No Love Left Behind (Boston Billionaire's Club Book 1)

by Jenni M. Rose

  Sadie cried, terrified words that she had no control over, as she hurriedly approached, hoping she could do something, anything to save Cocoa’s life. She slid into the mud, submerging her lower body, wrapping Cocoa in her arms and trying to rouse her.

  Her head was dead weight, her eyes closed. She wasn’t breathing.

  “No,” Sadie whispered, pulling her closer. “No, Cocoa. Please. Please. Come back. Please.”

  Cocoa didn’t come back. She slid along Sadie’s body as she pulled her, lifeless and heavy. Blood spilled out of her every time she was jolted, so Sadie stayed eerily still, keeping her close.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie cried, pressing her face into the dog’s neck. “I’m so sorry.”

  She sat there until the sun set completely and the dark surrounded them. For a while, Aggie laid at their side, watchful and alert, but she eventually wandered off, and Sadie was too lost to comprehend why.

  She replayed Cocoa’s day in her mind, their morning together and what would be the dog’s last swim in the pool. She remembered getting Cocoa as a puppy, starving and filthy, left for dead in an abandoned junkyard. At the time, Sadie had felt abandoned herself. Out of prison, the only life she’d ever known left far behind, it had been hard to make a fresh start. Cocoa had helped, loving her on sight, thankful for the love from the very start.

  She’d never been fearful, never worried that Sadie wasn’t going to take care of her or feed her. She’d just known from the get go. She’d loved everyone and everything.

  And Sadie had failed her monumentally.

  She’d let her out of her sight. She’d been shortsighted in assuming the threat Connor posed was only serious to her. She should have kept all the dogs closer.

  She looked down at Cocoa, whose face looked like she was sleeping peacefully, but her body told another story. Torn apart, ripped and cut, bleeding, she’d died painfully and that brought a fresh onslaught of tears. Sadie pressed her face against Cocoa’s neck, sobbing wildly.

  “Sadie!”

  How could she have let someone do this to her baby? How could she have let someone so precious to her go unprotected?

  “Sadie!”

  Cool fingers touched her face, checked her limbs, spoke soft words. And all Sadie could see was Cocoa, running into the yard covered with mud, crashing into Lincoln’s legs. Cocoa, sleeping at her feet, tangled with Gordon, the two canines more in love than any two humans Sadie had ever seen in real life.

  “Sadie.”

  Her eyes flipped up and met Brenda’s. Her neighbor looked on, horror washed over her features as she took in the scene.

  “What in the hell happened out here?”

  Sadie opened her mouth and tried to speak, but the words refused to come. They just lodged in her throat, nothing but scratchy keening coming from her throat. Her fingers dug into Cocoa’s soft coat, memorizing the feel of it, thick and wet. A fresh wave of nausea rolled over her when she thought about never having to vacuum up Cocoa’s hair from her hardwood floors again. She looked down at Cocoa’s face, memorizing the dark black of her nose, the way her brow bones winged up, making her look a little surprised. The number of whiskers that sprung from each side of her muzzle.

  Brenda kept talking, but Sadie heard no words. There was nothing to be said.

  She’d done this. From the very beginning of her life, she’d put this in motion. Being the person she’d been, selfish and petty, she’d carved her own path and everyone around her was on a collision course with disaster.

  “You should go,” she murmured, her eyes locked on Cocoa as she spoke to Brenda, who was talking in the background. “You should get away from me.”

  Aggie nosed into Sadie’s side, pressing herself tightly against her owner. A high-pitched whine came from the dog’s throat.

  “I know,” Sadie whispered, a sob building her chest as she leaned into Aggie. “I know, Ag.”

  Aggie whined again in response, a guttural, sad sound that cut right through Sadie and dislodged the cry stuck in her chest. It came out, animalistic and raw, painful as it tore its way out and echoed into the void that surrounded her.

  A void without Cocoa in it.

  Lincoln wasn’t always necessarily thankful for his money or the fact that he was rich, but there were times when it came in handy.

