A frown twisted my brow, and I blinked rapidly. “What do you mean?”
A shot of air puffed from her nose. “You really think that man walked in here wearing his heart on his sleeve because he wanted to gloat about winnin’? If he did what you think he did, then he already won. That man came in here wearing remorse, plain as day.”
My head shook, wanting to believe her so badly it vibrated in my spirit. But when I trusted, it only led to pain. “He’s been foolin’ us, Addelaine.”
My words slipped into the casual tongue of my childhood, the hours I’d spent in this place sewing at her side, listening to her talk, strength growing each day as she instilled hope and belief in me.
“He’s nothin’ but a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
She almost smiled. “Child, that man doesn’t look nothin’ like a sheep. Think he’s wolf through and through. But I think he just might be your wolf.”
“How…how could I ever believe him after everything?” I tossed the papers across the counter, the stack of them sliding and separating. “After I found all of this?”
Addelaine sighed before she began to shuffle through the stack of papers, pulling out the two different contracts she’d signed that were hidden beneath the stack of evidence I’d printed.
She pointed at the two signatures. “Look at this, child. Look closely.”
Confusion knitted my brow while heartbreak trembled my lip.
She jabbed her index finger between the two of them. “Those signatures aren’t close to bein’ the same.”
She looked up at me with a flash of fear in her grayed eyes. “And the men who came in here…they were…mean. Cruel and without compassion. I recognized it the second they stepped through my door. Just the same as I recognized the compassion in him when he first came here, too.”
I blinked as I studied the signatures that were clearly different even though they both bore Brody’s name. Broderick Wolfe III. A fact I had missed in my quest to find him guilty. In my mission to prove his betrayal, I’d overlooked the obvious.
Guilt built up inside me.
She lifted her chin. “You feel something for him?”
That feeling bubbled again. The affection and warmth I’d felt in his arms. The possibility that had become something tangible. I tried to resist it. Refute it. But it didn’t matter. My own truth came flying out. “Yes. I feel so much, Addelaine. More than I should. It shouldn’t be possible, but I do.”
She smiled. “Then you need to ask him why you should trust him yourself. Give him a chance to explain and see where the heart leads. It’s time for you to let it run. You’ve been holding it hostage for a long, long time. See what happens when you decide to trust.”
The tears came unchecked, and I pressed my fingers beneath my eyes and wiped the moisture as I struggled for a breath.
“Oh God…I think I messed up.”
In such a different way than I’d been accusing myself of all day. Because the thought of hurting him ripped me in two.
“What do you want?” she asked with a knowing smile threatening on her mouth.
Realization settled over me. Something powerful. Overcoming and overwhelming.
Unmistakable.
“Him. I want him.”
Her smile bloomed into a full-blown grin. “Then go.” Addelaine lifted my red coat. “Go, child, before it’s too late.”
I sat there stunned as I came to acceptance before I shot into action. Skidding around the counter, I darted for her, taking the jacket and dropping a kiss to her wrinkled cheek. “Thank you, Addelaine. For everything. I hope you know you mean everything to me.”
She clutched my hand. “Same way as you mean everything to me. You’re a good girl. Always have been. Now it’s time for you to go get what you deserve.”
Nodding furiously, I shoved my arms into my coat, wrapped the belt around my waist, and tied it as I flew outside. Cold air slapped me in the face, the sky an icy sort of blue. I didn’t even slow. I just rushed down the sidewalk, winding through people who were on their lunch breaks, my heels clicking on the concrete as I stumbled along as fast as I could.
My heart thundered.
Heavy in my chest.
A pound, pound, pound as I let myself fully feel for the first time since I was fifteen. Without reservation. Without question.
Trust.
It was terrifying.
But freeing in the most miraculous of ways.
I moved faster, rushing across the street and heading in the direction of his hotel, praying he would be there.
That I wasn’t too late.
That he’d give me the consideration I’d refused him minutes before. That he’d stop. Listen. Let me apologize. A frantic need built up, propelling me forward.
Faster.
Needier.
Filled with a hope unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
I gasped when I collided with a big body rushing my direction.
A stunning, powerful, strong body. Those big hands went straight to my face, gripping me tight, his eyes so intense and mesmerizing.
I clutched his jacket lapels. “Broderick…oh my God…I’m so sorry. I…” I forced myself to meet his steely intensity. “I told you back there that I fell for it, when in truth, I fell for you. That terrifies me, and the second something seemed to go wrong, I immediately thought the worst of you. And I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to be cynical and filled with doubt, always searching for the worst in people. Please…forgive me.”
His thick throat bobbed. “Do you trust me, Lil’ Redd?”
I swallowed hard, clutching his jacket tighter as I offered the words. “I told you I don’t trust easily. I’m the one always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just waiting on someone to let me down, because no matter how good things might be, they’re bound to go bad. But it’s time I realized I’m not that same girl who stood abandoned in that empty house. I’m not her. I’ve found love. A family. I don’t have to be her anymore.”
