Chapter 27
I hadn’t been moving before, but I went still then.
Horribly, achingly still other than the twitch of my jaw as flashes tormented me in a split second and betrayal burned deep as I wondered what all Rush had told Lainey and why he’d decided to have this conversation with her in the first place.
“I see,” she mumbled so softly, I wasn’t sure she meant to say the words out loud. The tips of her fingers trailed across my short beard before she cradled my straining jaw. “And the truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know because all of this is so new and different and intense and—goodness, so many things. But he said if I knew about your past, then I would know not to tell you if I do love you.”
“That all he said?” I asked when she didn’t go on, the words rough and gravelly.
Lainey drew in a slow breath as she thought. “More or less. He’s very protective of you. I think he thought I was leading you on and wanted me to make up my mind one way or another.”
Affirmation rumbled in my chest. “What’s your question?”
Sadness mixed with understanding filled her features. “If you’re shutting down on me, you already know.”
I forced my head to lower in a nod before giving a firm shake. “Lainey, I don’t talk about this.”
“Okay,” she said as if it were as simple as that.
And that understanding—that easy acceptance—nearly brought me to my knees and made me want to tell her.
I roughed a hand over my jaw and moved back until I was pressed to the island. My mouth parted, but my stomach wrenched, and it felt like a boulder lodged in my throat as twisted memories flashed in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” Lainey whispered from directly in front of me before one of her hands fell over the thunderous beating of my heart. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have?—”
“I won’t do that to you,” I managed to say, then had to clear my throat. “I won’t put those images in your head. Just know it was said to me—to my brother and sister—all the time. Like that was supposed to make what our mom was doing okay or make us compliant.”
Lainey’s forehead lowered to my chest, just beside her hand, and a shuddering breath left her. “I’m sorry.”
“Rush shouldn’t have said anything to you.”
“What if he hadn’t?” she challenged when my arm wrapped around her back, pulling her close. “What if I said something later that just...Asher, I needed to know.”
I pressed my knuckles to her chin until I was met with sorrow-filled eyes. “What do I ask for? Always.”
Lainey shook her head stubbornly, refusing to answer.
“Even if it hurts,” I reminded her.
“Forcing someone to relive their trauma is different than brutal honesty, Asher.”
“Have you seen my apartment lately?” I asked softly, gently, and watched as a horrified realization settled across her features, as if she’d forgotten about the décor we’d just been arguing about not even half an hour before.
Before she could fall into another ramble of apologies, I challenged, “Lainey, can’t you see you’re helping me with that?”
She drew in a breath to say something, only to release it as her eyebrows pulled together pleadingly.
“Rush never should’ve said anything,” I repeated firmly, then let my fingers drift along her skin until I was cradling the back of her neck. “But we would’ve had to have this conversation one day. If I’m lucky, you’ll help me through this too.”
Wonder and awe slowly replaced everything else until a resigned breath tumbled from her as she pushed against my chest. “You can’t say things like that if you want me to?—”
I crushed my mouth to hers, swallowing the rest of her words and her surprised whimper. Weaving my fingers through all those curls, I tipped her head back even more to deepen the kiss for long minutes that weren’t nearly long enough. Savoring the feel of her against me and the way she gripped at my shirt like it still wasn’t close enough.
“Give me a couple days,” I teased against her lips. “I’m sure I’ll find a way to make you hate me.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “You think it’ll take that long?”
Her light laugh was still dancing across my lips when I leaned in for another kiss just as my phone began ringing.
For a second, I almost ignored it completely. But then I remembered I’d never taken it off Work mode, which meant it was someone from my team since Lainey was in my arms.
And yet, even as my fingers curled around the device, I found myself silencing it instead and pulling Lainey closer as I turned so our positions were flipped. But just as I brought my mouth down to hers, the ringing started again.
“Get it,” she said, pushing against my chest when, just a second before, she’d been pulling me toward her.
“It’s someone from my team,” I mumbled apologetically as I reached for my phone again. A whisper of irritation slid into my veins when I saw Rush’s name on my screen, but I wasn’t sure if that was because he was interrupting or because he’d talked to Lainey about things he shouldn’t.
“Not the time,” I said in way of answering.
“It has to be,” he ground out, sounding in a way that instantly had me on edge.
I took a step away from Lainey but kept one hand on her waist as if some part of me knew I needed to keep her close. Protect her. “What happened?”
“Office was broken into and destroyed,” he explained. “Security company called me when they couldn’t get ahold of you.”
A curse tore from me as I turned, already heading out of the kitchen with Lainey’s hand wrapped up in mine. “Get Kaia,” I told her quietly, then gently urged her toward the hall. Once she was heading that way, I asked Rush, “Where are you?”
“At the office.”
My head bobbed in harsh nods as my mind raced. I wanted details. I wanted to know how bad and what all had been destroyed, but at the forefront of every thought were the girls no longer in my sight. “Get someone here now.”
“Monroe’s already on the way.”
“I need Gray with her,” I told him as I watched Lainey hurry back down the hall with a sleeping Kaia curled against her chest. Alarm shone in her eyes, but she just nodded when I pointed upstairs and started leading her that way because there was no way I was leaving her downstairs, closer to the elevator, without me.
