by Maria Luis
“Up we go,” Jerk muttered, giving me another push when we reached the base of the steps. “Don’t even think about getting frisky.”
The wood grated the soles of my bruised feet, and I bit back a curse when a jagged splinter cut just below my big toe. Hissing, I sucked in a quick breath and shoved past the pain. If I couldn’t hear Asher, then that had to mean he was dealing with more than just a wounded foot—at that thought, the rage in my system burned hotter.
It wasn’t until my eyes registered the figure sitting at the table in the brightly lit, one-room shack that I blinked and then blinked again, just for good measure. Maybe Big Hampton had accidentally knocked me over the head without me realizing it because there was no way I could be seeing who I thought I was.
Nat sat at the table.
My Nat.
My friend Nat.
Betrayal struck me straight in the heart, savage like an unexpected blade to the chest when you were expecting a hug. If she was here . . . if Joshua Hampton knew who I really was, then that could only mean . . . I swallowed the hurt—the lies that Nat had fed me all these years as she sat at my table in Jackson Square.
Somehow, she’d found me out. Deduced the truth. Kept my secret until it suited her to spill the tea and throw me to the wolves.
“How long have you known?” I didn’t bother getting more specific. From the way her gaze flicked over my body to my shoeless feet, she knew exactly what I’d gone through tonight . . . and I had the sneaking suspicion that she’d been part of its orchestration.
“Long enough,” she answered in that maybe-French-maybe-not lilt of hers. Her lips pursed. “Your feet look horrible.”
That was what she had to say? Seriously?
Back stiff, I snapped, “I didn’t have the luxury of keeping my shoes on when someone was trying to kill me.”
“Not you, cherie. You were never meant to be in any harm.”
I blatantly looked down at my cuffed wrists, lifting them up as though to say, “Stop with the bullshit.”
Nat tilted her head, one shoulder lifting in a delicate shrug. She was still dressed in her gown from earlier in the evening. Still looked just as elegant, as though she weren’t sitting in a shack in the middle-of-no-where-Louisiana. “Inconvenient, of course. I do hope you’ll understand why we’ll need you to leave them on.”
A startling thud echoed in the room. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I spun around—or as far as I could go with the jerk still holding me in place.
My heart dropped clear to my feet, my stomach roiling at the sight of Asher.
His fists were cuffed like mine, although his were locked behind his back. But his face . . . Bile rose in my throat, threatening to put on a performance for everyone to see, as I absorbed the horrid sight of him. The half-closed right eye, already purpling from what had to have been a fist. The blood trickling from his nose, a single droplet glistening on his bottom lip. His scars, already tinged a faint pink, were a brilliant red as though he’d been roughly shoved up against something—and held there with force.
I wasn’t even aware of darting forward, of my voice splitting the quiet of the room, until arms banded around my chest and yanked me backward, toppling me into a chair. Hands pressed down on my shoulders, limiting my movement, as a thick cord of rope wrapped around my ankles, tying them together.
“Shut her up,” Hampton said, entering the room in my periphery and moving to stand at Nat’s side. “I don’t want to hear a single word from her.”
When a palm closed over my mouth, I bit down on the calloused flesh without regret.
“Fuck!” my jailer shouted, just as Asher surged forward, my name on his lips: “Avery.”
He didn’t get far.
I watched in horror as a fist from one of the men collided with his stomach, and he folded at the hips, dropping to his knees as he coughed harshly, hands still linked together behind his back.
My gaze went to Nat, tied feet twisting on the floor as I squirmed in my chair. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She didn’t look away, simply returned my stare. Calmly. Easily. Like this was the norm for her. “I wish you hadn’t come to Whiskey Bay tonight,” she said. “You weren’t supposed to be involved in any of this.” She tipped back her head when Hampton shockingly slid a hand over her hair.
Holy crap.
Were the two of them together?