His hands cinched down on either side of my face. “I made both you and Addelaine a promise, and I intend to keep it. My father sent in his men to force this deal through and make it look like Addelaine agreed, threatening her into going along with it, and forging my signature to make me look like I was the one who was responsible. It’s not the first time this has happened, but I promise you it will be the last. Tell me you trust me. That you believe I wasn’t responsible.”
My chin trembled when I nodded. “I do. Completely.”
It was the truth.
Standing there with him, I’d never trusted anyone more in all my life.
Not with my heart. Not with my body. Not with my Addelaine and everything she represented.
He wrapped me in his warmth, pressing a bunch of kisses to my forehead, to my temple, to my lips, while my spirit soared. For the first time, freed.
He leaned back to meet my stare, his expression firm and unyielding. “I told you I always get what I want, Ms. Redd. I was already coming back for you. Because I’m not leaving this town without you.”
I gazed up at him, my soul completely bared. “Then why don’t you stay?”
A chuckle spilled from his mouth, and he hugged me tighter. “I think I like where this is going.”
I breathed him in. At ease. Wholly. Completely. “I think I do, too.”
He brushed back a stray lock of hair that whipped in the cold gusts of wind then threaded his fingers through mine. He lifted our entwined hands and grazed his lips across my knuckles. “Let’s go, Ms. Redd. It’s time to set things straight.” He squeezed my hand. “Together.”
Epilogue
Broderick
“Do you think she’s going to like it?” Her hopeful whisper tickled my ears as my Lillith stared out the window of Pepper’s, a dingy old diner that just so happened to have the best pie in the entire town with a direct view of where Addelaine’s building once stood.
Her raven hair cascaded over her shoulder.
Her delicious, delicious shoulder. Fuck, I loved her skin. I loved her body.
And God, how much I loved the woman.
Finding someone like her hadn’t been in the cards.
But we were never in control of the hand we’d been dealt.
I’d been dealt a straight flush.
Lucky me.
I couldn’t stop the grumble of possessiveness that filled my chest when I looked at my fiancé, who was wearing that expression of careful tenderness that was at the true root of who she was.
I reached across the table and took her hand, brushing my thumb along the back of the silky flesh, wondering how that simple action managed to stir the hunger inside me. “How could she not like it? She’s going to have primo space.”
Tindall’s Thimbles would be located on the first floor of the brand new hotel going up across the street.
She turned to look at me with a tiny smile. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Of course not. You love her.”
Her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip.
So damned enticing. I wanted nothing more to be the one delivering that bite.
“And you love me,” she murmured.
“More than anything.”
I toyed with the huge diamond that glinted from her ring finger, the ring I’d given her just two weeks ago. The day we’d broken ground on the new hotel.
This woman had been instrumental in seeing to it that my father was stopped. His corrupt practices silenced in the evidence Lillith had worked nonstop to prove.
My father had resigned from the company, and I’d taken his place as CEO.
But I sure as hell wasn’t walking in his shoes.
“Did you ever think when you came here that you’d stay?” she whispered.
I leaned her direction, inhaling her distinct scent, words a growl. “Not until the first time I tasted you.”
She shifted in her seat, and a heated flush skimmed her flesh.
Affected.
Needy.
Ready.
Just the way I wanted her.
“Are you wet?” I murmured casually.
She not so casually nodded her head, a tremble raking through her body.
After pulling my money clip from the inside pocket of my suit jacket, I tossed a stack of bills onto the table.
Then I sat back with the challenge.
She clutched the table, a harsh breath parting her lips.
“Run, Ms. Redd. Because I’m going to chase you. And where I catch you? That’s where I’m going to fuck you.”
She inhaled a sharp breath before she slid out of the booth, her knees clearly weak as she made her way through the restaurant. Today she wore a red summer dress, which she knew that color always drove me out of my mind, and a pair of sexy black heels. Her hair a black avalanche down her back.
She pulled open the door, only looking back at me to give me a smirk from her red, red lips.
Then she stepped out into the day and disappeared down the sidewalk.
I stood from the booth and straightened my tie.
The hunt was on.
And with her? It was never going to end.
* * *
Thank You
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KNOT
A Rapunzel Story
Lili St Germain
Prologue
Stealing from Ignacio Garcia Hernandez was risky at best. At worst, it was your death, but first, things worse than death. Maria de la Cruz knew this, and yet she had stolen from her boss. Just a little of the crude opium that grew wild in his fields. Just a few bulbs at a time. Without the opium, Maria thought she might die.
But now, with a machine gun aimed at her head, it seemed that even with the opium, death was certain.
“Take her up to the tower,” Ignacio ordered his men. “It’s almost dark.”
At his feet, a heavily pregnant Maria pressed her hands together, her knees squashing precious poppy bulbs that grew all around them. Ignacio tried not to think about how much her bony kneecaps were costing him right now, what with the groveling and the trampling and the blood that was tainting his precious opiate flowers. Hector and Rico made quick work of dragging the laboring woman to her feet and up toward the disused water tower in the middle of his poppy fields.
