38. BLAKE
BLAKE
A scream shattered the night. Not just any scream. The kind that stops your heart.
Tessa.
I charged out of my bedroom, down the hall, bare feet nearly sliding on hardwood.
My mind raced with every possible threat—intruder, accident, injury—while my body moved on pure instinct.
In a more lucid moment, I might have remembered we were fifty stories up in a secured penthouse.
But all I could process was that sound, that soul-ripping cry that made my blood run cold.
The darkness in her room disoriented me for a moment. When I turned on the soft lamp by her bed, I realized there was no intruder. No threat. Just Tessa, tangled in sheets, tears streaming down her face as she fought an enemy I couldn’t see.
“No,” she whimpered, one hand pressing outward against a phantom attacker. “Please stop.”
My stomach dropped through the floor. Rage bloomed in my chest. Helpless, useless rage with nowhere to go.
“Get off me!” The raw fear in her voice made my hands shake.
“Tessa.” I reached for her, then hesitated, worried my touch would make it worse. “You’re safe. You’re home.”
She jerked away from my voice, still trapped in the nightmare. “No!”
Something inside me cracked, watching her relive this hell. I’d seen thousands of patients in pain, but nothing had ever cut quite like this.
“Tessa, wake up. It’s Blake. You’re safe.”
Her eyes flew open, wild and unfocused. For a moment, she stared through me, still caught between nightmare and reality. Then awareness crept in, followed immediately by that mask she wore so well. The one that said, I’m fine; everything’s fine.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she said, voice scratchy, embarrassment flooding her cheeks with red. “I haven’t had a nightmare in a while.”
Even now, she was trying to comfort me. Jesus.
“Something triggered it.” Not a question. “Was it Jace? He didn’t mean to surprise you in the kitchen.”
We’d already talked about this, of course, when she’d apologized a million times.
“No.” She twisted her fingers in her lap, gaze down. The tell I’d memorized years ago.
“Was it because of our talk?” Damn, why did I bring that up? Maybe I should have taken her confession to my grave. If this was my fault?—
“No,” she said.
“Then what?”
Silence.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, but her voice wavered. “Really. I’m sorry I woke you.”
Tessa lay back down, shifting the covers until she was comfortable, making it clear this part of the conversation was over.
But something had set her off, and for some reason, I believed her, that it wasn’t our talk. But what then? What had infiltrated the safety of my penthouse and scared the shit out of her?
“Good night, Blake,” she said gently.
I turned toward the hallway but stopped, watching her stare at the ceiling with that carefully blank expression I knew too well. My feet refused to move, understanding viscerally what it was like to lie there alone after a nightmare, trying to be fine.
“Sometimes, sleeping can be the hardest when you don’t feel safe,” I said.
When she clutched the covers together to her chest, something twisted in my ribs.
“I don’t want to invade your space,” I started. “But … would it be okay if I lay with you? Just until you fall asleep?” She tensed slightly, and my voice softened. “I won’t get any sleep, worrying you might be in here, unable to sleep alone.”
Her voice was barely a whisper. “What if I can’t sleep at all?”
“Then we’ll be insomniacs together.”
That earned me a ghost of a smile, and after a moment’s hesitation, she shifted over, making room for me on the bed. After I shut off the light, we lay there in silence, but I could feel the tension radiating from her body, could sense her struggling to relax.
“Blake?” Her voice was quiet, embarrassed. “Would you … would you hold me?”
My throat tightened. “Cupcake,” I murmured, “I’d hold you every moment of every day if it meant you felt safe.”
I reached for her, but again, hesitated. She was in a bed, perhaps not unlike the one she was assaulted in.
“You’re sure?” I started. “I don’t want to trigger?—”
“I’m sure.” Her voice wavered, and we both knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful.
The way she’d flinched from the male nurse was still fresh in my mind.
But I understood what she meant. The nurse had been a stranger who’d moved suddenly, probably in a way that echoed her past trauma.
With me, right now, she felt safe. “Therapy helped,” she continued softly.
“It’s just the nightmares that still come, and for those few minutes after, everything feels … raw.”
