Chapter Twenty-Seven
Katey
Y ou also have you.
Sniper couldn’t have known how much those four little words meant to me. Inside the operating room, or the chaos of the ER, I was always sure of myself and my skills, my ability to handle any situation. In the rest of my life? I felt uncertain, less than. To a man like Sniper, who was a real life superhero in human form, a man who protected people from the worst parts of life, for him to acknowledge that I could take care of myself meant the world to me.
The gun, a nine-millimeter with a deep blue gripped handle, was gorgeous. It was compact and lightweight, nestled inside a gorgeous wooden box with my initials engraved on a silver plaque affixed to the lid. “It’s… gorgeous.” I looked up at this man, so different from me in just about every way imaginable was the first person in a long time, possibly ever, who saw me. Who got me. “Thank you.”
He seemed uncomfortable, either with my compliment or my gratitude, or both. “Yeah, of course.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not just the gun, it’s what it means. You have… you can’t know what this means to me.” My smile came shaky. “You taught me how to protect myself instead of just giving me your protection.”
He stood to his full height and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “You’re a capable woman, Katey.”
“In the ER sure, but I think you’re the first person in a long time to think so out here in the real world.”
His green gaze seared my skin even as it held me in place. “Then they haven’t been paying attention.”
“You can be charming when you want to be,” I teased as I worked hard to shove down these inconvenient feelings because there was no place for them in our fake marriage.
He smiled and it was as beautiful as ever but there was an underlying hint of something swirling in his green eyes.
“Thank you for this.” I hugged the box to my chest one last time and set it on the desk beside me before turning back to face him. Something else was on his mind and it didn’t take a medical degree to figure out what it was. I fisted my hands on my hips and prepared to tell him everything. “So what is it you want to talk about?”
He folded his arms and watched me carefully as several minutes passed. I felt itchy under the weight of his gaze, but I just stood there and waited.
And waited.
“We need to talk about the very thing that you don’t seem to want to talk about.”
I knew it was coming. I’d been waiting for this moment for weeks but still I didn’t have an answer, or rather I couldn’t seem to push the words past my lips. Flushed with embarrassment, I looked away.
He let out a frustrated sigh. “This isn’t about me being all in your business Katey, this is about finding out why the fuck this asshole is so untouchable.”
“I can’t.” My voice was weak and thready.
“You can, dammit. I need you to tell me everything.” His nostrils flared but that was the only indication of anger. He didn’t lunge forward, didn’t ball his hands into fists to intimidate me. He just waited. “Please.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. My eyes closed and I summoned up all the courage that I could muster before I opened my mouth again. And closed it. “I… can’t.”
“Katey,” he sighed. “Without all the information my brothers and I are sittin’ fuckin’ ducks. You get that don’t you?”
I nodded because yeah, I got it. “Of course I get it.” But I needed him to get it. I went to my bag and dug until I hit the small box at the bottom where I kept important documents. I opened it up and retrieved the long envelope with my brother’s name written in my handwriting. I stood and closed the gap between us, smacking the envelope against his chest. “I can’t tell you,” I said again in a lower voice that shook from the tears I held back.
“I get the fear,” he said in a low voice.
“Maybe you do but I thought I was going to die!” I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. “I was so fucking sure that I was going to die that I wrote a goodbye letter to my brother. I needed him to know that I loved him and that I was sorry for not listening to him. I needed him to know I was gone so that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life looking for me.” I knew he would and after everything I put him through, I couldn’t let him live with that uncertainty.
Sniper pulled out the paper, his gaze scanning line after line while his hands balled tighter and tighter. “Why didn’t you send it?”
“I never got the chance.” I dropped down on the floor and hugged my knees. “The night I left was the worst it ever was.” I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let myself witness the pity in his eyes. “I’d packed only two bags because there was no way I could remove anything else from the house without him noticing. It was all planned out, I would cook dinner and power through the sex he would inevitably demand and spend one final night in his bed.”
“Katey,” he growled. “You don’t have to.”
I shook my head, still not looking at him. “Ethan was out doing whatever it was he did after the Crimson Cobras cut him loose. He kept long hours and always had lots of cash, which was why I assumed he sold drugs. Or guns, possibly both.” I paused before I continued, “Anyway, that night I went down to the garage in search of the spare tire he’d taken out of my trunk. I knew I might need it or end up at the mercy of another bad man. It wasn’t anywhere that I could see, so I started looking behind shelves and plastic totes, anywhere it could be.”
