Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Sobs carried through the bathroom door, uneven and out of control.
I stayed where I was, arms crossed and staring out the window as the sun set, giving her the space to lose it without me standing over her. Scarlett didn’t need an audience. She needed space. I could give her that.
Twenty-four hours ago, she’d been a sassy-mouthed little hellcat on my kitchen counter, spitting fire and daring me to touch her. Now she’d locked herself in a hotel bathroom in Madrid, that same mouth trembling around a truth big enough to choke anyone.
She’d had twenty-four hours from hell.
Finding out who her father really was and what he’d done, what he’d been willing to trade her for—was something no daughter should have to go through.
She’d barely had time to process that before she’d taken a hard left turn into the confessional and shattered in my arms. Thank God for the sedative.
I didn’t regret for one second forcing it on her.
I don’t think she could’ve survived the long flight in a tiny metal tube with that much devastation to process.
Listening to her cry while she told me how she’d been coerced into selling her body—her fucking virginity, for Christ’s sake—broke something loose inside me.
I no longer had any other purpose on this earth than to right the wrongs done to her.
Fuck Xyst, fuck The Syndicate, fuck everything I’d thought mattered.
Now, the only thing that existed was her.
One way or another, I would mend her body and soul. She was mine.
I was ready to kill every single person who’d made her suffer. And if some bitch—Lola, I think Scarlett had said—thought I wouldn’t rip her throat out because she was a woman, then she didn’t have a clue about Irish wrath.
Scarlett had been unconscious for most of the seven-and-a-half-hour flight and then had slept nearly another twelve hours by the time the sedative wore off. While she slept, Nik brought me up to speed on the fallout from the safe house.
Hayes survived the shooting.
Worse, he’d turned his hospital suite into a press circus and his latest campaign quarters, spinning himself into the role of victim while my name hit the wires. A warrant for my arrest followed not long after.
Nik scrubbed what he could. There were no clear photos, just shadows and a few bad angles from The Black Ledger alley, leaving very few clues about who I really was.
I didn’t give a fuck about the warrant. That would sort itself out.
What I cared about was Scarlett. And I didn’t have it in me to hand her another grenade tonight. That truth could wait until morning.
Hayes getting shot and Scarlett escaping had lit a fuse. Delgado wanted her—wanted Hayes to suffer for not keeping his house in order. Instead, he got a bigger mess. Once again, he was a cartel king denied his prize.
That kind of man didn’t take defeat as an outcome. He took it as a debt.
Between what had happened with Lacey and now Scarlett, Delgado had a vendetta to settle with The Syndicate that only our heads, served on a buffet-sized platter, would quell.
But first things first, I needed to get some food in my little bird. She hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. And the last thing she needed was for me to grill her about her father and his connections to a monastery that was quickly looking like a front for sex traffickers.
I turned from the window and crossed the suite.
My go-bag lay open on the table in the living room.
I checked the guns again out of habit—magazines seated, chambers clear—then set them within reach.
I’d already stripped them down once and reassembled them with muscle memory just to keep my hands busy.
I shrugged out of my suit jacket and tossed it over the chair, then started on the cuffs of my white shirt, rolling them up on my forearms.
The sobbing she’d started with broke into an occasional hiccupping whimper.
The quiet that followed landed heavier than the crying.
I kept moving, checking the windows, searching for any of those nasty little hidden cameras or listening devices. Despite Nik’s assurance of safety, I refused to let my guard down.
A knock on the door snapped my attention.
My body went still.
I didn’t move toward the door like a man expecting a delivery. I moved like a man expecting trouble.
Gun first.
My hand snatched one up from where it sat on the table and covered the other one before I crossed to the door.
My phone was already in my hand by the time I reached for the handle.
I was expecting the woman Nik trusted here. The one I’d sent out for clothes, essentials, everything Scarlett and I might need for the next few days.
That didn’t mean I opened the door blindly.
I leaned into the peephole. A tall brunette stood in the hall, arms full of bags. I tapped her number into my phone.
It rang once.
Twice.
She knocked again, impatient now, as if she had better things to do than wait on me.
The woman on the other side of the door answered, “Да?”
Russian.
“All right,” I said quietly. “I see you’re outside my door.”
