12. Ranger
Chapter 12
Ranger
I pause outside the closed door of Denver’s room and will myself not to turn around. I refuse to allow rage and fear to consume me when I think about how I almost lost her and now I’m walking away. Temporarily, but still.
It would be easier to leave if it weren’t for the fucking vet.
Jealousy is a familiar feeling. It’s consumed me daily since Denver married Wyatt, but I thought that the intense, scorched ache of envy would ease since her husband is officially out of the picture.
It was only replaced by the desperate need to have her now before anyone stole her away again.
When did I become so fucking weak?
I’ve always assumed I was strong enough to face anything. I’d fought men; I’d fought demons; I’d fought anyone who stood in my way. I did what I had to do. For myself. For my family. For this life I’ve built.
I had always been strong.
Until I met Denver.
The day she walked into my house, I’d been standing at the top of the stairs on the phone. Denver had waited in the foyer, wearing a black funeral dress, a bag by her side. She’d tucked her hair behind her ear, feet fixed in place, obviously unsure where to go or what to do.
Axel had spoken to her first, but not because he’d wanted to. My son ignored her initially, deep in one of his teenage moods, walking by with his headphones on like she wasn’t standing there. Denver had frowned and snatched the headphones off his head.
“Are you Axel?” she’d asked.
“Yeah, and?”
“Say hello to me. I’m Denver.”
I remember smiling. Day one, minute one, and she’d made an impression. I had moved closer to the stairs to watch her, to listen to her reel off a list of questions to Axel about his life, school, and why he was so rude.
When she’d finally spotted me, I knew I’d made the right choice by offering her a place to stay. She’d stared at me, gray eyes unwavering, braver than most men because it was rare that anyone looked me in the eye. But she had. She’d challenged me from the moment she could, and she’d been good at it, too.
At Denver’s insistence, Axel had left to help with the rest of her bags, and I had walked down the stairs. She’d kept her eyes on me the whole time.
“Are you Ranger?”
“I am.”
“I’m Denver.”
Her Irish heritage had overpowered Nico’s Italian genes, and she looked so much like her mother. It was a shame because I’d hated her mother.
“I know. How long do you want to stay here, Denver?” I’d asked as if that was her choice anymore. I’d already decided she would stay as long as I saw fit.
“As long as you want me,” she’d said.
Forever, then.
She was never agreeable. Never easy to deal with. But Axel liked her. The staff liked her. I liked her despite her fighting me every step of the way with work, with security, with her name. She wouldn’t be a DeLuca under my roof. She was a Luxe, or she was nothing. She’d taken that literally and changed her surname to ‘Nothing’ for three weeks to defy me. That had made me laugh.
She was stubborn. She was strong. She was a good influence on Axel and even on me.
And every day she lived in my house, I fought my feelings for her because I didn’t want to cross that line. I’d ignored the electricity between us, how she sometimes looked at me, and how I felt whenever she was close.
When she’d convinced me to watch a movie with her one night, I’d focused so hard on anything but her that I hadn’t noticed her watching me. She’d brushed my hair back, scrunched up her nose, and said, “Smile, Grim Reaper. This movie is supposed to be fun.”
I’d almost kissed her.
Instead, I backed away after that night, colder with her than I’d ever been, determined to keep a safe distance.
And that was when she’d met Wyatt.
Or, more accurately, Wyatt met her.
But two long years later, she’s a widow.
And mine.
Cal is waiting outside the hotel. He’s spent most of his night checking the building is safe, sending me regular updates and occasional complaints about his lack of sleep. He’s the only person in the world, aside from Denver, that I allow to push their luck with me, and only because he’s always proved to be a loyal soldier. He’s quick, efficient, and, for the most part, happy to follow orders.
Cal runs a hand over his close-cropped, dirty blond hair. He never lets it grow, a habit he said had stuck with him from the forces. He’s younger than me, and while I spent most of my life running the underground of San Francisco, Cal had been in the military. He doesn’t talk much about his life as an actual soldier—his proclivity for violence was all I needed to know about before I hired him.
“She good?” Cal asks.
I open the trunk of the Mercedes and place my bag inside. “Fix your tie. You look like a slob.”
Cal glares at me. “It’s like a hundred fucking degrees. There’s sand in this suit where there shouldn’t be sand. Is she good?”
I slam the trunk shut. “She’s fine.”
“We killing the vet?” A vacationer throws Cal a wide-eyed look, and he grins at her. “Hey.” She scurries away, and he returns his attention to me. “Are we?”
I want to. I’d considered going over in the night to kill Ethan and his friends but had resisted. “No.”
Cal narrows his eyes. “Is this some kind of secret code?”
“No.”
“And by ‘no,’ you mean…”
I clench my jaw. “I mean, we’re not killing him.”
Cal’s face twists into a scowl. “Why not?”
“Because Denver wouldn’t want it.”
