21. Leah
LEAH
Three days of even more security guarding me, and I don’t like it one bit.
I still flinch every time I open my door and see an armed guard standing there.
“Ms. Bennett, I need to go with you if you leave your condo,” the guard outside my door says as I head for the elevator.
“I’m not leaving the building. I left something in my car. I’m just running down to the garage. You don’t need to come.”
He shakes his head and follows me onto the elevator anyway. “Sorry, ma’am. Strict orders. You don’t go anywhere without me.”
“Fine.” I roll my eyes, but not at him. He’s just doing his job. “Get ready for a very boring trip to the car and back.”
He chuckles. “Boring’s fine by me. In my line of work, boring is the goal.”
In the garage, he walks me to the car and stands by the taillights while I lean in to grab the folders off the passenger seat. I don’t hear anything while I’m bent over. But when I straighten up and reach to lock the door, there are footsteps behind me.
Footsteps in a parking garage aren’t anything on their own. But these are different. Quiet, careful, and then suddenly not.
Four men come at us at once. The guard draws his gun and fires, and one of them goes down clutching his shoulder, but the other three don’t slow. Two of them pile onto the guard and wrestle the gun away. The third corners me against the passenger door.
“Don’t even try it,” one of them snarls at the guard.
I see him grab the guard’s phone and throw it onto the concrete. The screen cracks. But before it hits the ground, I see it’s lit up, and the call timer is running. He got through to someone. Not that it helps me now.
“Where are you going, pretty thing?”
The man in front of me speaks quietly. His face is weathered, his brown eyes flat and patient in a way I don’t like at all. He runs a hand through salt-and-pepper hair and tucks it into the pocket of a cashmere coat.
“You don’t want to run from me, Leah. I’m tired of sending my men after you, and that’s made me impatient. This goes easier if you don’t fight.”
“You’re Victor Walsh.” It comes out choked.
“I am. And I’m glad we finally get to meet. Now, you’re coming with me. There’s a deadline on your future that runs out tomorrow, and I like to keep my leverage close.”
“I’m not your leverage.” I ball my fists at my sides, hoping it makes me braver than I feel.
“That’s exactly what you are.” He smiles. “Your value has gone up considerably. I don’t have one Oliver brother on a leash anymore. I have three. And I’d like to find out what getting you back in one piece is worth to them.”
“You’ll regret this.” Tears and fury, both at once. “They’ll kill you if you hurt me.”
“Doubtful. Your Oliver brothers are intimidating men, but they aren’t stupid. They won’t throw away their reputations and their businesses on something rash. Not even for you, my dear.”
I look past his shoulder toward the garage elevator and wonder whether I could make it.
“I wouldn’t.” His eyes follow mine. “Nothing heroic. You won’t end up a heroine. You’ll end up dead. Be a good girl and get in the car, and we’ll go for a ride.”
Every movie I’ve ever seen where the woman gets in the car flashes through my head. None of them end well. Getting in that car is the worst thing I can do.
Thankfully, Declan taught me a few things about self-defense. I’m about to find out how well I learned them.
I run. I dart around Walsh and sprint for the far end of the garage, and I make it three steps before he catches my wrist and wrenches me back so hard my feet nearly leave the ground. He spins me around to face him, thumbs digging into my skin. I can feel the bruise forming.
“I told you.” The pleasant act is gone. “Be a good girl.”
His anger is my opening.
That’s what Declan taught me. Emotion in a fight is a strength or a weakness, depending on whether you’re trying to take something or protect it.
While Walsh is too furious to think, I jab my free hand into his throat, the way Declan showed me. It catches him completely off guard. The strike isn’t strong enough to drop him, but the shock is enough.
For a second, his grip loosens. I pull. It isn’t enough. He clamps down harder, angrier now, and gets hold of my other wrist too.
“You little bitch,” he coughs.
I try to knee him. I miss and hit air beside his thigh.
“You know,” he says, and the grin is ugly now, “I don’t think your value drops much if my boys rough you up a little. In fact, after that stunt, I think you owe me for the trouble. Not every debt gets paid in cash, Leah. Some get collected with you on your back.”
My eyes go wide. I fight harder. It doesn’t matter.
“The only one on his back today is going to be you.” It’s Declan, but all three Oliver brothers come out of the elevator at a run. “And it’ll be from looking up at us from six feet under.”
My self-defense wasn’t so useless after all. It bought me the seconds I needed.
Emmett, Declan, and Rowan hit Walsh’s men like a storm. Each of them has a good twenty pounds of muscle on any of Walsh’s men, and Declan and Emmett have the advantage in seconds. While they keep the men from reaching their boss, Rowan goes for Walsh himself and slams him against the garage wall.
“Get the fuck off me, you asshole,” Walsh howls. “If you didn’t want your side chick getting hurt, you shouldn’t have put her name on the guarantee.”
For a second, my head can’t make sense of it. Then I see Rowan’s face, and I understand.
Walsh thinks he’s Kian.
“You piece of shit.” Rowan’s hand closes around Walsh’s throat. “You think I’d let you anywhere near her? You have no idea who you’re fucking with, old man.”
“Rowan, don’t!” I shout when Walsh’s face starts to change color.
Not out of mercy. I just don’t want Rowan doing something he can’t take back.
He looks at me and lets go. Walsh drops, choking, onto his knees.
