Chapter 39 Willow
WILLOW
“Put your hands behind your back,” the cop tells Malice, and my pulse jumps.
Malice hesitates, his jaw clenching. His gaze darts past the officer toward me and his brothers, locking eyes with Vic for a heartbeat. Then he shifts his attention to the man in front of him again and slowly starts to turn around, overlapping his wrists behind his back.
Some kind of silent communication seemed to happen between the twins in that look they shared, and I wait for Vic to do something—to execute whatever plan they were making in that wordless way they have.
But then Vic’s hand closes around my upper arm, and he starts tugging me toward the door again. My eyes go wide, my feet sticking to the floor a little as I dig my heels in.
“Wait,” I hiss, glancing between Ransom and Vic. “What are you doing? Where are we going?”
“We have to go, butterfly,” Vic murmurs, his voice tight. “Malice gave us the signal: run.”
What? I shake my head, panic rising up in me like a tsunami. No. That doesn’t make sense. We can’t do that.
“We’ll figure something out,” Ransom whispers, worry glinting in his eyes. “We won’t abandon him, I promise.”
But what are we supposed to ‘figure out’ if Malice is hauled off to jail? Are we supposed to run in there, guns blazing, and bust him out? The idea of him being locked up makes my stomach twist into a knot, and I don’t see how the three of us could possibly pull off a jailbreak.
We can’t let this happen. We can’t let him be taken away.
Behind us, the cop who stopped Malice clicks a set of handcuffs onto his wrists, and his partner glances over at him.
“You good?” his partner calls, gripping Jacob Beeler’s upper arm.
“Yeah.” The bearded cop nods. “Got a parole violator here. He’s wanted across state lines.”
“Must be our lucky fuckin’ night.”
His partner grins, and Jacob’s friends glare up at him from where they’re still seated at the table. They look tense and furious, and one of them licks his lips and spits on the floor.
“Hey, cut that shit out,” the cop holding Jacob warns.
Vic tugs on my arm again, pulling me toward the door.
When I glance up at him, the look on his face fills me with dread.
He’s normally so calm, his features almost expressionless sometimes.
I’ve learned how to read him better, and lately, he’s allowed more of his emotions to show on his face, even smiling from time to time.
He’s not smiling now though. He looks grim, his jaw set tight as his blue eye churn with fear and a flicker of self-doubt.
Normally, Vic has a plan, but it’s clear he doesn’t have one now.
He knows this is a bad idea.
That thought sparks something inside me, and I move without thinking.
Yanking my arm out of his grip, I dart out from between him and Ransom.
There’s an empty metal tray on a nearby table, and I pick it up and hurl it as hard as I can toward the wall behind the bar.
It hits the long shelf loaded full of liquor bottles, shattering two bottles with a loud crash.
The noise draw’s both cops’ attention for just a split second—but that’s all it takes.
The guy who spit at the cop surges to his feet, knocking over the table as he pulls something from the back of his waistband.
“Gun!” the cop yells, releasing his hold on Jacob and lunging forward to try to disarm the man.
At the same moment, Malice slams his head back, connecting with the taller cop’s face and making him reel back. A shot rings out, and more yells rise up in the bar, but I don’t even know who fired.
Malice doesn’t even look toward the altercation on the other side of the room. He wheels around and charges, barreling into the officer who was standing behind him. He plows his shoulder into the cop’s solar plexus, sending him staggering backward before he can recover from the blow to the face.
A brawl is breaking out between the other cop and Jacob’s friends, so there’s no one left to stop Malice as he sprints toward us. Ransom grabs my arm in a vise-like grip as Victor shoves open the door, and Malice is right behind us as we spill out onto the sidewalk.
Another gunshot rings out inside the bar, and I can hear someone yelling, “Backup! We need backup!”
“Go!” Malice barks, and we dash toward the car, heads down.
I’m running so fast that my hands smack against the smooth metal siding of the car when we reach it, and Victor grabs the keys from Malice’s pocket to unlock it.
I open the back door and throw myself inside, sliding across the seat to make room for Malice, who dives into the car with his hands still bound behind his back.
Vic gets behind the wheel, and as I reach over Malice to close the back door, I can hear the telltale howl of sirens in the distance.
Backup is already on the way.
The engine roars to life as several more people burst out of the bar. I can’t quite tell who they are in the dim light of the street, whether they’re cops or patrons, and we don’t stick around to find out. Vic peels away from the curb, driving like a machine.
The way he navigates us down the street is so different from how Malice does it.
He’s all precision and speed, taking each turn as fast as possible, but somehow not throwing us around in the car.
Ransom is in the passenger seat giving him directions, playing the role of navigator like Vic usually does.
Malice straightens up on the seat beside me, grunting as he wrestles with the cuffs. He glances out the back window, his dark eyes glinting under the passing streetlights.
“We’ve got a fucking tail,” he growls. “They’re a ways back, though. We’ve got a few blocks on ’em. Floor it, Vic.”