And as tempting as it is to put a bullet between Ethan’s eyes, I won’t risk pushing Denver away again. The vet is a passing fancy, that’s all.
“Sounds familiar,” Cal mumbles.
Yes, it does.
As Cal drives, I’m consumed with a feeling I don’t often entertain—guilt. I fucking hate leaving her behind. I hate leaving her in the hands of a man who cannot take care of her. I hate all of it.
But I mostly hate that she manipulated me, again, and I allowed it. If I told her she could stay here forever, she would. If I released her from my house, she’d leave. And while I’m not a good enough man to do either of those things, I at least want her to want to be kept by me. I want her to want me openly. She acts like she’d die if she gave herself to me, but the reality is, I’d cut out my own heart to keep her alive.
We stop in a small neighborhood around thirty minutes from the airport. The houses aren’t tightly packed together, but it’s busy—mini vans in driveways and kids running through sprinklers. It’s picturesque, cute, and parents are too distracted by mowing lawns and watching their kids to notice the car stopping at the house on the end.
The pretty detached home would be perfect for another family on this street, and as I stride up the well-manicured lawn, I try to picture having a life here with Denver. She wants kids, a family, a life outside of our world and somewhere safe.
I can’t give it to her, but I also know that deep down, it isn’t what she needs.
As the door to the house clicks closed behind us, JJ looks up from his phone. He’s young and relatively new, but I appreciate his silence. He’s said only a handful of words to me since I hired him, and even that feels too many. He’s not the only one of my men here. There will be two others out back, one in a car outside, and an officer waiting by his phone should we need him.
“The realtor?” I ask.
JJ nods at the ceiling. “Quiet.”
“Alive?”
He nods.
Cal takes off his sunglasses. “Where’s our friend?”
JJ heads toward a door between the spacious hall and the kitchen. It leads us into the basement. It’s modern, and on the realtor’s website, it’s advertised as the perfect space for a home cinema—cozy, dark, quiet. Soundproof.
A simple wooden kitchen chair holds Adam Ledger. His ankles are duct taped to the front legs, his wrists to the arms of the chair, and tape covers his mouth. And despite the fist to the face that took him down after he was apprehended, he’s untouched.
For now.
“Hello, Adam.” I stop before him. “Comfortable?”
He stares up at me, sweat shimmering across his skin, his breathing quick.
Taking another chair from the far side of the room, I place it before him. I take off my jacket, draping it over the back of the chair before sitting.
Resting my forearms on my thighs, I watch him. “I’m not one for delaying bad news, so I’ll tell you now that you’re going to die.” He tenses, the tendons in his neck pushing against his skin. “It’s going to hurt. A lot. And it will take a long time for your heart to stop beating, and even then, I’ve instructed my men to bring you back if they can. Then they will kill you. Over and over.”
Adam trembles, tears spilling over his cheeks and the tape across his mouth.
“But I’ll give you a small bit of peace before you go.” I lean back in the chair. “Wyatt didn’t die in a carjacking.”
Adam’s eyes widen, and he pulls against the tape securing him.
I smile. “I killed him. I killed him because your piece of shit cousin was going to kill Denver. He looked a lot like this, actually.” I gesture at him. “Except he was on his knees, crying like a bitch before I pulled the trigger.”
Adam shouts into the tape, and his sobs increase when I reach into my inside pocket to produce a small flip knife. I twist it in my fingers, admiring the initials carved into the metal. ND. Nico DeLuca. Denver’s father.
“Do you know where I came from, Adam?” I ask. The rage and desperation in his eyes are like a balm to my fractured soul. I know that bringing other people fear and pain shouldn’t soothe me, but it does, and I’ll take it where I can. “I fought to survive. Literally. Underground fighting rings were my source of income, and when I was sixteen, a man pulled me aside after a fight and offered me money to kill his brother. He was fucking his wife, or stealing from him, something like that, I didn’t care. I took the cash, and I killed a man, and I had fifty bucks for formula for my kid and groceries for my girlfriend. Word spread and I was offered more money. Nobody asked me to become more creative in my kills, but I did. And there was one thing I became fascinated by.” I stand, and Adam’s head snaps up, his body trembling as I close in on him. “Eyes.”
Adam struggles when I grip his jaw. His sweat slips across my palm, but I hold him steady.
“I became obsessed with finding out how to remove an eyeball perfectly. Very little blood, but a lot of pain.” Adam tries to wrestle away, and I don’t need to say anything for Cal to approach and hold Adam’s head still. I pull open his eyelid.
Adam starts screaming into the tape, and I smile. “This is only the beginning, Adam. This is just a taste of what happens when someone tries to take from me. And each piece I cut from you, I’ll deliver to Wyatt’s mother. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
His screams become screeches as my knife dips into his eye socket.
“I hate it when you do the eyeball thing.”
I smirk at the passing scenery on the way to the airport hangar. “It’s effective.”