I stared at Hampton’s hand, at the way he smoothed her hair, tucking the strands behind one ear in a typically sweet gesture. She reached up to grasp his wrist and tug his hand down to rest over her collarbone, where she played with his fingers.
Pershing’s president met my gaze, startling me with the lack of warmth in his expression. “You’ll have to excuse my behavior, Laurel. It wasn’t my intention to frighten you.”
There he went Laurel-ing me again, without even dropping a hint as to how he knew my identity. Everything in me tightened, especially when Nat gave a short nod, like she was pleased with Hampton’s half-assed apology.
I wasn’t pleased by it, and one glance at Asher told me that he wouldn’t be pleased by it even two centuries from now.
“You’re worried about him,” Hampton murmured, returning to stroking Nat’s hair like she was some sort of precious pet. He jerked his chin in Asher’s direction. “It’s sweet of you, of course, Laurel, but I wouldn’t stress. Your sergeant has been through so much worse.”
Worse than being pummeled while handcuffed?
A beat later, Hampton tacked on, “Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”
Asher swayed on his knees, his bruised eye swelling rapidly as he blinked his good one in the president’s direction. His full mouth twisted in a sneer. “Fuck you.”
Hampton’s ridiculous hair-stroking paused, his hand suspended mid-air. “He’s as crude as you warned me.”
Nat’s eyes turned to slits. “Some things never change.”
Through a rough laugh, Asher drawled, “Screwing your husband’s competition is definitely a new change. Ambideaux have any idea that you’re taking it up the ass from enemy number one?”
“Ex-husband,” Nat snapped, practically vibrating in her seat with fury. The part of me which considered her a friend wanted to shout at Asher to watch his language; the part of me which felt betrayed by her deception silently urged him to keep going. “Don’t be mistaken—Jason and I haven’t been on speaking terms for years now.”
Hampton cleared his throat. “In actuality, that’s the reason you’re here, Sergeant.”
“To listen to y’all’s bullshit?” Asher straightened his shoulders as much as he could with the cuffs, and my heart squeezed at seeing him—a strong, independent man—struggle to keep his balance. “Fuck no,” he growled, “I’m gonna take a hard pass.”
“Will you, really?” Stepping away from Nat’s side, Hampton closed the space between him and Asher. The president didn’t kneel to Asher’s level, nor did he crouch down, but he did stand less than a foot way. The close proximity forced Asher’s head up in order to maintain eye contact.
He’s in so much pain.
To the outside observer, they’d never notice . . . but I could. I could see it all: his shoulders flexing from his restrained position, the uneven way his chest lifted and fell, the slight pinch to his brow. The way it took all of his strength to climb to one foot, with no use of his hands, and then to the other, his chest muscles flexing under his shirt as he rose to his full height and moved toward Hampton.
He towered over Pershing’s president, imposing and brutally beautiful.
Hampton visibly stiffened.
In a low voice, Asher spoke. “This shit ends now. I’m done playing games.”
The entire room descended into silence, and it struck me then that when Hampton had quipped that Asher had dealt with worse in his past . . . perhaps he’d meant that Asher had personally dealt out worse. It would explain all of the guns trained on him, like they expected some savage to pop up in his pla
ce at any moment. And it would explain why no one said a word when he slowly limped to a man standing by the door.
Not a soul moved. Not a soul breathed.
“Take out your gun.”
3
Avery
Even I startled at the deathly quiet way Asher uttered the words, my bare heels digging into the floor, my back shooting straight.
The man’s eyes volleyed from Asher to Hampton and back again, a look of frenzy in his expression. “I-I—”
“I said”—Asher stepped closer, invading the man’s personal space until his back collided with the wall behind him—“take out your gun.” I couldn’t see Asher’s face from my position, but there was no mistaking the way his head ducked down as if he’d run his gaze over the man and found him lacking.
“Mr. Hampton,” the man edged out weakly, “I—”
My gaze fixed on Hampton, who clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “Do what he says, Charles. The sergeant clearly wants to make a point.”
