Chapter 46 Willow
WILLOW
A light breeze ruffles my hair as I step out of the front door. It’s chilly this morning, dew still clinging to the grass outside. I wrap my arms around myself, smiling as the sound of laughter rises up in the distance—one voice young and bright, the other deep and resonant.
“Malice took her for a walk again,” Ransom says from behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “She was begging him to go exploring. She’s just as brave and adventurous as her mother.”
I grin, leaning back against his chest. “Well, the three of you brought out that side in me. So it makes sense that you brought it out in your daughter too.”
His head drops, his lips brushing my temple as he murmurs, “Nah. That’s definitely not all because of us. You get credit for it too.”
My heart swells, warmth expanding in my chest from the fond, proud tone of his voice.
Deciding I’ll have plenty of advance notice when Malice and Dayana get back from the sounds of their voices, I turn around to face the man behind me.
His lips tilt upward as our gazes meet, the eyebrow ring he’s had for as long as I’ve known him glinting as he cocks a brow.
I go up onto my toes, and he meets me halfway, erasing the distance between our faces as we kiss, slow and unhurried.
His hair is a bit shaggy these days, the bronze and brown locks wild and unkempt in a way that I know makes Vic secretly dream of attacking him with a pair of clippers one night just to get it back in order. But I think it’s sexy.
I slide my fingers between the strands, loving the way they feel against my skin, and when I drag my nails over his scalp, he makes a sound into our kiss.
Even when our lips finally separate, we don’t let go of each other. I slide my hands down his back, keeping my arms wrapped around him as I rest my cheek against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“Did Vic go with them?” I murmur.
“Nah. He’s working on a shopping list. You know how he is, he hates when we forget something.”
I laugh quietly, because I do know. This far out from civilization, a shopping trip is a day-long undertaking, which is why Vic always insists on being the one to write the list. When we first settled out here, I thought the guys would miss living in the city, but it turns out that Malice wasn’t lying when he told me once that all he needed was me, his brothers, and his tattoo gun, and he’d be happy.
Ransom added ‘motorcycles’ to that list, and Vic added ‘computers,’ and since they’ve each got what they need in that regard, none of them seem to miss Detroit all that much.
I certainly don’t.
It’s been years since we fled from Olivia, and she’s never managed to find us. We’ve built a life for ourselves down here in a remote part of Mexico, and when I think of the city I used to live in, it’s never with longing or nostalgia.
Why would it be?
Just like Malice said, everything I need is right here.
Sweet, childish laughter rises up again, still at a bit of a distance but coming closer. I can’t make out Malice’s words as he responds to Dayana, but whatever he says makes her laugh harder.
Ransom and I finally break apart, and I turn again to watch Malice and our daughter emerge from the trees up ahead, following the path back to our house.
There’s no one else around for miles, nothing but lush forest and a back road that eventually connects to a larger highway, so I don’t worry about the noise as Dayana catches sight of us and lets out a happy cry.
She starts to run toward us, and Malice jogs to catch up with her, taking her hand to keep her from tripping on any loose rocks or roots.
Her blonde hair streams behind her, her cheeks round and soft and her blue eyes shining with excitement.
“Momma, momma!” she calls, and I kneel down to greet her as they reach us. “We saw a pretty bird!”
“Yeah?” I smile at her, brushing her wild hair back from her face. She’ll be four soon, and I can’t believe how big she’s getting. “Did you stay so, so quiet so it wouldn’t fly away?”
“Yes!” She nods proudly.
“At first,” Malice adds, crossing his inked arms over his chest as he grins. “That lasted for about five seconds.”
I laugh. “Better than I would’ve done.”
“Oh, I know you can’t keep quiet, Solnyshka.” His gaze turns heated as those dark gray eyes find me. “But I like it when you’re loud.”
I flush, heat rushing through me. As I straighten, Dayana holds up her hand to me, slipping it easily into mine, and the three of us turn to head back into the house.
Vic is in the kitchen, and he looks up from his computer as we enter.
His gaze shifts from me to Dayana, and if possible, the adoration in his eyes only grows.
He pushes his chair back from the table and pats his thighs, and Dayana lets go of my hand and trots over to him, crawling happily up to sit on his lap. He wraps his arms around her, gentle and protective, and she nestles into his embrace like there’s no place better in the world.
