He cleared his throat, and she raised her gaze up to him, guiltily. Whoops.
But instead of looking irritated or impatient, his eyes were filled with warmth.
“I’d ask you if you liked what he saw, but I think I already know the answer.” She narrowed her gaze as she glared at him. “I think it’s time you left.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. Someone should be here in case you need anything.” His gaze studied her. “Painkillers worn off?”
She wanted to say no but the only person she’d be hurting with that lie was herself, so she nodded. He reached over to the side table and picked up the bottle of painkillers and shook out a couple and handed them to her.
“I can get my own medicine, you know.”
“Not used to people looking after you, are you?” he asked her.
At one time she would have killed to have him offer to take care of her. Now, she had to guard herself against further hurt. She hadn’t forgotten the conversation they’d had the other night or that kiss. That kiss had been the hottest thing she’d ever experienced, which made it that much worse that he wasn’t interested in her. So she shrugged. “I’ve been looking after myself for a while now.”
She took the pills and the glass of water he held out to her and swallowed them down. He took the glass back. Then he reached out and cupped the side of her face. His eyes were gentle. “Well, that’s all over now.”
She shook her head, which was a mistake as her face throbbed, causing her to wince. He dropped his hand to her shoulder and started massaging slightly. “Headache?”
“A little bit,” she admitted.
“Sit forward,” he ordered her.
She looked at him quizzically. “What?”
“You’re wound up tight. Sit forward and I’ll give you a massage.”
“A massage?”
“Yeah, baby. A massage. Figure lying on your stomach might hurt a bit with your sore ribs.”
She just stared up at him.
“You don’t like massages?” he asked.
“No, I like them,” she said hoarsely. She just wasn’t certain how she felt about having his hands on her. It was bad enough him being here in her room . . . touching her was a step too far.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Do what? Give you a massage?”
“No. Yes. All of it. I know you feel guilty for what you said to me the other night. But, the thing is, this would have happened to me no matter what went on between us. You said this was Spencer’s fault and you’re right, it is. There’s something wrong with him. Something violent and dark. But you don’t have to do any of this . . . take responsibility for me, sleep in my bedroom, or offer a massage. I can look after myself. And what you said . . . it was only the truth. You don’t want me, and I need to stop living in dreamland.”
“You’re wrong,” he told her. “I’m not here out of guilt over what happened to you. But I do feel guilty about I said.”
“You don’t have—”
He reached over and placed his fingers against her lips. “Let me speak, sunshine. This isn’t easy, what I have to say. Can you just let me say it?”
Eyes wide, she nodded. She had a feeling whatever he was about to say, she really wanted to hear.
“I fell in love once. A long time ago. Before we lived here, we lived in Detroit. My dad,” he gave a bark of unhappy laughter, “my dad wasn’t a good guy. He liked to gamble and drink. He got into deep debt with some really bad people.”
He reached for her good hand and took it gently between his. The heat of his skin seared her and even though she was exhausted, she felt her body stir. Having West Malone sitting so close wasn’t something even her tired, sore body could ignore.
“He was an accountant. He started working for the Marceras family in lieu of paying off his debt. And once you’re in the family, you don’t leave. Not that he wanted to. That lifestyle suited him. But then the head of the family tried to recruit Alec. He was only sixteen.”
“Oh, shit.”
“He wasn’t interested in working for Marceras. When he refused, he figured they’d beat him. Maybe try to kill him. Instead they hit his weak spot. Us. They dragged in Beau and cut his finger off in front of Alec. Alec started working for them that night.”
“Oh my God.” She felt ill at the thought. And that must have shown on her face because he frowned slightly.
“You know what, this isn’t something you need to hear right now.”
“Please, I think I do.”
He frowned. “Don’t want to add to your nightmares.”
“West, I’ve had nightmares almost every night since my parents were taken by those rebels and beheaded. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I’m stronger than I look.”
West’s jaw clenched tightly, and he looked away. “He ever send you to someone to talk about these nightmares?”
“A therapist?” She barked out a laugh then groaned a little as her body protested. “No.”
He returned his gaze to her. He studied her for a long moment then, to her surprise, he continued on.
“So Alec started working for the family. He tried to keep us out, but Marceras wasn’t having that. He’d invite us over for family get-togethers. That’s where I met her. Lana.”
She sucked in a breath. She could hear the pain in his voice. This was the woman Mia had spoken of. This Lana was West’s one.
“There was just something about her that drew me in. She had this laugh—it was ridiculous, so deep it almost sounded evil.”
“She had an evil laugh?” she asked incredulously.
“I know. Sounds silly but that’s the first thing I noticed about her. That evil laugh. She didn’t mean it to be. Lana was sweet. But shy, so painfully shy. Those first few get-togethers, I never even noticed her because she was doing her best to blend into the background. Until I heard that laugh.”
Did it make her a bad person to be jealous of sweet Lana with the evil laugh? Probably. Especially since she knew something bad had happened to her.
