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“No killing anyone.” She stomps a foot. “I’m the one he took and I say no killing. That’s final.” She looks back and forth from me to George then back to me and adds, “No killing, Daddy, I mean.” Then at George again, “and Sir. No killing Daddy and Sir. I’m not joking.” She’s damn serious.
And fucking cute standing there in her donkey pajamas.
Given the gravity of the moment, it’s inappropriate, but I almost chuckle at the fire flamed words coming from my little girl.
I look at my friend and repeat, “I said change of plans.” I step to Ginger and she draws her brows together and crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you get that it’s my fucking job to protect you? Do you get that I failed and from now on every effort I made before will be magnified a hundred-fold? Do you get that keeping you safe sometimes means doing things I don’t like either?”
“You promised.” She isn’t giving an inch. “Figure out a different way. Protect me, don’t protect me. But if it means you are going to kill him, I don’t want this. Any of it.” She waves a hand in the air. “If this is going to be our life, I’ll leave now. You told me you’d changed, you wanted something better. You have to start now. You do this, I’m gone. You decide.”
I turn to George with venom in my voice. “Take both their phones and smash them. Take the car with the grandmother. Collect the dad and Hamish from wherever they’re holed up, head to their place and drop them both off. They can live, but if I ever see them again, make sure they know that can change.”
“You sure?” George shakes his head, concern in his eyes.
“Yep. Then after we’re gone, have some guys stay behind. Leave him here. Have them take the tape off and take anything he has on him. Leave him with the clothes on his back but leave him alive.” I look at Ginger, whose tight lips loosen with some level of approval in her eyes, then I address Calfus. “You’re on your own. If you have any brains, you’ll make sure I never see you again.”
“Wait.” Ginger comes to my side and tugs on my arm. “He has Romper and Geisha.”
For a moment I’m confused, then I ask, “Here?” I look out the window.
“No.” Ginger looks up at me. “He took them. They’re at some slaughterhouse.”
I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together, then pull my phone out of my pocket and pull up our security cameras from home.
“I think not.” I put the phone in front of Ginger’s face and see fire shoot from her eyes. “They are safe and sound. Fat and happy, just as I left them.”
“How?” She looks from me to Calfus, then back to me. “He showed me a picture of them in a cage. In the back of a pickup.”
I shrug, not sure what to say. “I don’t know, Babybear. But I will say, Photoshop can work wonders. Can you be sure it was actually Romper and Geisha?” I raise my eyebrows and see her swallow hard.
There’s both relief and anger in her eyes.
She licks her lips before turning to stare at Calfus. “You’re a horrible person, you know that?”
He stares back, nothing but satisfaction in his eyes.
“They’re fine, babygirl. And I have ten guys staked out there at home. Trust me, no one is getting to any of our babies. Including the cucumbers.”
16
Stas
“I need to be inside you.” I grunt, pulling the car over after driving back down the dirt road toward the state park land we’d passed on our way to the cabin.
Since we left there, I’ve held her hand against my chest.
I told her about a thousand times how much I loved her and how things would be different.
She’s cried a bit about her dad. Well, both of them. Let out some conflicting emotions regarding the barrage of information that’s been dumped on her in the last day.
All in all, she’s taking it pretty fucking good and I’m proud as hell of her. I mean, it’s not every day you find out the guy who wants to kill your man is the father you didn’t know you had.
The irony of it all still baffles me, but in my business I know just how small the world can be. I also know I need to still figure out my way out of my former life and still keep us safe. That is a Rubik’s cube I’ve still to solve but I will.
Looking over at Ginger, she’s paler than usual but more beautiful than ever.
I can’t wait.
I need to have her wrapped around me in every way. I guide the car through the entrance of the state park and into an abandoned picnic area.
