27. Drake
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Security swarmed the hotel in the moments before our arrival.
All the faceless, blurred enforcers moved around me as we took the secure back entrance to a suite owned by my family.
Personal guards posted up at the private elevator entrances and at intervals around the building, not that they mattered to be now.
I swept into the room the instant the golden elevator door dinged, setting my precious cargo onto the cream couch.
Everything happened in a flurry in the hours following.
Charlotte and Antoine made appearances, checking over their daughter and interrogating me on what happened.
One of their personal doctors, a bedraggled man torn from sleep in the early hours of the morning, diligently checked Helen over while I ran down the events with them.
Julian had stayed behind with Team Beta to sweep the grounds and sort through the evidence.
Charlotte stated she would send additional support to clean up the aftermath.
She asked about prisoners. I’d left no survivors.
Charlotte bent down and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s temple when the doctor promised Helen was alright, simply exhausted.
She nodded at me in silent thanks, and Antoine shook my hand when they departed.
I got the feeling that the Montgomery family had accepted me into their fold.
It was such an odd sensation, but a relief all the same.
When William Graham made his wholly unwanted appearance, I struggled to keep my lingering temper in check.
He cast one look at Helen asleep on the couch, blatantly looking down his nose at her before droning on about the shame of betrayal and how he never should have taken the Miller Whelp into our family’s good graces.
But we had the Montgomery princess at the end of the deal and the anonymous masked group was taken care of.
Now the Graham business could thrive, and he could send me back out on missions?—
“No.” The word surprised me when it leapt off my tongue.
Dad’s features hardened. He turned away from the wall of windows, away from the pale fingers of dawn rising above the horizon and the view of Central Park.
Despite the pale golden lights of the luxury suite, with his back to the ascending sun, he looked more like a creature of shadows than my parent.
“What do you mean no?” he asked slowly, as if there was a chance he’d misheard me.
“I’m not enforcing for the Graham name anymore.”
“Is that what you think?” His upper lip curled.
If I’d been fifteen, I might have cowered under that expression.
The same one that told me not to dwell on the lives I took—the ones he commanded me to take.
William Graham no longer existed as the greatest threat of our family. He hadn’t for a long time.
I was.
“It’s what I know, Dad.” I reigned in my tone, trying not to rise to his level and shout when Helen slept peacefully a few feet away. “I’m a married man now. I have a duty and a responsibility to my wife and her family. I’ll be taking on more roles within the Montgomery corporations going forward.”
His mask faltered. He’d never been as composed as Charlotte, and it was never more obvious. Hot tempered and fueled by fury. The man who had sent his only son through the fires of hell to be forged into a weapon of destruction.
“How dare you disobey me,” Dad seethed as he stepped into my space. I noted how he had to lift his head up, crane his neck back, just to look me in the eye. When did he become a small man to me?
“Is this because of her?” Dad gestured at Helen where she rested on the couch. “I give you a wife and you lose your head over it. You’re pathetic.”
Inhaling and crossing my arms over my chest, I unfurled myself to my full height and narrowed my eyes. An intimidation tactic he taught me to make opponents feel smaller. Recognition flickered beneath his furious glare. He flinched, just barely but enough that I registered it.
“Don’t ever talk about my wife,” I said. “She’s what’s important to me now. Starting a family with her. I am not going to be your Grim Reaper, your well-trained dog, ever again. Helen needs me and I’d much rather work with a family that values loyalty over mindless brutality.”
“You can’t be serious?—”
“I am.” My sharp tone cut him off. “She killed for me. I’d burn the world down for her.”
William Graham assessed me from head to toe, as if seeing me for the first time. Perhaps he was. Maybe he’d never really known me at all.
“Now, I’d like you to leave.” When I waved at the door, Dad seethed. I could practically see the steam pouring out of his ears as he stomped for the door. Several moments passed in his absence before I took another breath.
Fear of my father took her away from me once.
Never again. Nothing on our godforsaken planet would come between Monty and me as long as I had breath in my lungs.
