Chapter 10
West
Tick tock…
My pulse pounds in my ears to the movement of the second hand on my watch.
One… two… three strides across the cabin floor.
Tick…
She must be terrified.
Tock…
Chest tight, sweat on my nape, three more strides across the space. Pain in my left arm. Clenched jaw. All the symptoms of a heart attack. But that’s not what this is. I’m too twitchy, too ready to put my bare hands around Rogue’s neck and squeeze the life out of him for taking Dizzy with them.
He could have sent her back to the ranch last night.
The sliver of logic I’m struggling to hold onto reminds me he doesn’t know. Ivy doesn’t know. They had no idea what could happen. They’ve only ever seen Dizzy strong.
Not broken. Not hurting so much I cage her to keep her safe.
They’ve never known Lily.
But I do. I remember what it was like… I scoop my phone up from the table and make the call.
A man picks up on the other end. “Yes.”
“I don’t care what it takes,” I snarl as I let myself out of the cabin and take the path toward the main house. “Make it happen.”
“You know what to do,” the man says.
I pull the phone away from my ear and open the app. The money transfers in moments.
The ranch house comes into view. A few of the guests mill about, but most of them have congregated down by the lake where they are enjoying the sunshine and gossiping about the bride and groom’s mysterious vanishing act.
They better not be left wondering for too long if the bride and groom know what’s good for them. I have to believe Ivy understood my demand was not negotiable.
One of the catering crew hurries across my path. Her gaze runs me up and down before she gives me a confused look and more space.
“It’ll be done,” I hear in my ear when the money hits his account.
I hang up and a small sliver of satisfaction cools my overheated temper. I need to keep myself distracted, but my brothers aren’t back from the pit yet.
With nothing else to do, I take a seat in a rocker on the veranda. The florist is back at the house once again. She hauls buckets of fresh hydrangeas across the lawn, which has been set up for tonight’s pre-wedding dinner.
There are three wire structures at one end of the lawn. Each of them is seven feet tall, wrapped with fairy lights, and half decorated with hydrangeas.
She must have made another trip already this morning. The buckets of flowers multiply at the base of the motif with each trek from her van to the lawn. They’re not the only thing accumulating.
It seems she has another bruise. This one is in the shape of a palm that takes up half of her bicep. Now, that won’t do.
She glances around furtively while she shuts the doors on the back of the van.
Is she looking to find someone? Or avoid them?
One of the Heart brothers provides the answer when he strolls toward her, and she hurries to the driver’s side. Then she hesitates, hovering and nervously bumping from foot to foot while she waits for Jett.
He narrows in on the new marks quickly, grasping her arm so he can inspect them. I can only imagine that their conversation consists of him threatening to hurt whoever left marks on her and her trying to assure him that everything is fine. Or at least not his problem.
He finally stalks away and she climbs in the van and takes a call.
The wedding crew move around making sure everything is set up according to the plans that are laid out on an easel.
Summer’s nephew has climbed a tree and is dropping bits of bark on unsuspecting guests.
In the distance a couple of the Heart Brother’s take a truck into one of the paddocks to feed some cows.
Everything seems in order. No one stands out as suspicious.
If anything, that makes me more wary.
Whoever ran Rogue and Ivy off the road last night is most likely working with Nicole. The FBI agent is here because Riot has a stalker. But the goat’s demise doesn’t appear to be related to either of those things. It could be, as we concluded, a warning for Summer.
Unless my sunshine did kill the goat.
If she did that changes some things. Like why she kissed the first FBI agent she came across like she doesn’t have her face on every bulletin board in every office across the country. And how much I can trust her around these people.
Not that it matters currently with Lily resurfacing.
Summer interrupts my people watching when she comes through the screen door in a flurry of red locks, white sundress and an oversized purse.
She looks at me and her gaze narrows. “Everything okay?”
As if I would share my thoughts with a woman who looks at me like I’m her enemy and the devil rolled into one. While some would call me the devil, and others would call me their enemy, I am neither of those things to these people that Dizzy wants to call family. “Are you?”
“Rebel should be back soon.” She plays with the keys in her hand, looking dodgy as hell. “Riot too.”
“The Fed as well.” Before they come back, I should absent myself.