  He’d been at the Charles’s gala, avoiding getting trapped in a conversation with his mother and saying something to Mark he’d regret, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d let it go to voicemail, but it buzzed again and then again. By the fourth time, he picked up and his heart had fallen to his feet.

  He’d grabbed Brady and they’d quickly gotten approval to use Mark Charles’s helicopter that sat atop their building. Driving would have taken an hour. Flying took less than twenty minutes.

  Sadie’s neighbor Brenda had been on the phone, frantic and panicked. Lincoln almost couldn’t believe the words she’d spoken, that Cocoa was dead, murdered. There was a full gamut of emotions thrumming through him as they descended into Sadie’s back field.

  There was no way to pinpoint what was white-hot anger or rage and what was heart-rending sadness. They melded together, an amalgam of chaos and he knew if he was feeling so lost, Sadie must have been paralyzingly devastated.

  There were police lights in her driveway and people cleared the way as the chopper landed in the darkened field. Brenda raced out of the woods, waving him and Brady toward the forest, flashlight in her hand.

  “She’s still out there. I told them you’d be able to talk her into moving,” she said the second he was within earshot, the helicopter’s rotors dying down. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Someone came out here and did this on purpose.”

  He knew. He knew so fucking bad he could kick himself for letting her pull away, no matter how pissed she was. The situation had become a matter of life or death, and the repercussions of that were undeniably life-altering.

  He and Brady followed Brenda through the brush and into the woods. There were cops there too, but not nearly enough for his liking. If it were up to him, the place would be crawling with badges. He didn’t care what letters the badges had on them: FBI, police, CIA. As long as there were people there protecting Sadie and getting Connor Page behind bars. Only then would he let this go.

  They trudged through thick brush, probably looking ridiculous in their tuxedos, not that Lincoln cared. The undergrowth tried to trip him, snagging his pants, but he didn’t slow. Not until he got to the top of that hill and looked down, the scene lit up with big work lights.

  Sadie looked tiny, surrounded by uniformed cops that looked on with concern, Cocoa laying lifeless in her lap. She was murmuring into the dog’s fur, her fingers hanging on as if that alone would stop Cocoa from leaving, Aggie close to her side.

  It was far too late for that, the area splashed with blood, a gruesome scene.

  The slope down to where Sadie sat, half in a stream, was steep, enough that he slid down half of it in his rush to get to her.

  He assumed Brady was behind him, but he never checked. Not even once. His sole focus was on getting to Sadie.

  “Sir!” A cop tried to stop him, but he sidestepped him, without care. Without thought.

  Let them arrest him. Let them try.

  He reached her in a few strides, Aggie lifting her head and looking at him with solemn eyes. He squatted in front of them and put a gentle hand on her soft fur.

  “Hey Ag,” he whispered before turning to Sadie.

  Her face was pressed into Cocoa’s neck.

  “Sadie?” Lincoln murmured, his hand whispering over hers.

  “I did this,” she whispered, her eyes lifting to his. There was a whirlwind of anguish there, something that lived miles beyond vulnerable or hurt or sad. It was light years, galactic years past simple grief.

  Sadie was annihilated.

  “No, honey. You didn’t,” he told her, cupping her cheek.

  “I didn’t…I…” her words cut off and she choked, her wo
rds lodging somewhere in her throat.

  When she buried her face in Cocoa again, Lincoln finally looked at the dog. A strange thing to think, but he thought she looked peaceful. Like she was sleeping. It gave him hope that she hadn’t suffered much and that she went knowing how much she was loved.

  He wished it was like the movies, where the rain came down heavy, soaking them all and masking his tears. But life wasn’t like that. It was messy sometimes and ugly, the hard stuff all the more bitter when it came in front of a crowd. Lincoln didn’t try to temper his reaction, instead sitting himself in the mud next to Sadie and holding her as much as he could, while she held Cocoa and Aggie guarded them both.

  Brady took his spot, crouching in front of them, looking a little misty-eyed himself. “What can I do?”

