Chapter 17
We rode out as planned despite what just happened in the tack room.
I knew it when I saw it. It happened to Gabriel more than once, upon returning from deployment.
Trauma response.
The past twenty-four hours have messed with me. Seeing another side of Delilah, the human one, has cut through me like a blade I wasn’t expecting.
She carries pain.
When Delilah walked into my office, I saw a spoiled brat. A ruthless power hungry young woman who has never had to take no for an answer.
Now, I see someone who’s been taught men never have good intentions. That your own mom might hurt you.
Where the fuck was Marcus while his wife hurt his daughter like that?
Maybe Delilah has luxury clothes and fancy jewelry, but she certainly didn’t have love. And as many times as I promised myself that my family would never be poor again, I would never trade the love we have for money.
I’m starting to believe Delilah wants to see Marcus behind bars, not just for these women, but for everything she endured.
The question I still can’t answer is whether she’s doing it with or without Luther.
But even there, my walls are tumbling. If she hates the world her father inhabits, Luther is one of the same.
This whole thing is a mindfuck now. Wanting to comfort someone and keep your guard up at the same time are incompatible motives.
I was just as glad for the breather we had out on the trails as she was.
It was clear she didn’t want to say more right after her panic attack, so we quietly tacked up, and I helped her up on Ember.
We moved through the open land, the rhythm of the horses settling into something steady and quiet beneath us.
Delilah found her balance quickly. Ember is an easy ride, but she still handled the mare without hesitation, refusing to show those nerves I saw when she first took the lead rope in the barn.
Not unlike myself, Delilah doesn’t like to show weakness. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
The ride was peaceful.
We didn’t talk much. A few words here and there. Enough to keep it from feeling completely unnatural, but not enough to touch anything real.
The space between us feels… different now. Not as sharp as it was when she first walked into my office, but not easy either.
When we head back, I tell her to leave me to handle the horses from there. I don’t want her near the girth again, nor the tack room.
So she moves back to the house after the ride, and after putting the horses out to pasture, I have my call with David.
He’s found more on Rourke with additional access.
The plates. The jeep. Rourke’s address. His ties to Iron Covenant.
This time I’m clearer with the assignment.
I tell him we have an eyewitness who believes they were taken, and he doesn’t question it. He shifts gears, running through legal avenues, pulling up our contracts in the area, possible surveillance, and ways to get a sight on where the women are.
It’s the first brick in building something airtight. A case that’s clean and traceable.
And also visible to Enzo.
There’s no way I’m getting around that now, and it sits like a hot coal in my stomach. But I’ve accepted these women are missing, and that means whether Delilah is using me or not, I have to find them.
The problem is how Delilah and Luther play into it all.
An alliance between Black Ridge and Iron Covenant is forming. But does Luther know about the trafficking? Does Marcus know about Jackal?
And how will I deal with Delilah knowing enough to tear down my whole family?
If Marcus knows nothing, GhostEye could take him down clean. But if Luther gets pulled in with him, that complicates things in ways I don’t control. I don’t like operating without control.
The timeline just got tighter, because I believe Delilah now. The women aren’t a story she invented to push me into this. They’re real, and I have to find them.
I don’t know if she’ll ever open up, but it’s clear to me now that this isn’t about gain.
It’s about escape.
Justice.
It’s dangerous to help her. I shouldn’t.
But I can’t help myself.
I finish my call with David and head back toward the house, but halfway there, I stop at my dad’s place and grab the leftover soup that practically made her orgasm on the spot a couple of nights ago.
I hope it soothes her the same way now. The woman needs a break.
She’s been operating in fight or flight mode for God knows how long now, and it’s time someone offers her a place to lay it all down.
I push the door open and step inside. The house is quiet but not empty. There’s a low hum coming from the kitchen, the faint whir of a microwave working overtime, and something about it feels… normal. Too normal for everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
I follow the sound.
She’s leaning back against the counter when I walk in, arms folded loosely, the microwave ticking down behind her.
Her hair is still damp from a shower, twisted up off her neck, a few strands clinging to her skin.
She’s changed out of the clothes she wore earlier and into a lot less fabric– tiny shorts and a thin tank top that doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
Jesus.
It’s not easy to stay composed with a woman as stunning as Delilah in my kitchen. I’m not usually swayed by beauty alone, but Delilah is a lot more than that.
