AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“At this rate, you won’t live more than a few minutes.”
She blinked a few times and looked up at me with that blank stare I found highly disturbing. “That’s enough time for me to kill one man.”
“Assuming he’s right where you think he’ll be, he’s not surrounded by other men, and you can shoot. We haven’t even gotten to that part yet because I’m afraid you’ll lose focus and shoot my foot off! Maybe even something more vital if I’m not careful.”
I grumbled the last part, thinking of my dick, but I wasn’t about to say that in front of her. With what she’d beenthrough, and her habit of zoning out, fuck only knows how she’d react.
“Until I find him, I’ll stay close to Stella. You’d never let anything happen to Stella.”
“Willing to bank your life on that?” I asked out of curiosity more than anything else.
“Yes,” she said in all seriousness, gracefully lowering herself to the grass and drawing her knees into her chest, as if the simple act of standing had become more than she could bear. “I’ve seen the way you watch her when you think no one else is looking. You’re not like other men. While your desire for her is intense, you don’t see her as a warm hole, but as a vital piece of yourself, like one might view their limbs or heart.”
The girl might not talk much, but when she did, she was fucking insightful. Stel wasn’t like my heart though, she was my heart. She was the very air I breathed, and I’d already seen what life was like without her. I’d been nothing but a fucking mess wrapped up in booze and poor decisions.
“Stel would hardly agree with you,” I muttered as I plopped down on the grass a little ways away. Standing over her was growing awkward for both of us.
“She’s just trying to protect herself,” she said from behind the curtain of her long, dark hair.
Her hair ruffled with the breeze but remained a shield between us, which was fine by me as long as she kept talking. This was the most I’d gotten out of her so far, and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
“That’s fair, considering she was taken because of me.”
Her head snapped up, her dark eyes large in her pale face, the emotionless mask she wore momentarily slipping before she wrestled it back into place. “What do you mean?”
What I was about to do was risky. Most people clammed up when you asked them a personal question relating to something they’d rather not talk about. But it wasn’t like if she just got up and walked away that I’d know any less than I do now.
“Have you ever fucked up and your loved one ended up paying the price?”
She turned her head toward the house, her hair a black veil between us. Well, fuck. It appeared that sharing hour was over, at least for today. But if she shut me down again, I’d have no choice but to turn her over to Hunter.
My legs were stiff as I shifted my weight, preparing to stand.
“Yes.” Her voice was brittle, barely there, and I stopped, holding my body still, scared to even breathe. A few tense seconds of silence passed before she finally said, “My brother died because I fell in love with the wrong man. Now, tell me why it’s your fault Stella was taken.”
That was the last thing I expected her to say. No boyfriends, my ass. How the hell had Hunter missed him? The man was known for being able to find anyone or anything, yet he hadn’t found Delilah’s mystery man. It made me wonder what else we might have gotten wrong.
I’d gone this far down the rabbit hole, so I figured why not have a little informational pillow talk session with Delilah. But I was drawing the line at braiding hair or talking about my feelings. I was a biker, for fuck’s sake, not a teenage girl at a slumber party.
“The short version is Stel told me to fuck off, so I stayed gone, and she found herself plunged straight into hell for the sake of my wounded pride. Now, she can’t stand the sight of me, not that I blame her. Some days I can’t stand the sightthat greets me in the mirror, either. Your turn. Tell me what this man has to do with your brother’s death.”
Her hair covered the side of her face that I could see, so I had no idea what she was thinking, or if she’d say anything else. The last time she dropped a bomb I almost missed it because I was too quick to walk away. Even though my ass hurt, and I had a crick in my neck, I was gonna sit here until the cows came home if that’s what it took to get her to open up.
Hell, I figured if I could wait out Stel’s stubborn ass, then Delilah should be a piece of cake. I pulled out my cigarettes and lighter, prepared to settle in and chain smoke my way to information. She didn’t make me wait long before her reedy voice drifted to me on the afternoon breeze.
“He said we needed to keep our relationship a secret because of his work, so I did. Most women would find that suspicious, but since my brother couldn’t tell me about his job, I didn’t think anything of it. Everything was fine until one night, on the way to dinner, he said he had to stop by work and pick something up. I can’t believe I was actually excited. Then he turned down a dirt road and stopped beside an abandoned barn. I thought he brought me there to kill me. You have no idea how many times I’ve sat in a cell and wished I’d been right.”
Her hair shifted, sliding over her shoulder like black silk, her pale cheek now visible. “My brother died because he poked his nose in places he shouldn’t have. He’d be alive right now if he’d have just let me go.”
Damn. She’d been betrayed in the worst way possible and lost her brother because of it. No words I could ever say would make that right. All I could do now was prepare her for the road ahead. When the time came for us to move on these men, I would do my level best to make sure she lived long enough tosee justice done. It would be up to her whether she decided to take out one man or twenty.
“Those weren’t men that did those things to you, they were animals, and we will slaughter them like animals.”
CHAPTER 21
STELLA
Switch was on a mission, and Delilah had become his new pet project. They were out back for an hour yesterday, mostly sitting on the grass and talking, and today they’d been going at it for the last two hours.