“Yes, him too.” It appears she is planning to be absent herself. Why she would need to is obscure.
Her focus drops to the keys too. “I need to go into town.”
“Why?”
“Ingredients for the replacement cake,” she says. “They’re at the post office. I have to sign for them.”
“Must be some exceptional ingredients.” I don’t believe her for a second. There’s something else.
“They are. Special order.” She strides down the stairs. She depresses the button on the fob, and a beep accompanies the flash of the lights on the vehicle.
Such a special order that she couldn’t send one of the many people they hired to take care of these things? Actually… “Aren’t wedding cakes usually handled by pastry chefs?”
“Yes. And usually, they aren’t eaten by a goat.”
“I’ve missed something.” I follow her.
“Before Stains died his last act was to break into the kitchen and destroy the cake.”
“Perhaps we’ve been looking at this all wrong,” I quip. “Has anyone considered Rogue, Ivy, or Adira as a suspect.”
Summer’s eyes widen. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“At least we can be grateful he got his last meal,” I say. “He must have known it was his time.”
Summer stares at me like I’m a stranger. Her lips twitch. “Well, yes. You could say that. But now we need a new cake, and the cake designer isn’t arriving until tomorrow morning. He ordered and express shipped everything he’d need. That’s what I’m going to pick up.”
“You should let me drive. With everything that’s going on it would be impolite for me not to accompany you. Make sure you’re not run off the road.”
The thought slows her, but then she strides ahead. “That won’t happen. There’s no need for you to do that.”
“That just means you would prefer I didn’t,” I say, though I should probably try and make friends with my brother’s fiancée. The more of an alliance I can forge with these people the better. “But it’s time we got to know each other.”
She opens the driver’s door. “That doesn’t sound like you’re giving me a choice.”
I steal the keys from her. “I’m not.”
“You know I didn’t think I would ever see the similarities between you and your brothers, but I was wrong.” She sticks her nose up as I usher her into the passenger seat.
“Why are you really going into town?” I ask when we leave the property. “And why were you going alone?”
“I told you... the cake...”
“You told me...” I mimic her then drop into my normal voice. “Your excuse.”
“I didn’t. I am going for the cake.”
“You’re leaving something out.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Are you aware that the facial muscles hold tension differently when someone is avoiding confessing? If one knows how to read micro expressions well, they might be able to divine much more than their subject is letting on.”
Her eyes widen and her mouth slackens. “What? You can do that?”
I shrug.
“Fine. Since you decided to include yourself in my errand, I’ll tell you.” She shrugs into her seat. “But only if you tell me the story behind Dizzy kissing the FBI guy last night first.”
I grit my teeth when she smiles smugly. I don’t want to rehash it. I still need to punish my sunshine for her actions, no matter the motive. When Dizzy eventually resurfaces.
When Lily sinks back into the dark depths of her scars that is. Until then she won’t remember everything we are to each other.
And when Dizzy resurfaces, she might still need time in her cage. Where I can unlock her from the prison that her heart and mind keep returning her to. I’m never letting her out of my sight again.
“So?” Summer asks.
“It’s complicated.” The complication is that there is no real answer that would garner their trust, and I need to find a way to inspire her—and by extension Rebel’s—trust.
“I’m sure.” She watches the road with a quiet steadiness.
How can I protect my sunshine if she continues to try to circumvent the rules I have in place to keep her safe?
“I’m the reluctant heir to the Hawthorne empire.” I wring the steering wheel. My path was set in motion a long time ago. Before Lily became the blood circulating through my heart. My soul. My reason.
My destiny now is one of ruin. Fitting, really, that my real mother named me Ruin.
She must have known something about who I would become to give me a name like Ruin, instead of something vaguely less dangerous like Rebel, Rogue, or Riot.
“I have an empire in the clutches of a corrupt patriarch to take over. And a woman that I must protect at all costs. And the only way I could do both is by killing myself off.”
“What?” She screws up her brow.
“As far as the world I was part of knows, I’m dead.” I walked away from my clubs, and my favors. From my home and the seat that waited for me at my father’s side. “And the girl Dizzy used to be… vanished.”
“I have bad news for you then,” she says. “Because you were not dead when the boys searched out your family tree.”