The Alpha Bodyguards Books #1-3

Chapter Thirty-Seven

H e’d watched me ?

He’d been watching me?

“Why didn’t you turn me in to the ATF?” Or FBI? Or even the cops? He could have done that and gotten full custody of Maverick.

“A boy needs his mother.”

He said it as if it were the simplest answer in the world. But it wasn’t simple. Nothing was ever going to be simple unless I confessed to all of my crimes and cleared my conscience of all of it. But then my son wouldn’t have a mother, and I’d be in jail.

I stated the obvious. “His mother is a criminal.” Garrett had to know that. I wasn’t held at gunpoint to make those drops. I did it on my own. Yes, I’d feared Nathan. But I could’ve made different choices. I could’ve gone to Garrett’s condo when I was pregnant, and I didn’t.

“Criminal or not, you love your son,” he answered like it wasn’t a big deal. “You’re a good mother.”

“You don’t know that.” I felt like I wasn’t even a good person, let alone a good parent.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slow, he shifted his shoulder like he was uncomfortable, then his impenetrable mask slid back into place. “I know you take him to the pool every afternoon. I know you taught him to swim. He isn’t even three and he can swim.” His intense stare, the same as it was three years ago, held me captive as if no time had passed between us. “I know he laughs. I know he loves you. And I know he’s smart.” He tipped his chin. “That’s good parenting.”

My emotions in a freefall, I teared up. “Thank you. ”

For a long moment, he stared at me. Then, as if he’d made some internal decision, he nodded once and leaned back in his bed. “Start at the beginning.”

Even with his entire left shoulder bandaged, IVs coming out of him and lying in a hospital with gunshot wounds, he was an imposing man. More imposing than when I’d first met him, or maybe I just hadn’t been willing to see how much of a warrior he was. Because this man in front of me, he was a warrior—in every sense of the word.

And I’d carried and given birth to his son.

A flush of heat, inappropriate and ill timed, washed over me.

“Fuck, woman,” he muttered. “Don’t look at me like that.”

My cheek flushed. “Like what?”

“Like you haven’t been laid in years,” he bluntly quipped.

My voice dropped to a whisper, and I told him the truth. “I haven’t.”

His eyes closed, and he rubbed the hand of his unbandaged arm over his face. “Fuck me,” he quietly cursed before his gaze cut back to mine. “How long?” he demanded.

It took less than a heartbeat to recall the number, and less than a second after that to decide if I should tell him. “Three years, four months, two weeks and six days.” I knew exactly how long it’d been since I’d had sex.

His nostrils flared and his chest rose with a sharp inhale, but he didn’t say anything.

Regret and embarrassment consumed me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“We’re coming back to that and we’re gonna discuss it,” he stated with absolute authority. “But first you’re gonna tell me, from the beginning, what I need to know.”

“Which is?” I hedged.

“All of it.”

I stared at my lap. I didn’t want to tell this war hero who’d gotten shot because of me that I was a bad person.

“What was on the recording?” Garrett prompted.

I tried to see it from his perspective. He had a child with me. Didn’t he deserve to know who the mother of his son was? Didn’t he need to know everything in case he was in a position where he became Maverick’s sole provider?

Inhaling, I jumped. “That night, before everything happened, Nathan came to the pool house. He was being vague and questioning me, and I should’ve realized he was up to something, because he was always up to something, but I didn’t know he was recording our conversation on his cell phone until it was too late.”

“What did he get on you?”

I looked up at Garrett and told him the truth. “Me confessing to stealing money from the restaurants where I used to work, robbing a jewelry store and stealing cars.”

His face unreadable, Garrett stared at me for a moment. “How many of those incidents were your idea?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How many crimes did you commit on your own?”

“Does it matter?” I’d done them.

His gaze drifted over my head like he was fighting for patience. “Were you a victim?” He looked back at me. “Or are you a criminal?”

“Both.”

Looking more tired by the second, he sighed, then clipped out an order. “The beginning.”

“I should probably go. You need your rest.” And I wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground. I stood.

