17. Josephine
Josephine
“Josephine Elizabeth Jenkins, please tell me you’re fucking joking?”
“Don’t full-name me, Jasper Wesley. And, no. I’m not joking. She needs help. She needs to be safe. And you, Beau, Lawson, and Lincoln can give that to her.”
Once again, the five of us stare at the phone in the middle of the table as we send my baby brother on an emotional roller coaster.
Anya still hasn’t come downstairs, so we decided to take this time to call my brother and get him to agree, rather than doing it with her here and making her feel more uncomfortable than she already does when he inevitably becomes a crabass about the entire thing.
“Why don’t you just kill the dad and whatever the hell his name is?”
“Maxim,” I clarify.
“Yeah, him.”
“Because—” Luca starts, but a deep familiar voice on the other end of the line interrupts him.
“They’ll never be able to take out the entire Bratva. Even if they get rid of Andrei and Maxim, the rest will always look for her.”
“Exactly,” Luca agrees. “They are after us because we killed Aleksandr, and now that we’ve taken Anya from them too, their taste for revenge will be nothing compared to what it was.
But if we take out Maxim and Andrei, a new leader will rise to the top.
One that’s eager to take over, and one that will gladly sweep the fact that we killed them under the rug as long as it means they get to stay in control. But…”
“It’s clear that Anya is nothing more than a tool that will just be passed around to the next one,” Enzo finishes for him.
“I haven’t looked up much about her,” Sebastian says.
“Nor have we asked,” I add.
“But from what I have found, it looks like her family sold her to the Novikovs to pay for some sort of debt they owed. I haven’t dug too deep into what that was, but it doesn’t really seem to matter. As far as the Bratva is concerned, she is their property.”
Everyone is silent for a moment as we let the men on the other end of the line take in everything we just said.
I know this is asking a lot, especially considering Lawson and Lincoln’s past, but I genuinely cannot think of a place on this earth where she’d be safer.
They’re good men. Honorable men. Protective men.
I know they won’t say no. I just have to let them get there on their own.
Finally, a sigh fills the room, and I know it’s Jas before he even speaks. “Joe, I really just don’t think—”
“She can come,” Lawson interrupts him again.
“Law, this isn’t a good idea.”
“You know it’s the right thing to do, Jas.”
Silence.
“How soon can you get her here?” Jasper asks reluctantly, and a knowing smirk immediately takes over my face. “Wipe it off, Joe.”
I curl my lips in, and Enzo chuckles next to me.
“I can have her on a flight out of JFK tonight, and she’d land in Billings at nine.”
“Alright,” Lawson answers, “I’ll send Beau to pick her up and bring her straight here.”
“Thank you guys, really. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Joe. Love you,” Lawson answers softly.
“Love you too.” I hear Lawson’s boots walk out of the room without another word. “I love you too, Jas.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love you too, Joe.”
“Please be nice to her.”
“I’ll be nice,” he grumbles.
“But not too nice!” I add quickly.
“I’m a bull rider, Joe. I’m nothing if not nice.” I can practically hear him wink through the phone. “Oh, hey. What’s going on with Dad?”
“Nothing. He’s still downstairs, acting like his shit doesn’t stink. He’s told me nothing I want to know, but I’ll tell you the second he does.”
“Fucking asshole,” he mumbles angrily under his breath. “Okay. Get her a new phone and give her all of our numbers. Have her text me when she’s leaving JFK.”
I look over at Seb and he nods his head. “Okay, I will. Talk to you soon.”
“Bye, Joe Joe.”
Jasper hangs up the phone and I look around at the guys. “We have to stop doing this to him. One of these days he’s really going to have a coronary.”
Dante chuckles into his cup of coffee before saying, “They seem like good men.”
“They’re the best.” And I mean that with every ounce of my entire being.
“We can’t wait to meet them,” Luca says, rubbing his hand down the back of my head.