I stopped speaking and risked a glance at Sniper, his entire body was tightly coiled, his face dark with anger.
“I spotted a door I’d never noticed before because I didn’t park in the garage. I wasn’t allowed to.” I looked away again, thinking about why I’d been banned from the garage. “I figured it was a storage area so I grabbed the bolt cutters, and it took me a few minutes but I managed to get it open. What was inside…” My eyes slammed shut and I couldn’t even think about it. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d find a young girl in there.” Tears streamed down my cheeks as her face flashed in my mind. “She was so skinny and dirty. So fucking young, I was in shock.” A bitter laugh escaped. “I don’t know how long I stared at her while my mind tried to figure out what was happening.”
“A girl?”
I nodded. “At first, I thought she was one of the club girls, you know? But she was so terrified I just knew she wasn’t in there because she wanted to be.”
“What happened?”
“I did the only thing I could think of, I freed her from her bonds, one lone chain attached to the cement floor. I gave her my t-shirt and cardigan, and a fistful of cash and I told her to run.” I wiped the tears from my face on my t-shirt, not giving a damn how unladylike it was. “She ran and I put everything back to rights.”
“And then you left?”
I laughed bitterly. “No. I still had to make dinner and stick to my plan, which I did. I went to sleep knowing it was the last night I’d ever sleep in that house beside him.”
Sniper began to pace inside the small room, his body practically vibrated with energy.
“He woke me up out of a deep sleep with a fist to my face. And then another and another.” I shook my head trying to block out the memories, but they flooded my mind, so real it was as if they were happening again. “He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me down the stairs and into the basement. The door was open, and he was furious. I’d never seen him look so mad. He yelled at me that she was already sold . He shouted at the top of his lungs, kicking me and punching me while he freaked out saying that a very powerful man had paid good money for that young girl and how I fucked it up.”
“You saved her,” he growled.
“I know but he made it clear that the men who bought and sold people were not men to be messed with. He promised they were untouchable and would extract their revenge somehow.” I shook my head and got to my feet, suddenly feeling the urge to pace. “He beat me all night, saying it was so that he could prove to them that he’d taken care of me so they wouldn’t have to.”
“That motherfucker!” He punched the wall, leaving a giant fist-sized hole in it.
“He left early that morning. Twenty minutes later I left, I drove six hours before I stopped at an ER. And I kept running every few months, working low-paying jobs for cash. I didn’t want to stay in one place too long in case he found me. You know the rest—he found me, my landlady managed to hold him off giving me a chance to run, and I landed here.” There it was, the whole sordid tale. My body shook and trembled as the memories and the pain returned, their impact as intense as it was when it happened.
Sniper didn’t speak. He didn’t ask any questions either. When I looked up at him, his face was twisted in anger.
My breath caught in my throat, and I slid back until I was flush against the wall. I knew that kind of anger and I wanted no part of it. “That’s it, I swear. I don’t know who they are, only that they are rich and powerful.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice was low, the words came out tightly controlled as if he was trying to hang on to his own anger.
“Because I’m scared! I don’t know who they are, but I can guess about the kind of men who have the money to buy people! They will probably burn this place down with everyone who matters to you in it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” His green eyes were practically black as they glared at me. “But we’re weeks behind because you didn’t share this information.”
His words hit me like a blow. I should have told him sooner, but I couldn’t. Even now I couldn’t shake the idea that telling him was a mistake. “If you even try to go up against these men, you’ll lose. They can have the DEA or FBI come after you, and then what?”
“No matter what you think of us, we’re more than a bunch of dumb fucking bikers.”
“I never said you were!” More tears came and I let them fall because I had no control over them. But I refused to cry.
I saw anger all over his face and I braced myself for whatever happened next. I didn’t think he would hit me, but he was furious with me, looking at me as if I’d betrayed him and his MC. “Goddammit Katey!” And there it was, that look of hate mixed with disgust. He hit the wall again before he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
The perfect exclamation mark on whatever had been or might have been brewing between us.