Chapter 37
KNOX
Tara scowled at me as we walked toward the entrance of a large Art Deco building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Do they know we’re coming? Or is it a surprise for them as well?”
I couldn’t bite back my smile, even if I wanted to. “They know. This is where my mom lives. My brother is coming here from his place.”
She was still mad at me for not giving her enough warning about meeting my family.
But I was pretty sure she would’ve declined or made excuses if I had told her beforehand.
She’d agonized all through the morning whether they’d like her or not and had called in her girls to pick a dress for her.
All the ladies had given me withering glares when Tara told them about my very little warning while helping her get ready.
She looked stunning in a beautiful emerald-green long-sleeved dress that fell to mid-calf. “You look gorgeous, by the way. You’re going to make me look like an uncaring, unbothered slob,” I said as we neared the entrance of the building.
“You are an uncaring, unbothered slob.”
I chuckled. My beauty was still holding a little grudge.
We entered the apartment building, and I led her to the elevator. She looked around, taking in the opulence of the lobby. We weren’t filthy rich like Dominic Park, but we didn’t do too bad. She turned to me once again and asked, “Are you sure I shouldn’t wear a mask?”
“We’re going home. You don’t wear a mask with me, especially to comfort my family.”
When we arrived at our floor and walked out to the hallway, she bit her lip. “You’ve at least told them about my attack and what I fucking look like, right?”
I looked at my beautiful fairy tale, and my heart hurt with how much I loved watching her. I shrugged and gave her a teasing smile. “Now, where’s the fun in that?”
She halted in the middle of the hallway, her mouth frothing at me. “What?” she hissed, pulling my shirt in her fist. “You haven’t warned them about me?”
My girl was like a little scaredy-cat when cornered.
I gently ran my fingers through her hair and pulled her closer to me.
“While I agree that you need to come with a warning, it's not because of your scars. It’s because you’ll kill anybody who looks at a woman wrong.
Now, neither my mom nor my brother falls into that category.
So no. They don’t need a warning. Will they be a little shocked for a second?
Sure. Will they dwell on it? No. And if they do, we walk out. ”
“That simple, huh?”
“That simple. I told you. My loyalty, my devotion, is to you. Only you.”
She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I can’t stay mad at you when you get all wordy like that.”
I chuckled and put my arm around her, dragging her to my mom’s apartment. I’d just rung the doorbell when the door to the apartment flew open. “Here you both are…” My mom’s voice tapered off as she took in Tara.
Tara cringed and raised her hand in greeting. “Uh…hi. Knox should’ve warned you.”
My mom’s eyes turned to me and met my glaring ones at her. She quickly pulled herself together and gave Tara a warm smile. “Nonsense, dear. I’m sorry someone harmed you like that.”
Only then did I pull her into a hug. “Good save, Mother,” I murmured.
“Should’ve warned me, kid.”
I pulled out of the hug and gave her a wink. “Let’s protect my girl from Hugh, shall we?”
I wrapped my arms around both my women and walked into the apartment, when Hugh came sauntering from around the kitchen. “Learn to read the time, assho—”
Tara halted mid-step, but I kept her in my arms and continued walking, dragging her with me. “Some people have a life, asshole.”
I gave him a clap on the shoulder and made the introductions. “Hugh, meet my girl, Tara.” I turned to Tara. “Hugh, my brother. The man who helped me break into your apartment.”
A loud gasp had me cringing as my mom stormed over to the two of us and slapped us on our heads. “Hugh Marcus Steele. You did not just help your brother break into a woman’s apartment. And Knox Rose Steele. Have I taught you nothing?”
The sound of a sweet, ringing laughter had me looking around behind Mom.
Tara’s lips were stretched in a wide smile, and that mischievous glint in her eyes shot a heavy dose of adrenaline straight to my chest. After so many days of stress, it had been a while since I saw some levity in my girl. This was what I’d missed.
“Hugh, am I dreaming?” Mom’s voice filtered into my ears through a foggy haze.
“If you are, then so am I, Mom.” Hugh’s obnoxious voice pulled me away from Tara’s gaze.
