It would’ve all been fine, if he had stayed away. If he let me offer him this sacrifice for him to find his peace.
Jonathan’s laugh startles me and the heaviness in my head passes enough for me to lift it.
I let myself become lost in the man before me. Standing only a few feet in front of me, I could reach him in six, maybe seven steps. Big and formidable and affectionately deranged.
He looks ready to kill. Only, we’re at the disadvantage.
“I’m so fucking glad you could join us, Shay. You’re just in time,” Jonathan laughs maniacally, the sound shooting goosebumps over my cut and bruised skin.
Rocco doesn’t speak, his chest heaving in a fury that makes his eyes look black.
“You touched what was mine, asshole,” the man holding me as a shield bites out, the disgust in his words palatable.
“How you holdin’ up, Cami?” He speaks to me as though Jonathan doesn’t exist. He’s a nobody. He’s insignificant.
I’d believe it a little more if there wasn’t a knife pressed against my abdomen.
“You look real,” I whisper, liking that he keeps moving closer. Hoping with everything that he’s not a figment of my imagination.
“I am real, beauty. Reinforcements, remember?”
My eyes attempt to close, but a hand in my hair pulls my head back, forcing my eyes open on an anguished whimper.
“Put the fucking gun down.”
“I ain’t carrying.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Jonathan bellows, specks of his spit flying past my face, stinging the open cuts.
The sharp bite of his knife catches my neck and I stand still, afraid to even breathe for fear it’ll cut me.
Rocco concedes, hands lifting in surrender before he pulls a gun from the waist of his pants, bending to place it on the ground.
“Kick it away.”
He does as he’s told.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I tell him.
“You shouldn’t have gone.”
“I love you,” I tell him, needing him to know, not sure if I’ll ever get another chance.
Jonathan’s tongue touches my neck, mocking my declaration.
Rocco surges forward, but the knife against my neck pushes harder, forcing his feet to stop.
Pulling the blade along the delicate skin, he rips at my skin, letting blood trickle down my neck.
I whimper in pain, the warmth of my blood making me shake.
“Control.” Rocco stares into me.
“Control,” I repeat.
Jonathan has no control. He’s lost to his need for revenge. He’s not fighting for anything. He’s fighting with the hate within him.
Too consumed with himself, Jonathan lifts the blade from my neck, licking my blood in warning.
“Elbow, beauty.”
As tired as my body is, I lift my arm, bending at the elbow to slam it backward as hard as I possibly can.
Grip loosened, I dive away from my captor, lunging toward the gun discarded at my mother’s feet.
He’s right on my heels, his heavy footfalls thrumming against the ground in warning. I flip my body, gun aimed straight at his heart.
A wicked smile on his face, Jonathan pauses, hands in the air in a mocking surrender. He doesn’t think I’m capable. He doesn’t think willing.
“Don’t come any closer,” I scream.
“You wouldn’t have the fucking balls,” he.” He spits on me.
I resist the urge to wipe the taint of his saliva off my face. Gun still aimed, my arm shakes with the extension.
“Do it.” He steps closer. “I fucking dare you, bitch.”
Thick, heavy sobs fall from my mouth. I can’t make them stop.
“I HATE YOU!” I shriek. “I HATE YOU!”
Everything he’d put me through. The pain he’d caused me. The sleepless nights and the need he’d fed for me to cut myself. The liberty he took on everything in my life. All of it. Every last thing comes crashing down on me like a tsunami I can’t escape.
I’m gasping for air.
I can’t see, the tears falling from my face thick like the blood he’d made me spill over and over again.
I can’t move, save for my constant shaking. I was paralyzed again because of him.
I don’t hear Rocco’s approach, hell I don’t even feel him until his arms are wrapped tightly around me.
“Give me the gun, beauty.”
“No,” I sob. “He needs to die. I w-want hi-imm t-t-to d-die.”
Only, I can’t bring myself to do it. He was right. I’m not capable. I hate him, yet the thought of killing him, of taking his life is too much for me to comprehend.
