“Too little, too late,” Cruz snarls, fists balled. He’s a hurricane, trapped in a bottle, his tattoos like a warning sign. “Let’s have that address.”
“Wait,” my father says. “I didn’t help you then, but let me help you now. If I give you that address and you storm that place, these guys who did this to you will go free. I could even see them finding a way to implicate you. But if I go to Bill Fossey and his cronies wearing a wire, warn them about you guys or something, get them to talk, that’s the one thing that can’t be explained away.”
I watch Stone’s eyes, the hard line of his lips. He gave up his bloodbath. He gave up instant vengeance for him and his guys. Instant freedom for the boys. But this is something, right? A way to get proof.
The guys are exchanging glances, seeming to communicate with just that. I suppose being trapped together for years will give you that.
Do they realize what my father is giving up? If he turns on his own kind, his livelihood is gone. It’s not much compared to what Stone and his guys lost, of course. But it’s a sacrifice from a man who’s poured everything into his work.
“How do you know that’ll even work?” Stone asks. “The man’s a judge. A friend and ally to every officer on the FCPD. You think they’ll want to bring him down?”
“The honest ones will,” Dad says. “Rivera will.”
“How do we know Rivera’s honest?”
Dad watches him, eyes bleak. “You’ve got to give me some credit here…” He trails off. “I’m more careful now. You’re gonna have to trust me. And…they’re children.”
Stone stills, seems to contain himself with great effort.
He and his guys were children, too.
Everyone watches him.
Stone turns his gaze to me. It’s a silent question—do I believe my father? Do I think Rivera’s one of the good guys? I told him he has to trust somebody sometime. He’s trusting me.
“I think Rivera’s a good cop,” I say. “He’ll want to do the right thing.”
Stone’s still not convinced. “So what? We wait for you to meet with these assholes? For Rivera to get a search warrant? And who does he get it from? One of Fossey’s bench buddies?”
“You want them put away?” my dad asks. “This is how it happens.”
“I don’t like those boys in there one second longer than they have to be,” Knox growls. “You seriously considering leaving it up to rich white guys to punish each other?”
Stone looks around at the guys. “How many people went through that place when we were there? Hundreds?”
I feel sick. I can’t look at my father now. I won’t.
Stone’s next words are low and hard. “We could get them all. All their names. All the names of the men visiting that strip mall. So they can’t victimize anyone again.”
My heart swells. Justice instead of vengeance. Preventing future crimes instead of retaliating. It feels huge.
“What about when Fossey makes his plea bargain?” Grayson barks. “What if he gets away with it? What if he builds up a new fucking organization and does it again?”
“We’ll kill him ourselves, then,” Stone says. Like that’s obvious. “Slow.”
Okay, but it’s still a step. A big one.
Knox doesn’t look convinced. “What did the system ever do for us?”
“Nothing,” Stone says, getting in his face. “Will a killing spree fix it?”
Knox looks away.
“We could bring down half of the city,” Abby says. “Half the elites, anyway. I agree. This is important. This is better.”
Better than killing my father. Better than vengeance.
There’s a tense silence. Knox is the first to nod.
Cruz nods. The others agree in grunts and head gestures.
Stone goes over and nudges my father with his foot. “The address.”
“No reason you can’t get something for yourselves,” my dad says. “I understand you’re all in some degree of trouble.” He’s looking at Stone and Grayson, but it’s all of them. He must know that. “I want to see you get some kind of immunity for helping to put these guys away. I’ll go to bat for you. Rivera, too.”
They just stare at him, wary. Has anybody ever gone to bat for them?
“The address,” Stone says. “Give it up. Now.”
Dad doesn’t have the address memorized, but he gives Stone the name and the cross streets.
Stone sends Grayson and a few other guys to watch it, to make sure the boys don’t get moved. “And you see anyone driving up to visit? You got my permission to abduct them and beat the shit out of them. Just don’t tip anyone off. Good chance to practice those stealth skills.”
The guys move out.
He makes my father call Rivera after that—on speaker—to set up a meet. Dad insists they meet tonight. As soon as possible.
Tonight. It seems like forever since I got that text message in class, but it’s only just past dinnertime.
Mom’ll be there, waiting, probably sitting alone at the dining room table. It’ll be perfectly set, salad forks exactly one-eighth of an inch to the left of the dinner forks. The roast in a covered pan, ready for serving on the elaborately carved warmer that I bought her last Christmas.
The salad will be tossed, a bright green against the festive blue tablecloth she bought in town. She’ll be wondering where we are, why we’re not answering our phones. Staring at hers. Worried out of her mind.
I swallow hard. What will she do when she learns the truth about Innkeeper?
Rivera agrees to a meet at the Old Steer Steakhouse.
Stone orders the blond—Calder—to go along with Dad. Apparently Calder isn’t known to the authorities like the rest of Stone’s guys are. Calder grabs my father’s arm and practically drags my father out, allowing him to slow just long enough to give me one last backward glance. Grief. Worry.
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
“Get him the fuck out,” Stone grates.
They disappear, leaving the two of us alone.
Without warning, Stone spins around and punches the wall.