My mind caught on the word therapy . This girl had been through a war while I was evidently studying textbooks. Fucking A.
“Besides. Your touch would never trigger me.” She nuzzled her face into my chest as if those words hadn’t penetrated my soul. That my touch would be different. Safe. Even if all other men might scare her.
“Tell me what triggered this?” I kept my voice soft, though dread pooled in my stomach. Especially when she tensed.
“You’ll freak out.”
Despite everything, I smiled. “Stop trying to protect me from having feelings.”
She traced slow circles on my abs, each touch sending warmth from my skin to my heart. “Promise you won’t do anything rash?”
“Tessa.”
She sighed. “He sent another letter.”
Every muscle in my body went rigid with two more words: another and letter . I recalled what she’d been mumbling incoherently before her MRI. Something about police not being able to prove it was him, about wishing they used handwriting experts.
“What do you mean, another letter?”
The silence stretched so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer.
When she did, her voice was carefully controlled, like she was defusing a bomb.
“After I filed the police report, he started showing up on campus, demanding I drop the complaint. Then he went quiet. Long enough that when the letters began appearing, the police said there was no way to prove it was him. Especially since the first ones were typed, self-sealed, slipped directly into my mailbox. Untraceable.” She drew a shaky breath.
“Years later, when they turned handwritten, the police visited him, but again, no proof. No fingerprints. No explicit mention of that night. Just him, finding ways to remind me he’s still out there, still watching. ”
My vision burned red. The only thing keeping me from leaping up and hunting him down right now was the weight of her against my chest.
Knox was in prison with people like this predator.
The type of guy who wanted control over his victim, and when she dared speak out against him, the only way for him to maintain a sense of power and control was to continue to dominate her through threats and fear.
It was like reliving that attack over and over.
And putting Tessa through hell.
All while, evidently, keeping track of where she lived. He had to have her address to send that letter.
“Tess, have you seen him since the attack?”
Tessa yawned. “No. I just hate it when another letter comes.”
A letter. How did he get her a letter here ? She hadn’t even had mail forwarded yet, just grabbed the stack of mail on her counter from?—
I glared across the room at a piece of paper, a typed letter sprawled on her dresser.
Motherfucker. It took a massive— massive —amount of control to hold her until her breathing evened out, until I was certain she’d fallen into safer dreams. Only then did I ease away, tucking the covers around her shoulders, and then snatched the letter off her dresser.
I read it in the hallway. Twice, each word a bottle of gasoline to my wildfire of rage.
How dare this piece of shit! The image of a man forcing himself on Tessa made me want to break every single bone in his body, find every nerve and cut it with a dull ten blade.
Finding out he’d been taunting her this whole time, refusing to let her move on with her life?
Storming into my bedroom, I fired off a text to the guys. Time be damned.
SINNERS & SAINTS GROUP CHAT
Me: 911. Meet me at the mansion. Now.
Jace: It’s 3:30 a.m.
Me: Yep, I can tell time.
Axel: If this is about your car getting keyed, I swear to God …
Me: Nothing I can put in writing. You coming or not?
Ryker: Is Tessa okay?
Ryker didn’t know she was staying with me—still didn’t know about her medical condition—but he knew I was trying to find Voss. And knew Tessa was the only person in the world that would be worthy of a 3:30 a.m. 911 from me.
Me: She’s safe. But I need everyone. Tonight.
Axel: I’m literally in bed with a supermodel.
Jace: Your cleaning service deserves hazard pay for those sheets. Now Blake said move, so move. And, Blake? You STILL owe ME a favor, don’t forget.
Thirty minutes later, they arrived, looking like what they were: dangerous men dragged from sleep, running on loyalty and caffeine.
Jace was the last to walk in, immaculate, even at this hour, in a black button-down with the sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened but still perfectly knotted.
While everyone else looked like they’d been dragged from bed, Jace looked like he’d been calculating profit margins.
When asked, Jace kept the source of his injury vague enough that they didn’t suspect where it’d come from. Luckily, they were distracted with wondering why I’d called this emergency meeting.
