Broken Road

by Char Marie Adles

  He felt odd, almost light in a way. He had never given into such feelings for a woman before, yet he had the feeling that she would be different then any other. He smiled to himself as he went to the bathroom downstairs for a cold shower.

  No, it was far from over.

  …

  Devil watched him head down stairs and felt her heart flutter. She felt as if he had just breathed life back into her. He had given her a gift she would always remember and she wasn’t going to let it go just yet. He could give her more and she was going to be selfish and take it all.

  She smiled, feeling fuzzy inside.

  Oh, she was going to have fun for the next month before she had to make the hardest choices of her life. She was going to take what she would never be given again.

  Devil could still feel him on her and hear his last words breathed in her ear. “This isn’t over.”

  Devil went into Lilla’s room and picked her up out of the crib to rock her and Devil started to sing. It wasn’t one of her normal songs but the only warm one she knew from her mother.

  So many things were changing so fast and they would never be the same. Then it came to her. She wanted to give a gift to Lilla, one filled with her love for her and her new feelings about the world so one day she might understand.

  Devil wanted to write a new song and so she would.

  …

  A sweet low lullaby was drifting in a breeze from the ranch house out to the barn and Winthrop stopped to listen. He knew that voice. It was the voice of his favorite country star, Alto Devil Runner. Up coming singer, model, and actress, and she was already a super star.

  This was a new song that he didn’t know and figured that Devil had found the radio in the living room and was playing some music while she was working inside.

  Even her name brought a smile to his lips. He rarely smiled and yet she had him doing it all the time since she had been here. She was a wonder and she was good for him. She had become the one thing he looked forward to each day. He felt guilty about starting to like her since she used to be with his brother, but he figured that since his brother was clear that he had a chance and he knew that his brother would want him happy.

  He would have to be careful not to take things so far that one of them got hurt, but just far enough for them to have some fun. After all she was a young mother and he had an entire ranch to run with his men, but they could be very good friends.

  The song called him back from his thoughts and he found himself drifting towards the house by the lull of the sweet soft love song. It made him think of Devil while she was wrapped up in his arms.

  “Hey Boss! Where ya going?” Kip called from the carrel of horses.

  “To get me a Devil,” he said with a grin and made his way to the house.

  Chapter Eleven

  Devil found Mr. Canter’s office on the east side of the ranch house and decided that a peek inside the room couldn’t hurt. She should know what kind of man she was trusting with her daughter with right?

  She continued to hum her song as she gently pushed the oak door open; it swung inward a few inches without a sound and she stuck her head into the room.

  A heavily desk faced away from a large window that over looked the main barns of the ranch and then the training fields beyond. The walls were wooden just like all the others on the main floor, but unlike the others these had pictures hung on every open space. Some of them looked to be a few decades old and some even older then that. Pictures of smiling couples and children over the generations. There was even one of tall Indian man with a feather in his hair smiling slightly in front of a house being built, the ranch house as it were.

  Devil smiled, touching the picture.

  In fact most of the pictures were of Indian ancestors.

  The most recent ones were hung over an ancient computer that had seen better days, coated in dust. There were a few of a pretty, young Native American woman who stood next to another tall and proud white man, holding his hand. They both looked happy together. Then there were pictures of two boys. Many in fact.

  Devil knew at once that the pictures were of Mr. Canter and the other boy just had to be his younger brother.

  There was one picture however that caught her attention. It was a picture of the young Mr. Canter and his younger brother. They were both grinning at the camera and sporting matching scrapes and bruises. They looked so careless and happy and boyish that it shocked Devil that Mr. Canter had ever been that way. By her best guess he had been about seventeen and his brother twelve.

  Devil touched that picture and his smiling face wishing he would smile more. She had a feeling that if he smiled like that now that, that smiled would devastate her and put her on a path she couldn’t recover from. Best not go down that path, she wouldn’t end up powerless like her mother.

  She let herself be distracted by the papers littering the desk. Bills to be paid, sale bills, and record books covered the surface in abundant messes.

  Devil picked one up and glanced at it. She felt her mouth drop and the cold edge of a blade pressed against her throat.

  “Don’t move unless you wanna get cut, you understand me?” a deep voice rumbled over Devil’s head.

  She swallowed very carefully and nodded. Quickly she ran through all the things that her adoptive father had taught her and found something that just might work. After all she couldn’t just do nothing. When you were the adoptive daughter of Royal Crown, the Grand Don and king pin of the Russian and Italian Mobs, you had better know what to do. Even if you were only with them for two years.

  She spun around grabbing the knife in her burned hand and landed a solid kick to the beefy man’s midsection.

  With a surprised grunt he let go of her, the knife completely and doubled over.

  Devil was quick on her feet and pounced on the man’s back, grabbed a fist full of long blond hair and pointed the tip of the knife over the jugular in the man’s neck. He almost stopped breathing all together in that moment with shock.