As soon as I opened it, she said in crisp English with a hard edge, “If you shoot me, it will be inconvenient.”
I huffed a dry laugh.
“Inconvenient,” I repeated.
“For you,” she quipped.
She stepped inside without hesitation.
“Katya,” she stated. “I’m an old friend of Nikolai’s from St. Petersburg.”
I took most of the bags from her as she spoke and set them on the table in the sitting area. She rolled her shoulders as if she’d been carrying bags for a long time.
“There will be more tomorrow,” she said. “But this will hold you until then.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are welcome.” Her gaze flicked toward the bathroom, but she didn’t say anything.
Katya’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, thumb moving fast. “Madrid is a city with keen ears,” she said.
“People watch. People talk. You keep curtains closed. You do not use the hotel staff for favors. If you need anything, you call me. If you see anything unusual, you call me first, then you call Nikolai.”
“I don’t take orders,” I said automatically.
Katya’s eyes narrowed. “Then you die stupidly. And she dies with you.”
A beat of silence.
Then, quieter, she said, “Nik cares about his people. It makes him dangerous. So don’t be an idiot.”
That earned her a fraction of respect I hadn’t planned on giving.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call. And thanks for the help.”
Katya stepped back toward the door. Not lingering.
I moved with her, opening the door for her.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“Tomorrow,” I echoed.
She stepped into the hall, and I shut the door behind her, locking it.
The shower still ran, which meant Scarlett was stuck inside her own head. I stood outside the bathroom door, listening to the steady rush and nothing else. No movement. No sound but the spray of the water hitting the floor.
She was spiraling.
“Scar,” I called once. No answer.
I exhaled slowly and reached into my pocket, pulling out the slim multitool I carried out of habit.
The lock was a standard hotel privacy latch—cheap hardware, meant for guest privacy, not for a man who’d broken into worse places with less.
I slid the flat edge into the seam, twisted gently, and felt the mechanism give with a soft click.
The door swung open.
Steam rolled out first, thick and warm.
She sat on the shower floor, knees pulled tight to her chest, head bowed, arms wrapped around herself as if she were trying to disappear. Water sprayed over her shoulders and down her back, soaking her hair.
She looked…so small.
Too fragile for what the world had already done to her.
Something dark and possessive tightened in my chest.
I stepped in, reached past her, and shut the water off. She flinched, her head snapping up.
Her eyes found mine—wide, red, wrecked.
I grabbed a thick white robe from the hook on the wall with one hand and held my other out to her, palm open.
“Come here,” I said softly. “Come to me, my little bird.”
Her face twisted in disbelief, as if she didn’t understand the kind gesture.
“Come on,” I said. “You can trust me. You know that in your gut.”
She hesitated, then haltingly placed her hand in mine.
I closed my fingers around hers and pulled her carefully to her feet. She shyly covered her breasts with her free arm, so I made a deliberate point of keeping my eyes locked on her face—nowhere else. Not even a flicker downward.
Earning her trust one step at a time was all that mattered.
I held the robe open between us. “Turn around.”
She did.
I guided her arms into the sleeves, then reached up and eased her wet hair free from the collar, pulling it out so it fell down her back instead of trapping it against her neck. I leaned down slightly and tied the belt around her waist.
She sucked in a soft gasp at the contact.
I lowered my mouth near her ear, my voice barely above a whisper. “Trust me, lass. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re not alone in this world.”
Her body shuddered, a full-body reaction she couldn’t control.
She was so sensitive to me.
I scooped her up before she could argue and carried her out of the bathroom, setting her on the bed.
Then I went to the bags Katya had delivered.
I rummaged through them until I found what I was looking for—a kit with a hairbrush, a blow dryer, hair ties, and an assortment of other girly things I didn’t have names for.
I brought it back to the bed, set the kit beside her, and stepped back, giving her space.
Scarlett loosened the robe’s belt just enough to sit comfortably, then reached for the bag. She peeked inside, froze for a second, and then let out a soft gasp.
“Oh my God, look at all of this.”
She started pulling things out, setting them on the bed between us. “Okay—this shampoo and conditioner,” she said, holding up two bottles. “They’re actually good ones from a salon.”