If I ever stopped breathing, it would be the day they laid me down in a casket next to her, where we could keep one another warm in the afterlife.
Alone with the silence and drained from the harrowing chaos of the night, I sank onto the end of the couch.
I lifted her petite feet, not concerned with the dried blood on her toes, as I placed them in my lap.
My hand curved around her ankle, relishing in the warmth of her skin even as my mind drifted through the chain of events that got us there.
A childhood friend had betrayed me, taken my wife, and subsequently died at her hands.
Waves of grief I was ashamed of feeling tried dragging me under.
I mentally boxed up those feelings and shoved them into the darkest, deepest recesses of my skull.
That guilt and hatred and misery could wait until later when I’d had time to soak in the fact that Helen was safe.
She was with me. We were together, and everything would be alright.
The fear of losing her still had me in its grip, clenched tight around my ribs and squeezing with unforgiving force. So, I stroked my hand over her leg, adoring her and touching her, proving to my rampant paranoia that she was well and truly by my side where she belonged.
Time passed in a static blur. The sun rose over the city, bringing light to a new day.
Our height and thick glass walls blocked all sound, but I imagined the cars honking, the people shouting, the utter disorder of the city in the morning.
There were normal people down there getting coffees, going for a run in the park, meeting friends for brunch.
None of them had to worry about the blood on their hands or how their friend looked dying from a gunshot wound.
I must have dozed off at some point because a stirring against me jolted me from the darkness. My head shot up and my hand tightened on the dainty ankle in my lap. Helen groaned, shifting and attempting to stretch against the cream cushions. Instantly alert, heart pounding, I reached for her arm.
Panicked blue eyes shot wide open, and Helen bolted upright. Her gaze snapped around the room and her nails dug into the couch, muscles tensed as if she might leap to the sky and take flight.
“Hey, hey, hey. You’re alright,” I whispered.
Her startled stare landed on me, half unfocused, as if still trapped in her dreams. “It’s just me and you, baby.
Come here. I’ve got you.” Gently coaxing her as one might a stray kitten in an alley, I pulled her into my lap.
She didn’t fight, and relief rushed through me when he grasped at my shirt and nuzzled into my chest.
Her breathing steadied, and I continuously rubbed my hands up and down her back. The slight tremor in her limbs faded, allowing her to sink into the comfort I offered. Long moments passed in tense silence; not between us, but from phantom aches after the night’s mayhem.
Eventually she drew back, locking eyes. Helen looked over my face, studying me—not like a problem as she had so many times before, but in the way a person stares at a monument.
“You came for me,” her voice was awed. So much so that it nearly broke my heart all over again. “You came back.”
“Of course.” I cupped her cheek, grateful that she leant into my touch. “Always.”
Her gaze dropped and my head dipped to follow, wanting her to look at me for the rest of my life. Then she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth to stop it from quivering. Apprehension shot through me and I hooked a finger under her chin to catch her eyes again.
“What’s wrong?”
“I… God, I’m so sorry.” She swallowed. I noticed how small and vulnerable she looked, hair limp around her shoulders, dark circles under her eyes, dried sweat and tears and blood streaking her skin. But it was the guilt in her eyes that froze me.
“You have nothing to be sorry for?—”
Her dainty fingers pressed to my lips, effectively shutting me up.
“He said things to me. Douglas. He made me doubt that you would come to get me.” My brows steadily climbed higher as she talked, and a fresh wave of anger at the bastard filled me. “But you did, and I feel so bad that I let that doubt in.”
Both hands cupped her face now, brushing away the fresh tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Hey, it’s alright. We’ve learned he was a master manipulator. It’s not your fault. You were trapped and scared and alone. I don’t blame you for how you felt under duress.”
Helen caved under the weight of her emotions, crying openly in my arms. It was one thing to see her strong and brilliant day after day and another entirely to have the honor of seeing her break down.
She was still strong and wonderful, but she was a person who had suffered a nightmare come to life.
Knowing that she trusted me enough to see her tears and to hold her through them filled me with a sad yet airy sensation.