Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
EMERSON
You’re full of shit,” Pack told me, crossing his arms and staring me down.
“And you’re the only asshole I let talk to me like this. If you were anyone else, your tongue would be nothing more than a bloody stump.”
He laughed. “I’m serious, Cade. Can you really do it after all the shit you’ve been doing with her? A day at the beach? Sleeping with her every night?”
“I’m not fucking her,” I grumbled.
“Not yet, but that wouldn’t be as bad as the real reason.”
My eyes narrowed. “Watch yourself.”
“No, this is too important. You have your hostage in your bed every night. You smile when you see her. Smile, Cade. I’ve known you for twenty years and I’ve never seen you smile like that.”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Can you kill her? Because I don’t think you can.”
Neither did I. The thought gutted me. “No, I can’t.”
I fell into my chair, rubbing my temples.
“Then what are you going to do? She was your winning card, and now those threats are empty ones.”
“Greyson will come. He won’t leave her with me, neither will her uncle. I won’t need to kill her because they’ll get her.”
“And can you let her go?” There was no judgement in his question, and I looked up at him.
“I don’t know.” He was the only one I trusted to hear that admission.
His phone rang, and he glanced at it before answering. The concern in his eyes changed the air in the room.
“We’ve got a problem, boss.”
I stood quickly, tension high in every muscle.
“Ava escaped. She’s running across the west yard.”
All thoughts of our prior conversation vanished, and a myriad of emotions jutted at me.
She’d run away. Left me as easily as if there was no connection there, as if she hadn’t laid on the foyer floor and told me she’d stayed because there was no more searching.
As easily as if her smiles had been false, her words hollow.
“Cade? What do you want them to do?” He still had the caller on the other end waiting for instruction.
The west lawn was off her bedroom, but I had left her in my room. She had waited for me to leave, then made her escape.
“Shit. Tell them to stand down. I’ll get her.”
I bolted from my office and ran through the house toward her room. Throwing the door open, I saw the open window.
“Damn it, Ava.”
Her silhouette moved under the moonlight. She was too close to the woods. My initial hurt morphed to horror. We had traps throughout the woods. I couldn’t have my men monitor every inch of them, so we’d laid traps in specific spots that my men knew to avoid but Ava didn’t.
I jumped from the window and took off after her. She hadn’t even changed and with her bare feet, her pace was slower than mine. The five miles I put in running almost every day made my strides longer and my pace faster than hers.
“Ava, stop!”
She glanced over her shoulder, terror in her eyes before she sped up.
I pushed harder as she gained on the woods.
Just as the woods swallowed her, I reached out and snagged her arm.
She tumbled, and I went down with her, trying to pin her under me.
Nails scratched, punches flew, and I remembered how she had disabled her stepfather.
Pinning her flailing legs with mine, I tried to make sense of what she was screaming.
“You won’t kill me, damn it. I’ll fight you. I won’t stop.”
“Ava, I’m not going to kill you.”
She fought harder, and I had to give her credit.
She was strong, her hits calculated, and it took all my skill to block them until I captured her wrists and pinned them to her sides.
Still, she struggled, her body bucking, her mouth continuing to spew swears and insistences that I was planning to kill her.
“Ava, stop fighting me. I won’t hurt you.”
“You’re going to kill me,” her voice broke, her fight simmering. She looked exhausted. Her skin was flushed and her eyes wild.
“I promise you, I have no intention of killing you.”
Her chestnut eyes searched mine. “But you said…I heard you tell Pack.”
“Were you listening to my conversation, wildcat?”
Sight flitting from mine, then back, she said, “You told him you would kill me.”
I sighed. “It was a lie.”
Her muscles went slack, and I rolled from her, resting my head on the ground. “Don’t run,” I told her. “If you go any further, you’ll lose a foot, or worse. The woods have traps.”
She made a strange squeak but didn’t move.
I ran my hand through my hair. “I have a reputation to uphold, but it’s crumbling.” Admitting the truth was easier than I’d thought.
She still hadn’t run and remained where she was.
“A few years ago, I discovered a few of my men were running a trafficking ring and disguising it as part of the Omens. Like it was my ring, and I was in charge. They’d been doing it for years, right under my nose.
