“Zane?”
The way that Devon’s voice bounced off the interior of the apartment told Kami that they were heading for the front door. It was too simple. They were just walking out of here as though there was nobody to stop them or even with a reason to want to. That wasn’t right. It was too easy.
No sooner had the thought crossed Kami’s mind than she heard Robert’s snarky voice in the background. “You try to take her from this place and I’ll shoot you dead. You’re the intruder, rich boy. How much you think I can sue you for? Huh? You break in here and steal a woman and you think we’re not going to get a piece of that action?”
“Roberto, no!” Juana shouted at Roberto, and Kami struggled to open her eyes enough to tell her sister to stay out of the way.
Kami could not just lie here in Devon’s arms. She had to be a participant. Her body ached, but she could do this. Twisting with a groan, Kami forced Devon to lower her legs. He gently set her on the floor but did not let go. That was good. Kami wasn’t sure she could stay upright on her own.
The scene was something out of a bad movie. Her younger brothers and sisters cowered in a corner. Roberto was standing in front of the apartment doorway as though he had just come up from downstairs. Perhaps he had. Perhaps Papa had called Roberto for backup. But Roberto had a gun. He was brandishing it gangster style with a sideways tilt that would never encourage accuracy even if it looked “cool.”
“Roberto, stop,” Kami said firmly. She hoped she sounded calm too. She had to be both if this was going to end without someone getting really badly hurt. “You’re making a big mistake. There’s no money in this for you. If you honestly believe that you can get a lawyer and sue someone like the King brothers, then you missed the moment when that attorney went running out of Papa’s apartment because he didn’t want to mess with the Kings.”
“What?”
“He did!” Juana said eagerly. “He just ran out of here like his pants were on fire!”
Mama was crying. Kami hated that her mother had to go through this. What was wrong with her Papa? “Papa, why?” Kami asked quietly. “Why are you doing this? You’re hurting Mama. I know that you worry about Tia Esmeralda and your brother. But you can’t keep supporting them if they don’t want to support themselves. You can’t keep taking care of people who don’t want to lift a finger. You’re tired, Papa. We can all see it. We’re tired too. Mama is tired. Your son left.” They did not talk about Kami’s older brother. He had left to make his own life. Kami had a bad feeling that the relationship between her older brother and their father was far more antagonistic than he would admit.
“You disobeyed me,” Papa said hoarsely. “You have to be punished.”
Devon was breathing heavily. Zane was itching for a fight too. Kami could feel the tension in the room at a breaking point. The two King brothers weren’t just stronger than her father and Roberto. They were more. A lot more. Kami had to diffuse this situation before it blew up. “Papa, you punished me. I can barely stand. I’m hurting. You never used to hurt us like this before. I remember bouncing on your knee. Do you remember? Do you remember when I would sit there and you would pretend to play horsie with me? Do you remember helping me learn to ride a bike? Do you remember sitting by the window and reading with us? Do you remember when it was good? Papa, please remember.”
There was a long pause. For just a moment she saw her father’s expression crack. It was as if he wanted so badly to cave. He wanted things to go back the way that they were, but maybe he didn’t know how to get them back to that point.”
“I love your daughter,” Devon said quietly. “I love her so much. She is my wife. She is my love. She is everything I’ve wanted. You raised her. I appreciate that. But if you think I’m going to allow anyone to lay one more finger on her, you are sadly mistaken. What kind of man beats up on a woman?”
The harsh tone of Devon’s voice seemed to cut through the final bit of resistance in her father. Then Kami’s mother gently touched Papa’s arm. “Please, Orlando? Please? You are so tired. Kami is right. We are all tired. It isn’t fair. We cannot continue to send so much money back to Mexico. We came here for a new life! Can’t we please live it?”
Orlando Delgado turned to look at his wife. For just a moment, Kami saw that love that her parents had always held for each other. It was there. It was still there and it was strong. That was what had to happen. Her father had to remember why he worked and why he worked hard. It wasn’t because of his family in Mexico. It was because he had a wife and a family here in Dallas.