  “What are you doing in this house,” she asked with a growl.

  “I could ask you the same question, little lady. Who do you work for? What do you want with this place?” he growled back.

  Before Devil could reply the door slammed open and Mr. Canter stocked in looking dangerous and demanded, “What the devil is going on in here?” That however was before his eyes landed on the two of them.

  “Bingo,” Devil murmured, “and the man gets a cookie.” But she never loosened her grip on the man.

  “Boss?” questioned the man beneath her hoarsely.

  Winthrop went over to his ranch hand Judd and plucked Devil off of the man’s broad back.

  “What in that hell is going on and what are you doing,” he asked her in disbelief.

  He was holding her by the back of the neck like a mother of a kitten would do and she felt hopeless and she didn’t like it. The fire flared in her eyes and the look of outrage followed soon after.

  “Me? What was I doing? I was saving my own ass! This man was trying to kill me!” she seethed pointing in the man’s direction.

  Winthrop looked down at the little hellion as if she were going to spit fire. Judd had tried to kill her?

  He looked to the man in question. Judd himself was looking at her as if he couldn’t believe it.

  Then Devil turned around ready to fight the man who had held the knife to her throat and felt her jaw drop yet again.

  “Grange Judd Marshal!” she blurted out like an idiot.

  The man under all that blond hair froze, eyeing her carefully. After a moment his jaw hit the floor too.

  “Devil!”

  Devil suddenly found herself spun around than quickly sat back down.

  “What are you doing here!”

  She smiled a little. “I’m here for a while. What about you?”

  “I’m-”

  “Holy shit!” Winthrop yelled suddenly making the other two jump. He pushed Judd aside and reached for Devil’s burn
ed hand.

  Blood was quickly oozing from her hand where she was holding a wicked looking knife by the blade and onto the room’s burgundy carpets.

  As Mr. Canter came rushing towards her she finally noticed the blood and the knife. Slowly she uncurled her hand and the blade dropped to the floor. She watched as even more blood welled up from the deep cut that ran from her palm and up over three of her fingers.

  It was surprising how much blood could come from a hand. She felt like giggling. She felt odd and rather tipsy.

  “We need to get her a hospital and quick,” Winthrop yelled at Judd. He ripped off his shirt and wrapped her hand.

  “No hospitals!” Devil protested weaving like a drunken sailor. “No hospitals…”

  As she slipped into a dead faint Winthrop picked her up in his arms and rushed for the nearest truck.

  “What’s going on? What wrong with Lady Bird there?” Red asked, jugging up beside his boss.

  “Go and watch Lilla,” he ordered the redheaded man.

  “What?” Read asked stopping.

  “The baby! Go and watch the baby!”

  Judd took out his keys and they all piled in his old truck.

  He rocked her back and forth murmuring soft comforting words for her to hear and to keep him from wanting to yell at his man to go faster. Every minute that passed it put him more on edge.

  “Hurry!” Winthrop yelled finally, both frantic and frightened at the site of so much blood soaking the shirt that he had placed around Devil’s hand.

  That’s all it took for Judd to floor it at ninety miles per hour to the nearest hospital.

  What is a strange day, Judd thought with a rueful smile. Strange in deed.

  …

  Groggy and still half asleep Devil cracked open a sleep crusted eye and looked around her. She groaned with remembered pain at seeing herself in a white hospital room. Past memories of the agony she went through in rooms such as this assaulted her and she closed her eyes. The needles, the stitches, the blood and worse of all the pain that that came again and again and-

  “Devil? Are you awake, in pain?”

  The softly whispered voice pulled her back out of the memories and she opened her eyes again. She blinked blurrily at the man staring at her and realized it was Grange.

  He had once worked for her adoptive father Royal Crown as a hit man, before that he had been secret Military Black OPS.

  Devil shook her head and slipped back off to sleep.

  …

  Winthrop wanted answers and he knew just who he was going to get them from. He cornered Judd in the room next to Devil’s so she could sleep.

  “How do you know her?”

  Judd thought for a moment on that then smiled a little at his boss. “She once sang a song for me. Well,” he said with a grimace, “she stopped me from committing suicide when she was a little kid.”

  Winthrop felt a little lightheaded. “Go on.”

  Judd smiled then. “She was kidnapped after her parents died and she ran away. Her dad was a high roller and a drunk, with a bad mind. Her dad owed my old boss Royal a lot of money and they didn’t know he was dead and gone three weeks before they took the girl. She was locked up in the dark for three days in a basement and fought her way out. After that she was taken to the boss. He liked her spunk and adopted her when she was twelve. I met her a year after that when I came back from my last mission in the war. I did somethings and I landed up in the hands of Royal and in his basements with a job offer. She has seen a side few people ever will. He’s a ruthless man, but he is truly like a real father to her. He loved her very much and would have killed any man who touched her.”

  Winthrop felt as if Judd had run his over with his truck. Just when he started to think that he had the girl figured out he finds out that he knows nothing!

