Chapter Twenty-six – Love I Got Left
Chapter Twenty-six
Sadie
LOVE I GOT LEFT
Performed by Max McKnown
He was an idiot if he thought I’d walk away when he was in danger. He didn’t know anything about me or my Hatley blood if he thought I’d turn away from the person I loved when their life was on the line.
The shots fired at us had triggered a whole slew of ugly inside me. For several horrible seconds, I’d been right back in that moment at the ranch with my desperate fear for Mila squeezing my chest. Right back to watching blood pour from my thigh as my tiny niece ran for her life just as I’d lost consciousness.
It would be so easy to slip into the intense emotions of that day. The terror and agony of not being able to go after her. The relief at seeing Maddox. The panic of coming awake after surgery, and the doctors telling me I might never get full use of my leg back.
I wouldn’t lie and say my hands weren’t still shaking. That the memories and fear weren’t still curling through my blood, but I refused to give in to it. Refused to let whomever this was coming for Rafe and his family send me cartwheeling back into the dark I’d been swimming against for nearly three years. I only wished, like I had that day with Mila, that I’d had a weapon to defend us. Some way of striking back as the bullets rained. A chance for a whisper of control in a situation where I’d had none.
His hand landed in my hair, drawing the strands around his finger, tugging so I was forced to meet his gaze again. “Sadie, I…” He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Damn it. I won’t be the reason you get hurt…or worse. I’m so sorry this brought back those memories for you. That you had to experience any of it again.”
The fact he was more upset about what this had triggered in me than being shot at snagged my heart and made it his more than it already was. I stroked his beard, hating the grief and remorse I saw in his eyes, the guilt and blame that would stick to him. I knew those feelings too. All too well.
“Some asshole shooting at you isn’t your fault.” When I saw he was going to argue, I shook my head and cut him off. “You want to do something for me, Rafe? Find out who it is and put them away.”
His stare burrowed into me. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to tell him nothing was going to take me away, but my tongue locked to the roof of my mouth. Now wasn’t the time. It would sound as ridiculous as it had when I’d talked to Gemma.
I eased off Rafe’s lap and finished cleaning and wrapping his arm.
The entire time, his gaze was pinned to the office door, nearly coming out of his skin at every sound while he waited for his daughter. When Mila had run away from me that day, when she’d disappeared from sight, I’d been overcome with panic, unable to see how to protect her and knowing she was facing the danger alone because I’d failed. And even though Mila wasn’t my child, I still loved her with all of me. I still knew the rage and guilt and terror he was feeling.
When the front door finally crashed open, he jerked to his feet, pushing me behind him just in case it wasn’t his team and his family.
“Dad!” Fallon’s voice echoed through the hall, and his shoulders dropped in relief.
She came sprinting into the office, eyes wild, braids bouncing behind her. She barreled into him, wrapping her arms around him and holding on tight. Her shoulders shook with sobs as she clung to him.
“I thought you were dead,” her voice cracked. “I thought I’d lost you too!”
When I met Rafe’s eyes over her head, his were filled with the same unshed tears as mine. He kissed her temple and held her tight. “I’m not going anywhere, Ducky. I’m here. You aren’t going to lose me.”
She stepped back and pummeled his chest with her fists. “You aren’t bulletproof.” When she saw the bandage on his arm, she gasped. “You’re shot! Oh my God, why aren’t you at the hospital?”
“It’s just a graze,” he insisted, pulling her back into his arms. “Sadie already took care of me.”
Noah and Lauren came into the room, trailed by Lorenzo and Parker. The rest of the wedding party stood in the hallway beyond them in various stages of fear, anger, and dishevelment.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lorenzo demanded, back rigid, fury pouring from him.
“You tell me,” Rafe growled, setting Fallon aside and stepping forward as if to protect us all from my cousin.
The terror of the gunshots was slowly easing away, but in its place, a new fear rose inside me. Had we escaped the gunshots only to let the wolf in the front door?
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed, and he didn’t back away. Instead, he moved closer to Rafe. “You think this was me? That I’d ruin Marielle’s wedding by taking a potshot at you that I could have taken any time I wanted when you were in Vegas?”
