by Lara Adrian
“I can’t ever come back here again. Neither can any of the kids who lived here.”
He nodded, turning a solemn look on her. “You don’t have to. None of you do. There’s plenty of room for everyone out at the ranch.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. We’ll find a way to make it work.”
Her heart leapt inside her rib cage. She tried to reach him for a hug, but her seatbelt restrained her. “Shit.” Laughing in spite of her tears, she popped the buckle and threw her arms around him, peppering his face with grateful kisses.
He bent his head to hers, a smile playing at the edges of his sensual mouth. “Maybe I should pull over if you’re going to do that.”
She was so swept up in the moment that the sudden ringing of her phone in her back pocket took a second to register.
Michael’s ringtone again, only this time it hit her senses like a hammer on glass.
“Oh, my God.”
Asher’s face darkened even as his eyes lit up with fire. He veered over to the curb and put the truck in park. “If it’s Slater, let me handle it.”
But she already had the phone at her ear. “Hello.”
“You disappoint me, Narumi.” Slater’s voice sliced through her. “I would’ve thought my message today was clear enough. And yet you still haven’t brought my money.”
“I told you, I don’t have it. I have some, but—”
“All of it,” he cut in sharply. “That was my demand.”
Asher’s eyes blazed as he listened next to Naomi. If Slater were in arm’s reach, Naomi had no doubt that Asher would already have torn the man’s throat out with his bare hands.
“Why do you insist on making me hurt you, Narumi? Do you remember what I said? If you don’t give me back the money, I’ll be forced to take something else you care about.”
She didn’t want to guess what that might be. He’d already ripped out her heart today. What more could he do?
“I can give you what I have. Eighty-seven-thousand dollars. The rest of it—”
“Every. Fucking. Penny,” Slater said. Then he started to laugh. A maniacal sound that chilled her veins. “Every penny of mine in exchange for yours, Narumi.”
Her breath caught. “What?”
In the background, she heard commotion followed by a young girl sobbing hysterically.
“Bring her here,” Slater ordered.
The cries got louder as the girl came closer to the phone. She sniffled and choked on her tears. “N-Naomi?”
“Oh, my God.” Penny’s jagged, fear-filled sobs shredded her. “Penny, don’t worry. We’re not going to let anything happ—”
The sound of a hand striking a tender cheek split the air on the other end of the line. Penny shrieked, then started bawling, begging Naomi to help her.
“Bring the money. All of it,” Slater snarled. “Or sweet little Penny here is going to have a terrible accident too. Unless I decide to take my debt out of her flesh.”
CHAPTER 24
“Holy shit! I just won a thousand dollars!”
“Jackpot! Oh, my God!”
“Twenty-five-hundred bucks! I can’t believe it!”
Asher strolled about twenty paces behind Naomi as she made her way through the large pit of slot machines at Casino Moda. As she walked, she casually traced her fingers over every machine she passed, lingering just long enough to finesse the mechanism inside into hitting a payout on every spin of the wheel.
The din of excited voices in the casino grew like a swelling tsunami in her wake, along with the nearly deafening sounds of the whirring, chiming, dinging machines as they vomited out thousands upon thousands of Leo Slater’s profits.
It didn’t take long for the shouts and cheers of the twenty, thirty, fifty and more winners to incite a stampede of new players to elbow their way in for a chance at the money that seemed to be flowing nonstop from the slot pits. People on the street began pouring into Moda now, too, as word got out that something unusual was happening inside.
“Cash grab!” someone shouted. “Cash grab in the slots!”
Asher couldn’t help marveling at Naomi’s steely resolve as she set off pandemonium right under Slater’s nose.
The plan to go on the offense had been hers. Instead of dissolving into paralyzed hopelessness at the threat he’d issued a few minutes ago, the news that he was holding Penny hostage had galvanized Naomi.
“No amount of money’s ever going to satisfy him,” she’d told Asher in the truck as they considered their few options. “Even if I had the one-point-three million plus the two-hundred grand I owe him, he’s not going to let me walk away. Now, he won’t let Penny walk away, either. This isn’t going to end unless I end it.”
