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“I wish like hell I’d known about the uncle. He’d already be shark chum and dumped somewhere by now.” After a long and painful dismemberment. I’d have to cauterize each and every limb as they came off.
No sense in letting him bleed to death too early or to pass out from the pain. We could be patient, wake him up, and go again.
“I still—”
“Milo, did I like you beating my face in for a few weeks there?” I shook my head. “Did I understand it? Yes. Did I give you back what you served me? Also, yes. We didn’t know. I hate that we didn’t. Nonetheless, we knownow.”
“It’s never happening to her again.” That wasn’t a question, but I understood why Milo needed to say it. Why he needed to lay it out there. “All I ever wanted for her…and she ended up in Hell. Then she gets here, and all I tried to do was make her leave…”
“I can tell you we didn’t know a few hundred times, but even not knowing, you were still a dick about the last.”
He snorted, then scrubbed his damaged hand over his face. “It’s all so fucked up, Jas. Everything.”
“Yeah,” I said, exhaling a long breath. “Except as bad as it is—it’s also better.”
His sudden frown almost made me laugh, because right now? Yeah…
“Look, I know it sounds crazy, and maybe it is. A lot of bad shit has gone down—so much.” Too much. “But one, she’s here with us. Two, she trusted us by telling us what had happened. She’s trusting us to hear her, to protect her. The fact she trusts us at all is a fucking gift. Three? We’re together. Not only is she here.Youare here. Doc is back. Even fucking Liam…maybe especially fucking Liam.”
And Freddie was clean and sober, fighting to stay that way. Like Emersyn, he wasn’t in this fight alone, and we’d back his every single step.
“The last forty-eight hours have been hell.”
Milo and I locked eyes. I meant it. It had been hell, but it was better because we were together.
“No one’s alone,” Milo said finally, leaning back against the counter like he needed the help to remain upright.
“Exactly,” I said. “And I know I’m the fucking hardhead in this group even if you’ve been really challenging for the title, but we’re together. That matters. We’ll handle this—together. For her. For you. For Liam. For Doc. For all of us.”
“I keep thinking we’re missing something,” Milo said. “Why would her family commit her mother, commit her…why would they do these things?”
“Because Swan isn’t their family.” She’d never been their family. “She’s a possession. One they want back—or I should sayhewants back.”
“What about the father?” Well, that was the ten-thousand-dollar question.
“Hopefully, her mother can give us an answer. If she can’t—”
“I’ll rip it out of his lungs myself if I have to,” Milo said.
“I thought we’d start at the feet and work our way up. Go old-school. He doesn’t need his limbs to live.”
A cold smile creased Milo’s face as he straightened. “You know, I always did like to watch you work.”
“I’m more about participation,” Liam said from the doorway. His expression was absolute granite. “I don’t care who gets the last blow, but I want blood and answers. If it takes a lot of pain to get to the answers, I’m really fucking okay with that.”
“We’re going to need a plan…and I need to get Freddie some food.”
“I have a plan,” Mickey said, his voice rough as hell like rocks tumbled with every word. “We’ll start after I look at your hands.” He nodded to Milo, then focused on me. “Where is Little Bit?”
CHAPTER10
DOC
The world had indelibly shifted. Waking in Little Bit’s bed without her the day after Stephanie died, I could genuinely say I wasn’t sure which way was up. The landscape had shifted—the field of battle, a morass of foggy swamp.
Danger, and our choices, had come for us.
They’d taken victims along the way. Cataloging every bit of damage Steph endured would haunt me until the day I died. Although I would make sure those who did it felt every single sting, every lash, every broken bone.