“Ain’t worth the guilt of your conscience, Cami.”
I shift away as he moves his arm along mine. The indecision coursing through me like a bass drum.
Kill him, it commands.
Don’t, it pleads.
“Trust me. Don’t let him fuck with you anymore. You’re stronger than he is. Look at him, Cami. He’s at your fuckin’ mercy. Yours.” His hand rested atop of mine on the gun, takes the opportunity, removing it from my grip and I fall into him.
Hands balled against his strong chest, my tears soak through his shirt almost immediately. I can’t hear anything with the exception of the broken wails coming from me.
“The two of you deserve one another,” Jonathan—still standing only a few feet from us—spits. “Fucking pathetic. Just know, Shay, you have my slopp—”
The three bullets penetrate his chest in quick succession.
Bang.
Bang.
Fucking BANG.
Cries catching in my throat in shock, I watch him fall to the ground. The thud as he hits the concrete is not at all different to the sound my mother made.
“Never said he wasn’t gonna die,” Rocco murmurs. “Just didn’t want you carryin’ that burden with you for eternity. “
I look up at him through glassy eyes. “What about you?”
“Baby, taking that piece of shit’s life ain’t a stain on my conscience, it’s a gold fuckin’ star.”
Hands stretching up to his face, I need to feel him. “You came for me.”
“Never a doubt, Cami. I told you, I fucking bleed for you.”
“I bleed for you, too.”
His eyes scan my face. “I wish that wasn’t so fuckin’ literal. Look at you.”
His fingers gently trace every cut and bruise across my face.
Not being able to take it anymore, I pull him downward, needing his lips on mine.
His kiss is hesitant. Dictated by fear and restraint.
“Kiss me,” I beg.
One hand threading through my hair, the other grabs hold of my ass, pulling me into him. Still, the kiss is tender. Too fucking tender.
Pulling back, I stare into his panic-stricken eyes.
“I just almost fucking died. Let me feel alive, Rocco. Kiss. Me.”
Something snaps deep within him and his lips slam onto mine.
If he tastes the blood dripping from the split in my lip, it only fires him up more. He can’t get enough of me. Lips wide enough to devour me, we become consumed by one another.
Our tongues clash. Our lips collide. And our hearts find a rhythm.
It’s done, it beats.
The end, it thumps.
With you, it pounds.
With. You.
Pulling apart reluctantly, we stare at one another for a long beat.
“I’m so fuckin’ mad that you put yourself in this position.”
“I’d do it a hundred times over, Rocco,” I whisper, hoping like hell he believes me. “I was not going to let my toxic mother or inhumane ex play with your kids’ lives like that. If my life was lost to save theirs, I would’ve died happy.”
“If you had…” He trails off, unable to say the words.
“Hey.” I grab his hand, placing it over my heart. “I didn’t and I’m not going to. I fought, Rocco.” Tears hit my eye
s unexpectedly. “I fucking fought and I won.”
“Yeah you did.” His eyes are as glassy as mine and without a breath between us, he kisses me again.
“How did you find me?” I ask when our kiss ends.
Scratching at his beard, something I’ve noticed he does when he’s uncomfortable, he shrugs. “I may have taken a page outta Dominic’s book and linked the find your phone app on your and the twins’ phones.”
I attempt to raise an eyebrow, but it hurts too much. “You’re basically stalking me.”
“Saved your life,” he mumbles. “You had no issue with your dad doin’ it, so, uh…”
“Invasion of privacy, Rocco,” I stonewall.
“Are you mad?” he gripes.
I only need a second to think about it. “Well, no, not exactly.”
“Then let’s stop fuckin’ talkin’ about it. I love you. I need you. I wanted to make sure if anything like this ever went fuckin’ down and the dickhead that took you was as dumb as this cunt and didn’t check you, I’d be able to find you.”
Reaching up on my tiptoes—holding my ribs because fucking ouch—I push my lips against his. “Let’s go home.”
I don’t look back as we leave the warehouse, my heart wrapped up in the man beside me.