Before I could jam my elbow into his side, Mom cleared her throat. “Alright, boys. Let’s be civilized in front of Tara. Tara, dear, come on. Let’s sit at the dining table. You’ll have coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, following my mom.
Mom quickly waved her hand. “No need for ma’am, dear. You can call me Terry.”
The two of us followed the women, but Hugh pulled me back and asked in a low murmur, “You’re dating a fucking criminal?”
I don’t know how it happened, but I had my hand wrapped around his throat. “Don’t call my girl a criminal. Only I can call her that.”
He choked and punched me in the stomach, making me drop my hand. “You called her a criminal. You asked me to track her and get access to her place to monitor the criminal. So forgive me if I call her a criminal.”
I sniffed. “Fine, you’re forgiven. Don’t call her that again. She’s a vigilante.”
His jaw dropped, and a laugh escaped me. His mouth opened and closed. “Umm…okay, then.”
Before he could ask further, Mom yelled for us from the kitchen.
“You telling Ma?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Awesome. Thanks for the entertainment in advance.”
“Fuck you.”
The moment we turned the corner to step into the dining area, two sets of eyes greeted me. Tara looked petrified while Mom looked very curious.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and asked Tara, “You want some cream, beautiful?”
She usually took it black, but the situation seems to require cream and sugar. Still, she shook her head. “That’s fine.”
I placed the two things on the dining table, just in case she changed her mind. A small smile pulled at her lips as she rolled her eyes and poured some cream and sugar into her cup. “Your mom was asking me how we met.”
I snorted. “Really? What’d you say?”
Mom cleared her throat and folded her arms across her chest, giving me a pointed look. “She asked me to ask you, young man.”
Oh, I’d gotten to hear a lot of young man over the years. I shrugged and gave Tara a wink. “You should’ve gone with the truth, baby.”
I looked at my mother and said, “She was a vigilante that I had been hunting for weeks. What started as a cat-and-mouse chase turned into respect and obsession. I was going to arrest her. But the moment I saw her, I knew I’d kill anybody who took her away from me.”
“Knox.” My name was a whisper on my mother’s lips, a million expressions flooding her face.
It was a chaos of emotions, conflicting between pride, disappointment, hurt, love, acceptance, shock, and surprise.
That was why I loved looking at my Tara.
I could read her face and know her emotions.
For some reason, either she couldn’t hide them from me, or I could read her mind way before I tried to decipher her face.
My girl only had one emotion on her face right now. Love.
Mom turned to Tara. “You’re a vigilante? What exactly do you do, Tara?”
Tara took a sip of her coffee before she said, “We avenge women who have been raped or abused. We provide justice to the women when the law enforcement and the judicial system have failed to do so. We do whatever the women want us to do. Torture them. Remove them from their lives. Kill them. Of course, we do our due diligence and never let an innocent person suffer. But there hasn’t been a single time when the accused men have turned out to be innocent. ”
Hugh and Mom looked shell-shocked. Mom gulped and, with a nervous glance at me, asked Tara, “And your scars, dear. If you don’t mind sharing, what happened?”
“You don’t have to answer. It’s pretty obvious what happened,” I said, giving my mom a look.
She raised her hand in surrender. “Obviously, she’s suffered a vicious acid attack. I meant how could someone do something like that? It takes someone truly heinous to commit such an atrocity.”
I gave Tara a proud smile. “Don’t worry, Mom. Tara gave him what was coming for him.”
A proud smile came over Mom’s face as she turned to Tara and gave her hand a tight squeeze. “Good. Very good.”
My jaw dropped. “Am I mistaken, or did you just approve of her illegal way of dealing with her attacker?”
She turned to Tara. “Did the cops fail to find the attacker?”
Tara swiped her finger over the rim of the cup and shrugged. “My parents didn’t want me to file a complaint. I didn’t look like this at that time. The damage was quite significant.”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that.” She turned to me. “And that is why she’s justified in taking matters into her own hands.”
“You never let me take matters into my own hands.” I turned to my brother, asking for support, considering he’d been there when my mother ranted and shouted at me to follow the legal route.