“Sit. Your ass. Down ,” he growled. “And fucking talk to me. I’m not a goddamn judge. This isn’t a trial. I want—I need to know what the fuck I’m dealing with so I can protect you and Maverick.” He reined in his tone and tipped his chin at the chair. “So, please.” The last word cut across his lips like it hurt to speak it. “Have a seat and just fucking tell me what we’re dealing with.”

We.

What we’re dealing with .

Not me.

Not alone .

My chest constricted and my mouth opened. “My dad got sick when I was in high school. Cancer. It was only ever me and him. He started treatments, and things looked pretty good, but he was too sick to go to work and he lost his job. Then he lost his health insurance, and I was working at two fast food restaurants to pay the bills, and we were charging his treatments on a credit card, until it hit the limit. That’s when I met Nathan. He came into one of the places I worked then a few days later he came into the other one with some guys and he did a double take. He asked me if I’d lost my job at the other place, and I told him I worked both places.

“He asked why, and I told him. I was young and stupid, and I’d lost my friends because I was working so much, then I’d dropped out of school. He saw an easy mark, and he laid the groundwork. I was seventeen, and he was twenty-four. He was what every girl dreams of for a boyfriend at first. Attentive and flattering and flirtatious.” I shook my head at the memory. I’d been so stupid.

“I fell for him,” I admitted. “Barely a month later, he was telling me his plan to hit both fast food restaurants in one day and steal the daily deposits, and how the money could help pay for my father’s treatments.”

“You didn’t get caught?” Garrett asked.

I shook my head. “He planned it on a day I worked at both places. He said as long as I was on shift, it wouldn’t come back to me. It’d just look like a string of robberies.”

“You didn’t actually steal the deposits yourself?”

I shook my head, but it didn’t matter. “I may as well have. I told Nathan who was making the deposits and what times.”

Garrett frowned and his jaw ticked. “Did he give you the money for your dad?”

“Yes. But in the end it didn’t matter. He died a few years later.”

“I’m sorry.”

I shrugged because it hurt to think about.

“The cars?” Garrett asked.

“That came after we stole the deposits. ”

“ He stole the deposits,” Garrett corrected.

I didn’t argue, but I was as much to blame as Nathan. “Nathan came up with a way to steal keys from valets, mostly at expensive hotels. I’d distract them, he’d take the keys from those key boxes and then he’d pass them to me, and I’d drive the cars to wherever he told me.”

“You didn’t get caught on video surveillance cameras?”

“No. We disguised ourselves, never hit the same place twice, and after a few months, Nathan had a new idea. That was how he worked, he was always looking for the next angle.”

“Jesus,” Garrett muttered. “Let me guess, the jewelry store was the next angle.”

I nodded. “He came up with an elaborate plan. I went inside the store and asked to look at rings. He paid two homeless guys to get in a fight outside the store. They threw bottles at each other. It broke the storefront window, and in the ensuing chaos, I grabbed what I could and took off. The haul turned out to be the catalyst that got him into money laundering by way of a real estate scam first.” I half shrugged. “You know the rest.” Except about the estate. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about that yet.

The ATF agent had drilled me for an hour before I’d finally glanced at the lawyer. True to his word, Mathew Barrett had stopped the questioning then and there, telling the ATF agent I obviously didn’t know anything. The ATF agent had stormed out, but not before he’d said he’d be back, with evidence.

I still didn’t know if Neil had gotten Nathan’s phone. I hadn’t seen him since that night he dropped me off at his house. I’d gone to bed and left Neil in the living room, but when we woke up, Sawyer was there. I didn’t want to tell anyone else about the phone recording, so I didn’t ask Sawyer where Neil was or how to get in touch with him. I didn’t know what else that ATF agent would come up with, so I’d been existing on nerves and caffeine ever since. Thankfully, Mav seemed content to just have a new pool to swim in, so that’s what we’d been doing.

