21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
Shaun
It's dark now. We fell asleep after we got cleaned up and had lunch. It wasn't intentional, but it felt so natural to curl up with her on the couch under a blanket that it just happened.
Wyatt shouldn't be too much longer. He didn't want to come straight back here after he picked up the money. Larken raised the point that the police might be looking for him but he brushed it off. I brought up the fact that he'd be carting around a fuck ton of money but he was nonchalant about that, too. I hope he put it away somewhere instead of driving around with it buckled into the passenger seat of the car.
I've had my little nap and now I've got a new plan. It might be unconventional, but fuck it. I've never done anything the way I'm expected to. I'm keeping Larken. I don't know what that will look like because she's going to be Ms. Business and I'm not exactly ready to give up my opulent life of crime. Sometimes I rob the rich to feed the poor, but sometimes I just rob. I don't like being bored or stagnant or stuck. I need to keep moving, and I doubt the corporate life Larken has waiting for her after we get her set right again is going to be a good fit for me.
It'll be a good fit for Wyatt. He practically screams Mr. Business with the way he carries himself and his ungodly need to control everything. He's probably even got a suit packed away somewhere. Which is why I think she needs both of us. She'll have a daytime suit guy with Wyatt, then she can come home and have a nice relaxing evening with both of us, and I get her on the weekends. I can do my nefarious dealings during the week while Mr. and Ms. Business take care of the company.
This is a good plan and I'm going to force it on them if I have to. She needs us. Both of us. Even if she doesn't need us forever, she needs us right now. And I'll be damned if I give her up because of the societal expectations on women to be a good little wife to one man until she dies of boredom. Larken is more than that. Her fucking husband has kept her in an actual cage since he's had her. We broke her free. She's ours. Wyatt will just have to learn to share.
“I think Wyatt's back,” she mumbles from her rightful place, lying across my chest.
I listen to his footsteps walk up to the door while I run my fingertips across her back. He's going to throw such a fit when he comes in here and sees us cuddled up nice and sweet. It's just too bad that he won't be catching us in the act. Seeing her wearing my shirt and not much else is going to have a big enough effect, though. I can't wait to see the top of his head burst into flames.
Then everything changes so suddenly that my body moves faster than my mind. The front door splinters open, throwing wood chips across the floor and furniture. I push Larken off of me and onto the floor in front of the couch and stand up to face whatever is happening before I realize I've done it.
The man who steps through the door isn't Wyatt. I don't know who he is. He glares around the room before focusing his sneer on me. “Where is she?”
There's nothing close enough to me that would make a decent weapon. Nothing. I don't dare to look down at Larken. “She?”
“Don't be a hero, kid. Just give her to me and nobody needs to get hurt.”
I definitely believe that, I think to myself, mentally rolling my eyes. “There's no girl here. Just me.” I try to use my peripheral vision to look around the room without looking away from him, but I can't see anything useful that I would have any chance of reaching. I guess it's just me, this guy, and a throw pillow.
“Call her in here. Last chance.”
Alright. Here we go.
I need to get to the bedroom or the kitchen. They're roughly the same distance from where I'm standing but in opposite directions. The kitchen door is more of a direct shot than turning down the hallway for the bedroom, though, so that's where I'm going . My fingertips are brushing against the pillow Larken and I were using and I grab it and launch it at the guy's face and make a run for the kitchen. I hope Larken has enough sense to stay where she is and be quiet. If she doesn't move and he doesn't look too hard, she's mostly hidden by the blanket and he might not see her.
I make it about three steps before a gunshot deafens me and fire spreads from my side to the rest of my body, then he's on me. He tackles me from behind, landing punches to my side and back as I hit the floor, taking on the full brunt of his weight. He's a big mother fucker, and the air rushes out of my lungs as I hit the floor with him on top of me with a heavy thud. He doesn't give me a chance to catch my breath before he starts hitting me in my sides. I manage to gasp when he delivers an especially vicious blow and I know that ribs have been broken, I just hope they don't puncture anything.
Larken hasn't made a peep. I don't dare yell at her to run or even look at her. Hopefully she'll be brave enough to sneak away and this guy will be too busy beating the shit out of me to notice she was ever here.
He lifts off of me and that's when I know for a fucking fact that my ribs are broken because it hurts more for the weight to be gone than it did to have it on me. He flips me onto my back and straddles me, trapping my arms at my sides, then punches straight down into my face. I'm barely quick enough to turn my head to the side so that the side of my face and ear take the hit instead of my nose or mouth. I'm too pretty to walk around with a crooked nose or missing teeth.
“Where is she?” he asks in a rough, singsong tone.
“Fuck off.”
He hits me again and I'm not as fast as I was the first time. His knuckles catch the corner of my mouth.
“I know she's here,” he hisses. “Just give her over and you might walk out of here.”
Oh, that's how it is. Yeah, he has no intention of letting me walk out of here and it won't matter if I fight for her or put her in a to-go bag for him. It's just too bad for him that I have no intention of letting him kill me or take her. I hold my breath and buck until I can free my arms, then I flip us again, knocking into the entertainment center. A few of the knickknacks from the top of it fall down on and around us, one or two shattering when they hit the floor.
I grab at his face with the goal of shoving my thumbs into his eye sockets, but he pushes his hands up and between my arms, knocking my hands away. I go for it again and he tries to twist away, so I grab his hair instead and bring my fist down as many times as I can until he manages to flip us over again. We roll, but we get tangled up in the coffee table and he lands on top of me again. Then he fucks me up. He grabs both of my ears to lift my head and I expect him to smash the back of my head on the floor, but he doesn't. He brings his own head down to meet mine in a headbutt that rattles my goddamn teeth. Who headbutts people anymore? Jesus. Getting shot hurts less.
I'm dazed. My head falls back with a hard, nauseating thunk .
Then it's suddenly too late for me to do anything else because Larken screams and the last thing I see before he grabs my head to smash it on the floor is him whipping around to grin at her. She's still screaming when the room gives way to darkness.