  Sadie just shook her head. She had no words.

  “Can you figure out what they want from us?” Lincoln asked him, his voice barely more than a whisper, not wanting to disturb what little peace Sadie had left with Cocoa. “What’s our next step?”

  Brady nodded, his eyes gentling as he looked at his sister. “I’m so sorry, Sade.”

  “I did this,” she choked.

  Lincoln did nothing more than hold her and cry for the next however many minutes. However long it took Brady to get someone to tell him that they needed to investigate the scene. They needed to examine Cocoa and then take her away.

  “Take her where?” Lincoln asked, knowing that Sadie would need to know that.

  “They can take her to Sadie’s vet’s office for examining.” Brady was eyeing his sister with great concern. “Can you tell me who your vet is?”

  She made no move to answer him, her fingers locked tight on Cocoa’s fur.

  “Mercedes?” Brady said a little louder.

  “I can find out,” Lincoln told him. “Let me help her into the house and I’ll find the vet’s name.”

  Lincoln regretfully began prying her fingers away from Cocoa. Sadie was cold and shaking, and Cocoa was stiff on her lap. The very realization sent a sharp pain through his chest.

  “Come on, honey. Let me take you inside.”

  “I did it,” she whispered, her eyes meeting his as he continued to pry her away. It was like she was begging him to understand her words, like if she kept repeating them he’d get it.

  But she didn’t do anything wrong and Lincoln refused to perpetuate her misbelief.

  “You’ve got to let her go, Sadie,” he said instead. “They’re going to take her to the vet and take good care of her until we can get down there.”

  “But, I was supposed to take care of her,” she argued. “Look what I did, Lincoln. Look what I did to her.”

  She cut him with every word she spoke.

  “No you didn’t, baby,” he murmured, finally freeing her hands and pulling her out from underneath Cocoa’s weight.

  She didn’t struggle, didn’t fight him like he thought she would. Instead, she just let him lead her around as if she were a blood-soaked rag doll, her mind not even present. Her eyes were hollow and lost, her shoulders slumped over. He looked behind him to see a police officer gently pull a sheet over Cocoa’s lifeless form.

  They took the long way out of the woods, not scaling the steep incline and instead going around it. Brady took up a post at Sadie’s side, effectively sandwiching her between them. When they cleared the brush, Lincoln scooped her up in his arms, though he wouldn’t be able to say if it was for her benefit or his.

  She didn’t fight him. Despite their argument earlier in the week and how mad she was, she let him care for her.

  If Brady was surprised at Lincoln’s action, he didn’t show it. He just played protective older brother, watching their surroundings until they finally reached the backyard, where Lincoln strode directly toward the house.

  “Aggie,” he called when he got to the door, making sure she went inside. “Let Lola out of the pen and lead her into the house,” he told Brady, not willing to let another of Sadie’s precious companions get caught in Connor’s crossfire.

  “Lead her?” Brady said warily.

  “Just let her go,” Lincoln told him. “She’ll come. She’ll want to be with Sadie.”

  He waited, Sadie still in his arms, her eyes closed. She wasn’t sleeping; her forehead was creased with worry and she made the occasional sniffle. He let her have her quiet.

  Brady let Lola out of her pen and the big dog loped up to the house until she stood directly in front of them. She nudged Sadie with her nose until her master gave her a gentle caress on her head.

  He met Brady’s eyes, the seriousness of the situation thick in the stifling summer air around them. Sadie was in danger.

  And neither of them planned on letting anything happen to her.

  15

  When Lincoln woke the next morning with Sadie in his arms, there was still a cloud of sadness in the room with them. It wasn’t anything close to the times where he’d gradually eased into wakefulness to find her smiling at him from across the pillow, her laughing eyes entertained by his lack of enthusiasm in the mornings. Instead, he woke with a start, Sadie still sleeping, dark circles marring her eyes.

  He wouldn’t wake her, the previous night long and restless. Soundless as he could manage, he detangled himself from her and dressed, easing himself out of the room.