The sirens behind us get louder, their wails rising in the air, and Vic speeds up, weaving around cars as he checks the rearview. He takes each twist and turn that Ransom tells him to, and after a while, I can’t see the blue and red lights behind us anymore, although I can still hear the sirens.
“Up there. Left, left, left!” Ransom says urgently. “Pull into that alley. Kill the lights.”
Vic does, veering into an alley that’s just barely wide enough for our car.
Panic flashes through me at how boxed in we are, but he doesn’t question his brother’s judgement as he switches off the headlights and drives deeper into the dark alley, stopping when it dead ends in a brick wall and killing the engine.
Just about a minute later, several cop cars go screaming by, lights flashing.
We wait a few seconds, then a minute more, and when they don’t come back, I slump against the seat, blowing out a shaky breath.
It feels too soon to say we’re in the clear, but at least I can’t hear sirens anymore.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
The sudden boom of Malice’s voice jerks me out of my thoughts. He turns to face me, and it’s so dark in the alley that his features are cast in deep shadows, making the anger on his face even more apparent.
“Do you have any idea how badly that could have gone down?” he demands, somehow managing to get right up in my face even though he’s still constrained by the handcuffs. “I gave Vic the signal to run. You were supposed to get the fuck out of there. Not start a goddamned brawl!”
“And leave you behind?” I narrow my eyes. “No.”
“For fuck’s sake, Solnyshka! You can’t keep risking yourself like this. That cop only wanted me, but they’ll sure as hell be after all four of us now. Is that what you fucking wanted? Are you happy now?”
My hands are still shaking from the fear and adrenaline of everything that happened in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, so I let them ball into fists. I don’t back down from Malice though, glaring right back at him.
“I was doing what you said,” I tell him stubbornly.
“What are you talking about? I never told you to pull some reckless shit like that.”
“You said the only way I could protect you and your brothers is by staying by your side. By staying where I belong.” I hold his gaze, lifting my chin and letting him see the defiance in my eyes.
“So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not running, and I’m not letting you split us up.
I don’t care about your secret signals. Vic knew it was a bad idea too, I could see it in his eyes. We have to stay together.”
“Not if the rest of you—”
“No!” I cut him off, my heart pounding. Yanking the neckline of my shirt aside, I gesture to the still healing tattoo he put on my shoulder.
It’s still bright and shiny from the fresh ink, the skin a little tender.
“Is this really how you see me? Because if it is, then you don’t get to pick and choose when you like this quality about me or not. ”
Malice goes still, blinking as he stares at the tattoo peeking out from my shirt. His nostrils flare as he breathes hard, and I can see several emotions playing out over his face in the semi-darkness. When he speaks again, his voice is as rough as gravel.
“Ransom. Get these fucking cuffs off me.”
Ransom leans around from the front passenger seat, and Malice twists a little on the seat as his younger brother picks the lock on the cuffs, popping them open.
As soon as his hands are free, Malice reaches for me. He grabs the back of my head and hauls me in, dragging me onto his lap and crushing his mouth to mine. It’s a rough kiss, even by Malice’s standards, almost punishing, his lips and teeth clashing with mine.
When he finally pulls back, his eyes burn, and the hand at the back of my head fists my hair close to the roots, tipping my head up to meet his gaze.
“I love that about you all the time,” he says, his voice low. “It’s a fucking pain in the ass sometimes, but your fierce spirit is my favorite thing about you, Solnyshka.”
My heart stutters in my chest. He didn’t say ‘I love you,’ but it’s the closest he’s ever come to saying it.
I stare at him, my bottom lip trapped between my teeth, forgetting all about where we are and what’s going on, until Vic speaks up from the front.
“We should move again,” he says. “We need to get out of the city. And I need to get on my computer to make sure to scrub the tracks.” He turns his head to look at Malice. “Do you want to drive?”
Malice doesn’t look away from me for a second, just shaking his head. “Nah. I’m good right where I am.”
Ransom chuckles. “Figures. The only one who can get Malice to give up a chance to drive is Willow.”
“Well, one of you has to, because I have work to do,” Vic points out. “Unless you’d like to get arrested for real tonight.”
“I’ll do it,” Ransom offers.
He and Vic switch seats quickly, which is slightly awkward since they can’t open the doors, and then he starts the car up, pulling out of the alley. Ransom drives quickly but carefully, making sure to blend in with traffic and avoid any cops as we go.
Now that we’re all back together again, I feel a little better, gradually letting the tension in my body bleed out. Malice still has me on his lap, and he pulls me closer with rough hands, shifting me around until I’m where he wants me to be.
He leans in, and his breath tickles my ear as he murmurs, “That little stunt you pulled kept me out of prison. Thank you, Solnyshka.”
“You’re welcome,” I whisper.
His voice drops to a growl as he adds, “But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna punish you for it later.”
I lean into his possessive touch and bite back a smile, my heart racing for an entirely different reason now.