Chapter 2 Hudson
She was crying.
I sat on her couch in the dark, my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands, and listened to Betty cry through the thin walls of her apartment.
The sound was muffled. As if she was trying to be quiet, probably pressing her face into a pillow, but I heard every broken sob like it was a knife sliding between my ribs.
This was my fault.
All of it. The tears. The fear. The fact that she was in danger in the first place.
If I'd been here maybe she wouldn't have had to face any of this alone.
But I hadn't stayed. I'd walked away ten years ago and convinced myself it was for her own good, that keeping my distance would keep her safe. And look where that had gotten us.
Her crying eventually quieted, replaced by the soft, even breathing of sleep. Only then did I let myself exhale, let my shoulders drop from where they'd been hunched up around my ears.
She was safe. For now.
I stood and moved through her apartment on silent feet, checking the locks on the windows, testing the deadbolt on the front door.
The place was small. One bedroom, one bath, a kitchen that opened into a living room, and it was still a mess from the break-in.
Cushions slashed. Drawers emptied. Her clothes scattered across the floor like someone had wanted to touch every piece of her life.
The thought made my hands curl into fists.
I'd seen the photos. My team had sent them to me within hours of the break-in, along with a full report. I'd stared at those images until my vision blurred, assessing every violation, every message those bastards had left behind.
We can get to you whenever we want.
Not anymore.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text to my second-in-command at Black Hawk.
Me: Need a full security overhaul. Apartment and bar. Send Martinez first thing tomorrow.
Reeves responded within seconds, because the man never slept.
Reeves: Copy. You staying long?
Me: As long as it takes.
Reeves: About damn time.
I ignored that last message and pocketed my phone.
Reeves knew about Betty. He was one of three people on the planet who knew the real reason I'd built Black Hawk Protection into what it was. Not for the money or the prestige, but because it gave me the resources to keep tabs on the one woman I'd never been able to forget.
He'd called me a lovesick idiot more than once. Told me to either go get her or let her go.
I couldn't do either.
I settled back onto the couch and let my head fall against the cushions, staring at the ceiling in the dark.
Ten years.
It had been ten years since I'd walked out of her life, and I could still remember every detail of that night like it had happened yesterday.
We'd been twenty-two. Young and stupid and so in love it hurt to breathe when she wasn't next to me. We'd been living together for two years by then, in a shitty studio apartment with a leaky faucet and a mattress on the floor, and I'd been happier than I'd ever been in my life.
Betty had that effect on people. On me.
She was fire and light and fierce, stubborn determination wrapped up in curves that made me lose my mind. She laughed with her whole body, argued with her whole heart, loved with an intensity that terrified me even as I craved it like oxygen.
I'd known from the first moment I saw her across a crowded bar where she was slinging drinks and giving some asshole customer hell for grabbing her wrist, that she was going to ruin me.
I'd been right.
And then I'd gotten the call.
Special operations. A classified unit that didn't officially exist, doing work that would never be acknowledged. The kind of job I'd been training for my entire military career.
The kind of job that got the people you loved killed.
I'd seen it happen. Watched a guy in my unit lose his wife because she'd asked the wrong question to the wrong person at a dinner party.
Watched another guy's kid get snatched from a playground because someone wanted leverage.
The men in these units didn't get to have normal lives.
They didn't get to have families, girlfriends, anyone who could be used against them.
And Betty, my beautiful, fierce, stubborn Betty, would never have stayed quiet. She would never have stopped asking questions, demanding answers, refusing to be kept in the dark.
She would've gotten herself killed trying to find out what I was doing. Or worse. Someone would've used her to get to me.
So I'd made a choice.
I'd lied.
I told her I didn't love her anymore. That I needed to focus on my career. That she'd be better off without me.
I could still see her face when I'd said the words. The way the light had drained out of her eyes. The way she'd stood there in the doorway of our apartment, still in the oversized t-shirt she slept in, her bare feet on the cold floor, looking at me like I'd just put a bullet through her chest.
"Don't do this, Hudson. Please. We can figure it out."
But there was nothing to figure out. I'd already made my decision.
