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“You’re okay, angel,” he assured me, his arms tightening. “It’s all over,” he added as his lips pressed into my hair.
Somehow, his quiet reassurances only managed to open the floodgates wider, making loud sobs escape me, coming from somewhere deep and seemingly endless.
But Aurelio sat with me through it.
Not complaining.
Eventually, Judah pulled out of my arms and moved over to play with Aurelio’s shoe boxes, allowing Aurelio to turn me, to fully pull me into his arms, his hand running up and down my spine, his lips pressing soft kisses to my forehead.
Until, little by little, the well seemed to dry up, leaving me sniffling and hiccuping much like my son had done just moments before.
“He’s right here,” Aurelio said as I finally came back to myself and remembered my son. “He’s shoving my shoes in the storage room.”
Turning, I saw that he was right.
Judah was on his belly, feeding shoes into the room, moving halfway inside of it himself, erasing my worry that he might be absolutely terrified of small spaces for the rest of his life.
“Come here, buddy,” I said, and Judah frowned, but walked over to me, let me scoop him up.
Then Aurelio helped me to my feet.
The night wasn’t over.
And, it seemed, there was much to be done…
CHAPTER TWELVE
Aurelio
I didn’t know panic like I did as I heard Claire on the other end of the phone, voice tight, terrified, as her psychopath of an ex tried to kick the door in.
Of course, that panic only ratcheted up when the call cut out. And I had no fucking idea what was going on in that house.
We weren’t far away.
Ten, twelve minutes, maybe, with how fast Milo was driving.
And I could see the headlights peel out behind us, knowing there were a dozen men, maybe more, coming with us, ready to fight to the death for this innocent woman and her little boy whose only sin in this world was being fathered by a fucking lunatic.
Still, ten or twelve minutes, that could be the difference between Warren finding them, dragging them out, and disappearing with them.
It could be the difference between life and death.
“She’s going to be okay,” Milo assured me. “They both are.”
Milo wasn’t one for offering comfort, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe him anyway as my heart lodged in my throat and my pulse hammered.
How long would it take to kick in my door?
I’d taken out the nails that had come with my door and drilled much deeper ones, knowing it would offer a bit more stability in the case of an attack. But I was kicking myself for not installing a steel-reinforced one.
I guess, in the past, all I worried about was myself. And even if I was caught off-guard, I knew I had weapons.
And, short of them, I could fight.
But there were Claire and Judah, alone in the house, with no access to the guns, and nothing between them and Warren fucking Graves but a standard front door.
My hands curled into fists, my nails digging into my skin as Milo took a turn at a speed that should have had us up on two wheels, but he managed to keep control, whipping up and down the familiar streets with skills I hadn’t known he possessed, despite being the one who’d taught him to drive.
