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So watching that happiness leak from her eyes with the single phone call, hearing that fuck’s threats to come into her life and try and make it even dirtier than he had, Lance was not having that.
He did not give a fuck about Keltan’s orders to leave that fuck alone.
He didn’t give a fuck about anything but that deadness in Elena’s eyes. The way she shook.
He couldn’t comfort her, he wasn’t physically able to do that. So he did what he could. The only thing he could. He made that fucker bleed.
He didn’t greet Keltan as he approached the SUV, he just waited.
“He still alive?” Keltan asked casually.
Lance nodded curtly once.
Keltan raised his brow in surprise. Lance wasn’t known for losing his temper. And when he did, he wasn’t known for leaving anyone alive when they made him lose it.
“Elena didn’t want that,” he said by answer.
Keltan’s look of surprise only intensified. “And that’s what stopped you? A client’s wishes?”
Lance gritted his teeth at the knowledge behind the fucker’s words, his eyes. He didn’t know shit.
So he didn’t reply.
“This is gonna make it more complicated,” Keltan continued. “Leaving him alive.”
Lance nodded. He knew that it would. Leaving rats alive just meant they could continue being vermin. Better to exterminate.
But he couldn’t.
Him.
The firm’s resident grim reaper.
Because of a client.
A woman.
A kid.
He clenched his fists, relishing in the burn from his bleeding and bruised knuckles.
“Could blow back on Elena and Nathan,” Keltan said.
“I won’t let it,” Lance hissed, the very thought of fresh bruises on Elena’s face making his trigger finger itch.
Keltan nodded. “I know, brother.” He clapped him on the shoulder and Lance stiffened with the contact. Keltan didn’t move his hand. “She’s good. Recovered well after you left. Got her people there with her. Duke’s down the street at the house.” Keltan paused. “Assume you’re gonna relieve him of that duty?”
Lance only nodded once.
Keltan grinned, more knowledge in that fucker’s face. “Welcome to the club, brother.”
Elena
Lance didn’t come back.
I pretended I didn’t notice.
Surely there was enough to distract me.
Like the fact him smashing my phone and storming off garnered quite a bit of attention.
Keltan had been calm, collected and totally on his game at getting me to tell him what happened without having a panic attack. Then he’d seamlessly passed me off to a calm and smiling Lucy when he and a couple of the other guys left, presumably to follow Lance.
I didn’t get to wonder exactly where they were going because I had to focus on my son, who was perceptive as shit and even if he wasn’t, his favorite grown-up smashing a phone inches away from his mother caught his attention.
It was the superpower of a parent to mask all kinds of pain and panic so their child wasn’t faced with it. Burdened with it. Children were little sponges, so yes, they parroted curse words they’d heard at home at school or in church. But they also soaked up the emotions of a parent. I tried to make sure Nathan always soaked up smiles, jokes, stories, lessons. None of my pain, my worries, my sadness. The world would inject enough of that into him as he grew into himself. He would inherit my skin tone, my hair, my obsession with peanut butter, but he would not inherit my sorrows.
So his little face, asking what was wrong was the cold splash of water I needed to jerk myself out of whatever Robert’s phone call had triggered within me.
Luckily it took a smile, a hug and letting him have more pie to distract Nathan from the shift in the evening.
While he was distracted, Karen ordered me to repeat everything Robert had said, cheeks getting redder and redder as I did so.
Bobby got that scary look on his face again.
As did Logan.
And Esther.
“I’m fine,” I told everyone.
They did not believe me.
But they pretended to, because they knew calling bullshit on me when I was this fragile would break me.
And the people around me, worried for me, angry for me, murderous for me, they would do everything that it took for me not to break.
Everyone trickled out at different times, but everyone staying long enough to help me clean something, wrap up leftover food or drain leftover wine. It irritated me that two bottles of the wine I’d convinced Lance I wouldn’t drink were gone.
Of course I hadn’t drunk two bottles by myself, no matter how tempting it became after Robert’s phone call. Eliza and Karen had helped, eyes widening when they saw the label, even though it was red.
My five-dollar bottles personally offended them.
Rosie and the rest drank margaritas. An impressive amount for women their sizes, and none of them seemed even the least bit tipsy as they left with their husbands and children.
I was definitely a lot tipsy, having gone over my two-glass limit. Nathan had stayed up well past his bedtime, but I managed to get him to bed at a time that would hopefully afford him enough sleep.