Whether I like to admit it or not, that woman has fire. Grit. Passion. She’s smart, and to top that all off, she might even have a good heart.
I need to sweep these thoughts out of my mind. I can’t let my body respond like this.
Not only does she know all the shit about me I’d rather forget, but the respect curling under my ribs is taking on a very different shape from the kind I feel for ordinary colleagues.
It’s suspiciously deep. A type of respect and admiration I’ve been actively avoiding by keeping life casual.
And when I lock eyes with Delilah, if I ever crossed the line with a woman like her, casual wouldn’t do.
Tina trots over, tail wagging as she heads straight for me. I crouch, scratching behind her ears, grateful for the distraction.
“Hey, pup.”
Delilah offers a thin-lipped smile. “Hey.”
The microwave beeps behind her, and she reaches back to stop it, pulling out whatever she’s heating without much enthusiasm. Considering she hasn’t been to the grocery store, and I invited her to eat whatever’s going, it’s probably a high-protein meal from my freezer that will taste like sawdust.
I set the bag my dad packed for me down on the counter. “If that doesn’t work out,” I say, nodding toward it, “I brought backup.”
Her eyes drop to the bag, then back to me, a small crease forming between her brows. “What’s that?”
“Albondigas. My dad always makes too much.”
She stares at me, and a weird feeling I’ve never had before washes over me. It’s a nervous energy I don’t recognize.
I scratch the back of my neck. “I figured you might want something better than whatever that is.”
She leans to one side, the skimpy fabric rising, and she places a hand on the curve of her hip. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“I’m not being nice. You have to eat.”
Her brows raise, suspicious above glimmering green eyes.
“Okay,” I admit. “I’m being nice.”
She crosses her arms. “You feel sorry for me, and you shouldn’t. I’m fine.”
Her words flare in my chest. Someone hurt her and told her to hide it. And it makes me murderous.
But she tries again to convince me of just how fine she is. “I’m not the only person in the universe with problems. I’m nothing special.”
I agree everyone has problems, but I don’t agree she’s nothing special. By all accounts, Delilah Cross is extraordinary.
“What?” She asks, growing uncomfortable with my silence. Her tone turns surly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
She’s almost cute when she’s a brat.
The corner of my mouth kicks up. “Grab two bowls, Princess.”
She holds the defiance for a beat before she concedes. She turns to the cupboard and reaches up for two bowls, and her shorts have absolutely no interest in making this easy for me.
She watches me open the containers, my dad gave them to me hot, and a savory steam fills the air. She breathes it in deeply.
“Smells better than mine,” she says.
“That’s not a high bar,” I say, grabbing a serving spoon from a drawer and filling a bowl.
“Why are you so obsessed with protein?”
“You will be too when you’re not a baby.”
“Rude.”
“Once you’re thirty, you’ll face more peer pressure to eat protein than you did to do drugs in your teens.”
A laugh erupts from her pretty lips. “Wow. A joke? Now I know you’re trying hard.”
I slide the full bowl toward her.
She leans against the counter again, bends over to blow the top of the bowl, and the scoop neck of her flimsy camisole gapes open.
I avert my eyes.
But I don’t want to.
I fill my bowl up, mouth already watering. Few things elicit involuntary reactions from me. The food of my childhood, and my eyes darting back to Delilah’s breasts are two of them.
She stands upright again and points her spoon at me. “So you disarm people with jokes and soup, eh?”
“I wasn’t joking.”
She smiles, amusement dancing on her cheeks, and my God, if she was beautiful before, Delilah is a sight to fucking behold when she smiles.
“So the soup is the gateway to me making bad decisions?” She asks.
“Bad decisions?” I perch on the edge of a stool. “Wouldn’t want that.”
“No.” She stirs her soup. “Definitely not.”
That felt a hell of a lot like flirting.
I let it sit for a second, and she takes a bite of soup. I watch the comfort of it slide down the column of her tanned throat.
I’m not so hungry for soup anymore and when my dick twitches in my pants, I can see how my body hasn’t gotten the memo that being attracted to Delilah could make something complicated into the death of me.
I clear my throat.
“I told my guy at GhostEye to see what contracts we have surveillance-wise near the body shop and strip club,” I say like it’s nothing. “I elevated the case in status on our system.”