I jolt to attention. The speed and violence of the act shocks me. Was that what he was bottling up? Is that what he had in store for my father?
Dust suffuses the air. When it clears, there are exposed beams where drywall had been.
He stares at the ruined wall, trembling with fury, not looking at me. “I wanted to kill him,” he whispers.
The barely leashed violence. Both power and terrible pain.
“But you didn’t kill him.”
He says nothing. I can’t see his face, but I feel him like I never felt anybody. I go to him. I wrap my arms around him from the back and hold him.
His breath is ragged, and I think I’ve never met anybody stronger. This beautiful, brave, desperately wounded man struggling to do the right thing—and succeeding.
Men with every opportunity in the world did the wrong things to him over and over. Men who should have been helping a kid like him.
And here, he did the right thing.
Putting this situation in the hands of the law. More or less. My heart swells with so much love, I don’t think my body can contain it.
Chapter 28
Stone
My hand blazes with pain. Did I fracture it? I kind of hope I did. I need something to balance out the churning hell in my mind.
I can’t believe I let him go. But with Brooke’s hopeful eyes on me, it’s all I could do. It’s more than just the fact that he’s her father. She watched me kill someone the first night we met. I can’t do that to her again.
I feel her behind me. She shouldn’t even be near me right now. There’s too much violence inside me still. All of it unspent. I may have spared his life, but that doesn’t make me a good man.
She moves nearer. I’m not fit for her right now.
And my mind is still reeling with doubt. What if they get away with it? They’ve gotten away with it for years; why should things ch
ange now? What if the dirty cops just kill her old man? What if they send in a SWAT team and move the boys?
“You did it.”
“I should’ve gone with the guys. To sit on that place.”
“Having an army there will alert somebody. You’re here. Ready to make decisions. Thinking things through. Being the leader they need.”
I know she’s right.
“My father wants to help—whatever you say about him, he’s tenacious when he sets his mind to something. Rivera is one of the good guys. This will work, Stone.”
I think about what she said, how I need to trust somebody sometime. It’s hard.
“You and your guys aren’t alone.”
Something strange happens. There’s heat in my eyes. Pinpricks. What’s happening? Then I realize the pinpricks are tears. Am I crying? I’m more shocked than ashamed. When’s the last time I cried? Not ever. Not even in that basement. It’s because she’s right. So right I’m fucked up over it. So right I’m shaking like a motherfucker deep down inside.
Maybe I just don’t know how to feel okay. Maybe that’s what they took away from me.
Her cool hand settles onto my shoulder. “You blow me away,” she whispers.
I shut my eyes, not sure what she means. Not sure I want to know.
“You blow me away, Stone.” Her fingers close around my shoulder. Her touch is sweet. Cool beyond imagining. “I love you so much.”
A breath I didn’t know I was holding gusts out of me. She’s the rain, soothing the fire in me, washing the rage.
Before I can stop myself, I spin around and grab her small frame. I push her up against the wall and devour her mouth—mercilessly, hungrily.
I’m a starving man, and Brooke is the only food for me. The only nourishment in all of time, in all the universe.
I can feel her hands pulling at my shirt, busy and frantic, like she needs this as much as I do. It makes my heart swell up as huge as my cock.
She’s a wild thing against me, but small enough that I can hold her in both hands. I cup her face, tasting her lips. She’s trying for my fly and not really getting it. I don’t care. The feel of her fingertips grazing my steely dick is pure madness.
Her breath is soft and rhythmic in my ear. I kiss her cheek. I pin her to the wall and glide my teeth along her jaw line. I taste her neck, giving her a hard suck, marking her as mine. She cries out, but I keep on. I suck and pull at her neck as I yank up her schoolgirl skirt.
My hands rip at her panties. Find her soaked. I groan and release her neck. “You’re so fucking wet for me.”
She’s panting, watching my eyes.
Just that.
I love the way she watches my eyes. The sweetness of her trust. The bravery of her love. I grip her hair. I tilt her head back so she has to look at me. “I only ever want you to look at me.”
“Only you,” she says, panting. “Don’t stop.”
“I can’t be sweet like last time,” I say. “I can’t be gentle. I need you too much.”
“Fuck me,” she says. “That’s all you need to know. Fuck me. Now. Please,” she adds.
It’s the please that kills me. My perfect little bird, panting against the wall with her schoolgirl skirt around her waist, asking me please.
Like a madman, I’m tearing off my pants. They end up across the room with my shirt.
I grip her bare thigh and pull up her leg. I open her to me like a flower.
I press my chest against hers, heart pounding right into her tits through that schoolgirl shirt. The way her eyes are, I know she feels it. Then I guide myself into her and drive home. The tight silken warmth surrounds me.
She’s so tight and so ready, I nearly lose it. I begin to thrust, fucking her deep and hard.
“Yes, Stone,” she says, fingers squeezing my ass to pull me closer.
“Omigod omigod,” she moans.
I come out of my haze enough to slow. “You need me to stop?”
“It feels so good,” she says.
“So good,” I say, sliding a knuckle over her cheek, just hanging out inside her, feeling the way her muscles move and clench around me.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at how beautiful you are. I can’t believe I’m inside you right now.”