So I'd walked out. Closed the door behind me. And spent the next eight years in the darkest corners of the world, running missions that didn't exist, killing men whose names I'd never know, and telling myself that the hollow ache in my chest would eventually go away.
It never did.
I'd started keeping tabs on her almost immediately. At first, I told myself it was just to make sure she was okay. That she'd moved on. That she was safe and happy and living the life she deserved.
But it had quickly become something else. An obsession. A compulsion I couldn't shake no matter how hard I tried.
I knew everything about her life. Knew she'd taken over at The Flame three years after I'd left, buying it from the original owner with a loan from her uncle and her entire savings.
I knew she'd turned it from a dive bar into something special.
It was now a neighborhood institution with live music on weekends and the best damn jukebox in the city.
I knew she still took her coffee black with two sugars.
Knew she still bit her thumbnail when she was nervous.
Knew she'd cut her hair short for a while, then grown it back out, and that she'd gotten a small tattoo on her left shoulder blade, a flame, for the bar, that she probably thought no one knew about.
I knew about the men she'd dated. Not many. A lawyer who'd lasted six months. A firefighter who'd stuck around for almost a year before she'd ended it. A few others who hadn't made it past a handful of dates.
None of them had been serious. None of them had stuck.
That shouldn't have made me as satisfied as it did. I'd given up any right to her the night I'd walked away. But knowing she hadn't found someone else, hadn't moved on, hadn't replaced me.
It was selfish. It was fucked up. And I couldn't help it.
And then her father had died.
I'd gotten the alert within hours. Heart attack. Massive. He'd been dead before the paramedics arrived.
I'd sat in a hotel room in Singapore, staring at my phone, and felt the world tilt on its axis.
Frank Ramirez. The man who'd taught Betty how to throw a punch. Who'd shown up to our apartment once with a shotgun and a glare that could've melted steel, demanding to know my intentions toward his daughter. Who'd eventually, grudgingly, accepted me as worthy of her, or at least close enough.
Frank Ramirez, who'd loved Betty with a fierce, protective devotion that I'd recognized because I felt it too.
He was gone. And Betty was alone.
I'd almost gone to her then. Had gotten as far as booking a flight, packing a bag, making it to the airport.
And then I'd stopped.
Because what the hell was I supposed to say? Sorry I disappeared for eight years, but I heard your dad died and thought I'd swing by? She didn't need me showing up and making her grief about us. She didn't need me dredging up old pain on top of the fresh wound of losing her father.
At least, that's what I'd told myself.
The truth was simpler and uglier. I'd been a coward.
I'd been afraid to face her. Afraid of the hatred I'd see in her eyes. Afraid that seeing her again would shatter the careful walls I'd built around my heart and leave me bleeding out with no way to stop it.
So I'd stayed away. I'd watched from a distance as she buried her father in a cemetery on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, standing alone by his grave with a broken umbrella and a face that looked like it was carved from stone.
I'd watched, and I'd done nothing.
I'd never forgive myself for that.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to push away the memories, but they clung to me like cobwebs.
Sleep wasn't coming. Not tonight. Maybe not any night until this was over.
I pulled out my phone again and opened the file I'd compiled on Lang and Briggs.
Two decorated cops with spotless records and enough corruption underneath to make a cartel boss blush.
They'd been running protection rackets, shaking down local businesses, taking cuts from drug dealers, and planting evidence on anyone who didn't play ball.
And four weeks ago, they'd murdered a man named Chris Greene in the alley behind Betty's bar because he'd threatened to talk.
Betty had been taking out the trash. She'd heard voices, looked out, and witnessed the whole thing.
Because of course she had. Because she couldn't just mind her own business, couldn't just close the door and pretend she hadn't seen anything. No, she'd called 911 like the brave, stubborn, infuriating woman she was.
And now she had a target on her back.
I scrolled through the incident reports. The threatening text. The vandalism at the bar. The car that had followed her. The break-in. And finally, the SUV that had tried to run her off the road.
I'd watched the traffic camera footage at least twenty times. Watched that black SUV accelerate into her bumper, watched her car swerve toward the median, watched her somehow keep control and avoid the oncoming traffic.