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“Storm,” I answer my phone as I slip into the hallway but keep the door cracked open so Snow is still in my line of sight.
“How’s Snow?”
“Still quiet. She sleeps most of the time, and when she’s not sleeping, it’s almost like she’s checked out. I don’t know what to do for her,” I sigh. I never thought I would be talking to someone who is meant to be my mortal enemy about my relationship, but it’s funny how these things play out.
“It’s only been a week, I’m sure she’s just working through it all.” His words do nothing to comfort the ache in the pit of my stomach that maybe I’ve made a mistake. I’m starting to think I never should have stolen her from her life, never should have taken her from her family and kept her. She wouldn’t have been hurt if I had stayed in the shadows. She’d still be her lively self who I’ve obsessed over for the last decade.
“I know.”
“We’ve had another shipment go missing,” he sighs.
“What? How?”
“I have no fucking idea. We had so many men at the docks we were bordering on suspicious, but when they went to do the count, everything was missing.”
I lean on the wall opposite the bedroom door, my eyes brushing over my Snowflake as she sleeps. Watching her allows my mind to work better, as if when she’s around, all the worry I feel and measures I have in place to protect her disappears, and my business mind starts firing. “They’re hitting it before it docks,” I say.
“What?”
“They must be intercepting the ship somewhere. That scene was too clean the last time, and there’s no way they got past your guys this time, so the only explanation is that they have to hit the ship during its journey, not after it docks.”
Silence greets me on the other end of the line and I pull the phone from my ear to check he hasn’t hung up on me. “Those motherfuckers,” he growls. “We have guards on the ship though, and cameras. Surely someone would have seen an entire shipment of guns get unloaded to another ship.”
I nod, thinking through how I would have approached this back when I would run jobs for my uncles. “The cameras are easy, they would have hacked in and had a loop play over and over again so you wouldn’t be suspicious.”
“But the guards?”
“That I’m not too sure of.” It’s been too long since I’ve had a complex problem to solve and too long since I’ve been out of these four walls, but I won’t leave Snow. I don’t trust anyone who works for me, and I certainly don’t trust anyone in Storm’s ranks. The only people I trust with her safety are me, and her brothers, and I’m still not convinced they won’t try to take her back from me the first opportunity they get.
Storm sighs, the sound of ice on glass filling the line. “Wynter wants to come see Snow,” he tells me.
I brush my eyes down my fragile Snowflake curled up in the middle of our bed and allow my head to fall back against the wall. “Give her a few more days. I don’t think Wynter would intentionally upset her, but she’s fragile right now.” I hoped that after her admission in the hospital, some of the guilt would disappear, but if anything, it gets worse with each day that passes. She’s convinced this is karma, that by taking birth control without my knowledge, she set a series of events in motion that led to her losing an ovary.
Nothing I say or do seems to ease her worries and seeing her in so much emotional turmoil makes my cold, dead heart ache.
“You can’t hide her away forever, Elijah. And you can’t personally guard her for the rest of her life. At some point, you’re going to have to hand her safety over to someone else, at least for some of the time.”
“No,” I growl. He may be right, but I’m not ready to hear it yet. I need more time. More time to watch her, to bring her back to me, to prove to us both that I can keep her safe from any threat that comes at us.
A knock at the door draws my attention away from Snow, and I watch as Mrs. Chambers makes her way to the front door, wiping her hands on her apron. I watch as she looks through the peephole and pauses for a moment, a frown tugging at her brow before she unlocks the door and opens it.
David, the guy who distributes the drugs to the dealers, falls through the door. His face is bloody, so much so, I doubt he can see through the swelling and blood. His clothes are torn and soiled, and by the way he collapses in the entry, I can only imagine there are other injuries I can't see.
“Elijah?” Storm says on the other end of the line.
“Get over here,” I snap and end the call. I chance one more look over my shoulder at my Snowflake sleeping before tearing my attention from her to the more pressing issue. The half dead man in my hallway.
Mrs. Chambers jumps into action, quickly making her way to the cabinet where we keep an emergency first aid kit for times just like these.
I stride toward the large man. Once I reach him, I kneel beside him and push him onto his back.
A strangled groan erupts from his chest, and his eyes squeeze together before he forces one open. The other is swollen shut and I doubt he’ll be seeing out of it anytime in the next week. I’ve had my fair share of black eyes, and this one isn’t going to heal quickly.
“What the fuck happened?” I ask as Mrs. Chambers presses cotton pads onto his wounds to soak up some of the blood.
“They’re coming,” he chokes, a bloody cough tearing from his throat, splatting red across the carpet.
“Who are?”