Garrett studied me. “Three years ago—why were you at Dax’s bar? ”

Exhaling, I tried to push everything about the ATF agent to the back of my mind and refocus on Garrett’s question. “That was after Nathan had started laundering money and my father had passed. I wanted out, but every time I mentioned it, Nathan hinted at turning me in, and I believed he’d do it. Nathan had a way of manipulating situations and people, and I had no doubt I would go down for all the crimes.”

Garrett uttered a string of curses.

“So I saved what money I could. I didn’t have a bank account anymore, because Nathan said I needed to live off the grid. I didn’t have a real job because Nathan wouldn’t let me, and I had no money. I was reliant on him for everything. Even if I wanted a soda from a gas station, I had to ask him for the money. So every time I asked for some cash for something, I put half away. A few months later, I thought I had enough to make a run for it. He went out one night and I just left.”

“He didn’t come after you?”

“It took him a few weeks to find me.” I’d never know for sure now how he’d done it, but I assumed he’d had his bodyguards looking.

“Where’d you go?”

“Not far enough.” I’d been stupid. I should’ve run as far as possible when I’d had the chance instead of staying local, but I’d never lived outside Miami, and it didn’t occur to me to leave the state. “That motel you found me at. Except I wasn’t there the whole time. I ran out of money before I could find a job and the owner let me stay an extra day, but after that I was on the streets.”

Sitting on the table next to the bed, his phone rang.

Garrett’s nostrils flared and he ignored his cell. “You were homeless.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yeah.” I nodded at his phone. “Are you going to get that?”

“No.” He didn’t even glance at his cell. “How long?”

“Not long.” Two jars of peanut butter I’d made last about ten days long. I didn’t have a clue there was a fifteen-million-dollar property with my name on the deed. Not that it would’ve mattered. I still would’ve left Nathan .

Garrett’s phone stopped ringing. “What did you do?”

“I had my bike, so wherever I could bike to apply for a job, I did.” I didn’t like to talk about it, much less think about it, but next to Mav’s birth and two nights ago when Garrett had been shot, it was the scariest time of my life. “Then the summer rains started and I was getting soaked every afternoon. I was dumpster diving for cardboard for a makeshift shelter when Dax found me. The rest, you know,” I lied.

Garrett studied me. “Did he tell you to take my keys?”

“Yes.” For that, I gave him the truth.

His jaw went tight and his next words came out low. “The kiss in my hallway, in front of my door, did he take that from you too?”

My stomach twisted and my heart faltered. I held his gaze, but I didn’t hide my shock. I didn’t know he’d seen that. There must’ve been security cameras in the hallway of his condo, which meant he’d seen more than the kiss. He’d seen Nathan’s hands on me barely an hour after I’d been in his arms, and suddenly, I understood what he’d been forced to live with for three years. My heart crushed and my guilt compounded.

Nothing I could say would undo the past. All I had was the truth of that moment, so I gave it to him.

“I didn’t kiss Nathan willingly. I didn’t fight him off either, but none of what you saw was wanted on my part. I was….” I didn’t even know how to explain it. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was keeping you out of it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry.” My gaze traveled to his shoulder. “For everything.”

His phone rang again.

I glanced at it, then back at him. “You should get that.”

No reply, not even looking at his phone, he studied me.

Every second he didn’t speak, I wanted to crawl away from his stare. Or maybe I wanted to crawl toward it, toward him.

Seeing him again and feeling like I was losing a chance at a life with him all over again, it made me remember the days after my father died. I wasn’t with him when he passed, and I never got to say goodbye. Sometimes that feeling was so overwhelming, I couldn’t breathe. Right now, sitting in front of this man, baring my soul and my mistakes and everything that made me who I was, I couldn’t breathe either.

I should’ve said goodbye.

I should’ve gotten up and walked out.

But I didn’t have the courage to do it.

His phone stopped ringing, and I waited. I needed words right now more than I’d ever needed them in my entire life, but I didn’t know how to ask for that kind of forgiveness.

Turned out, I didn’t have to.

His eyes, dark and perceptive, cut to my wrist. Then his words broke what was left of my composure. “You don’t need long sleeves anymore.”

Nine years of hell finally over, I fell apart.