  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, his hand still on the rail and just stared, like a kid caught red-handed.

  Brady was there in the living room, but so were Mark and Lori Charles, sitting on Sadie’s couch like royalty. Aggie and Lola looked on from the kitchen, banished there by the baby gate at the door.

  “Lincoln,” Mark said with a solemn nod.

  He’d known Mark since he was just a little kid and they’d always been solid. That may have been before Mark caught him sneaking out of Sadie’s room.

  “Mark,” he returned. “Lori.”

  “Hi Linc,” she said with a sad quirk of her lips. “How is she?”

  “Sleeping for now.” He descended the rest of the stairs but didn’t sit. “I need to take care of the dogs and call Audrey. Anyone want coffee?”

  He removed the gate; because the dogs were in their own house, they didn’t need to be quarantined. They followed him into the kitchen where he let Sadie’s girls outside, making sure to put them in their pens, where they wouldn’t wander off and he could watch them from the window. The space where Cocoa belonged was jarringly empty.

  When he went back into the house, Lori had started coffee, and Mark and Brady sat at the little kitchen table.

  “You sure?” Brady was on the phone, holding up a finger. “I’m sure he appreciates it. You too.” He looked at Lincoln. “Audrey can keep Gordon for however long you need her to. She also said if you want her to bring him out here, she can do that too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Brady says you have a story to tell that will explain just what the hell is going on out here,” Mark said as Lori handed him a steaming cup.

  She handed one to Lincoln and went back to the counter for two more, delivering one to Brady and sitting with one of her own.

  “Not exactly my story,” Lincoln explained. “This is Sadie’s house, Sadie’s rules.”

  “And since when does Mercedes call the shots for you?” Mark asked, his voice hard and implacable, a distinct challenge lacing his words.

  “Mark,” Lori murmured warningly.

  Lincoln bristled. “She wants to be called Sadie. You should respect that.”

  “Oh, I should, should I?” Mark shot back. “Speaking of respect, how long have you been sleeping with my daughter?”

  Annoyed, Lincoln stood and strode out the back door. He needed a second to think and he wanted to bring the dogs inside. He didn’t like them out on their own with no one watching. He’d feed them inside today. With any luck, the cops would get ahold of Connor and put him behind bars, and they could try to figure out a new routine. One without Cocoa, if that was at all possible.

&nbs
p; He brought Lola and Aggie in, getting them both breakfast which they completely ignored. Instead, they stood there watching him with expectant eyes. Like he had the power to make anything that was going on around them magically okay.

  Somehow.

  But he didn’t have that kind of power. There were some things that money just couldn’t buy. Everything was falling apart around them and Cocoa was gone. Forever. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to make that better. There were no words to gloss over that. No placations that would make it feel better for any of them. No amount of money he could produce.

  He crouched in front of them, giving Aggie a good rub and telling her what a good girl she was. When she moved to his vacated chair at the dining table and laid at its feet, Lola lumbered up to him and sat before him, regal as ever. She then leaned her upper body forward and rested her head on his shoulder.

  She was hugging him. In his mind, he chuckled but his body refused to let it come to fruition. He rubbed his hands down her back and let her console him before she too backed up and laid at his chair.

  “I think it’s time you start answering some questions here,” Mark ordered.

  Lincoln slowly rose to his feet and faced Sadie’s father, a man he’d known and respected his entire life. A man that he’d recently found had been part of the reason Sadie kept herself so isolated and had made her feel unwelcome in her own home.

  He turned to Mark and put on his best business facade, the one that he played hardball with, and he saw Brady perk up in his chair.

  “What exactly is it you’re doing out here, Mark?” Lincoln asked, his tone biting. “What did you come here for?”

  “Did you forget about the part where I let you use my helicopter last night?”

  “So, you came back to retrieve your helicopter?” Lincoln asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the kitchen island. “I can see it from where I’m standing. I’ll pay you whatever fee you want for borrowing it. If that’s all, you’re welcome to go.”