It was like watching two bucks go at it in the wild as they stood almost toe to toe. Feral and fierce and both equally determined to protect what was theirs.
What surprised me was that I believed Lorenzo. That even after everything Rafe had told me about being stabbed, I could believe him. But he was right. I couldn’t see him hiring a gunman to take Rafe out in the middle of the wedding. Not when he’d treated his cousin with such love and affection all day.
“As far as I’m aware, nothing like this has happened at the ranch or in Rivers until you showed up, bringing your damn criminal activities with you,” Rafe insisted.
Lorenzo scoffed, and the two men stared each other down, waiting to see who would make the first move. My heart thudded in my chest as the tension in the air grew, and I eased closer to Rafe, unsure what I would do but determined to somehow help.
From behind Lorenzo, Nicky stepped forward. “Puzo, what the hell is this?”
Lorenzo didn’t break his glare with Rafe, and instead, it was Lauren who spoke, hurrying toward the wedding couple. “I’m so sorry this happened. So sorry your evening was ruined in this way. Everyone is safe here in the house, and if you could please just give us a moment to figure everything out, I promise we’ll do everything we can to fix it.” She waved a hand toward the sitting room across the hall. “Let’s go in here, and I’ll have drinks brought in while I arrange for the dinner to be moved from the marquee to our dining room.”
“Lorenzo?” Marielle’s voice was uncertain, her dark eyes sad, and her carefully arranged brown hair tousled and out of place.
My cousin finally looked away from Rafe to take in Marielle’s worried expression. “Go with Lauren. I’ll take care of this.”
She hesitated but then let Lauren take her arm, leading her and the rest of the wedding party into the sitting room.
“I had nothing to do with this,” Lorenzo insisted again. I was astonished when he was the one to back away, to put space between him and Rafe. But his next words proved he hadn’t dropped the fight. “But I won’t stand idly by while my family is in danger.”
The insinuation Rafe had let this happen took the worry and fear inside me and layered it with my own rage. I stepped out from behind Rafe’s broad shoulders, pointed a finger, and said, “If you think for even one second—"
“Someone tell me what the hell is going on!” Lauren demanded as she rushed back inside and shut the office doors behind her. Silence and tension flipped through the air, but no one said anything. She looked at Rafe and asked, “Did Jim and his men catch whomever this was?”
“He’s still out there looking,” Parker answered just as Rafe demanded, “Have you heard from Adam?”
Lauren paled. “He wouldn’t do this… He wouldn’t risk hurting me or Fallon…” But I could see the doubts filtering through her, and maybe her mind had gone to the same place mine had—to the person in her room with a pillow pressed to her face.
“If he killed Spence, why wouldn’t he kill Dad?” Fallon said scathingly. “He wants all of you out of the way so he can get his hands on the ranch. He wanted me to sign over half of it. He would probably have offed me too.”
Lauren inhaled sharply just as Rafe barked out, “What are you talking about?”
Fallon darted me a glance, as if amazed I’d kept quiet about what she’d told me. “He wanted me to sign over half the ranch to him once I turned eighteen. He kept saying Spencer had promised to right the wrongs of the past by giving him a share and that Spence had agreed it was as much Hurly land as it was Harrington.”
Lauren shook her head. “It’s what Adam wanted, hoped for, but Spencer never agreed to it. He was going to change the trust so Adam and I were executors, but he was never giving away the land.”
Rafe’s face was thunderous, and his head whipped back toward Lorenzo. “How much does he owe you?”
Lorenzo ran a hand through his hair, a tell showing just how much he’d also been rattled by tonight’s events. “I never said he owed me money.”
While I’d believed what he’d said about not being responsible for the gunman tonight, I didn’t believe him now, and the fury in Rafe’s face said he didn’t either. “Have you been helping him steal from the ranch? Scurrying the money away to some offshore account?”
Lorenzo tugged at his suit jacket, regaining his control. His voice was calm, returning to that mocking condescension he’d used when he’d lobbed the insinuation about Rafe not protecting his family, as he said, “The only thing I did was try to help. Once I realized it was impossible, that Adam was still burning through more money than the ranch earned, it was easier to just wait for it all to crumble. I’d be able to buy the land for pennies on the dollar. It would have given me great pleasure to own what you’d tossed aside.”