“Watch the fucking flowers!” he barked at their suit-clad backs.
“Please,” she begged, screaming as another contraction overtook her. Ignacio held up a hand and his two burly guards dropped her arms, letting her writhe on hands and knees in the dirt this time. Ignacio waited patiently as she crested the peak of her pain and breathed back down the mountain of it, her pupils giant in the weak light of dusk, her hands covered in the blood of the dead husband who lay a few feet away. Ignacio glanced at him, the man whose name he couldn’t remember, the man who had stolen from him, the man who would never again step foot onto his property, because he was about to be buried beneath it. The skeletons in these fields could tell all kinds of secrets if they were ever exhumed – but here, in the most remote pocket of Mexico’s mountain valleys, there was nobody to dig.
In the tower, Hector and Rico set Maria on the ground. She was bearing down, the life inside her demanding a swift exit. That was good. Ignacio was a terrible man, but he preferred not to murder babies unless absolutely necessary. Ignacio loved babies. He desired the innocence they possessed. He coveted the malleable nature of their youth, the ability to bend them according to his whims.
He imagined his supper at home, cold, as Rico headed back down the steep flights of stairs to bury Maria’s thieving husband.
“Ignacio, please!” Maria screamed, clutching her swollen belly. The waves were so close there was barely pause between contractions now.
“Please what?” Ignacio asked, in a voice that was far too calm.
“Please let me g-go!” the woman begged. “I promise I won’t t-tell anyone. I swear!”
Ignacio crouched before Maria, careful not to get dirty. Nobody had been in this tower for years. It was filthy and barren and the perfect place for what he had planned. “You stole from me, Maria. You took drugs that were not yours and probably hurt this poor child.” He placed a hand on her belly. “And you think I am the bad man here?”
Maria continued to sob. “I’m sorry,” she said, strings of saliva hanging from her lips as she tried to beg for her life while giving birth at the same time. Not an easy feat, by any means. Ignacio wrinkled his nose up at her animalistic grunts and screams, so primal, so Neanderthal. His first wife – before he’d stabbed her to death after learning of her infidelity, God bless her soul – had birthed all of their ten children at home, in the bathtub, in silence. Ignacio had caught more than his share of children in his lifetime; such was the wonder of holding a child in it’s very first moment, of whispering in their ear your plans for their destiny, for Ignacio was a maker of destiny and fate. To hold a brand new being in the palms of your hands and begin shaping them to your will as they took their first breath; new life was exquisite, something to be revered.
Ignacio checked his watch again; he had to hurry this up. “Give me your jacket,” he said to Rico, who obliged immediately, shrugging his meaty arms out of his suit jacket and handing the pile of material to his boss. Ignacio folded the jacket lengthways, sitting it on the ground on front of the spot where Maria was laboring. He rolled up his sleeves, mindful not to get any blood on the starched white linen he preferred to wear in the summer heat, and got down to business.
Maria screamed when he used two fingers to check her dilation. She was barely awake, though, so depleted of strength that the pain was the only thing stopping her from passing out
.
“Come on now, Maria, you’re completely open in there. Open like a beautiful flower. You have to push,” Ignacio said, shaking his head as if they were talking over dinner and not holed up in the dark in an abandoned water tower, surrounded by poppy fields in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
Maria, carried by her body’s urges rather than Ignacio’s, bore down, screaming as she pushed, and a baby’s head appeared. She leant against the wall in between contractions, her breath ragged, the fields absolutely silent on this balmy spring night.
The desolation only added to Ignacio’s feeling of excitement, of wonder – right now, the rest of the world didn’t exist. His men melted into the background, dutiful soldiers who were there merely for their muscle and ability to fire a gun, nothing more. No, right now it was Ignacio Garcia Hernandez and Maria de la Cruz and – one more push! – now they were three, Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear, Baby Bear. Maria reached for the baby as it slithered out from her body, but Ignacio was faster. He took the child, still attached by reams of umbilical cord much like a bungee jumper to a bridge. Ignacio didn’t cut the cord right away. He’d read somewhere – or was it his wife who had told him? – that the best way to ensure a healthy baby at birth was to wait until the cord stopped pulsating before cutting it.
This was also the reason he had not simply killed Maria and cut the baby from her flesh, though he was hardly about to tell her that. Mothers tended to get violently hysterical when confronted with their own mortality.
The baby was still. He turned it over and gave a great slap on the back – a sharp intake of breath, the very first air to touch its lungs, and then the baby cried, strong and sharp.
Ignacio Garcia Hernandez held the wet, screaming bundle in his palms and smiled. A healthy child, with a thick head of blonde hair. Bright blue eyes and the most adorable little fists that were currently clenched as it wailed. Ignacio moved the umbilical cord to the side and confirmed what he’d already suspected.
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