“And, then, when I saw her, I was gone. Of course, being a teenage boy, I thought I could immediately charm my way into her pants.”
“At fifteen?” she squeaked.
“Well, I think I was closer to seventeen by the time I noticed her.”
Still . . . yikes. She’d wondered what a teenage West was like. Now she had some idea. A player.
“I’d dated a few times, and the girls I usually went for were, uh, more experienced, older.”
There was the proof that teenage West would never have looked at teenage Flick. Mind you, when he was sixteen, she wouldn’t have even been in double digits.
“With Lana, I quickly learned I had to change my game. She was so quiet she barely even spoke to me the first few times I approached her. I finally managed to get her number. Alec warned me away from her. Said nothing good would come from getting involved with Lana, but, like an idiot, I ignored him. I thought nothing could come between us. I thought we were keeping it all quiet from her family, that they had no idea. Until he pulled me into his office.”
“Who? Alec?”
His gaze met hers. His reflective, full of regrets. “No, sunshine. Her father. Tony Marceras.”
She sucked in a breath. “Her father was the head of the family? The one who cut off Beau’s finger?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he want?” she asked.
“For me to work for the family. Told me how happy he was that Lana and I were together. He made it clear, though, he’d never let her marry someone who wasn’t in the family. Which I took to mean I had his approval to date Lana so long as I started to work for him. I was an idiot.”
“You were just a kid.”
He shook his head. “In our family, we never had a chance to be a kid. Well, except maybe for Tanner. He was still young when we got out of there. Alec is more like his father than brother. If it wasn’t for Alec, we wouldn’t
be alive. I pulled us all into a dangerous world.”
“Seems like your father did that when he got himself into gambling debt,” she countered.
“Yeah, he started the ball rolling, but I brought it all to a head. I started doing jobs for the family; they started small but gradually became bigger.”
“Like what?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Ain’t ever gonna tell you that, sunshine.”
Hurt filled her. Didn’t he trust her?
“It’s to keep you safe, baby. To keep us all safe. It’s also because I don’t want you to know about the terrible things I did. All in the name of the family. The reason I have a slight limp is because I got into a knife fight with a dealer from another gang, got infected, lost a lot of muscle. I did anything he asked, because I thought it was getting me close to Lana. He let her go on dates with me. Let me spend time with her. And I thought that was all worth it. Four years he strung me along. Four years I lived in the dark, doing things I detested, but all because I thought Lana would be my reward.”
“And Lana just let this all happen?” she asked hotly.
He blinked, stared at her for a moment, then he shook his head. “Baby, in this family, well, they’re not enlightened. Women don’t have a say. Lana, she had no power with her father. She had no way of stating her opinion. And, even if she had, she was scared of him. I needed to shelter her from him.”
So she’d just let him get pulled in deeper and deeper into the darkness? That didn’t sound like something you let happen to the man you loved. But, then again, they’d both been young, and who was she to judge? Look at her own life.
“Even if she’d wanted to speak up against him, I would never have allowed her to,” he said arrogantly.
She raised an eyebrow at that statement. Yikes, seemed like even teenage West had an abundance of egotism and bossiness.
“You guys never thought about leaving together? Running off?”
“It crossed my mind,” he said honestly. “But where would we go? Neither of us had much money and running would have meant new identities because he’d come after us for sure. And I’d seen firsthand what he did to those who betrayed him. I’m not sure Lana could have run, although in hindsight, maybe we should have tried.”
She heard the pain in his voice. She only knew a fraction of that pain. Sure, West was her one, but at least he was still there and alive. She couldn’t help but draw parallels between their situations. She knew what it was like to be stuck in a nightmare.
“I did anything that was asked of me, to be rewarded with time with Lana. And then he decided to give her to one of his enforcers.”
“What?” She asked. “Her own father gave her away? Gave her to somebody like she was chattel?”
“Exactly.” His face showed no expression, but she could see the pain living in his eyes. She couldn’t even imagine how a father could do that to his own daughter.
Much like how a brother can abuse his sister?
Okay, so maybe she knew a bit about fucked up family relations.
“What did she do? What did you do?”
“I lost it,” he told her. “I was so mad that I went after her father. Took three of his bodyguards to pin me down. He said he would ignore my attack on him that time, due to the extenuating circumstances, but if it ever happened again, I was a dead man and that I better understand that he owned me.”
“He said those words exactly? Extenuating circumstances?”
“Those words exactly.”
God, she couldn’t even imagine his pain. He’d gotten involved in all of that for her and her father just gave her to someone else. “And Lana?”
“I couldn’t get to her. Her new husband, his enforcer, had her safely tucked away in his house. He was a complete and utter prick. An asshole who beat her, raped her, and, ultimately, killed her.”
She gasped. “What?”
“He was sick in the head. She was his reward for years of service to the family. He didn’t see her as a person. He saw her as a thing. And he went too far. I doubt he meant to kill her. Even he couldn’t have been that stupid to know that Marceras would let him get away with killing his daughter.”