Just when Kami was almost sure that her father was about to relent, Roberto must have smelled blood in the water. The gunshot was so loud. Kami’s eardrums felt shattered and she shuddered as though she were going to collapse to the floor. There were screams. The kids. Mama. Someone down the hall was screaming. There was yelling and calling out in Spanish. The noise was echoing through Kami’s body for several moments before she realized that most of it was coming from her own mouth.
“You stupid shit!” Zane went almost immediately into action. Closing the distance between himself and Roberto in less than two strides, Zane snatched up the handgun and flipped it end over end in his hand. With one downward swipe, Zane pistol whipped Roberto with the butt of the weapon. “Go down and stay down before I decide to use the other end.”
Devon immediately began searching Kami’s body for wounds. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she told him breathlessly. Of course, that wasn’t entirely accurate. She wasn’t fine. She was battered and woozy and in horrible pain from her ribs. But she wasn’t shot and that was really the point right now. “What about you?”
Kami grabbed Devon’s muscular arms above the elbow and stared up at him. That was when she felt the stickiness of blood on the left arm of his dress shirt. He glanced down as though he were surprised. “Dammit. That’s going to sting.”
“You’re shot!” Kami nearly stumbled and fell to the floor. “Mama, he’s shot! Call 911!”
Juana ran to the window. There were sirens outside. “Someone already did. There are police cars everywhere down there!”
Papa put his hand to his head and stumbled toward his armchair. He was looking green and almost sick as though he could not believe the situation had gotten so completely out of hand. Kami was so angry with him and yet he was her papa. She could not hate him no matter how much he might deserve it.
Roberto was groaning on the floor holding his face. He was rolling around in the open front door of the apartment with his legs hanging into the hallway. He had been bursting inside when he had shot Devon. This did not bode well for his chances of spinning some false story for the police.
Zane used the toe of his shoe to scoot the gun away from Roberto’s body. It didn’t look as though Roberto had any desire to get off the floor. He was holding his face and sobbing into his hands like a child. Zane kept glancing up at Devon as though he were waiting for his older brother to make a decision.
“We need to wait here for the police,” Devon told Zane. “It will be easier that way. I don’t want this to touch Kami.”
She noticed that Devon did not even mention her parents. She couldn’t blame him. His mother was a pushy woman who could be rude as the day was long, but Kami could not see her pulling a gun on them at a party and firing away.
Except she had managed to find someone to shoot her husband Big Mac King.
Kami put that in the back of her mind. Now wasn’t the time. There were loud boots on the stairs as the police streamed up the stairs. They all had rifles at the shoulder and pretty much started yelling before they even got to the open apartment door.
“Down! Stay down!” A uniformed officer in body armor stepped over Roberto’s body and into the apartment. He glared at the King brothers for just a moment before he seemed to recognize them. “Good God! Zane and Devon King? What in the hell are you doing here?”
Devon’s voice did not waver or hesitate. “The apartment belon
gs to my wife’s parents. The young man there tried to bust in with a gun.”
“You shot?” The cop lowered his weapon and gestured to Devon’s bleeding arm.
Devon waved it off. “Just a graze. We’ll go to the hospital and get checked out on our own. No need for an ambulance.”
The cop gave a nod. Then he turned and glared at Roberto. “What’s the matter, Robert Villareal? Did you finally tangle with someone who wasn’t afraid of your bullying?”
Kami watched her father’s eyes widen in surprise. How could he have been so blind to Robert’s true nature? The policeman dragged Roberto to his feet. They were cuffing the man without even taking statements or asking about the validity of who was telling the truth or not. In other words, they had no doubt that Roberto was the guilty party.
“That his weapon?” Another cop spoke to Zane as he jerked his chin toward the gun on the floor.
Zane nodded his head. “Yes. That would be it. The little bastard busted in here and started waving it around. Then he squeezed off a shot before I could take it from him.”
