Lady Luck: Ashby Crime Family Romance Book 4

by Winters, KB

  “Why? Sadie wouldn’t have invited you if she didn’t want you there, and you’re friends with Kat and Maisie.”

  Which reminded me of another question I wanted to ask her.

  “I know, but this feels different. I won’t be there as Lance’s wife which is how they all know me. Won’t that be weird?”

  I pressed a kiss to the crook of her neck. “Not for me. How about you show up as my date to Virgil and Maisie’s wedding?”

  “Really?”

  I nodded, uncertain if she was surprised that I wanted her to be my date or shocked at my audacity.

  “That would be great, Emmett. Really.”

  “We’ll have a good time, I promise.” I hadn’t been to a wedding since I was in the military and used to go solo when a buddy got married, so I had no idea if it was too soon for such a step. Most important, I didn’t give a damn either.

  “I always have a good time with you.” She punctuated her words by cupping a gentle hand on one side of my face as her blue gaze bore into mine. She looked like she wanted to say more, almost like she was feeling exactly what I was but didn’t know how to say it.

  I didn’t blame her. I had no fucking clue either. Was it too soon? Would she laugh or run away in horror if I told her I was falling for her? The idea of either of those things happening made me sick to my stomach.

  She just said, “Me too,” and kissed me slowly and sweetly, pulling back too damn soon.

  This woman brought all of my protective instincts to the surface. I wanted to keep her safe. Protected.

  “You haven’t had any more trouble at work? Or around town?”

  Terry and Jas still had no clue who had killed Fiona or why, and if they did, they hadn’t seen fit to share that information with me.

  “No,” she sighed. “It’s been thankfully quiet for the past few days.”

  I could tell something was on her mind, though, and I stayed quiet, stroking one hand up and down the length of her body, tracing the curve of her hip and the dip of her small waist.

  But I wasn’t expecting what came next.

  “What can you tell me about Fiona?” she said, looking directly into my eyes.

  My whole body froze at the question but only for a brief moment.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, some the players, the regulars, keep asking why she just picked up and left. They wonder if she was running from the mob or if she was cheating on Evan and ran off with another man. It all seems so sordid, but none of it seems, I dunno, true.”

  I wanted to tell her the truth. This was the perfect opening to just tell her what she needed to know, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, refusing to budge every time I tried to say a word.

  Vanessa mistook my silence for anger and sat up so we were eye to eye again.

  “I know you don’t deal so much in that side of the business, but Provo said something I can’t stop thinking about. Be careful or you might end up like Fiona. What happened to her, Emmett?”

  There it was. A direct question that gave me the opportunity I’d been looking for. I promised Terry I’d keep my mouth shut unless she asked me directly.

  I took a deep breath and said it simply and directly because there was no other way. “She was found dead in her apartment with her tongue cut out.”

  I held my breath while Vanessa processed what I’d just blurted out.

  A flurry of emotions crossed her face. Horror. Fear. Sadness. Anger. Shock. More sadness. She sat up and slid away from me, her gaze pinned to mine.

  “How long have you known?”

  I couldn’t lie to her, not by omission. Not at all. “I was with the guys when the call came in. The day I drove you home from Kat’s place.”

  Her blue eyes went wide and she shook her head in disbelief.

  “Okay. I understand why you didn’t tell me at first, maybe you thought I didn’t need to know. But now, Emmett? After everything that’s happened, you still kept it from me?”

  With every shake of her head, I could see Vanessa growing further and further away from me. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

  “I wanted to tell you that day, I really did. But I couldn’t.”

  “Because you were ordered not to?”

  Even as she asked the question, Vanessa went around my bedroom and picked up her panties and bra, putting them on in sharp, jerky moves.

  “Yeah. Let me explain.”

  “Dammit, Emmett,” she growled and shook her head as she yanked her jeans off the floor. “I’m done with men keeping secrets. Lance had way too many secrets. Where he went, what he was up to when he left the house. And then he shows up dead. I swore to myself I’d never go through it again. Apparently, it’s a lesson I need to learn again.”