“You know my opinion on it.”
“Tongues are not harder.”
“Yes, they are!” He gestures at me. “They’re pure muscle, and people wriggle them. Cutting out a tongue takes skill.”
“I removed his eyeball in a clean cut. Are you saying that isn’t impressive?” I ask, and he rolls his eyes. “What you do is messy. What I do takes skill.”
Cal shrugs. “Torturing him does feel like a waste of time, though. Wyatt’s mom isn’t exactly someone we want to scare off by proving what we’ll do. She’s just lashing out.”
That’s true. Isabelle Ledger is a grieving mother who wants to hurt Denver. She’s not a threat, not really, but word of the attempt on Denver’s life will spread, and I want to make it clear to anyone who hears of it just what happens to anyone who tries to hurt her.
“It sends a message,” I say.
The jet is ready when we arrive, and I take my bag from the trunk.
“I want you to stay.”
Cal’s brows furrow. “Okay. Why?”
“Reiterate our point to Richmond.” The bodyguard I’d hired to watch Denver has likely learned his lesson, but his mistake has burrowed too deep. And if I can’t take my frustration out on Ethan, I’ll do it on Richmond. “Remove more fingers if you have to.”
Cal shrugs. “And can I?—”
“Yes, you can book a fucking suite,” I interject. “Be home in two days. And don’t let Denver see you.”
The air hostess beams prettily as I climb the steps to the private jet. It can hold at least fifteen passengers on the two cream couches or leather seats, though it’s mostly only used by me. I opt to sit at a table seat and check my phones. Countless messages from home. Shipments, meetings, threats, the media, the police.
Nothing from Denver.
She used to text me. Pointless, silly things. Jokes. Demands. Selfies of her using my credit card that she’d taken without asking. I rarely replied, even when she provoked me, because the distance of a text had me longing to say things I shouldn’t. Like if she remembered the taste of me as well as I remembered the taste of her.
I check my phone again.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
I tear my gaze from my darkened phone screen to the air hostess. I hadn’t even realized we were in the air.
“No.” I return my attention to my phone. Cal had texted saying he had eyes on Denver and had decided to remove Richmond’s thumb.
“Are you sure?”
I frown, my gaze flicking back to the brunette. She’s pretty. About Denver’s age. Her uniform hugs her curves, and her heels accentuate her long, shapely legs.
I lean back in the chair. “What are you offering?”
A blush steals across her cheeks. “Whatever you want.”
Unless she can deliver a five-foot-six redhead who has occupied my every fucking thought for six years, then this woman is useless.
Useless and unfamiliar.
I lift the armrest and nod at my knee. “Sit.”
The brunette wets her lips and glances at the cockpit before following my instructions. She sits sideways on my lap, one arm draped over my shoulders. I open my knees, and she squeaks as she drops into the seat between my thighs.
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “What’s your name?”
“Rose.”
“That’s a pretty name.” I unfasten the top button of her uniform, and she watches with wide eyes as I reveal her red lace bra. “How long have you worked for me?”
“Donald hired me just yesterday.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” She gasps as I run the tip of my finger across the lace. “I?—”
I kiss her neck, and she tenses. “Is this what you wanted?” I feel her nod, and I skim my hand up her chest before closing it around her throat. “What’s Donald’s surname, Rose?”
“Connors.” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“And what’s mine?”
“L-Luxe.”
“And what’s yours?”
She falters.
Fucking cops.
I squeeze her throat, and she tries to free herself, but I hold her tightly to me, my lips against her ear. “I know they’re listening, so I’ll keep this brief. Of all the people to send, they chose a fucking amateur like you?” I shove Rose, or whoever the hell she is, off my knee. She scrambles away and stands, clutching the backs of one of the seats.
I stand.
She seems to find her courage and squares her shoulders. “I’m not a cop.”
“Not after today, you’re not.” I advance slowly. She has nowhere to go, and this would be the perfect place to kill her if she wasn’t an officer. She’ll survive this flight, but she’ll run back to her colleagues with nothing but an embarrassing story to tell. Rose backs away until she bumps into the cockpit door. “Once we land, you’re going to get off this plane and quit your job. One, because I said so, and two, because you’re a crappy fucking cop.”
She swallows, her eyes wide. “Fuck you.”
I rest a hand next to her head, bringing my face close to hers and whispering, “I wouldn’t fuck a cop if it absolved me of all my sins, Rose .” My lip curls as I return to my seat. This isn’t the first time the police have tried this. Countless undercover agents have tried to worm their way into my business or life, but years of experience means I can sniff out a cop from a mile away. Especially one as experienced as this ‘Rose.’ I relax in my seat, take out my iPad, and flip open the cover. Rose keeps her eyes on me but doesn’t move. “On second thought, I’ll have a whiskey.” I open my emails, and when Rose remains frozen, I raise my gaze to her. “Or are you incapable of doing that, too?”