“I need your help.” My tone made them straighten. “What I’m about to propose is unethical. Illegal. You can walk away. But I’m hoping you won’t.”
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
“What happened?” Ryker’s voice had that edge he saved for destroying witnesses.
“I want to ruin someone. Systematically. Completely.”
Ryker’s jaw locked. “He did something else to her, didn’t he?”
My silence answered for me.
Ryker’s fist found the wall. The lawyer who never lost control lost it spectacularly.
“Who?” Jace’s voice was arctic as he reached for his phone, as if preparing to mobilize his financial empire at a moment’s notice.
“The man who assaulted my sister,” Ryker answered.
The room crystallized into something deadly. The guys who’d crawled through hell together slowly processed what was just said—someone hurt someone we loved—and now, their faces hardened, ready to drag someone else down.
“Tell us what you need.” Jace’s fingers were already hovering over his screen, his weapon. There was something lethal in his stillness, a darkness I recognized. The same kind that had lived in him since the day his father was murdered.
I’d tracked Voss down in terms of knowing his address and other intel, but without the ability to sit outside his place 24/7, I had yet to spot him, yet to physically get my hands on him.
“The guy owns a talent agency. Small but growing. His entire ego’s wrapped up in it.” I fixed on Jace. “Buy him out. Hostile takeover. Whatever it takes. I want him watching his life’s work turn to ash.”
A cold smile curved Jace’s lips. “I know exactly how to destroy him. We’ll start with his investors.
I’ll buy their silence, their shares, so fast that he won’t know until he’s bleeding out.
” His voice dropped lower. “I’ll protect his employees though.
Move them to subsidiary companies before the kill shot. ”
“Good. This is about him.”
“I can have preliminary documents drawn up by morning,” Jace continued.
“By noon, I’ll know every weak point in his financial structure.
By tomorrow night, I can have rumors floating that will make his investors panic.
Once they start selling …” He looked up.
“He won’t be able to do anything to stop it. ”
“Good.” I turned to Axel. “Your PR department still highly compensated?”
A predatory smile spread across his face. “Want me to dig up his skeletons?”
“I want you to find every secret he’s buried and blast it across the internet. Make him radioactive.”
“If you’d told me we were doing something this fun, I’d have shown up faster,” Axel added.
“I’ve got contacts at every major news outlet,” Jace added, his fingers already moving across his phone.
“By the time we’re done, his name will be poison in every boardroom from here to Tokyo.
No one will touch him with a ten-foot pole.
” He looked up, and for a moment, I saw the wounded boy who’d lost everything, now a man with the power to make others feel that same loss.
In this moment, I think I appreciated Jace more than I ever had before. And trust me, I’d respected the hell out of him already.
You’d think a guy whose father was murdered would give up on life.
Especially when it happened right in front of his brother’s eyes.
You’d think a guy who inherited hundreds of millions at eighteen would choose to coast. Globe-trot on private jets, sip drinks on beaches, collect supermodels like trading cards.
And you’d think with all that money, he’d have just bought his way into business, but he took the time and energy to go to college.
“You can’t run a company if you haven’t paid your dues,” he’d said once.
And that was Jace in a nutshell: a billionaire who still believed in earning his place. While other CEOs collected corporations like trophies, he spent his career saving struggling businesses from going under.
“Ryker, any evidence Axel finds with legal legs, build a file. Worst case, we take it to authorities. Get him shipped to prison. Preferably Knox’s block.”
“And best case?” Axel asked.
“Best case, I get my hands on him first,” I said.
They understood instantly. Better yet, not one of them tried to talk me down.
“His name,” Axel demanded, playboy facade burned away. “Give us his name.”
“Eric Voss.”
Jace was already making calls. Axel’s fingers flew across his phone. Ryker’s hand landed on my shoulder, solid as steel.
“He hurt your sister,” Jace said to him, voice deadly quiet. “In forty-eight hours, Eric Voss won’t know what hit him.”
Brotherhood wasn’t always about defense. Sometimes, it was about demolition. And Eric Voss? He was about to learn what happened when you hurt someone under our protection.
He didn’t just pick the wrong girl to hurt. He picked the wrong family to face.