  “You mean she was the daughter of a drug lord or something,” Winthrop asked numbly.

  Judd place a hand on his shoulder giving him a look of sympathy. “For a man who used to be a mercenary you aren’t taking this well and the next part isn’t going to be any easier, but you should know. She isn’t the daughter of a mere drug lord. Her father is Royal Crown, leader and Grand Don, of the Russian and Italian Mafia.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The ride back to the ranch later that night could be described in one word according to Devil.

  Hellish.

  Her pain meds had worn off and the ones she had just taken hadn’t kicked in yet. Her hand was throbbing with a vengeance of fury fit for a roaring tornado. Pulses of stinging pain shot through her fingers and she winced. She was groggy and grumpy and utterly drugged out of her mind with her sleeping pills from the hospital. They had to put her out for the stitches.

  The silence in the cab of the truck was bugging her as it grew awkward. She turned to look up into the pale face of Mr. Canter and reached her free hand up to poke his cheek.

  “I know you don’t like women and all, but no need to turn glum just because you’re holding me in your lap. I could have sat by myself ya know. I already said I was sorry,” Devil grumbled at him crossly.

  He didn’t say a single thing but he took her hand in his and paced them on his knee.

  It said nothing, yet it said everything at the same time. She knew that something was wrong with him and it was something that was eating away at him inside. She could tell by the pained and hollow look in his silverish blue eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning at him.

  Winthrop said nothing but glanced down at her gravely and then looked back out the window as his mind ate away at him.

  She was a daughter of two mobs and the mother of his brother’s child. It didn’t take long for him to put two and two together. They had said his brother had died in the cross fire of a gang shooting, but it may have been more then that. Devil could every well have been the reason for his brother’s murder.

  Yet as he glanced to the now sleeping woman in his arms he found he couldn’t believe that she had had anything to do with it. His heart felt tight at the feeling of seeing her hurt. She already had a hard time trusting people like he himself did and he couldn’t see her as a killer.

  He brushed back a loose lock of hair from her forehead. No, she wasn’t one and he was just making trouble. Her past was just that, the past. Yet there was some doubt…

  …

  Three.

  That was the number of days she had been ordered to stay in bed and rest. It was also the number of days she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Mr. Canter and she was pissed.

  The saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn’ was about to get a new meaning. Especially when that woman was a Devil.

  It was well passed bed time for everyone, but she didn’t care. She stormed out of her room stomping down the stairs to the main level of the house. She found him in the office and the sight that greeted her eyes pained her more then he would ever know.

  He was setting in the chair looking at the pictures on the wall with a bottle of whiskey in his hand that was already half empty. Devil didn’t miss the three already empty bottles on the desk.

  His long hair was messy as if he had run his hand through it a million times. And who knew? He might have done just that. His strong cheeks and chin were cover in stubble that made him look as if he hadn’t shaved in days.

  His eyes moved sightlessly over the pictures as he took a long slow swig of the whiskey.

  A memory of Devil’s father flashed in her mind and caused her to wince. Her father had been like this many times after he had drank to much. Then he would turn to the nearest person and start to beat them till they were broken on the floor. The person had always been her. Devil had made sure of that so he would hurt her mother or her little sister Lily yet that hadn’t stopped him the last time-

  “What do you want?” Winthrop growled at the person in the door with out turning around. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, that’s why he was in his brother’s office, yet someone
had found him. “Get out!”

  Devil flinched at the fury in his voice.

  He was just like her father.

  She started to take a step back.

  He is not like your father. Help him understand.

  Devil froze, foot in midair. Was he different? Could she help him? Devil looked him over and saw that grief was engraved in his face, in his eyes. It was not anger like her father’s had been. Her face softened with sympathy. Yes, he was different. Her father couldn’t hold a candle to this man. He was so strong and proud all of the time, but even strong people had their weak moments.

  She inched her way forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s only me, come up to bed. You shouldn’t drink this much. You’ll regret it later,” Devil said softly reaching for the bottle in his hand.

  He took the whiskey out of her reach and took another drink then swung the chair around to face her.

  “Go back to bed, kid. This ain’t got nothing to do with you,” he growled, glaring at her out of narrowed eyes.

  Devil felt her mouth turn into a thin line of compressed frustration.

  “You will stop drinking. Wallowing in self pity is stupid.”

  He laughed without humor. “Call it whatever you like, but you understand nothing.” He took another drink and felt its warmth bloom in his gut.

  Devil snatched to bottle out of his hand and placed it behind her back. She ignored the pain in her hand.

  Winthrop rose out of his chair and glared at the girl. “Give it back.”

  “Never. I know what drink does to a man,” she said quietly.

  “You know nothing,” he sneered reached behind her for the bottle.

  She moved the bottle again.

  Okay he would play her game. He grabbed the wrist of the empty hand and leaned in close to her.