“Lainey’s been living in a hotel a few blocks from me,” I explained to Rush. “I need one of them to be here with the girls and another to get Lainey’s things.”
“Done.”
“I’ll head out as soon as Monroe gets here.” I ended the call, then hurried to fill Lainey in before leaving her at the front of my bedroom to get ready.
“Do you think it has to do with the mafia wife?” she asked once I was stalking through the room again.
“I know it does,” I said as fear clawed at my chest—a fear I was wholly unfamiliar with.
But I’d never had this before. I’d never had a baby in my care. I’d never had Lainey .
“Have they done anything like this before?” she asked as I swept her out of the room and toward the stairs.
When I didn’t respond, she turned her worried gaze on me. Her lips pressed tightly together in acceptance at whatever she saw on my face.
Because, no, they hadn’t. The last time I’d had any real interaction with them had been years before I’d started the company. For them to do something like this? It felt like a warning of more to come.
I glanced at my phone when we made it to the main floor, but still didn’t have anything from Monroe or the night manager that she’d arrived.
“You can put Kaia back,” I told Lainey as I stole an anxious look at the foyer. “I just didn’t want either of you down here?—”
“I understand,” she said over me, but made no move to take Kaia back to her room. “I’m sorry you feel like you have to wait.”
My head snapped in her direction, but I forced myself to take a breath before responding, knowing my anger and fear were probably lashing from me in everything I said. “Making sure y’all are safe is my priority. If it wasn’t my company, I wouldn’t leave you at all.”
She nodded just as my phone chimed with a message from Monroe, saying she was about to head up.
“Monroe and Gray aren’t Rush, but I need him at the office with me, and you can still trust them,” I told Lainey just as the night manager sent a text letting me know one of my approved guests had arrived. “I don’t know why you’ve been living out of a hotel, but if they’ve gotten into my system and broken into my office, they have your files. They can track you to the hotel. So, either Gray or Monroe will get your things and bring them here, or wherever you wanna go.”
Horror dripped from Lainey when she said, “Then they’d have my address, Asher. They’d go there.”
I pocketed my phone and stepped close to her, cradling her face in my hand and waiting until her worried eyes locked on mine. “They’ll look for where you are . Not where you might call home.”
“A-and what about everyone else? What about Aunt Ada and the rest of your team?”
I ground my jaw as I thought of how to word this in a way that would be the easiest to digest while also driving home the severity of the situation. “If they’re coming after us now and like this, they know we helped one of their wives escape; and it isn’t even the first time. They won’t go after my team directly, they’ll find ways to hurt us. As for Ada?” My head listed just slightly. “Lainey, they aren’t looking for women like Ada.”
“I don’t—” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she searched my expression. “What do you mean?”
I looked over my shoulder when the elevator arrived, but only watched long enough to confirm Monroe was the one stepping into my apartment before meeting Lainey’s stare again. “The coffee shop...I told you they planned on taking you. Yeah?” At the barest movement of her head, I gave her a meaningful look. “That’s what they do, Lainey. They take young women. They take little girls. They’re drug-and-sex traffickers.”
Lainey’s face paled, and as much as it surprised me that she hadn’t put it together on her own yet, I hated that I had to be the one to taint her world this way.
I’d grown up in a world where this was all too easy to accept because I’d witnessed it daily. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to go decades without the dregs of society marring your life, but it said so much about Lainey’s joy. About her quickness to believe the good in people, even when they showed her their worst sides.
Me included.
“You can still leave,” I reminded her when she lowered her head to Kaia’s. And even though every part of me wished she would for her safety, an iron fist was gripping at my chest at the thought of her doing just that.
A soft, weighted laugh fled from her. The sound and the smile tugging at her mouth contradicting the deep worry filling her eyes when she looked up at me again. “You expect that little of me?” she asked shakily, repeating her response from our earlier conversation that felt like a lifetime ago.
“Never, but I’ll always give you the option.”
“Don’t,” she said on a breath, then nodded past me. “You have to go.”
I did, but the last thing I wanted was to leave this spot.
Pulling her close, I dropped my forehead to hers and let that action say everything I didn’t know how to before tearing myself from them both and stalking across the apartment to where Monroe was pushing the button for the elevator.
“I’ve got them,” she assured me when I neared her.
“Nothing happens to them,” I said in low warning.
“Like I said,” she muttered with only a hint of her usual attitude, then turned to watch me get on the elevator. “If all of you die without me there, I’m gonna bring back each one of you to kill you myself.”
Despite the fear still pulsing through my veins, a smirk briefly slipped across my face because I knew she meant it.
“You know they aren’t coming after us. They’re coming after what we have.” I nodded toward the wall blocking the foyer from the rest of the apartment. “If the Wreckers find out about those girls, they’re coming for them.”
A look flashed across Monroe’s face so quickly I nearly missed it.
But I didn’t, and I read her loud and clear.
I’d put myself in this position. I’d put Lainey and Kaia in this position. As if I wasn’t excruciatingly aware of that fact or that this was why none of us had any real ties to people.
Not that the rest of my team had sworn off relationships or families the way I had, but they knew how people could be used against you. Between that and everything we’d seen throughout our careers, it’d more or less become an unspoken vow between us to keep any type of relationship superficial.
I was so far past superficial, and now there was an attack on my company for the first time in the seven years we’d been up and running.