My mother simply rolled her eyes, as if I were too stupid to understand. “Because you did not have a moral compass. You thought everything and everyone was a matter to be dealt with.”
Tara snorted a laugh. When I looked at her in betrayal, she shrugged. “It’s true.”
Mom gave me a silent smirk, knowing how much it would irk me that my girl agreed with her over me. “Well, you’d be happy to know, Mother. I’ve found my one and only moral compass.”
Mom’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “You have no idea how happy that makes me. You know how volatile and impulsive and obsessive you were as a kid. I had to channel all those emotions somewhere to keep you alive and out of jail.”
I gave her a wink. “You did perfect, Mom. Now, I get to keep Tara and her friends alive and out of jail forever.”
“There’s more of her?” Mom’s shocked expression had the three of us chuckling.
Tara nodded. “A few of us actually. All women. Except for two men now.” She looked at me, and a shy smile came over her face. She was finally accepting me into her fold, into the tightly woven group of her friends who were more than her family. She lived for them. And I lived for her.
My mother looked just in awe of my girl. She turned to me and said, “I’m glad you decided not to arrest this young woman and her friends.”
Tara burst out laughing. “You and me both, Terry.”
I met Hugh’s eyes and hinted to him that we needed to talk about why we were really here. Mom obviously took the hint and stood. “I’m going to make us all spaghetti and meatballs. Do you eat meat, Tara?”
“Yes, Terry. That’s fine by me.”
Mom visibly breathed a sigh of relief and walked into the open kitchen, leaving the three of us at the dining table. It’s not like Hugh and I didn’t talk about work when we came to visit Mom. I was sure she’d have inputs and comments as I went over the plan with Hugh.
Once I explained to Tara that Hugh owned a large cybersecurity company and worked with high-profile private as well as government clients, I went over what we needed from him next.
For the next two hours, we planned and plotted the number of men he could provide to Tara on the field as a contingency, the number he would use off-site, the devices he’d provide, and the mechanism for setting all the bombs to go off together.
The moment they started discussing shop, the two of them got lost in their own world.
It felt good to see Hugh get along with my girl. He rarely ever gets along with anyone.
Knowing that I wasn’t needed at the dining table, I stepped into the kitchen. “You need any help, Mom?”
“Always. Grab that lettuce and start chopping. We still need to eat some greens.”
I washed my hands and got to work. I could feel Mom’s eyes on me. “What is it, Mom?”
She came closer to me and looked up at me, her eyes wet with tears. “I’m so happy for you.”
I stopped chopping. “You are? So you like her?”
“She’s brave. So fucking brave. To suffer through such a horrible attack and then put yourself back together.
It takes so much courage and strength and mental fortitude.
Despite her suffering, her trauma, she hasn’t closed herself off from the world.
She hasn’t turned bitter about the hand she was dealt in her life.
She’s devoted her life to avenging other women. That requires a heart of gold.”
“Even though it’s illegal?”
“Sometimes, some people have to rise above the law to protect those that the law can’t. Maybe that’s illegal. Maybe that’s unlawful. But that’s also being a hero. Or heroine, in this case. And of course, you’d fall for a woman like that. I just don’t understand how she fell in love with you.”
“I wouldn’t leave her alone, that’s how.”
“Now that’s illegal.”
I pulled her into my arms and pressed a kiss on top of her head. “Hush now, she loves it. And she loves me.”
“She said that?”
“Of course she did. I’m a catch.”
Mom snorted. “As your mom and the person who raised you, I’ll have to agree. But you’re a psychopath, dear. You’re not exactly a catch. You’re more of an acquired taste.”
Oh, she’d acquired it and fucking loved it. But I didn’t say that out loud. “I’m glad her taste buds are broken, then. But I’m glad you love her as well. She’s it for me.”
“I couldn’t be happier, baby.”
When we walked out of the kitchen, Tara had a soft smile on her face, her eyes shiny with tears. “You okay, little beauty?” I asked, putting the salad down on the table.
“We heard you talk,” Hugh mouthed at me as Tara sipped some water.
I pressed a kiss on my girl’s head as my mom welcomed Tara home.