With awkwardness and a visible tremor, Charles fumbled with the gun at his hip. The distinct scent of urine saturated the air, and it sure as hell didn’t belong to me.
The man had pissed himself.
His legs shifted from a squared-off stance to squeeze together, and the misery on his face said it all. Embarrassment cloaked him like a second skin as he clutched the gun in his hand, his gaze bouncing everywhere but never landing on the man directly before him.
Asher would not be ignored.
He knocked the man’s wrists with his bound right arm, and the guy was so on edge that he nearly let the gun drop to the floor. Scrambling, he reassumed his position, gulping audibly.
Turning around to face the room, Asher rasped, “Put the gun to my head.”
Wait. What?
Was he absolutely insane?
My ass came off the seat in an instant, and I managed one step before remembering that my ankles were tied together. My elbows broke my fall.
As did my chin.
Teeth crashing together painfully, vision swirling, I lifted my face to see Asher staring at me, his expression tight. His one good eye narrowed with concern, his lips pulling thin, and then he seemed to come to a decision in his head.
He wrenched his gaze from me just as masculine hands went to the back of my dress and hauled me off the floor. It was a miracle the damn material didn’t rip in half, and God knew how many people had just seen my naked crotch.
If I came out of this alive, I really needed to stop for new underwear.
Walmart would do.
Walgreens would do.
Anywhere would do.
“I’m not getting any younger,” Asher barked like a drill sergeant, and the gun he was so desperate to have aimed at his head lifted up, up, up until the mouth was in place, and every single person in the room took a collective inhale, all at once.
Except for Pershing’s president.
Haint-blue eyes homed in on Hampton. “I’m giving you one chance for this. You pissed I decked your precious kid? You ticked off that I’m a crude motherfucker?” He stepped back into that gun like a man without fear, and that icy feeling returned to my skin, raising the hair on my arms. “I’ve giving you one chance. You skip it? The next time you even try to come after me, I will snap your neck before your next breath.”
He paused, the silence lengthening, and then added, “But maybe you’re trying to prove that you can play with the big boys—and we both know that you don’t have the balls to kill someone, Hampton. You’ll rough them up, hold them at gunpoint, but at the end of the day, you’re still that rich asshole sitting in your perfect mansion behind twenty-foot walls with twenty-four-seven security ensuring no one disturbs a blade of grass on your damn lawn. But, hey, maybe for the first time in my life, I’m wrong. Maybe you’ll follow through.” Asher’s bloodied lips lifted in a smile that would send children scurrying for their mothers. Hell, it made me want to scurry away. “Tell him to shoot.”
My mouth fell open.
He. Was. Insane.
There was only one reason why he’d do something so asinine as to tell someone to shoot him. And where the hell did that leave me?
Dead. That’s what.
If we lived, there was a good chance I’d bust his other eye—just for giving me a heart attack. The bastard deserved it. One-hundred percent.
Hampton’s expression tightened, hands balling into fists at his sides as he glanced over his shoulder at Nat.
Nat, who’d tricked me into this mess.
Nat, who’d lied to me for years when she’d known all along that I was Laurel Peyton.
If given the chance, I’d bust her eye, too.
The metal handcuffs chafed my wrists, and I settled down, temporarily resigned to my restraints.
“Make up your mind,” Asher clipped out.
Hampton slammed his eyes shut. Then, “Take the cuffs off him.”
“Surprise, surprise.” Not even relief or smugness registered on Asher’s face. Like he was completely composed of marble, he nodded stonily in my direction. “Avery first. Now.”
The jerk who’d cuffed me earlier moved before me, unlocking the handcuffs, untying my feet. My limbs, already accustomed to the constraints, felt heavy, my toes numb. I wriggled them, but I might as well have been watching someone else’s appendages move because I couldn’t feel a thing.
Hampton spoke up. “I brought you here because I have a proposition for you, Sergeant.”
“Then you should have called me like a normal fucking human, instead of playing the Hollywood villain and staging an abduction.” Asher sneered, rubbing his wrists after they were freed. “Give me my guns and my damn car keys.”