“Are you okay?” Rowan turns and comes toward me. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine.” I reach for his outstretched hand. “Thank god you got here when—”
The gunshot and the look on Rowan’s face happen in the same terrible second.
He falls. Blood spreads across his right shoulder. Behind him, Walsh is on his feet with a gun in his hand.
Declan and Emmett break off and run for their brother. Walsh’s men grab their boss, drag him into a car, and it screams out of the garage before anyone can stop it.
“Rowan!” I scream as Declan and Emmett lift him between them.
“It’s alright.” He’s straining to get the words out. “I’m okay. You can’t get rid of me that easy, Leah.”
He tries to smile and winces instead. I look from Declan to Emmett, searching for something to hold onto.
“It’s okay.” Declan takes Rowan’s weight and starts for the car.
“It’s a shoulder wound. We just need to get him to the ER.
He’ll be fine.” He glances at me. “Remember what I told you when we were training? Emotion is strength when you’re protecting something you care about.
And Rowan cares a whole hell of a lot about you. ”
The guard drives. I take the passenger seat while Declan and Emmett tend to Rowan in the back. The hospital is close, and the guard runs every light on the way, so we’re there faster than an ambulance would have been.
Declan flags down a medic and goes in with Rowan. Emmett stays with me, and the two of us pace the waiting room.
“I’ll get us coffee,” he says. “Actually, coffee’s the last thing you need. I’ll find tea.”
I nod and fight the tears.
“Leah.” He wraps me in a bear hug. “Rowan is going to be fine. And we’ll deal with Walsh as soon as we’re out of here. We’ve got you. You’re stuck with the three of us for as long as you’ll have us.”
“He got hurt protecting me.” My voice breaks. “If I hadn’t gone down to that garage—”
“No.” Emmett’s voice hardens, which it almost never does. “Walsh was going to find a way to you no matter what you did. We had extra security, and he still got through. Kian is the one who caused all of this. You did nothing wrong. None of this is your fault. Okay?”
I nod. I don’t believe him.
It is my fault. Rowan is in an emergency room because he put himself between Walsh and me, and when I called out, he turned his back on the enemy to come to me.
I’m the danger. And Walsh got away, which means this is going to keep happening.
Next time it could be Madeline, or the baby, or all three of the men I’ve fallen in love with.
I can’t do this. I can’t keep putting them in danger. It would make me no better than Kian.
“Stay right here,” Emmett says. “I’ll be back with tea, or coffee, or whatever this place has.”
He stops at the nurses’ station on the way. I know he’s checking on his brother. I strain to hear, and I catch enough. He’s going to be okay.
Emmett smiles, glances back at me, and heads for the vending machine at the far end of the hall.
For a second, I hesitate. I know what I have to do. I don’t want to do it. And I know this is the only chance I’ll get.
I leave the waiting room and walk fast to the car, where the guard is still waiting.
“Where are the others?”
“Staying while they patch Rowan up. He’s going to be fine.” I make myself smile. “But I need to run back to the condo for a few things. Can you take me?”
He pats his pockets. “Sure, I just need to let them know.”
“Declan said it’s fine.” Another smile. “I just need my laptop so I can work while we wait. You’ll be with me the whole time, and I’ll be fast.”
“Alright.” He pulls out. “This gives me a chance to get my phone. I think it’s still on the floor of the garage.”
I lean back against the seat and watch out the window as Emmett walks back into the waiting room with two cups in his hands and stops.
I’ll need to be fast. At least they can’t reach the guard without his phone.
“That was smart, what you did,” I tell him. “Calling one of them when Walsh’s men came at us. I saw your phone light up before it got knocked away.”
“Rowan told me to call him directly if anything happened. He was watching over you, ma’am, even when he wasn’t there.”
I wipe a tear away before it falls. This is exactly why I have to go. They love me, all three of them. Declan, Rowan, and Emmett would risk their lives for me, and I can’t let them.
Because for the first time since any of this began, I know I’m in love with all three of them. I won’t be the reason they get hurt. Even if it means losing them.
We pull up to Koi Tower, and I’m out before the car stops.
“Be right back!” I call to the poor guard, who’s had enough for one shift. I hope they don’t eat him alive for bringing me here.
I race up to the condo. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing. As soon as the guard has his phone back, this window closes.
Bags, clothes, laptop. I don’t have much. This isn’t my first time leaving somewhere fast. It’s just the first time it’s ever felt like this.
I grab a notepad and scribble as fast as I can.
I’m sorry. I’m not leaving because I don’t care about you. I’m leaving because I DO. I can’t be the reason any of the men I love gets hurt. I’m going somewhere he won’t look, and I’m not telling you where, because you’d come. Look after Madeline.
I stare at the word love for a second and wonder if I should have written it. But it’s true, and I’m out of time.
When I step into the hall, the elevator is on its way up. The guard has his phone back. One of them has told him what to do.
I take the stairs, bags in both hands, laptop under one arm, all the way down. I spill out onto the sidewalk and throw myself into the first cab I see.
I don’t know where I’m going. For the first time in my life, I owned my own home and was in love. And I can’t go back to any of it.
“Where to, miss?”
Through the window, I see the guard burst out of the tower’s front doors.
“Just drive.” The tears come now, and I let them. “Drive. I’ll give you an address in a minute.”
He drives, and within moments, Koi Tower is gone behind us. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Not about where to live, not about Walsh still out there looking for me, and not about how I’m going to get through a single day without wanting to be with Rowan, Emmett, and Declan.