Chapter 42
Kian
Caleb paces the room in front of us, just like he’s been doing for the past hour. With each minute that passes, the tension in the room grows thicker.
“Why aren’t they coming to tell us what’s going on?” Caleb eventually roars and then takes off toward the door. “I’m going to find him.”
When we got to the hospital, we were given a private room for privacy while Beckett is in surgery. His vitals weren’t stable by the time we got him here, so he was rushed right back. We haven’t seen any of the doctors since.
I leap up from my chair, and I step in front of Caleb before he can storm out of here and cause a scene that we don’t need right now.
“The best doctors money can buy are working on him,” I tell him as evenly as I can. “As soon as they know something, they’ll come tell us.”
I hope.
They have to come tell us something. Soon. Because while I’m holding Caleb back right now, I’m struggling not to go out there myself to look for my baby brother.
Caleb is bigger than me. For a second, I brace myself for him to shove me out of the way; instead, he stares at me with a look of fear on his face that I’ve never seen from the man. Beckett is his best friend. And he’s terrified of losing him.
“Beckett is tough. He’s going to get through this,” I say quietly. “He’s going to be okay.”
Maybe if I keep saying it, it will become reality.
Caleb closes his eyes briefly, then nods and walks away from me. A moment later, he throws his fist through a wall, the noise startling everyone, but no one says anything.
Even though all I can focus on is my brother, Ace keeps popping into my mind. I hope like hell she’s sound asleep and isn’t suffering from her migraine anymore.
I slide my hand into my pocket where I usually have my phone, but it’s not there.
Fuck.
I must have dropped it at the cemetery, or in the car.
My stomach drops. What if she’s tried to call me? I run my hands through my hair. She would have called Luciano if she couldn’t reach me. Remembering that calms me slightly, but just as I’m about to ask Luciano for his phone, the door opens, and two surgeons walk in.
The one in front, a woman with dark hair slicked back from her sharp face, looks at me as everyone else rises from their chairs.
I clear my throat. “How is he?”
She glances at Caleb, then down at his bloody knuckles, before she looks up at me again. “He’s alive and stable. He lost a lot of blood, and the bullet fragmented. We had to do some delicate work to remove the pieces, but we’re confident we’ve got it all.”
It almost feels like the room takes a breath at once. My knees almost give out as relief hits me.
Caleb drops into a chair, head in his hands.
“He’ll be in a lot of pain for a while,” the doctor continues, “and there’s risk of infection while he heals. Muscle damage will require months of physical therapy, but the bullet missed anything vital.”
I nod, and the rest of their words become a blur. Beckett is okay. He’s going to be fine.
Luciano speaks to the doctors for a moment before they step out of the room, Caleb on their heels, demanding to see Beckett.
A second later, Cash’s phone rings. When he answers it, he turns to me and then puts it on speaker.
“It’s Roman,” Cash says.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Roman barks urgently.
My shoulders go tight as I step closer to the phone. “What’s wrong? Is Ace okay?”
Luciano is next to me in the blink of an eye.
“She’s in Seattle. She left her house around four this morning and got on a plane,” he explains.
“What?” I roar, grabbing the phone from Cash. “Where the fuck is she? Let me speak to her.”
The line is silent for a moment before Roman sighs.
“She’s not with us, sir. Someone met her at SeaTac and gave her a gun.
We had to disarm ourselves to get on the plane in Vegas.
She called us out of our hiding spots after her friends left.
Then she pointed the gun at us and made us smash our phones on the ground before she took off in an SUV.
The last thing she said to us was to have Luciano send a clean-up crew to her mother’s house. ”
It’s almost as if all the air is sucked out of the room as I stare at Luciano. Everyone else watches us in silence as we process those words.
“She’s going to kill her mom,” I finally say, barely loud enough for even myself to hear.
“Jesus,” Luciano mutters.
Turning my rage toward the phone, I glare at the device.
“You’re going to wish she had shot you two motherfuckers by the time I’m done with you.
You let a tiny, glittery, sprite of a woman…
” Nostrils flaring, I squeeze my fist together and roar, “My woman, goddammit! Who you outweigh by at least a hundred pounds, fly across the country, take a gun from a stranger, and then hold you up like you’re a couple of fucking amateurs? ”
Luciano’s phone rings, and his eyebrows furrow as he looks at the screen, then slides his finger across to answer.
“Knox McCray,” Luciano says darkly. “I hope to hell you’re not calling me to tell me you put a gun into my cousin’s hands because I will use that same gun to fucking kill you.”
The man on the other end of the line chuckles. “Would you rather she had found a gun off the streets, Ricci? At least with me giving it to her, we know it’s a safe firearm that she knows how to use. Besides, I have my brothers posted outside her mother’s house, ready to go in at any time.”
My mind reels. I’ve heard the name before.
Knox McCray. He’s a member of the Javier family in Seattle.
Their father, Leo Javier, ran one of the largest underground fighting rings on the West Coast. He raked in millions over the years and is known worldwide as one of the most dangerous MMA fighters in underground history.
Leo is retired now, but I’ve heard that Knox and his brothers are just as dangerous, and they do a lot of vigilante shit.
“Get my girl out of there,” I snap.
Luciano looks up at me, then down at his phone, silent.
“Knox McCray,” the voice on the phone introduces. “You must be Kian Savage.”
When I don’t answer right away, he adds, “Lacey and my wife are friends. Addie told me about you.”