She’s not wrong about that.
“How’s the shopping list coming?” I ask, walking over to press a kiss to his lips.
He lets go of Dayana with one hand and catches the front of my shirt, pulling me closer and extending the kiss, his lips moving hungrily against mine before he finally lets me straighten up again.
“It’s almost done,” he answers as I clear my throat, my heart beating a little harder. “We should be—”
“Willow.”
Malice’s voice behind me interrupts Victor, and my brows pull together. There’s something off about his tone. Something urgent and hard. But that doesn’t make any sense.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head and returning my focus to Vic. “What were you saying?”
“I said we should—”
“He’s going after Willow! Fuck!”
This time, it’s Ransom’s voice that cuts in, so loud and full of fear that it makes me gasp.
My heart lurches as a large hand closes around my wrist, and—
My eyes pop open, my body jolting with the force of being dragged awake so suddenly.
The hand on my wrist tightens, and I realize with a shock of panic that it wasn’t just in my dream. Someone really did grab me, and in the darkness of the bedroom, a figure looms over me.
“No, you don’t, you son of a bitch!”
Ransom’s voice is like a growl, and a second later, he plows into the shadowy figure above me. The two of them go stumbling across the room and crash into a wall, and I realize that near the doorway of the room, Malice and Victor are wrestling with another man dressed in black.
Fuck. Oh god, fuck!
I scramble out of bed as Ransom ducks a punch from the man he’s up against, my heart crawling up into my throat.
I feel dizzy and disoriented, my mind reeling from the sudden shift of my dream to this.
But I know I can’t afford to hesitate. I don’t know who these men are, but they must’ve broken into our bedroom as we slept, and they’re clearly skilled fighters because it’s taking both Malice and Vic to hold one of them off.
That leaves Ransom on his own to face the other one.
Shit.
Adrenaline rushes through me, clarifying my thoughts as I glance around the room. The bedroom is sparsely decorated, but there’s a wicker chair in one corner, and I pick it up and bring it down as hard as I can against the back of the man fighting Ransom.
The wicker snaps and cracks, hardly enough to do any real damage—but it gives Ransom an opening.
He lunges in, landing a hard punch against the man’s face.
He follows it up with two more, and when the man staggers a little, Ransom grabs the back of his head and yanks it downward, lifting his knee to crack it against the man’s skull.
The guy in black grunts and goes down, and behind me, I hear the sound of frantic scuffling.
I whirl around, worried that the man Malice and Vic were fighting has managed to hurt one of them, but instead I see that Vic has their attacker in a headlock.
He holds the man tight, bracing one hand against his bicep as his forearm slowly cuts off the man’s air supply.
The man struggles for another several beats and then finally goes limp.
“Fuck!”
Malice bites out the curse as Vic deposits the man on the floor and stands warily over his body, as if prepared to fight him again if he has to.
Ransom does the same with the other man as Malice strides out of the room and then returns a moment later with a gun in his hand.
He’s still naked, just like his brothers are, and in the dark, their tattoos look like shadows crawling over their bodies.
“Should we try to wake them up and interrogate them?” Ransom asks.
“No.” Malice shakes his head grimly. “We don’t know if others are coming. There’s no fucking time for that.”
Without breaking stride, he stalks to the bed and grabs a pillow off it. Then he kneels down by the unconscious man Ransom is standing over, holds the pillow to his head, and pulls the trigger.
Even muffled like that, the gunshot is loud, and I jump, my heart crashing against my ribs.
“This isn’t a time for mercy either,” Malice says in a hard voice, his gaze flicking up to me before he grabs another pillow.
“These two fuckers broke into the house. They were armed, dressed in tactical gear, and one of them had a syringe of what’s probably some kind of knock-out drug. They came to take you, Solnyshka.”
He drapes the pillow over the second man’s head, the muffled bang of the gunshot punctuating his words.
My skin goes cold, goosebumps breaking out over my naked body.
“Get dressed,” Vic says, leaving his post near the downed man now that it’s clear he won’t be getting up again. “We need to leave. Now.”
He grabs his clothes and starts tugging them on, and I rush to do the same as his brothers get dressed too.
“Who were they?” I whisper as I pull my shirt over my head, my pulse racing as I glance at the two still forms on the floor.