She was right, Asher had no doubt.
So, she’d returned to Slater’s domain like a warrior on the march. Utterly courageous, armed with her spine made of iron and the power of her unique Breedmate gift.
And him.
Asher stayed out of the line of sight of the casino’s various eyes in the sky. His best means of helping her at the moment was the element of surprise. For now, this was her show, and he’d never been prouder of anyone in his life.
As the uproar grew, the pit bosses all convened in the middle of the casino, five guys in black vests and white dress shirts standing around with their dicks in their hands and shrugging in useless confusion.
When the chaos had reached a fever pitch, Naomi glanced at Asher. He gave her a nod and moved in close enough to listen as she took out her phone and dialed Michael’s number.
It took Slater a moment to answer, and when he did, it was in the midst of apoplectic distraction.
“—And tell Thompson to get his ass up here with some answers and I mean now! What the fuck do I pay you people for? Narumi,” he snarled. “You’d better be calling to tell me you have my fucking money.”
“Yeah, I’ve got your money. I’ve got my hands on every last dime in your casino, Slater. And unless you let Penny go in the next two seconds, I’m going to drain every slot machine and roulette wheel in the place.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“This.” She held the phone out for a moment and let him hear the feeding frenzy under way on his casino floor. “Let Penny go, or this is only the beginning.”
“I’ll kill the bitch first,” he hissed. “Then I’ll come for you.”
“Wrong answer.” Naomi’s voice was steady, cool control.
Asher smiled as he watched his incredible woman stroll along another row of machines in the pit, touching each one, setting off jackpot chimes and sirens while Slater listened. The crowd of people scrambling to get to the money closed in like a hive full of bees, swarming the machines and shrieking with greedy excitement.
Naomi glanced at Asher, nothing but steel in her gaze. “I want Penny,” she demanded of Slater. “Send her down. Right now.”
“You’re gonna pay for this, you fucking little cunt.”
“You first,” she said, emptying the half-dozen machines beside her as she spoke. “Let Penny go.”
“Somebody, go get that damn kid!” he shouted, his voice shrill over the receiver. When Slater came back to talk to Naomi, he was panting with rage. “Nobody threatens me. Nobody steals from me. You understand? You’re dead, bitch. You’re fucking dead!”
Naomi barely blinked at the threat. She hung up on him and turned to Asher. “Do you think this is going to work?”
He reached out and palmed her cheek. “You just did the hardest part. You’re fucking amazing, you know that?”
She gave him an anxious look, the first he’d seen her falter tonight. “I just want Penny safe.”
“We’re not leaving without her.” He glanced up, his head and shoulders towering over most of the buzzing crowd. “We’ve got company on the way.”
The group of pit bosses finally clued in on the source of the disruption. A couple of them touched their wireless earpieces and blanched, no doubt on the receiving en
d of Slater’s tirade. All five men started jogging toward them.
“Go,” he told Naomi. “Stay low. I’ll handle these dumbfucks.”
The men split up, three sprinting toward Asher while two others fanned out to cover the perimeter of the clot of shouting, screaming, shoving casino patrons. Naomi disappeared into the throng, her petite size and sleek agility aiding her in hiding in plain sight.
Asher swiveled his head in the direction of the oncoming casino managers. A simple flash of his fangs convinced one of the men to turn tail and run in the opposite direction, but the other pair kept barreling toward him.
He charged at them too, grabbing their lowered heads in his hands and skull-smashing them unconscious. He had more trouble on the way. Slater’s security detail had decided to join the party now.
Half a dozen men moved in from other parts of the casino to look for him. One cowboy already had his service pistol in hand, brandishing it as he charged for Asher. Bad move. Asher was in motion before the human even knew what hit him, tossing the guard halfway across the floor.
Another trigger-happy rent-a-cop fired his weapon over the teeming swarm of casino patrons and suddenly the excited squeals and cheers turned into a panicked stampede.
