AllFreeNovel
Share Us
All there was in the world was her string of curses as she, I imagined, tried to move.
After being attacked.
By Luis.
Fucking Luis.
Maybe it was naive not to have him toward the top of my list. Rationally, the guys who were already higher up in rank, closer to power, got greedier for more.
I’d fucking grown up with Luis.
And I’d let that cloud my vision.
But if it was Luis, did that mean it was Marco too? The thought of that was a kick to the gut. I’d kidnapped a doctor chick who happened to be a Henchmen princess, and got myself in the outlaw bikers’ crosshairs to save his ass when he got shot. If I’d done all that shit only to have him betray me, that was going to hurt.
Worse than betraying me, though, was Luis putting his hands on Hope. A woman who’d just been doing a fucking job.
We didn’t fuck with women.
That was one of our hard and fast rules. Of which there weren’t many. But one of the things I’d hated the most about the Soto cartel I’d grown up in was the fact that they did all kinds of unforgivable shit to women.
I wasn’t going to tolerate that under my leadership.
The fact that he’d used her to send me a message was fucked beyond measure.
I hadn’t expected to be as fucking unhinged about her being hurt. But my heart was hammering in my chest as I flew through Navesink Bank to get to her.
Then seeing her there on that ground, fuck, I didn’t even have words for what that felt like.
Something like the ground falling away, taking me with it.
It was especially hard, I think, seeing someone that I knew to be such a badass to be so hurt. To see her crying. To feel her lean into me, trying to steal a little comfort, maybe some strength.
I didn’t know dick about catching feelings for a woman. But there was a sensation moving through my chest right then that I’d read enough in books to recognize.
I don’t know if I’d call it love.
But it was something close.
It had been a risk taking her so far out of the area to hit up a hospital. Especially with concerns about her spleen.
It wasn’t just that I had an understanding—one that cost me a fortune—with the hospital I’d taken her to. It was that I didn’t trust that Luis and whoever else he’d recruited from me, wouldn’t track her and me down. Do something more permanent.
I had to get her safe.
I’d failed at protecting her once.
I wasn’t going to let it happen again.
I was going to keep her ass in that hospital, even though she didn’t really need it, for long enough for me to get some shit in order.
I didn’t give a fuck about the house, about my possessions in it. I could deal with that later.
What I did care about was the dogs.
So I’d called up the dog walkers I used when I was out of town, and had each of them pick up a set of dogs after shift changes, so no one at the gates would be suspicious that all of the dogs were going missing at once.
Then I met up with the dog walkers, loaded up the dogs, and took them for a long-ass joy ride around the area to make sure I wasn’t being followed.
Only then did I drive them out to my safe house.
The one no one knew existed.
The one I took out with a fake name, so no one could trace it to me.
In an old brick building.
Where I’d, by myself, taken trips there to painstakingly secure it to make the walls and windows bullet resistant. To stock with supplies that would last years, even though no war would last that long. To bulk up with my own supply of weapons. And books. And dog food. Anything I could possibly need to camp out there for a while.
It was all of twenty-five minutes from the hospital, so once I’d taken the dogs out, and tossed out some food and water, I’d secured the place, and gone back to check on Hope.
She’d been moved up to the floor by then, and was assed-out in the bed. A mercy, for her aching head and body, considering they wouldn’t give her the good shit.
I still had a few things to work on before I was going to take her back to the safe house.
The plan wasn’t for me to stay there.
It was for her to.
Feeding and playing with the dogs.
Taking them onto the roof where I’d laid sod and some complicated drainage system so they could do their business, protected from prying eyes by the privacy fencing I’d put up around it.
No one would see her.
No one could get to her.
The dogs would be taken care of.