Rafe practically vibrated with barely contained animosity, and I fisted the back of his shirt, holding him back, because I knew if he lost control now, he’d despise himself later for it. He didn’t want to give Lorenzo the power of his emotions any more than he wanted his daughter to see him react in violence.
Lauren and I shared a look, and she stepped in between Lorenzo and Rafe. “If you want your money back for the wedding, if you want to move it away from here, I’ll understand. I’ll do whatever I can to find a place nearby that can accommodate you tomorrow.”
“My family wasn’t the target tonight. If Marquess leaves, we’ll all be fine,” Lorenzo said casually as he straightened his suit lapels and pulled himself together even more.
“I’m not leaving my family with threats hanging over them,” Rafe snarled.
“He’s right, though, isn’t he?” Lauren said. Her words struck me like a dart to the chest, and if they stung me, I knew they’d sliced into Rafe. “You’ve been the target.”
“A man was in your room, smothering you!” Rafe shot back.
She paled. “I…that was just a nightmare. We don’t know…”
But we all did.
Lorenzo pulled his phone from his pocket. “There’s no need for us to leave. I’ll send for my security team, and we’ll have men all over the ranch protecting my family and our guests.”
Rafe laughed. It was brutal and harsh. “You’re crazy if you think I’m letting your men on my property. I can handle the extra security.”
Lorenzo didn’t even look in Rafe’s direction as he raised a brow at Lauren and said, “If you want me to stay and not demand you give back every dime we’ve spent here, you’ll let my men protect us.”
“Lauren.” Rafe’s warning was gritty and deep, but she shot him a defiant look that matched the ones I’d seen from her daughter.
“No, Rafe. Spence may have left you in charge of the money and legal aspects of the ranch, but he left me in charge of the operations. You don’t get a say in this. As far as I can tell, we need all the help we can get.”
Rafe swore under his breath.
The office door opened, and Jim Steele and Barry came rushing in. Their faces were set and grim.
“Tell me you found him,” Rafe demanded.
Steele shook his head, dropping a handful of shell casings he’d wrapped up in the bottom of his shirt on a side table. “We found where he’d holed up. He had a clear shot of the field and the back of the house.” He waved at the shells. “I didn’t have gloves, but I was careful, so we might get prints.”
“He had a truck of some sort parked nearby that left tracks in the dirt and the grass. I’ll get a mold kit, and we can trace the vehicle,” Barry added.
Rafe dragged a hand over his beard. “Let’s call the sheriff and see how he’d like to proceed.”
Lorenzo made a noise of disgust. “Of course, running to the police is your answer.”
Rafe’s fists clenched, and his lips flattened, but he acted as if Lorenzo hadn’t spoken. “We’ve had three attempts on our lives now, and from what I can tell, Adam has stolen—at a minimum—three hundred thousand dollars from the ranch in just the last five years.” Lauren and Fallon both gasped. “The authorities need to be involved, and they need to reopen Spence’s case.”
Lauren’s hand went to her chest, rubbing, and she sank down into the nearest chair. Surprisingly, it was Fallon who tried to comfort her, leaning over the back of the chair to hug her. “It’s not your fault, Mom. Uncle Adam was good at hiding things.”
Lauren brushed a hand over Fallon’s hair and then looked up at Rafe. “He’s been angry many times over the years. It’s not like I didn’t know it. As kids, he wanted the two of us to leave and start new somewhere else. He hated that I stayed, but when he came back to help after your dad died, he seemed at peace with it. He even seemed happy here…”
She trailed off, looking into the empty fireplace, and all I could think was that Adam had probably been happy because he’d been stealing and plotting from the moment he’d returned to the ranch. If Fallon hadn’t gone to her dad in Vegas, if Rafe hadn’t shown up and rocked the boat simply by stepping onto the land, maybe he would have succeeded.
What would he do now that his plans had been interrupted? My vision swam with Chainsaw’s face, ugly with fury as he’d waved his gun and ranted about what had been taken from him. Desperate men did desperate things. My mouth went dry, panic curling over my spine once more. What could I do to keep Rafe safe? To help protect all these people who’d worked their way into my soul in a matter of days?