My dad was right. If you’re looking back at your past, you’re going to stumble into your future. I wasn’t going to do that. I finally felt at peace. I felt free and I was going to embrace that like the love of the man holding me up.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Rocco
Dominic’s guys are on their way to do clean-up. I didn’t give him too much information. Enough for him to know that Sarah and Jonathan were dead and that Camryn and I were alive.
He started yelling at me over the phone, sprouting some shit about me goin’ off half-cocked, but I hung up. I had my girl back and I was gonna enjoy that fact. I also needed to get back to my kids. Which meant I needed to call Archer and ask him to bring them right the fuck back home. A call he was more than happy to receive.
Camryn sits quietly in the passenger seat of my car, dozing in and out. She assured me she didn’t have a concussion and that I needed to calm my farm. A bit fucking hard to to do when your girl is bruised from head to fucking toe.
It makes me sick thinking about the things that she went through. The way Jonathan hurt her. But as angry as I am, as fucking raging as I am, I have no urge to fight. All that unfiltered rage has taken a backseat to my need to be with her. To make sure she’s okay.
Even in the warehouse. The way he stood over her when she was aiming to shoot. I could’ve killed him. I have no doubt I had enough anger within me to rip his head clean off his fucking body. I wanted to beat his face into the ground until there was nothing left but blood and gristle. I craved to tear him apart, limb from limb and set him on fire.
But more than any of that. I needed to get to her. I needed to make sure her finger didn’t press down on that trigger. Jonathan was wrong, she definitely had it in her. I have zero doubt, but she didn’t want to. The fear was painted openly in her eyes. He read it as her fear for him, but it wasn’t that. Not at all. It was the fear of taking another person’s life that gave her pause.
“Is Jesse okay?” She breaks me from my thoughts.
“The two of you look like twins.”
Her right eye—the one not swollen shut—closes in sadness.
“Hey.” I lean over, taking her hand in mine. “He’s fine.”
“Why was my mother so toxic?” she asks, a desperation for answers dripping along her words in prayer.
“Sarah was messed up, beauty. Same way Marcus was. Same way Kane ended up. Circumstance has a lot to do with it… I’m guessin’ so anyway. But I think they had somethin’ evil brewin’ within them to make them turn so fuckin’ nasty.”
Unhappy with my answer, she looks out the window on a defeated sigh.
“Kane’s evil was power.” I pull her attention back to me. “Some people can’t handle it. People like him. He craved it like nothin’ I’ve ever seen before. When he had it, somethin’ switched in him. His humanity just disappeared.”
She watches my profile as I drive, her hand still holding onto mine in a delicate urgency.
“Sarah, I don’t know. I’m guessin’ the drugs and alcohol fucked with her enough to strip away her conscience. Easy to forget all the shitty things you’ve done when you’re blacked out half the time. She took the shitty things that happened in her life and let ‘em fester inside of her, Cami. You had far worse shit happen to you and you built your life on helpin’ others. Like I said, somethin’ evil just pumpin’ through her veins.”
“And Marcus?” she tests quietly.
“Should’ve been swallowed from the get-go. Even that would’a been nasty enough for his mother. No rhyme or reason with that cunt, beauty, he was plain fuckin’ evil. Born into an earthside purgatory that never should’ve existed.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
Lifting her hand to kiss her knuckles, I smile against her skin. “‘Bout time I repaid the favor, don’t you think?”
* * *
Blake jumps on me the moment I open the door of my loft. Arms and legs wrapping around me like an octopus. She says nothing, not that she needs to. Her actions scream louder than any words could.
Jesse, a little more graceful, hugs into my side. But he refuses to lift his head. I feel the wetness of his tears dampen the cotton of my shirt and I swallow down my need to do the same by squeezing him into me tighter.
“Could fuckin’ kill you.” Parker approaches. “I haven’t even begun to deconstruct everythin’ that just went on, but when your two kids aren’t attached to you, you better believe I’m gonna beat your ass.”
