Chapter 21
Twenty-One
I drive safer when there’s food in my passenger seat than when there’s a person sitting there.
—Eddy to Weaver
Eddy
The take-charge attitude gave Weaver pause.
“Go. Now,” I ordered.
Weaver looked torn.
“She doesn’t know you’re here,” I elaborated. “She just knows that Boston is.”
He looked horrified.
I knew he was.
His entire world had just turned upside down.
“Go!” I hissed.
Weaver got up and walked to the bedroom, closing it behind him most of the way.
I waited until he was all the way inside before shuffling my way to the door.
I opened it, and a beautiful brown-headed woman stared back at me with puffy, bloodshot eyes and tears coursing down her cheeks. “Where is my niece?”
I frowned at the distraught look on her face.
“Aunt Pippa, what’s the problem?” Boston said, coming up behind me.
Pippa started to run toward Boston, but I stopped her with my hand. “No. Don’t.”
Pippa came to a sudden stop, her body physically recoiling from making contact with mine.
That was a reaction I never expected.
“Don’t hurt her,” Pippa said. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just let her go.”
“I’m not being held against my will,” Boston said. “I’m here because I want to be. I don’t want to live anywhere near you anymore.”
Pippa sucked in a breath, her breath hitching partway through, and then she just collapsed.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she bawled. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, please.”
“What the hell?” Boston said. “Aunt Pippa, I’m okay. What is the problem?”
When Boston reached down to touch her aunt, her entire body flinched like Boston had burned her.
When she wrenched away, her shirt lifted, and I could see a smattering of bruises on her neck and chest.
I inhaled deeply. “Who did that to you?”
Pippa’s bloodshot eyes met mine. “I’ll give you anything you want. Just please, let her go. You can kill me. I’ll let you do that right now. Just please, please don’t hurt her. I’ll do anything.”
I felt him more than heard him.
One second I was standing in the doorway blocking Pippa’s entrance into Weaver’s house, and the next Weaver was pushing the door open and dropping down to his knees in front of his sister.
“Pippa, what the hell is going on?”
Pippa inhaled swiftly and looked up.
“Winston…”
Pippa’s eyes rolled back into her head in the next instant.
If it wasn’t for Weaver, she would’ve fallen face first onto the stone.
He caught her before she could hit the ground and picked her up.
“Find her phone and turn it off,” Weaver ordered. “Bossy, you. Not Eddy.”
“On it,” Boston said as she all but ran to the parked car at the bottom of the drive.
“Eddy,” Weaver said. “Get my phone. Call Denver first. Then Apollo. Get them both here now.”
I hurried as fast as I could toward Weaver’s phone that I spotted on the counter between them earlier and input the code I’d watched him input hundreds of times over the last few weeks.
Denver answered on the second ring.
“Weaver, what’s up? It’s late,” Denver growled into the phone, his voice husky and sleep laden.
“It’s Eddy,” I said. “We have an emergency.”
“Talk to me,” Denver ordered, sounding nothing like the charming man from earlier.
I told him everything.
“I’ll call everyone in that needs to know,” Denver said. “Don’t worry about Apollo. He’s at my place.”
It took five minutes for the first man to show up.
By the time that Pippa woke, Weaver’s living room was filled with men.
Men that immediately made Pippa start to hyperventilate.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, leaning in so that I was all that Pippa could see. “They won’t hurt you.”
“How do I know?” Pippa breathed through a gasp.
“I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Aunt Pippa,” Boston said as she, too, leaned in over the arm of the couch. “I promise. I’m not here against my will. Dad is…”
Boston trailed off, but Pippa had heard.
She cried out, threw herself forward, and jumped off the couch.
She looked around wildly and then launched herself at Weaver.
He went to catch her, to stop her attack, but it wasn’t an attack at all.
It was a breakdown.
“Winston!” she cried big, great, hulking sobs. “Oh, my god. You’re dead!”
“What is with all of you leaving hysterical sisters behind?” Denver grumbled.
“I didn’t mean to,” Creed grumbled, clearly offended.
“You, Romeo. Weaver.” Denver shook his head. “Just bring ’em with you next time. Solve all of this bullshit.”
“We had our reasons,” Creed grumbled.
I felt like I really needed to understand everything that was going on, but now definitely wasn’t the time.
Weaver’s eyes caught mine and he looked lost.
“Shhh,” he breathed. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“I’m so, so, so s-sorry.” She hiccuped between sobs. “I hate myself. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not,” she whispered, but it was loud enough that most of us could hear it. “He’s never going to let us live. Especially you.”
There was a moment of stilled silence and then, “Who?”
“Gibbons.”
“He’s in prison, baby sister.” Weaver tried to soothe her. “He can’t reach you.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered, voice filled with fear. “He hasn’t left me alone a single day in twelve years.”
Black arrived last with a prescription bottle of something that they forced Pippa to take.
By the time she’d cried herself to sleep, everyone was sitting on the couch looking horrified.
Why?
Because Pippa had let it all hang out.
Sonny Gibbons might’ve been in prison for drug trafficking, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have one hell of a reach. He also had enough money to blow, and he’d spent it on making Pippa’s life miserable.
At first, Pippa had explained, she truly had been mad at Weaver. But eventually, once the shock wore off, she realized that it was an impossible situation. The only issue was, by that point in time, Gibbons had sunk his claws into Pippa and hadn’t let go.
Forcing her to make impossible decisions that then put her brother in prison.
After he’d been placed in prison, Pippa had tried to find a way to get free of Gibbons’ claws, maybe get her brother out, but her enemy had only become more controlling.
Having in turn taken to threatening Boston’s life and their parents’.
Pippa had done her level best to make it seem like she didn’t care about Weaver—Winston—Boston, or her parents. She’d alienated herself to the point that no one wanted anything to do with her.
And it’d worked—kind of.
But when Gibbons’ sentence had started to come to an end, he’d started to toy with Pippa more.
And with that came the threats to her family if she didn’t cooperate.
Photos of them at their various activities.
Frequent updates on her family’s day-to-day life that she’d decided that she needed to figure out a way out of this.
So, she’d cooperated with Gibbons while in turn trying to find a solution. And by cooperating, he meant coming to see him. To make life plans where she would be there with him the moment he got out.
When she’d refused, he’d upped his game.
Every single job she’d tried to get, he’d had her fired from. Every apartment she’d tried to rent, he’d had her kicked out of.
In the end, she’d started to live out of hotels throughout the city and state, practically draining her savings and trust fund as she did.
Her father had finally cut her off, and she’d lost it.
She’d been paying a private investigator to help her, and when her funds dried up, so did her way to fix it.
When Boston had gone missing, she’d freaked.
But, her overprotectiveness had proven warranted, and the small tracker she’d placed in the bottom of all of Boston’s shoes had become useful.
She’d traced Boston here.
To her brother.
And to her salvation.