it seriously.