Chapter 32 Wren
WREN
I’m folding laundry, one of the few tasks that doesn’t upset my stomach. Pixie has been hovering, which is sweet. But it means the men are growing more suspicious of my behavior.
My lack of energy.
My only constant is my violin. The songs have been softer, sweeter, more hopeful but melancholy.
They’ve noticed that, too. But I brush off their concerns, their questions. I’m such a coward. And the longer I keep this a secret, the worse I feel about it. The more afraid I get to say anything.
Every time I think about it, I wind myself up into a panic. It only makes them more certain that something’s wrong.
Guilt has me falling into old habits, meek, quiet, passive. I don’t like being this version of myself, but I can’t seem to pull myself out of it.
I jump mid towel fold, turning toward the hall. Was that the door? Most of the club is out back for church, but men are constantly moving about. It’s so much different from my old, silent life.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but small noises like that still put me on edge.
Shaking my head, I go back to my task.
“Miss me?” a familiar voice asks behind me.
I freeze, the towel in my hand tearing. My heart is beating twice as fast as it should be. No. It can’t be.
I’m hallucinating.
But I turn, and there he is. Already inside. Already past every defense that was supposed to keep him out.
Grant. No weapon in hand. No shouting.
Just confidence and a blazing need for revenge in his eyes.
He casually shuts the laundry door and turns the lock. “That’s better.”
He’s doing this to unsettle me because we both know the lock won’t keep my men out. But right now they can’t see him in here with me. Alone. At his mercy.
Just like the morning of what was supposed to be our wedding.
No one can save me from him. Not now. Probably not ever. I’ve just been delaying the inevitable.
Grant steps toward me, spurring me into action. The towel flutters into the basket with the others. It won’t protect me, even though I wish it could.
I back away from him, my shoulder blades finding the flat wall beside the dryer, hands up between us like that’s ever helped me with him. I doubt anything I say will help either. Not this time.
I have no more cards to play.
He studies my face like I’m a thing he once owned. This feels intimate in the most violating way. “You look tired. They working you too hard?”
Grant’s beauty only makes the cruelty in his eyes more vivid—and harder to look away from. He’s the kind of handsome that covers so many sins. It allows him to get away with too much.
The rest, his money takes care of. His equally cruel father.
What will he do to me when he knows I’m going to have one of their babies?
His head tilts as he looks me over, stalking closer and touching my vest dismissively. “They make you queen here? You give them everything they ask for? Like a greedy bitch.”
I grind my teeth together. If I give him a reaction, I give him what he wants. I’m done doing that.
Straightening my shoulders, I will fight back. With everything I have. Even if it’s not enough, I will fight until I can’t anymore. I swear it.
He clocks the change, glancing down at how my hands curl into fists. Grant’s chuckle sends fire through my veins.
He spreads his arms as if inviting me to try hitting him, flashing the gun at his hip and sending terror into my heart. Panic swirls.
His hand wraps around my throat like he did the last time I saw him, leaning in to press our bodies together, to take away all of my leverage. Grant tsks against my ear.
“You really thought you escaped me? No, babe.” His nose pressing into my cheek, Grant gives me a squeeze that sends black spots through my vision. “Now, let’s get this off of you.”
He yanks my vest half off, pulling me away from the wall enough to shove the leather down my arms and to the floor.
It takes everything in me to keep myself breathing, shallow against his palm. Those steely eyes—cold, satisfied—track every shallow breath I manage. He likes this part. Likes watching me struggle for air.
“You’re shaking.” Grant’s thumb brushes under my jaw like a lover’s caress. His grip tightens just enough to remind me who controls the oxygen. “Is that fear? Or excitement?”
I refuse to answer him. If I open my mouth, I’ll waste what little air I have. My pulse thunders in my ears, drowning out everything else—the dryer hum, the distant noise of the club, the fact that there are armed men barely fifty feet away who would kill him if they knew he was here.