Pershing’s president dipped his chin, and someone off to his right scurried forward with the goods.
“We have a common enemy between us, Sergeant,” Hampton said, trying to get Asher’s attention when he stepped forward, into Lincoln’s line of sight. “Your father . . . he has something that I want.”
Asher’s father.
My ears perked up, and I shifted forward, biting back a howl of pain when my poor feet scraped along the floor. Asher’s eyes flicked to me again, went to my feet, and then he immediately crossed the distance between us.
His arm went around my waist, and he hoisted me close to his side.
His familiar scent felt like safety, but I couldn’t . . . God, it was weird. So weird. We shared no blood, and I waited for disgust to sit low in my belly. I waited, and yet it never arrived. My fingers clutched the back of his shirt, holding onto the fabric for stability.
When Asher spoke, I felt his chest reverberate against my cheek. “I don’t give a fuck what you want. You don’t own me. You don’t get a say in what jobs I take on. You are nothing.”
A hard light entered Hampton’s dark eyes. “Perhaps I’m nothing, but is she?” He indicated to me with a casual tilt of his chin. “It seems imperative to note that our lovely mayor fully believes Laurel is dead. Clearly, he went so far as to bury the poor girl before the masses when she’s standing before me now, breathing, alive.” Mouth curving in a sinister grin, he added, “But a single word from me will change all that. I, for one, would love to see his reaction to her miraculous return from the dead. So, let me repeat my question to you, Sergeant. I might be nothing to you . . . but is she?”
Asher’s arm tightened around my waist, which may as well have been a hand around my lungs, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until they burst with a climactic pop! My vision blurred at Hampton’s words.
I was the pawn.
Since that day twelve years ago, I had run my life as the queen of the chessboard. I directed the ship. I operated everything from behind-the-scenes.
In the span of a breath, Hampton’s words had demoted me so swiftly I feared suffering whiplash.
I opened my mouth, fully prepared to take control of my fate.
There was no opportunity to do so.
“Take your threat and s
hove it up your ass, Hampton,” came Asher’s gruff reply.
His arms swept me forward, directing me toward the front door of the shack. I jerked to look back at Nat, at Hampton, at my fate dangling on the precipice. Pity lined Nat’s pretty features. There was nothing but resolute hatred in Hampton’s.
“No,” I whispered, “no, I—”
Asher’s heat left me, and I whipped around just in time to see him grip the man who’d pissed himself by the throat and shove his face into the wall. There was a crunching sound—the wall or the man’s bones splintering upon impact, I didn’t know—and then Asher was leaning in, his hold so tight that Charles’s face began to purple from lack of oxygen.
My hands went to my mouth, holding in my gasp.
“You ever throw another fist at me like you did earlier tonight,” Asher said, voice deathly low, “and I will end you.” His knuckles whitened as his grip tightened. “Understand me?”
“Lincoln.”
That was me. My horrified whisper. My rapidly beating heart. My unrelenting fear.
His lips thinned at my tone, and then he brutally tossed the man to the floor, where he curled in a fetal position, his hands at his throat as he gasped for air.
“Let’s go,” Asher muttered, hands reaching for me.
I stepped back.
I didn’t want his hands on me.
I didn’t want him touching me.
He was—he was . . . I looked at Charles with the imprint of Asher’s hand around his neck, and this time when the bile rose, it had nothing to do with my stepfather or his lies and everything to do with the monster masquerading as a man before me.
In the end, my feet stole the fight from me.
They wobbled under my full weight, burned with an intensity from the scratches and cuts that scored the soles.
Asher’s arms swooped below my butt, hauling me into his arms, bridal-style, as he strode from the shack.
Cop.
Devil.
It didn’t matter what you called him—in the end, Lincoln Asher carried me all the way back to the SUV, his rugged face bruised and bleeding, his limp shortening his usual long-gaited stride.