“You’ll always be inside me.”
I kiss her again. Gently this time. I slide my hands under her hips, urge her up. “Wrap your legs around me, baby.”
She complies. I lift her and walk her to the bed, kissing the fuck out of her pretty face, staying hard as rock inside her. I yank away the blanket and settle us down on the soft sheets.
“Stone,” she says, looking up at me. Her dark hair is splayed out over my pillow, calm waves on either side of her.
“I’m here, little bird.”
I climb over her. I fuck her slow and sweet and easy. Not like she’s a piece of food about to be taken away, but like the woman I love. The woman who loves me.
I can’t trust a lot, but I can trust that. I can start with that.
Chapter 29
Stone
Two days later
The decision to keep Brooke’s old man alive and work with a cop and all that might’ve been easy for a better man than me. A no-brainer. Kids rescued. Faith in the system. No more violence. Brooke happy.
I’m not that man.
It took every ounce of restraint I had not to let loose on her father. It took everything in me not to drive over to that strip mall at top speed, get those kids out, and drive my fist into the men’s faces over and over and over again—enough so that there would be no faces left to pound. It would’ve felt amazing. I’d promised my guys vengeance. I wanted it, too.
I’m their leader, though. I got them out of that shithole, and somewhere deep down in my miserable self, I knew this was the way forward. So I held off. Buttoned down all my darkness.
Wasn’t easy, but I didn’t let my guys know that. They needed to see one hundred percent confidence. They needed to believe. And they did. They followed me, even in this.
It took almost twenty-four hours for Brooke’s dad to get that meeting with Uncle Bill Fossey. He called him up, told him there was trouble, and Fossey couldn’t get away until the next day.
Whatever Fossey said on that wire that Brooke’s dad wore, it was enough to get a search warrant…three hours later. So that was twenty-seven long hours of my guys looking at me sideways, all of us knowing those kids were down there, miserable. And we weren’t doing a damn thing to help them, aside from making sure visitors weren’t arriving.
Rivera actually helped with that—he had a utility crew and a police cruiser set up at the place across the alley, making it look like an issue with that warehouse there. The official presence scared the lowlifes off and served as an excuse for why the ones my guys intercepted never showed.
Those were long fucking hours, though. But sometimes when I really got silent and clear inside myself, I could feel it was right, deep down. And when I’d look into Brooke’s eyes, I could find it there, too. I could be better for her.
We cooked pasta while we waited. Knox and Cruz tried to get her into playing Destiny 2, their latest video game addiction, but mostly we stayed in bed, Brooke and I.
I thought about Nate a lot. When we were first out of that basement, I didn’t understand why he went the way he did, working toward his vet degree and healing animals instead of making guys pay. We’d give him so much shit for playing the game. But now when I look at him, I think he got himself free in a way we didn’t.
Brooke once said I was still down in that basement, that I never left. Maybe she was onto something.
Not that I plan on strapping on a necktie anytime soon—or ever—but maybe I don’t need to go killing everyone I hate. Baby steps.
Brooke’s dad managed to persuade Fossey to reconvene the old gang at some club in East Franklin they all belong to. A place where they all feel safe and in control.
Brooke’s dad gave Fossey some
bullshit story Rivera cooked up that there’s some guy peddling information on Grayson and the prison break—shit that could get us all locked up.
So that’s where the takedown will happen. Rivera wanted us to steer clear of that entire part of the city.
Yeah right.
We really wanted to be there when those kids got pulled out, but Rivera talked us out of it. He promised we could see them, but the social workers have some special protocol that’s best for the boys. Something better than a bloodbath and a blazing inferno. Who knew.
We arrive on the street where the fancy club is well before showtime. We might not be pounding their faces in, but this takedown is ours.
“It’ll be that door,” Cruz says, pointing out the unmarked cars up and down the street. Because he knows how cops arrange things.
We hang back in the shadows, in the service entrance to a grand event center across the oak-lined street from the ornate stone and marble historic landmark.
The seven of us waiting together, just like old times, along with Brooke and Abby. This is their day, too.
Brooke is right by my side, like the strong ally that she is.
Calder is on my other side, stoic and silent, bright hair concealed in a dark cap, unmoving as a statue, eyeing the entrance to the exclusive club. Knox has his phone out, checking it over and over like it’s part of his brain, which it is. Nate leans against the wall, hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes on the pigeons jockeying for perches at the top of the three-story building. Grayson and Ryland sit on the stoop, the least happy about this wait-and-see shit. Abby is right next to Grayson. She pulls out a paper bag.
“That better not be popcorn,” Grayson says.
“It’s fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies,” Abby says. “You gonna tell me you don’t want cookies for this?”
We all do, it turns out. Leave it to Abby to lighten the mood, but there are things to celebrate beyond the guys getting caught.
Rivera got a lead on the real cop killer from whatever Fossey told Brooke’s dad—he’s all but promised Grayson’s conviction will be overturned and charges from the escape vacated. We’re all getting clean slates. That’ll be the deal for our testimony.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 108