  “Vanessa, you seemed so happy with the job, and I didn’t want to be the one to take that from you. Not after everything you’ve been through. And Jasper still doesn’t even know who did it. Or why.”

  “I’m not talking about them, Emmett! This is about you, the man I trusted. You lied to me, not them.”

  And here I was still lying to her. Was I going to admit my brother had ordered me to keep silent?

  “I only wanted to keep you safe, Vanessa. You mean the world to me.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure I do,” she grunted and reached for the torn blouse I’d ripped off her body last night. “Just not enough for you to be honest with me. To trust me with your precious family secrets. At least now I know where I stand.”

  I got up from the bed, pleading, “Vanessa, you have to stay. You’re not safe out there.”

  Before I reached her side, she said, “I’m not safe here, either. Goodbye, Emmett.”

  I couldn’t move. I was frozen in the middle of the room as she stomped down the steps. I walked to the top of the stairs and saw her pause only to put on her sexy high heeled boots and grab her purse. Moments later, the purr of her engine sounded before it slowly—too fucking slowly—faded.

  I was angry as hell. Pissed off but mostly at myself. Vanessa was right; I should have told her the truth as soon as things changed between us and that was on me. I couldn’t blame Terry or Jasper or anyone else. It was all on me.

  And now that my place was full of Vanessa, her smile and her scent, I couldn’t stay here. I grabbed a hot shower and changed into my gray sweats before heading to House of Ashby to give my body a good, hard, punishing workout. It was the only way I’d be able to sleep tonight, to forget the look of betrayal in her eyes. The goodbye that levelled me with the permanency I heard.

  For the first time in a long damn time, I skipped Sunday dinner at Ashby Manor.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Vanessa

  I pulled up in front of my house, almost blind from the tears burning my eyes.

  I hated crying. It never solved any problems, and only left me wallowing in sadness, which delayed finding solutions to the problem. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to solve the problem of Emmett lying to me, keeping things from me. Yeah, sure, it was a lie of omission, but it was still a damned lie.

  Driving back from Emmet’s had taken the last of my energy. I fell back against the seat and tried to take it all in. Fiona had been murdered. Her tongue cut out of her mouth. How fucking gruesome was that? And still, no one, not Provo who called himself a friend, not Hulu or Evan or Mace. Not Jasper and certainly not Emmett. None of them had bothered to tell me the girl I’d replaced had left her job to go on a permanent vacation.

  “Shit.” I just realized that Kat must have known too when she asked me to fill in.

  Everyone but me knew and no one had said a Goddamn thing.

  As if trying to get away from it all, I snatched up my purse and all but leaped from my car, eager to get into the house and under a hot shower to wash away the Ashbys and all they represented.

  I’d started up the walk to my front door telling myself, “I am a fucking fool.”

  I punched in the seven-digit code for the security system
I’d insisted on, thinking it would make it harder for the bad guys to get to me. Turns out, it was a targeted assault. Hell, they all were.

  Before I could open the door, I heard behind me, “Don’t be alarmed.”

  The voice of an unfamiliar man startled me. I gasped and reached in my bag for the five-inch knife Hulu had given me as a welcome to the family gift.

  My hand wrapped around the cool metal handle as I quickly turned around.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I said.

  My heart raced at the man’s nearness, and I took in the sight of his half-burned face and brown eyes, the arrogant smirk on his face. “Well?” I insisted over my throbbing pulse.

  The man lifted his palms up in the air and took half a step back, out of fear or caution, I didn’t know.

  “I just want to talk.”

  “I don’t know you, so I don’t know what we could possibly have to talk about.”

  After the attack by those two thugs and what I knew about Fiona, I had to fight the urge to simply flee into the safety of my home. But I needed answers.

  “I just want something simple. One little thing that will cost you nothing to get for me, and a lot if you don’t.”