Steele broke the quiet that had descended. “Let me go call the sheriff and see if I’ve gotten a hit on any of the alerts I set online for Adam.”
Lauren watched him as he stepped out into the hall, and then she stood, shaking off the heartbreak and becoming that sure woman I’d first met again. I realized just how much Rafe and Lauren were alike in that way, hiding their emotions, tucking them away. And I wondered what their childhood here had been like that they’d both come away with the need to shield themselves so tightly.
“I need to get dinner served and reassure our guests that they’re safe.” She looked at Lorenzo. “I’d appreciate your help with the additional security and anything you can do to smooth things over with Marielle and Nicky.”
The look of triumph Lorenzo sent Rafe took my panic and amplified it. But then he confused me by stopping at the door, gentling his voice, and saying, “Believe it or not, I’ve never condoned any illegal activity in any of my businesses. Not back when you worked at my club, and not now.” Rafe snorted in disbelief. “Someday, you’ll realize the enemies you have are all of your own making.”
Then he left, striding away in that smooth way that made him appear like he wasn’t moving at all and leaving anger and doubt singing the air behind him.
I could see his words had landed with Rafe, making him doubt what he’d always thought had happened. I was pretty sure that had been my cousin’s point—to attack him in another way and tip Rafe over the edge when he was already tumbling.
I stepped toward him, wanting to reassure and comfort, but before I could go to him, Fallon had wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned her head into his uninjured arm.
He returned the hug and then said quietly but firmly, “Sadie, I want you to leave, and I’d like you to take Fallon with you.”
“What?” Fallon said, jerking away from him as I shook my head.
“There’s no reason for either of you to end up caught in the crossfire.”
“I’m not leaving Mom! I’m not leaving my home!” Fallon stamped her foot.
Barry cleared his throat. “Steele already has more of our men on their way. Factor in Puzo’s crew and the police, and I think just the number of bodies will deter whomever this is. If you stay out of sight, boss, there’s no reason to think anyone else is going to get hurt.”
Rafe glared at the man, and he wisely shut up.
I didn’t agree with Barry. If Adam was the shooter, if he was the one who’d put the snake in Rafe’s bed and tried to smother his own sister, then he wasn’t thinking rationally. Another flash of Chainsaw’s eyes, wild with desperation and fury, spun before me. But even if Adam came, even if it was him who’d shot at us tonight, he hadn’t ever targeted Fallon or me. He’d targeted Rafe. And I wanted him to be safe more than anything. More than my own safety.
I took his hand and pressed it to my chest. “I’ll go if you go.”
“I’m not leaving.”
I laughed, not because it was funny but because it was so entirely the man I’d come to love. “So, you’ll send everyone you care about away, but you’ll leave yourself wide open? Don’t you think the people who love you want to see you protected as much as you want us to be?”
I swallowed hard after I’d let the words out. They weren’t exactly me saying I loved him or that he loved me, but the meaning was there. The intent. The intensity of his gaze when it settled on mine rocketed through me like a shock wave.
“I can’t leave, Tennessee.” And I heard in his voice everything he wasn’t saying. He was blaming himself for all of it. For leaving years ago and for not seeing what Adam was doing now. For the danger that had arrived on the ranch’s doorstep. And he couldn’t walk away again without trying to fix it.
“Then, we all stay,” I told him, hoping to remind him that his daughter was part of that deal. I wanted him to leave and take her with him. To let the authorities handle the search for Adam or whoever it was who had shot at him.
Steele strode back into the room and said, “Sheriff is on his way.”
Rafe cupped my cheek and said softly, “We have things to discuss, Tennessee. But not now. After.”
I didn’t know if he meant after the police had come and gone or after all this was over. But as I wasn’t prepared yet to have the talk he wanted, wasn’t sure I knew any more this evening how to meld our worlds together than I had this morning, I just nodded.
The one thing I was certain of was that I wanted to cherish every minute I had with him. I could have lost him tonight. He could have been killed as he’d shielded me from the shots, and knowing that made everything else in my life seem unimportant.