He knows that, too.
That’s why he came for me alone.
“That’s what they don’t understand about you,” he says, voice low, conversational, as if we’re discussing dinner plans instead of my survival. “You’re not built for this world. You never were. You need structure. Direction.”
His free hand slides to my shoulder, fingers digging deliberately into the still-healing wound. Pain blooms sharp and white, stealing my breath in a broken gasp.
He smiles at the sound. “You need me.”
I bite down on the cry threatening to escape. If I give him pain, he’ll take it as permission.
A shout carries faintly through the walls—male voices raised, boots pounding. My heart stutters. Grant’s head turns slightly, listening, but he doesn’t release me.
“Your boys are about to cause a mess out there. And I don’t like messes.”
He leans in until his mouth brushes my ear. I smell his cologne—expensive, familiar, nauseating.
“You’re going to come home with me. Right now.” His fingers flex at my shoulder, testing my threshold for pain. “Or they die. I don’t mind starting with the little bartender girl. Pixie, right? Bright hair. Big mouth.”
Panic claws up my spine, feral and uncontrollable. Pixie’s laugh flashes through my mind. Her sassy mouth. How she had no problem snapping back when someone stepped out of line. The way she hovered when I was sick, when I was quiet, when I was scared.
I can’t let him touch her.
My muscles burn. My vision dims at the edges as pain creeps down my chest from the constant pressure of his thumb against my stitches and his fingers flexing at my throat. This is the part where I used to disappear—where I’d go soft, compliant, let him decide if he really wanted to hurt me.
Not this time.
I force my hands to move.
Slow. Careful.
I let them settle against his chest, fingers splaying as if I’m seeking comfort. His body stills immediately, attention sharpening. He’s always loved when I showed him affection. Like he’s been starved of tenderness his whole life.
“There you are,” he whispers, satisfied.
I swallow hard and make myself look up at him, lashes lowered, mouth parted. Every instinct screams that this is dangerous—that any softness will be taken as weakness—but it’s the only hand I have left to play.
“I can’t breathe,” I rasp. “Grant…please.”
His grip loosens just a fraction.
Enough.
My hand slides lower, brushing his waist, tracing the familiar line of his belt. I feel it then—the weight, the shape of the gun at his hip. My pulse spikes so hard it almost gives me away.
Grant watches my face closely, smug. “That’s it. Be good for me.”
My fingers curl around the grip.
I move fast—faster than I ever have in my life.
The gun comes free with a sharp tug, the weight shocking in my hand. I bring it up between us, the barrel pressing hard against his chest, right over his heart.
Grant freezes.
Then he laughs. It’s loud, sudden, full of disbelief.
“What?” His brows lift, amused. “You think you’re going to shoot me?”
My arm shakes violently. The room feels too small, too tight, like the walls are closing in. My shoulder screams in protest, pain radiating down my arm, but I lock my elbow and keep the gun where it is.
“You won’t.” His voice drops, coaxing. “You’re too soft. Too kind. Pathetic.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. My hands are slick with sweat. My finger feels enormous on the trigger, clumsy and wrong.
“You don’t know me,” I say, forcing the words out through the tremor in my chest. “You never did.”
His palm settles over my wrist, not pushing the gun away—just resting there. Almost tender. “Go ahead, babe. Prove me wrong.”
Everything inside me locks up.
This is the moment. The one he’s always counted on. My hesitation. My mercy.
I think of Pixie. Of the men outside who gave me sanctuary without asking for anything in return. I think of the life growing inside me—small, fragile, already more loved than I ever was.
I draw a breath that burns all the way down.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
The words barely leave my mouth before the shot rings out.
The sound is deafening in the small room, a violent crack that echoes off the walls. Grant’s body jerks, his breath exploding out of him in a sharp, shocked sound.
His eyes go wide.
Not angry.
Not cruel.
Just…surprised.
And then his weight slams into me, and everything falls apart.