  Shit. I was so fucking pissed about all of this, I couldn’t even think straight.

  Whatever he wanted had to do with the Ashbys, I knew that much. I didn’t have anything to offer other than money and information. I figured he wanted the latter.

  I turned to him sharply. “And what is that one little thing?”

  “Names. The men and women who attend those games you work.” He gave me a smile that turned gruesome because of his disfigured face. “That’s all I want.”

  My grip tightened on the knife handle, and I nodded at the request, not because I planned to give him anything, but because I couldn’t.

  “Sorry to tell you that I only know first names and I’m not even sure those names are real.”

  Every trace of a smile left him, and he said, “That is the wrong fucking answer, Vanessa.” The unmarred side of his face tightened in anger, turning the burned side a scary shade of pink. “I was really hoping you’d be more cooperative than your predecessor.”

  He shook his head and took a step forward, and I pulled out what was supposed to be a knife, instead it was pepper spray. Fucking pepper spray.

  It’ll have to do. I pressed the tab and a wide red cloud formed between us, giving me enough time to unlock the door and rush inside. I made sure every lock on the front door was engaged, along with the alarm as Provo’s words played on a loop inside my head.

  Be careful or you might end up like Fiona.

  Fuck that. I found the knife and aimed it at the door for a full minute before my hands stopped shaking and my heart slowed to normal. When I was able to think again, to form complete thoughts, I pulled out my phone and hesitated. My first instinct was to call Emmett, but my emotions were still raw, too raw to talk to him when he wasn’t the man I needed.

  Not now.

  I dialed the number of the one person I knew who would want to know about my visitor.

  “Jasper, it’s Vanessa. A man with a burned face showed up at my house right now asking for names of the players in the card games. I pepper-sprayed him.”

  The line was silent for a moment, but when he finally spoke, his voice was ice cold and low.

  “Sit tight. I’ll be right there.”

  The call ended before I could give him my address so I assumed there was some employee file for Lance.

  I did what Jasper said and sat on my sofa with a glass of wine on the coffee table and the knife gripped tight in my right hand. I was prepared for a fight because there was no way I’d battled grief to die now.

  I said the words out loud. “No fucking way am I gonna die now.” Maybe I felt more courage. Hard to know. I took another swallow of the wine.

  What felt like just a few minutes later, a loud pounding on the door had the knife clattering to the floor and sliding beneath the sofa.

  “Vanessa, it’s Jasper. Open up.”

  Deciding to err on the side of caution, I flattened myself on the floor to grab the knife before I raced to answer the door to Jasper, Terry and Provo. All looking intimidating as hell.

  “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

  Jasper nodded and stepped inside, a move that forced me to back up.

  He looked around and asked, “Was he inside?”

  “No. He snuck up behind me when I was disarming the alarm.” A thought occurred to me. “Do you think he got my code?”

  Jasper frowned, and Terry stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Change the code. Now.”

  I nodded and did what Terry said, listening to the men talk as if I wasn’t in the room.

  “Brendan Rhymer,” Terry said.

  “Has to be,” Jasper confirmed. “It’s time we stop fucking around where this asshole is concerned. I know what Ma said, but I’m done with this shit.”

  Terry said, “I’ll handle Brendan. It’s been a long time since I’ve kicked some ass.” The delight in his voice was slightly terrifying and also a little hilarious.

  “Well you handled the fucker who shot Kat with ease, didn’t you?”

  “That was different,” he growled. “It wasn’t about enjoyment.”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t enjoy it?” Provo had come in with the guys, but he’d mostly stayed quiet and I understood why. This was probably too much of a reminder of all the times he was here because of Lance.

  “I didn’t say that, asshole.” Terry flashed a smile at Provo. “I just said it wasn’t about enjoying it. But whatever I do to Brendan, my plan will be to enjoy inflicting maximum pain on that motherfucker.”

