Chapter 11
Jericho
There's no way I can be around that woman, but the long walk in the fucking woods doesn't help the way I was hoping it would.
I trust Jersey with her. I don't for one minute think that he'd do anything to hurt her, and I know we're safe here. There's no way for Damien to track her. We dismantled the trackers on the car and have a scrambler in the trunk. There's technology in the house that will keep him from pinging her phone to get her location. We've taken every cautionary step we could to extract her safely, but I didn't consider my own safety.
I didn't take into account how I would feel when I locked eyes with her, and I still haven't looked directly at her face. It was hard enough to focus on the task at hand by just seeing her in the rearview mirror. I'm so fucking fucked right now, and there's nothing that I can do but give in to the urge to go back to the cabin and try and fight this ache inside of me at having her near after so many years.
Was it fear that made her demand to be taken back to a man who hurt her? Has she been playing with my emotions through those emails? Does that even make sense if she thought I was dead?
There are a million questions running through my head, and I know that I could never get honest answers to any of them. I could spin my wheels for years and still not fully understand what makes that woman tick and what drives her choices, but being out in the cold, freezing my nuts off, doesn't benefit anyone.
I stop at the tree line, looking back at the small cabin. The girl I just knew I was going to marry one day is less than a hundred yards away, but she no longer belongs to me. Hell, I don't know that she ever really did after seeing how quickly she turned against me that day.
I lift my hand to my face. The scar has become a part of who I am. After the stitches were pulled from it, the gnarl of flesh having gone too long without treatment for it to be sewn together correctly, I embraced the wound. It was daily visible proof that trust isn't something that should ever be handed out freely. I had sympathy for Aspen Reese. I thought she was this perfect woman trapped in a horrible life she never asked for. We don't get to pick our family after all, but that ended up not being the case.
I can't count the number of times I've doubted how I handled that situation. Telling her who I was at the very last minute, when there was no chance of making a different choice, backed both of us into an inescapable corner.
Maybe if I had told her that I was a fed when we had a chance to get away from her father's house might've had her making a different decision.
Today, I gave her no choice. Sink or swim, beautiful Aspen. Your wish from eight years ago is my command, but after this is done, I have to walk away. I can't give this woman any more power over me than she already has.
I trudge toward the front door, my toes frozen from the snow and ice coating them. I'd forgotten just how brutal Massachusetts winters can be, and I haven't missed the harshness of the cold on my face at all. I'd much rather be on a beach somewhere or sitting beside a lake with a fishing pole in my hand, even though I hate fucking fishing. I hate the tasks before me even worse.
I remind myself that this is a case like any other. The history I have with Aspen doesn't come into play at all. The danger surrounding this is no different from any other case I've worked on. They're all dangerous. There's always a risk of dying. Damien is brutal, but so is Nathan Adair, who will always be the piece of shit who got away until we can take his ass down, too. So was Gabriel Sosa, and I put his ass behind bars years ago.
As I push open the front door, I spot her immediately, and there's something so familiar with the way she's sitting in the armchair, with her arms crossed over her chest, more than a little annoyed to be inconvenienced.
Her eyes light up when she sees me, and I hate the way the spark of it threatens to set something inside of me on fire like it always did in the past. There's no room for any of that shit in my life. I'm team fool me once , especially where she's concerned.
"Luke," she whispers, and I fight the way my face wants to scrunch in disgust.
Luke Gannon was a fool, and I haven't been that man since my blood stained her father's office carpet.
When I don't acknowledge her like it seems she fully wants me to, the waterworks start again. Witnessing her flipping the switch is surreal. There was a time when I'd bend over backward to keep her from feeling an ounce of pain, but I'm slightly more sadistic these days than the man she knew was.
"You have to take me back," she insists when I walk toward the small kitchen and take a seat at the tiny kitchen table so I can pull my soaked boots off.
"He will kill us both," the driver from the far corner of the room, having finally woken up after being drugged, says.
He's tied up. We haven't decided exactly what we're going to do to him.
Ivan was extremely paranoid. That's why I spent all those months working for him and didn't learn a damn thing. I was right in the middle of that shit and there was no one talking. What I was permitted to see was never enough to testify and get a conviction. I never once heard Ivan issue an illegal command other than the one that was supposed to end with my death.
I have to suspect that maybe one of the things Damien actually learned from his old boss was to keep things close to the chest and trust very few people with all your secrets.
There's a very real chance the driver doesn't know a damn thing and the only involvement he has with the family is driving Aspen to her weekly hair and nail appointment.
"Please," Aspen begs, and like the smart woman that she is, she doesn't use my fake name again.
She was always so good at reading a room, and I know that was from hard lessons learned when she made mistakes as a kid.
"Eli will be punished for this," she whispers, another sob escaping her throat.
Part of me wants to do her bidding. She's clearly a distraught mother wanting to protect her child, but not having one in the first fucking place would've been the best recourse.
"There is another team in Connecticut that is getting your son," I tell her as I stand barefooted and grab my go-bag so I can change my wet fucking socks and get a dry pair of boots.
"Is he getting all the kids?"
I snap my head in the driver's direction. "What the fuck did you just say?"
Jersey stands from his spot on the sofa and walks closer to the driver. "He has more kids."
The man swallows, and I can see the fear in his eyes, and it's not there because of us. It's there because of Damien fucking Gaines.
"Your silence right now isn't protecting you from anything," I growl when it's clear the man isn't going to speak.
"Samuel?" Aspen whispers. "He has more children?"
I can hear the disbelief in her tone. She had no idea about this.
"My daughter," the man says. "He has Sabrina."
Another sob escapes Aspen's mouth, and I see the same fear in Samuel's eyes that I've witnessed in hers.
"It's how he keeps us working," Samuel continues. "We aren't supposed to talk about it, but I know for a fact he has at least ten if not more kids. All are employees' children, and then, of course, Eli."
"How long has he had them?" I ask, wondering if this is something new.
"I haven't seen my daughter in person in almost two years, and it's been six months since I've been able to speak to her on the phone."
I look back at Aspen, and the look on her face tells me what I need to know.
"My father knew about this?"
Samuel glares at her as if she's been part of the problem this entire time.
"Your father is the one who ordered her to be taken."
Aspen shakes her head, instantly rejecting his words. I can't believe after the life she's lived and the things she has witnessed that she'd even think for a second that her father would be innocent in all of this. Blood related or not, the man was evil. He'd do anything to protect his safety and his empire.
"My father loved Eli," she says.
Samuel just glares at her rather than arguing.
"Eli gets to come home twice a year. Sabrina and the other kids don't get to do that. Macy hasn't seen her son in four years."
Aspen drops her head into her hands as she cries.
"Enough," I growl at the man. "Clearly she didn't fucking know what was going on."
I catch the look on Jersey's face from the corner of my eye and I know I'm reacting in the way a man who is too close to this situation would act, not like a man working a job.
I turn my attention back to Aspen, waiting until she looks back up at me before I speak.
"You have to keep our son safe," she pleads.
"We'll do everything we can to ensure your son's safety."
She swallows, her throat working as she shakes her head. " Your son."
My heart skips a fucking beat, and I swear this woman will either be the death of me or I'll end up a fucking vegetable after a goddamn stroke.
It seems when she's backed into a corner, she'll do whatever manipulative tactics she can use in order for her to get her way.