“How the fuck could you give her a gun? She could hurt herself!” I shout, tearing my hands over my hair.
Fucking Christ.
“Lacey is highly skilled with pistols. My action might be questionable, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t have handed her a gun unless I was confident she knew exactly how to use it,” Knox explains.
Both Luciano and I look at each other in confusion.
A second later, someone clears their throat on the other end of the phone.
“I’m Addie. Lacey shopped at my boutique here in Seattle, and we became friends.
She came to ladies’ nights at the shooting range with me whenever she could.
Lacey was one of the best whenever she was there.
Knox and his brothers taught her everything she needed to know. ”
The thought of any other man, married or not, teaching my girl things, being close to her, touching her, makes me want to lose my fucking mind and hunt Knox McCray and his entire fucking family down.
But first, I need to get to my girl before she does something she can’t take back.
I don’t want that on her conscience. I’ll gladly have it on mine, though.
Cash and Xander look like they’re about to follow us, but I turn and stop them. It means everything to me that they’re willing to leave Beckett to help me with the situation my girl is in, but Beckett needs them right now. And I need to be with my girl.
“Luciano and I can handle this. Stay with Beckett. And keep an eye on Caleb. This is hitting him hard,” I say to my brothers, and even though they look reluctant, they nod and step back.
“Let’s fucking go,” I mutter, throwing the door open and ignoring stares as I walk through the halls of the hospital wearing a blood-stained shirt.
The second we walk through the automatic doors, a black SUV rolls up. One of Luciano’s men. I’m in his territory now, and he wants me to know it.
We sit silently in the back seat as the driver moves through traffic with ease, even though there are cars and people everywhere.
“Who the fuck is Knox McCray, and why did my fucking girl go running to him?” I finally shout, my fists balled.
Luciano doesn’t say anything as he types away on his phone, then he gives me a sideways glance.
“He’s one of the few good men left in the world.
I can assure you he weighed up the danger in his mind.
He is serious when he says he has men out there who will protect Lacey with their lives.
like any of my men would. They’ll do whatever needs to be done to get her out of there if she decides to pull the trigger. ”
In other words, they will make sure Ace doesn’t get arrested for killing her mother.
The bitch deserves it.
She deserves more than just a fucking bullet.
Twenty-five years of treating the sweetest, most precious angel on Earth like a pawn.
Like she was nothing. It kills me just thinking about how lonely Ace must have been throughout her life.
How sad and fucking exhausted she must have been.
Her father was her one savior from her mom, and then the cunt took him away from Ace.
My left palm twitches, and I look down at it, turning it over in my lap, staring at her name inked into my skin. One day, there will be a band sitting over the E. But wedding ring or not, I’m hers.
And she’s mine.
And when I get her home safe and sound, I’m going to strip her down and teach her what happens when she disobeys me and does something so fucking dangerous. I’m pretty sure I’ve had three fucking mini-heart attacks since the call came through. She won’t sit comfortably for a while.
It shouldn’t surprise me that Ace took it upon herself to face her mother on her own.
She isn’t the type to have someone else do her dirty work.
That’s what’s so fantastic about the Ace in a deck.
It’s higher than the Queen but can go to the lowest of lows in the right game.
And my job, at this moment, as her man, is to have her back in whatever way she needs.
I’m still debating hunting Knox McCray and his brothers down, but Luciano’s words weigh heavy on me.
I fucking hate that. My respect for him is growing.
What else was the guy supposed to do? He knew if he didn’t give her what she asked for, she’d find it elsewhere.
Because Ace is determined. It’s one of the things I love about her.
It’s also one of the things she’s going to get in trouble for the most with me. I just know it.
Luciano calls Ace’s phone number, but it goes straight to voicemail. He shakes his head, throwing his device to the floor. “God, she drives me fucking insane! I hope you plan on punishing her ass for this goddamn stunt.”
His outburst makes me chuckle as I side-eye him.
At least I’m not the only one she’s driving mad.
Though his comment about punishing Ace makes me wonder about the type of lifestyle he leads.
It hadn’t dawned on me before, but Luciano and I have a lot of similar traits. Except he’s a dick, and I’m not.
As soon as the driver slows to a roll at a set of gates, I open the door and jump out, rounding the back of the SUV right when Luciano hops out, too.
I pull my gun and jog into a cluster of bushes, where the gates turn into stone walls.
I quickly climb it and swing over, pushing myself off, so I land on my feet, the air getting knocked from my lungs when I do.
Luciano lets out a grunt and stumbles against the wall.
“Fuck, we’re not as young as we used to be,” I mutter as I suck in air.
He laughs and shakes his head. “No shit! I think I just pulled my hamstring.”
I snort, and together we take off toward the house, my blood running cold when we get to the front porch. The front door is ajar, but other than that, the house is dark and silent.
“I’ll go upstairs, you look down here,” I tell him as I start to cross the foyer to the grand staircase.
Luciano holds his gun in front of him as he heads toward a wide hallway that leads to one wing of the house.
As soon as I get to the second landing, I know she’s up here. I can smell her. My girl.
“Pst,” I signal Luciano.
A second later, he appears again and jogs up the stairs two at a time, his icy eyes alert. He hears the hushed voices. We both start moving toward the sound, the tension so thick, I can feel it even in this monstrosity of a house.
The closer we get to a set of closed French doors, the louder it gets. Finally, I hear snippets of the conversation, and it makes me want to vomit.