Kami’s mother was wide eyed with fear. “My husband had nothing to do with this!”
“We never said he did, ma’am.” The policeman looked a bit confused. “We know the King brothers, ma’am. If they say that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”
Kami could see her parents digesting that. They hadn’t expected Kami’s husband and his family to be quite so influential. It hadn’t mattered how much Kami or the priest or the lawyer might have told them. They had apparently needed to see the truth of it for themselves.
Tugging at Devon’s uninjured arm, Kami looked up into his face. “I just want to go home.”
“Baby, I hate to say it, but you need a doctor first.” He wrapped his arm around Kami and nodded to his brother.
Zane clapped the cop on the arm. “We’re heading out. My sister-in-law has had a rough couple of days. She needs rest. You know where to find us.”
“Yeah,” the cop joked. “I’ll just head for that building with your name scrawled all over the outside of it.”
“Exactly!” Zane winked at the cops as he, Devon, and Kami left through the apartment’s crowded front door.
They had nearly made it all the way to the stairwell at the end of the hallway before Kami realized that Juana was following along determinedly in their wake. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. At least her sister wasn’t going to wind up having to marry Roberto in Kami’s stead.
Chapter Thirty
Devon was pretty sure that he was the worst thing that had ever happened to Kami Delgado’s health. In the last few days since they had made their relationship public she had been in a car accident, she’d been beat up by her own father, tossed around by a man who claimed to be her fiancé, and then shot at by that same guy. Now they were in a hospital room and Devon was just hoping that the doctor wasn’t going to tell him that the best medicine for Kami Delgado would be to never have to see Devon King again.
“I think your wife is going to be just fine.” The doctor patted Devon’s shoulder and offered a tired smile. There was never any way of knowing how long some of these guys had been on the floor treating patients. “She’s a tough girl, Mr. King. You should probably watch yourself. Her ribs are cracked, but not broken. That’s honestly a miracle. She has some contusions and I’d like to keep her overnight for observation because her concussion is pretty damn bad. But she’s going to be just fine.”
“Thank you.” Devon took the man’s hand and shook it.
The doctor gestured to Devon’s arm. “You want me to have a look at that and bandage it up?”
“Nah.” Devon waved off the offer. “It’s just a graze.”
“Suit yourself.” The physician chuckled and shook his head before walking off. “The nurse will be in shortly to add some meds to Kami’s IV bag. That will keep her comfortable, but it’ll probably also make her sleep so just keep that in mind.”
“Right. Thanks again.”
Devon watched the doctor leave Kami’s dimly lit private hospital room. It was only mid-afternoon in Dallas. The sun was shining outside the blinds, and as the city inched toward the last few weeks before Christmas, the number of pedestrians scurrying about like rats trying to get the best bits and pieces before their neighbors could beat them to it seemingly multiplied.
“Hey.” Zane stuck his head in the room. “What did he say?”
“Where have you been?” Devon asked absently. “She’s going to be fine. They want to keep her for observation.”
“What about you?” Zane walked the rest of the way into the room and closed the door behind him. “How’s the arm?”
“Stings like hell.” Devon glanced at the windows near the doorway of Kami’s room to make sure the nurse wasn’t standing right there or about to walk in. “I think the bullet finally came out though.”
“You know,” Zane drawled with amusement. “You’ve just made the job of any forensics team twice as hard. They’re going to be combing that apartment for the bullet because you told them it was a graze.”
“Shit, I didn’t even think about that.” Devon frowned. Then he dug in his pocket. “This worked its way out about an hour ago. Maybe I should go back and shove it into the wall at her parents’ place.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zane told Devon drily.
Zane reached for Devon’s arm. Devon let him. The two of them peered at the quickly healing wound. Of course, that was the entire problem with letting anyone look at one of them, especially for a gunshot wound. Almost as soon as the bullet had entered Devon’s flesh he had felt his body starting to push it back out. Their healing processes were superior. It was one of the best things about being a shifter. Increased health and an accelerated healing rate that sometimes defied the best expectations of the medical community.