As the crowd screamed and dove for cover, the other security men opened fire. Shots rang out from multiple directions, a few of them hitting their mark. Asher didn’t feel the bite of the multiple rounds that slammed into him. His attention was focused completely on something else.
Across the large casino, the glass elevator descended to the lobby. Inside stood Slater, short and stocky, with graying dark hair and a jowly face currently pinched with anger. His hands gripped Penny’s thin shoulders in front of him, as if he were prepared to use the lanky girl as a shield. Surrounding the pair were Slater’s team of heavily armed bodyguards.
Fuck. Where was Naomi?
Asher scanned the area for her as the floor security closing in on him tightened ranks with guns blazing. He dodged the fire and the relentless stream of terrified civilians bolting from all directions for the exits.
“Naomi!”
Another shot hit him, square in the chest. Asher’s fury was on full boil now. Bellowing, he mowed down the team of humans, his hands a blur as he crushed bones and twisted spinal columns, working to clear a path toward Slater and the child.
As the elevator doors opened, the new team of armed men spilled out.
And then he saw Naomi.
Slater took his hands off Penny as he stepped out of the car and gaped at the chaos going on inside his prized casino. The momentary inattention was apparently all the opportunity Naomi needed. She raced forward, making a desperate lunge for the elevator.
“No,” Asher growled. “Naomi, no!”
Too far away to warn her and hit with a new barrage of gunfire, he couldn’t reach her before Slater realized she was there.
Asher roared. “Naomi!”
She was in the open elevator car and had the sobbing girl under her arm as Slater pivoted around and saw them. Without a second’s warning, he slammed his fist into Naomi’s jaw. She went down like a stone, crashing into the back wall of the glass compartment.
Asher tore forward on a leap and a thundering war cry.
He was only a second too late. His bloodied body collided with the closed doors as the car began a swift upward climb with Slater looming over Naomi’s unmoving body and Penny slumped in the corner dissolved in terrified screams.
CHAPTER 25
Naomi opened her eyes on a groan. Her face was pressed against the cold marble floor of the elevator as it rose swiftly through the center of Casino Moda.
Penny’s thin arms were wrapped around Naomi’s shoulders, the girl sobbing over her slumped body. Naomi’s jaw hurt like hell, but she was alive. Penny was alive.
Oh, God. Asher.
She’d seen him under heavy gunfire from casino security and Slater’s personal bodyguards. He was Breed, so she knew it would take a lot to slow him down, but that didn’t ease the terror that was sitting like ice in her stomach.
“Barnes, get up to the helipad and start the chopper.” Slater was talking to someone on his phone a couple feet from where Naomi had dropped after he struck her. “Just me. I’m on my way up now.”
Naomi pushed herself up onto her hands, her vision swimming. A heavy foot slammed into the center of her spine, knocking the wind from her lungs as she was pinned to the marble tile once more.
“Leave her alone!” Penny wailed. “Stop hurting her, you asshole!”
Like a viper, Slater struck hard and without warning. The savage blow sent the girl flying backward into the wall of the elevator car. The instant her blonde head hit the sharp chrome hand rail, she slumped bonelessly, leaving a trail of blood on the glass behind her.
“You son of a bitch!” Naomi vaulted to her feet, adrenaline and fury surging into her bloodstream. She would have jumped on Slater in attack, but when she wheeled around to face him, she found herself staring into the business end of a big black pistol.
His expression darkened with menace. “Let’s go, Narumi.”
The elevator car stopped and the doors slid open soundlessly on to a private floor of the building. Naomi managed a furtive glance at Penny and was relieved—if only marginally—to see her chest rising and falling even though she hadn’t moved.
“Start walking.” Slater fisted his hand in the hair at the back of Naomi’s head and marched her at gunpoint toward a steel door marked Roof Access - Personnel Only.
“You always were a pain in my ass,” he complained. “You and your mother both. More trouble than either of you were worth. Doesn’t surprise me that you turned out just as uppity as she was.”