  He flashed a wicked yet joyful smile, and I shook my head. These were fully grown men and even talking about violence, they sounded like boys.

  “We need to get her outta here,” Jasper said, bringing that conversation to an end. His serious, slightly angry gaze met Provo’s. “Take her to Sadie.”

  I finished changing the security code and shook my head. “That’s not necessary. Odds are he won’t come back. Right? Or is he going to cut out my tongue like he did Fiona’s?”

  Looking to these tough guys for assurance was a fool’s errand, but my heart raced and thudded at the idea of crashing Ashby Sunday dinner.

  “Emmett,” Terry said.

  “Yeah, Emmett. Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me I was in danger? You guys are supposed to be bad ass gangsters and you couldn’t even keep Fiona safe. Nor my husband!” I shouted, the tears starting to fall.

  “Whether he comes back or not, you won’t be here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!” I sobbed.

  Jasper came closer and rubbed the back of his neck. “Vanessa, pack a fucking bag. You are going to the Manor. Now.”

  Jasper’s words were final and I knew there was no point making another argument.

  I gave a sharp nod and made my way to the bedroom to pack enough clothes for a week. I packed jeans and t-shirts for the day and a few dresses for work. A slinky red nightgown drew my attention to another fact. Emmett would be at Sunday dinner, and I wasn’t ready to see or talk to him. Not yet.

  Provo demanded my keys and slid behind the wheel of my car. “What’s the big deal about staying with the Ashby’s. I thought you were cool with them?”

  “I am, it’s just that I’d prefer to stay in my own space.”

  I didn’t want to get into the real story about Emmett, especially with a man who had so much baggage and a clear dislike for me. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so.” Provo shrugged his big shoulders, and we made the rest of the trip in silence. “It won’t be so bad Nessa. Enjoy the food and the whole sisterly thing of being in a house full of women, yeah?”

  I shrugged and nodded, telling him the only thing he wanted to hear which was that I would be okay. “Sure, Provo. Thanks.”

  “Welcome, Mrs. Decker.”
The always impeccably dressed Thomas smiled at me from the front door. My stomach clenched. I wasn’t even safe in my own home. Somehow now it all seemed too real.

  “Thank you, Thomas. Where should I put my bags?” I held up two matching leather duffel bags with a sheepish smile.

  “I’ll take care of that. The women won’t be put off much longer.” He took a step back and nodded for me to follow the noise toward the dining room.

  “Sure. Right. Thank you.” I braced myself for seeing Emmett again as I walked down the well-lit hall, sucking in a deep breath before stepping through the doorway. He’s not here. Not yet anyway, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  “Got room for one more?” I said, my voice quaking.

  The talking stopped and several sets of eyes turned to me with varying degrees of worry.

  “It’s about damn time!” Kat was on her feet first, wrapping an arm around me as she guided me to an empty spot beside her at the table. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Jasper sent me here as a precaution so I wouldn’t get my tongue cut out of my mouth.”

  For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop. Then, without breaking stride, Sadie handed me a glass of what I guessed was Irish whiskey.

  I accepted and said, “Sorry. I’m just a little shaken. Thank you, Sadie.”

  “Of course, dear. Now tell me what happened. Exactly as you remember it.”

  Though sympathy filled her eyes, I could hear the anger in her voice, and I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or the man the men had called Brendan.

  I took a sip and sucked in a deep breath before I recounted the entire interaction, exactly as it happened. “Then I pepper sprayed him, locked myself in the house and called Jasper.” Sadie seemed satisfied with what I’d told her so I took another sip.

  “Wait. I want to know why you called Jasper and not Emmett.”

  Leave it up to Kat to worry about romance when clearly there was something more concerning happening.

  “Because he lied to me. Well he didn’t technically lie, but he withheld the truth from me, and that’s the same damn thing.”

  “Did he lie about banging another chick?” The young girl, Madison, had both elbows on the table, chin resting in her hand and an interested smile on her face. “Well?”