“Me too.” I kiss him quickly, take my last swig of coffee, and rise from my chair. “Alright, Seb, how long would it take you to whip her up a new identity and get her a new I.D.?”
“Pshhh. Child’s play, Love. Give me a couple hours,” he answers with a cocky grin.
“Perfect. Once you do that, book her the ticket. Dante and Enzo, figure out a safe way to get her to the airport. And you, boss man”—I look down at Luca—“transfer her enough money to make her life comfortable for a while. The last thing she needs after everything she has been through is to worry about how she’s going to feed herself. ”
“Not a problem, Vita Mia. Consider it done.”
They didn’t need me to give them directions like that.
They could have figured this all out for themselves.
Hell, it’s what they do. And they’ve done things far more complicated than this.
But they let me speak. They let me be in charge, and they didn’t even bat an eye over it.
And as I look down at the four of them seated at the table, I know none of them even thought twice about it.
Letting me be strong is as easy as breathing for them.
And that’s what Anya needs. She needs to be around people who will let her be as strong as the woman who ran for her life last night.
“Alright, boys, I’m gonna go wake up our girl and fill her in on the plan.”
“Okay, Mama,” Dante answers with a wink.
Turning on the balls of my feet, I trot up the stairs. I’m almost halfway up when I hear Enzo whistle and yell, “Uhhh, that ass!”
I tip my head back in laughter and let the sounds of their deep chuckles warm me from the inside out.
Several hours later, Dante, Enzo, and I are outside of JFK, ready to drop off Anya, or should I say, Abigail Adams, for her flight to Billings.
After I went upstairs and told her the plan, she agreed.
I could tell she was hesitant, but I don’t blame her in the slightest. She’s scared, and she has every right to be.
But she knows as well as the rest of us that her life in New York is over.
Everything she once knew is gone. She may not like it, but she understands it.
And somehow, I got her to trust me enough to know that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Yet, when I look over at her, she’s not unbuckling or grabbing the bags filled with all of the essentials I had sent to the apartment for her this afternoon.
Instead, she’s looking down at her lap and fidgeting with the seatbelt.
It’s then I see a single stray tear fall from her eyes.
Quickly, I unbuckle and scoot across the back seat while Dante and Enzo give death glares to the airport employee who’s trying to get us to move out of the dropoff lane.
It’s like having scary dog privileges.
“Hey, everything will be okay. You have all of our numbers in that phone, you have the new bank card and I.D., you have enough essentials to last you a few weeks until you get settled, and then you have money to get you everything you should need for a while. You focus on resting and getting better. They have you. You’ll be safe at the ranch, Anya. ”
She sniffles. “I-I just don’t understand why you are doing this for me. You—you don’t even know me.”
I look at Dante’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Because… Because we know how it feels to be hurt by the people who are supposed to love you the most. To be treated like garbage. And we also know how meeting the right people can change your life. And we want to give that to you. It’s who they are.
” Enzo turns to look at me. “It’s who we are. ”
Slowly, I reach up and tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear.
Caressing her cheek with the pad of my thumb, the way I remember my mom doing whenever I was upset.
She inhales a shaky breath before wiping her nose with the back of her hand and sitting up straight. “You’ve got this, Anya. I know you do.”
“Abigail,” she corrects me with a half-hearted smile.
“Abigail,” I agree before wrapping her in my arms. “You call me if there’s anything you need, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers into my shoulder.
“Or if any of those boys put so much as a toe out of line. They like to act tough, but they’re scared of me.”
She laughs into my shoulder, waits a moment longer, and then pulls away. “Alright, I’m ready.”
Dante and Enzo quickly climb out of the car, and Anya follows them.
I watch out the window as the two of them hand her her bags.
She hugs them both. Dante responds with an awkward pat on the back, and Enzo whispers something in her ear before kissing her softly on the cheek.
She gives me a small wave through the window before grabbing her bags and walking into the airport.
Dante and Enzo get back into the car, and I don’t waste any time leaning over the center console and kissing them both on the cheek. “You’re good men, too.”