Naomi didn’t miss the past-tense reference he used. “Is that why you killed her?”
He chuckled. “I didn’t want her dead, but what choice did she leave me? That last night she came to my place with her fucking ultimatum—get help for my anger issues or she was going to press charges on me? Stupid bitch had a camera full of photos, all the bruises I gave her, the broken bones. I mean, who the fuck did she think she was?”
Naomi’s bile rose to hear these facts now. After years of wanting the answers, thinking her mother hadn’t been strong enough to walk away from a deadly relationship, the truth hurt even worse. “So, she stood up to you and you had some of your thugs get rid of her? Or did you have Cain put his special skills to use for you?”
“Cain.” Slater scoffed. “That Breed bastard turned out to be a goddamn traitor. I paid the asshole a million a year to look out for my interests—inside and out of the casinos—and what did he do? Stab me in the back. He must’ve known for months about your thieving, but I had to learn it from one of the pencil pushers in accounting over at the Gold Mine.”
Naomi drew in a breath, more than surprised at that information. But Slater still hadn’t totally answered her question about her mother. “What happened to my mom? It doesn’t matter if you tell me. I’m sure you have no intention of letting me live.”
And as terrified as she was at the idea, she took small comfort in the fact that Penny was alive back in the elevator, and if Asher was at all able to reach her, he would make sure the girl was safe.
She didn’t want to consider all of rounds Slater’s men had fired at Asher.
She’d seen him in action. He was unstoppable. But he wasn’t immortal; even one of the Breed could be killed if the wounds were catastrophic enough.
She refused to let the thought take root. She couldn’t let herself imagine that he might be suffering . . . or worse.
“Tell me, you cowardly piece of shit,” Naomi pressed. “Did you have your men kill my mom?”
He yanked her hair, wrenching her head back until she was staring up into his cold reptile eyes. “No, Narumi, I didn’t have anyone kill her. I kept that pleasure all for myself. I took her far out to the Mojave and bashed her head in with a tire iron. Then I left her for the vultures and the other garba
ge eaters to fight over.”
Naomi’s gag choked out of her. Even though she had suspected something close to this all along, hearing him say it—hearing the satisfaction in his voice as he described how he’d brutalized a woman who had truly, foolishly, loved him—made the bile surge up her throat.
“You sick fuck. You monster!”
“It’s been great reminiscing, Narumi, but I’ve got to fly.” The fist that was wound tight in her hair twisted even harder now. And that pistol jabbed cold and hard against her temple. He nudged her once they were standing in front of the roof access door. “Open it.”
She did as he ordered, wishing for the chance to reach up and touch the gun that was cocked and loaded at her head. She’d never tried to finesse a weapon before, but dammit if there was any hope at all, she was going to try.
A warm breeze gusted at them from atop the fifty-two story casino. Overhead the sky was inky black, the stars out-glittered by the lights of the surrounding Strip. The moon cast a milky glow onto the roof’s concrete surface, and glinted off the black helicopter that sat on the large bullseye circle of the helipad. The rotors were unmoving, no sign of anyone in the cockpit.
At her back, Slater let out a curse. “Where the hell is my pilot? Barnes!” he shouted. “Why the fuck isn’t this bird ready to fly?”
“Barnes had another commitment.”
Asher’s deep voice was an unearthly growl coming from somewhere behind them.
With his hand still grasping Naomi’s hair, Slater whirled around, holding her in front of him like a shield. “What the fuck?”
Standing atop a large air conditioning unit, Asher looked like something out of a horror movie. Immense, seething, otherworldly with his glyphs churning everywhere they were visible on his body. His eyes were molten coals, throwing off heat like a furnace. His lips were peeled back in a murderous snarl, baring his teeth and the enormous dagger-sharp lengths of his fangs.
He’d never looked more formidable than he did in that moment, but Naomi saw the way his chest labored with each breath.
And he was dripping blood from more wounds than she could count.