I smile at him, lifting my hand for him to grab hold. “Like to see you try, doll face.”
Cami, standing by my side, has been swamped by her sister and dad. Too many arms trying to hug her at the same time.
“Guys,” she grits out. “Few bruised ribs here, chill.”
Tears are streaming down Codi’s face. “Ryn, oh my God. You’re so hurt.”
“Physically I’m a bit of a mess,” she agrees. “But I feel great, Codi. I promise.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryn.” Blake adopts her nickname with an ease that makes my heart thunder in my chest.
“You have nothing to apologize for, sweet girl. I promise. Like I told Codi, I feel great.”
Dominic, eyeing me like he’s ready to pull a pistol on me any second, steps closer and I hold a hand up.
“You once told me that when retaliation is taken out in temper and impatience; it’s messy and tends to lead to incrimination.”
He stares at me blankly.
“So you’re welcome.”
Glancing to Camryn and then back to me, he swallows heavily enough that we can all hear it. “Thank you.” His words are barely audible beyond the lump sitting in his throat.
“Do you need a hospital, Cami?” This comes from my son, standing cautiously against my side, watching her in regret. He feels responsible for the wounds decorating her face.
“Nah, kiddo.” She attempts to smile. “Nothing some steri-strips, a bandage, and a large glass of vodka can’t fix.”
“And frozen peas,” he adds on the start of a smile, relief softening the stern look in his face.
She laughs, the movement enough to cause her pain, not that she lets on.
“Not a scratch on you.” Archer only makes his approach after our families have swarmed us. “I feel like I need to mess your pretty face up for old times’ sake.”
“Only if your wife is happy to have you go home bruised and broken.”
“Absolutely fucking not.” A smoking hot brunette moves to stand beside my friend, big brown eyes dancing in curiosity. “Annabelle Dean,” she introduces herself. “And I’ll have to kill you if you ruin his pretty face, I’m more than a little fond of it.”
I lift my chin in greeting, watching th
e change in Archer’s face the moment he looks at hers.
Whipped.
For. Fucking. Sure.
“Don’t fuckin’ look at me like that,” he gripes. “You’re so far down the same rabbit hole, you can’t even see the fuckin’ light.”
“Whatever that means,” Annabelle muses, looking at Camryn with a look that bleeds exasperation. “It was nice to meet you guys, even under the shitty circumstances.” Grief flashes through her eyes, one of camaraderie and shared feelings. A story of heartache untold. “We should be getting back to Sachi.”
“Are you sure?” Jesse steps forward, a pink touch growing at his cheekbones.
Archer hides his smirk under a rough rub of his jaw.
“Kid, you steal her away and I’ll have to kick your dad’s ass..”
Jesse looks embarrassed, but it gives way to elation when Annabelle steps forward to hug him. “Get your dad and Camryn to come visit. Jake’ll teach you guitar like he promised.”
“Don’t forget that Luca offered to take me for a ride on his Harley.”
I cast a look over Archer in an appreciation I hope he can read. My kids were in meltdown, digesting a level of guilt they’d easily drown in, all the while facing the fear of losing their dad and he gave them the one thing that could distract them.
Family.
He gave them his family, letting them know no matter what happened, they had a group of people that would turn up for them.
“Forever in your debt,” I murmur.
“Ain’t no such thing. Just don’t be so much of a stranger. Our family would love to meet you.” He looks around the room. “All of you.”
* * *
“You sure you don’t need a hospital?”
She stands from her position on my bed. “Nurse.” She points at her chest. “Civilian.” She points at mine. “I’m fine. I promise. I just want a shower to clean the stench of him off my skin.”
She takes two steps before I grab her arm, forcing her to look in my eyes.
“I’m not gonna cut, baby,” she assures me, reading me right. “He’s gone and that is in part to me. I don’t need to be afraid of him anymore. You built me up, Rocco. I don’t need pain to survive the day, I have something greater. I have you. I have love. For me. For you.”
Reining Devotion: A Chaotic Rein novel Page 26
