Page 31 of Stealing Cinder

"Fuck me."

His lip twitches. "I agree. Follow me."

“No, follow me.” I know this property better than he does. I grab his hand and take the path through the garden gate, past the stone bench where my father used to sit with his morning coffee, past the wrought iron trellis strangled by dead roses no one tends. The gravel gives way to the paved service road that circles to the front driveway.

Three cars idle near the entrance, engines running, headlights cutting through the dark. Oliver is already sliding into the driver's seat of a matte black sedan. Bastian jogs toward a second vehicle, his loosened tie swinging against his chest, and Valerian folds his massive frame into the third with a fresh cigar still clamped between his teeth. Smoke trails behind him.

My lungs burn from breathing too fast and too shallow, and when I try to slow down, my body refuses. It wants more air.

I press my palm against the hood of the nearest car. The metal vibrates under my fingers, warm from the engine, and I grip it until the trembling in my hand transfers into the steel. My knees threaten to buckle. I lock them and swallow against the bile climbing the back of my throat.

"Your friends okay?"

"They can handle themselves."

Samuel steers me toward a low sports car parked at the end of the line. He opens the passenger door, lifts me by the waist, and drops me into the leather seat before I can protest. The door closes. He rounds the hood and folds in behind the wheel. The engine roars and tires bite into the pavement.

I press my spine into the seat and grip the console. Chicago blurs past the windows, streetlights smearing into golden streaks as Samuel pushes the car through intersections without touching the brakes. I take out the Beretta and hold it in my hands, earning me a side-eye from Samuel. I put it in the console between us.

I yank off the heels and toss them into the footwell. My arches scream with relief. Five hours in cheap stilettos designed for looking pretty, not running for your life.

“The police reports describe a specific gun tied to my father's murder." I stab a finger at the Beretta. "That's it.”

Samuel reaches out and looks like he’s reaching for the gun, but he wraps his fingers around mine instead. “We’ll take care of Edgar.”

In mobster terms that means whack him and give him a shallow grave somewhere. “I want more than him just dead. I want him stripped of everything and forced to live behind bars where they will use him like he used my father.”

I take comfort in the darkness surrounding us and use it to mask the true pain eating away at my heart.

Samuel tightens his hold on my hand just as the baby moves. A slow roll low in my belly before our baby settles. My hand goes to the curve and stays there, my thumb stroking the taut skin through the halter top.

For you. Everything I do is for you.

Samuel's gaze drops to my hand. Without a word, he spreads his fingers over the curve of my bump. Warm. Gentle. His scarred knuckles press against my belly with a reverence that doesn't match the blood still drying on his skin. The baby kicks against his palm, a sharp little jab, and his hand goes still.

His eyes find mine. The streetlights streak past, painting his face in quick flashes of gold, and in the half-second between one flash and the next I catch it. The raw, unguarded crack in his composure. His jaw works, the muscle in his cheek flexing, and his dark eyes go glassy before he blinks it away and returns his focus to the road. His knuckles on the steering wheel are split and swollen, Edgar's blood drying in the grooves of his skin. But the hand on my belly stays.

Neither of us speaks. The city rushes past and I count the blocks by the rhythm of streetlights flickering over the car's interior. The adrenaline recedes, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion that settles into my muscles and makes my eyelids heavy.

The iron gates grind open with a mechanical whir that carries across the grounds. All three cars enter the compound in formation and the gates close behind us with a heavy, final clang.

Samuel's compound is a fortress. Blackened steel, poured concrete, walls of floor-to-ceiling glass reflecting the landscape lights back at us. The architecture is sharp, angular, stripped of anything soft. There’s no ivy climbing the walls or warm stonework to soften the edges. From what I can see through all the windows, there’s not even a banister worn smooth by the hands of people who loved living there. My father's home was built for gathering people. This place is built for keeping the world out.

My heart breaks a little for the father of my child. But somewhere behind all that reinforced glass, I spy the faintest glow of warm light that gives me hope.

After the gunfire and the breaking glass and the screaming of tires on asphalt, the absolute stillness on the other side of those gates presses against my eardrums.

All the men climb out and take stock. Magazines are ejected, checked, reloaded. Oliver rolls his shoulder, wincing. Bastian inspects a graze across the back of his hand. Valerian stands apart, his cigar a bright orange point in the dark, scarred face unreadable. Does that man ever not have a cigar?

Samuel comes around the car and stops in front of me, blocking my view of everyone but him.

"Are you okay, princess?"

Cold air bites at my bare skin and I wrap my arms around myself. The halter top, the short skirt, the fishnet stockings. Yeah, it doesn’t really keep a girl warm.

"I'm fine, but now what?"

He ignores the question. His fingers work the buttons of his shirt, pulling the bloodied white fabric free of his body, and he drapes it over my shoulders. The warmth of him clings to the cotton. I inhale deeply and pull in the scent of Samuel, but also the metallic scent of blood.