“Did Marceras know what he was like when he gave Lana to him?”
“Yes,” he said in a really quiet voice that prickled along her spine. “He knew.”
“Alec talked me into waiting. He told me he was working on something. I didn’t really want to listen, though. I was working on my own plan to get her back when I heard she’d been murdered by that bastard.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. He must have lost it. To know that Lana had been beaten, raped, and murdered. “Then what happened?”
“I went searching for the bastard who killed her. I was going to take him down. And I had no intention of coming out of it alive. Alec and the others were searching desperately for me; they had no idea where I was, they just knew I’d lost the plot. Unfortunately, Marceras killed that bastard before I could get to him.”
She let out a sigh of relief. Not that the man that killed Lana didn’t deserve to have West seek revenge on him, but because she didn’t want that on his soul.
“He was already dead by the time I found him, so I couldn’t get payback for Lana from him. But there was one other person at fault. One other person just as guilty for her death.”
She stared at him with wide eyes. “You went after Marceras again?”
How was he still alive? She couldn’t imagine one could go after someone like that and come out unscathed.
“This time I was smarter about it. He kept a mistress, and I knew where she lived. I took out his bodyguards who were outside, snuck my way inside, and took out the guards in there. He didn’t even see me coming. I slit his throat while he lay there in that bed. I didn’t touch the woman he was with. It was dark enough she didn’t see me. After I left, I walked around in a kind of stupor for a while. Didn’t really know where I was or what I was doing. I’m just lucky Alec found me when he did. Well, I didn’t feel lucky at the time. I just really wanted to die, to be with Lana.”
She winced. She couldn’t even guess his pain. “Oh, West. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you horrified? That I killed him?”
She thought maybe she should be. But Marceras hadn’t been a good man. “He cut off Beau’s finger. He forced Alec to work for him. Forced you to do the same. Would have done the same to Jaret next, I guess.”
He nodded. “He was already making moves on him.”
“He used you. Used Lana. Gave her away, like she was something he owned. And he gave her to someone who didn’t take care of her. Gave her away, when he knew how you felt about her. So, no, I don’t think I’m horrified. I think I would have done the same.”
To her surprise he smiled at her.
“You don’t think I’m capable of killing someone?”
He leaned in and lightly kissed her lips, shocking the breath out of her. “No, baby. I don’t think you are.”
“I could be,” she insisted. “I could do it if I had to.”
“Are we really arguing over whether or not you would be able to murder someone?”
She huffed out a breath. “I guess it’s a pretty stupid thing to argue about, right?”
He gave her a full-blown smile and warmth filled her belly. “Yeah, baby. That’s a pretty stupid thing to argue about.” His face grew serious. “And I hope you never have to find out whether you could do it or not. In fact, I’m going to make sure you never know.”
That sounded like a declaration, and she had to force herself not to read more into it than he meant. He was caught up in the memories. Of course he wouldn’t want anybody else to live through what he had.
“How did you get away? How did the cops not find you? How did the family not find you?”
“Remember how I said Alec was working on something? And he asked me for time? Time that it turns out Lana didn’t have.” She nodded her head
“Well, Marceras’
s son, Mateo, wasn’t happy with how he was running the family. Especially wasn’t happy with him giving away his baby sister to one of his enforcers. He and Alec were working in the background to have Mateo overtake Marceras. When I murdered the old man, it moved the timetable up. Mateo helped to set things up so it looked like a rival family killed his father. We disappeared.”
“Didn’t it look suspicious that you guys disappeared after he died?”
“I don’t know what Mateo told everyone, but he helped us all get new identities. Alec had been putting away a lot of money, and Mateo gave me even more. Alec bought this place.”
“Right. Hell of a payoff.”
West shrugged. “Mateo got what he wanted. We moved here. And we’ve lived here ever since. Never thought I’d ever end up on a ranch. What a learning curve that was for all of us.”
“But you like it?”
“Yeah. I do. My brothers drive me insane on a daily basis, but this place is ours. We’re under nobody’s rule but our own.”
Might explain how wild the younger Malone brothers could be.
“Your father?” she asked.
“He left. No idea where he is. Don’t care.”
He’d never done a thing to help any of his sons, to protect them from Marceras, so she wouldn’t lose any sleep worrying about him.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, West. To Lana.”
He gave her an intense look. “Happened years ago, but I always carry her with me. Wherever I go, there she is.”
“I get it,” she whispered. “It’s okay, I understand.”
“Do you?” He tilted his head. “Cause I haven’t really explained it all yet. What exactly do you get?”
“That she was your one.”
“My one?”
“The person for you. That perfect match. I get why you were so harsh with me the other night. I can be sort of persistent. You made your point. You loved her. You can’t love anyone else.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I figured you didn’t get it. I’ve carried Lana with me always, like a shield. She was a lesson. Never get involved. Never care. Because having someone you love ripped away from you hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It does.”
How West Was Won (Haven, Texas Book 7) Page 10