“Looks like a pain in the ass,” Zane commented. Then he poked the wound with his finger. “Does this hurt?”
“Yes!” Devon glared at Zane and shoved him back. “Don’t poke it! What the hell, Zane?”
Zane was cackling like an ornery kid. “Oh, stop acting like such a wimp. Look at you. It’s practically filled in the hole already. I don’t even think I made you bleed.”
“Next time I’m going to shoot you!” Devon stared at the livid red wound on his bicep. It was surrounded by dried blood. The flesh was slightly swollen and hot from the increased bloodflow to the area for healing. But as Devon gazed at the gunshot he realized something very significant. “Zane, there is no way that Dad was shot to death by accident.”
“I know.”
Devon could actually watch his flesh starting to mend itself. “Dad was shot with his coyote rifle. The chances of that accidentally discharging are pretty slim anyway, but the convenience of being shot in the head suggests that someone knew they needed time to make sure that he could not heal and come back.”
“No, you’re absolutely right,” Zane murmured. “Even if Dad had been shot in the head, the wound would not have been fatal. He would have taken longer to heal. Then he would have gone stumbling back to the ranch. His horse wouldn’t have dragged him home. That kind of trip would have brought him out of a healing coma pretty fast.”
“So someone had to shoot him and then what? Stand there and keep shooting him? Strangle him?” That was the part of their father’s death that had continued to elude Devon’s understanding. “How do you keep him down like that? Who did it? Mother was supposedly out of town. Do you honestly think that Dad’s best friend could have done something like that after being like peas in a pod for thirty years? Even if you were cheating on your friend with his wife, you wouldn’t automatically be ready to murder him over it.”
Zane gently touched Devon’s shoulder. “Look. I’m not saying that we don’t need to figure this out. I think our mother is the key. I think she’s the one who either hired or coerced someone into committing murder. I just think they had to know that Dad was a shifter and that t
hey had to take some extra precautions because of it.”
The two brothers stood for several moments in silence. Devon was just glad to have one of his brothers there. It felt good to know that he wasn’t alone. The world might be going completely crazy around them, but they were still brothers. Even if Edward had defected to Italy and Jason was spending almost all of his time out running the ranch when he and Skye weren’t publishing some kind of inflammatory newspaper articles or blog posts.
“I meant to ask you,” Devon finally murmured to his brother. “What did you do with Kami’s sister?”
“Oh. I took her to your apartment.” Zane glanced over at Devon and shrugged. “She’s your sister-in-law, right? I figured she would either be staying with you or something like that. Of course, I wasn’t thinking that you probably wanted a ready made family like that.”
“No doubt,” Devon sighed. He rubbed a hand down his face. “I’m not sure what I want to do about that. But it’s not my decision. Whatever Kami wants to do is fine by me. It’s her sister.”
“Wow.” Zane shook his head. He was hiding a huge grin. “You guys gave me hell when I became—let’s see, how did Orion put it? Oh yes. Landry’s lap dog. And now you understand, don’t you?”
“Yes. I understand.”
The door of the hospital room creaked open. Devon was expecting to see a nurse coming in to dispense the medication for Kami’s IV bag. Both Devon and Zane were surprised to see Gemini slipping into the room.
Gemini jerked his chin toward the hospital bed. “How is she?”
“She’ll be fine,” Devon murmured. “Thanks for coming to check on her.”
Gemini pursed his lips. He was such an odd combination of things. Their half brother, their nemesis—unintentional or not—and even sometimes a total pain in the ass. But when it came down to it, Devon always got the feeling that Gemini was glad to have someone. Perhaps it was the whole thing about knowing that he wasn’t the only one. When you were a shifter, you knew that you were different from everyone. Sometimes you just didn’t truly understand how isolated that could make you feel until you were right in the middle of it.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 93
