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There’s not much more to say after that. I have a feeling Quinn and her people want to be left alone to start dealing with the realities of her father’s death and figuring out what comes next, so with a final nod, my men and I get back into the car.
I look back once as we pull away, watching Quinn gesture as she gives orders to the gathered men and wondering when—or if—our paths might cross again.
The drive back to the safe house feels long.
I keep replaying everything that happened today over and over in my head, reliving all the moments that we could all have died. Everything that could’ve gone wrong with our plan seemed to go wrong, and if it weren’t for Jonah being on our side…
I don’t even want to think about it.
Somehow, we all made it out alive. My grandmother is dead and buried under several tons of concrete, unable to ever hurt us again. That’s hard to wrap my head around, but I keep repeating it in my mind, trying to make it feel real.
The guys are mostly quiet as we head back into the safe house, lost in their own thoughts. I want to leave them to it, to let them decompress after the night we’ve had, but there’s something building inside me that I can’t ignore.
So as soon as we get back and step through the door, I turn to them, my heart thudding.
“Take off your shirts,” I demand, surprising even myself with the fierceness of my tone.
Ransom raises his pierced eyebrow, almost smirking at me. “Not wasting any time, huh?”
Clearly he thinks I want sex, but this isn’t even about that.
“No, I just… I need to see.”
I keep thinking about Jonah and the way he walked up to my grandmother’s body, spit on her corpse, and then just… collapsed. He looked okay before that, hiding his injury well enough that I didn’t even know it was a lethal wound until he went down.
The thought that one of my men might have a hidden injury like that makes me feel sick to my stomach. I need to see with my own eyes that they’re alright. That they’re whole. It’s the only thing that will make my heart calm down.
They seem to understand, because one by one, they start taking their shirts off.
I go to Vic first, running my hands over his chest and torso. His muscles tense beneath my hands, and I can feel it when he takes a shuddering breath. It makes me swallow hard, knowing that just feeling me touch him like this is enough to get him to react this way.
I run my fingers over the scar from the last time he got shot for me, and the bruise that must be left from him getting shot this time, even with his vest on.
Thank fuck for bulletproof vests.
Vic lets me touch my fill, and when I’m finally satisfied that there are no life-threatening injuries, I move on to Ransom.
I feel as if I know all of these men’s scars by heart now, having cataloged them with my hands and mouth since we’ve been together. There’s nothing new on Ransom, and the dried blood on his arm turns out to be from someone else, to my relief.
“I’m all good,” he murmurs to me, lifting one of my hands and kissing my knuckles. “I promise.”
I nod, my heart thumping in my chest.
Last, I turn to Malice. The most reckless of the group, the one most likely to be trying to hide a bullet wound and shrug it off. I take my time, making sure all the scars on him are the usual ones, and that none of the blood is his. There are bruises on his chest from being shot, blood that probably belongs to Olivia, and a shitload of scrapes and bruises that can be explained by being kidnapped and thrown in a hole, but nothing else.
The invisible vise around my lungs finally releases its grip, and I feel like I can breathe normally again.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Malice, staring at his tattooed, bruised chest. “For not dying.”
He grabs my hand and then uses his free hand to tip my face up to his so that I’m looking him in the eye.
“I meant what I said, Solnyshka,” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t have hesitated to die for you, if that’s what it took.”
“Neither would I,” Vic agrees instantly, and when I glance at Ransom, he’s nodding too. Something flutters in my stomach, and I swallow hard.
Malice’s fingers draw my face back to him. The hardness of his features softens a little as a smile pulls at his lips.
“But I’d ratherlivefor you,” he tells me. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