I’d always wondered where those rumors came from, but I’d never imagined they had substance. ”
She rolled toward me. “Wait, you don’t traffic women and children.”
“Fuck no,” I said. “I despise scum that get into that shit. I have a line I don’t cross.”
Irises of chocolate penetrated mine. “But everyone thinks—”
“Because I let them. I founded the Bad Omen on blood and death. My reputation is the most ruthless of any of the bosses, and I like it that way. People react better to me if they fear me. The rumor was there, and I didn’t stop it.
But I tried to stop the instigators. It was a brutal fight, and I lost five men that night. ”
She stayed quiet, letting me spill the secret that only Pack and Breaker knew.
“They slipped away, and we lost them. I thought that was the end of it until they resurfaced about two years ago. Only, I can’t locate them.
Their leader, Henley, is using the training we gave him and hiding too well.
They’re taunting me, luring my newer men away, slowly dismantling my empire, pretending to be me while fucking up because they aren’t me. ”
“All the stuff in Armina? With Riley?” she asked.
“None of it was me.” I rubbed my face. “Clint Randall was one of the originals who broke from me. He was an idiot. Sloppy and one mistake away from a bullet in his head. He knew it and left when the others fled. I don’t step into my brother’s territory.
And It’s been years since I’ve bothered taking over another family.
I don’t give a shit about the families in Armina as long as they continue to fear me.
But these imbeciles are out there stirring up trouble, trying to turn enough families against me that there’s no way for me to fight my way out. ”
She chewed her lip, her eyes keen. “That’s why you wanted to kidnap Riley? To force your brother to talk to you?”
“Yeah. We’ve hated each other for so long that when we do talk, it’s quick and heated. I need him to hear me because these assholes are ruining my reputation.”
“And threatening your empire?”
“Yes,” I turned toward her. “But it’s not just what I’ve built. There are people who count on me. Jill, my men. The cities in my territory benefit from my businesses. People work in those establishments. I put back into my territory, donate, invest in it even if no one knows it’s me.”
“And what if your brother doesn’t help you?”
I cringed at the word help, hating that it had come to this. That my hands were tied, and I had resorted to begging my brother for help.
“You really hate him, don’t you?” she asked, seeing my reaction.
“Loathe is a better word.”
“But you’re brothers. What did he do that was so bad?”
“Stole something.” Bringing back memories of that day always spoiled my mood, but with Ava there, it didn’t.
She waited for me to say more and when I didn’t, she asked, “What could be that important to lose a brother over?”
“A woman,” I admitted. But she hadn’t been a woman. All of us had been kids. Just twenty years old and what had we known about the world? We were three years into building our empire. Rolling in money, power, and women.
“What kind of woman has that power?”
None, but it hadn’t been her. It had been Greyson.
“One I loved, and my brother decided to use to prove she didn’t love me.
” Saying it sounded idiotic. “He called me, telling me I needed to see something, and when I walked in, she was on her knees with his cock filling her mouth. She didn’t even pause as he told me she was nothing but the whore he’d warned me she was. ”
“Huh.” I squinted at her reaction. “Seems like an asshole move to me.”
“Yeah. I left that day, packed up and moved to Seagate to start my own business.”
“How long, Emerson? How long has this rift gone on?”
“Twenty-five years. It seems like a lifetime ago.”
“It was a shitty move, but maybe he thought you needed to see it to believe it?”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help the nagging memories of him warning me over and over.
Of not listening to what he was saying, that he’d seen her screwing another of our friends.
Seen her going down on one of our guys after that.
And each time I’d dismissed him, the rift already forming because I accused him of trying to take her from me, assumed he wanted her and was trying to make me give her up. Until he finally showed me the proof.
“Yeah, it was a shitty move.”
“Does it help that the Greyson Tides I know is not that man? He loves Riley—”
“And I loved…” But I trailed off because I knew it hadn’t been real love.
I’d gotten over her in days, but the grudge had lasted for decades.
The hate I had for Greyson had devoured the speck of love I’d had for the girl.
But I’d never loved again, never gotten close enough.
Maybe Ava was right, and I’d been waiting to find someone worth loving.
“Let’s go back inside. I could use a drink.” I didn’t want to talk about my brother anymore or the situation that was drowning me.
“So you’re not going to kill me?” she asked, changing the subject, seemingly reading my mood.