Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Romeo
I watched Fiona disappear up the stairs with Devlyn, my eyes following until the last glimpse of her vanished around the corner.
She looked fucking exhausted. The ride had put shadows beneath her eyes that hadn’t been there yesterday morning, but it was the way she’d held on to Devlyn outside that kept gnawing at me.
Like finding someone familiar here had given her permission to loosen her grip on whatever had been keeping her upright since Rosewood.
For most of the ride south, she’d been wrapped around me so tightly I could feel every breath she took against my back. I’d told myself it was because we were on the bike. Told myself she needed to hold on.
Bullshit.
I knew what fear felt like when somebody tried to hide it.
I’d felt hers every time I stopped for gas and she automatically looked around before climbing off the bike. Every time somebody moved too close behind her and her shoulders stiffened before she realized who it was. Every time she checked that I was still standing where she’d left me.
Marcus Webb had done that to her.
My hand tightened against the edge of the bar.
He would never do it again.
That should have given me more satisfaction than it did.
“Cuz.”
I glanced toward Gator. He had moved away from the doorway after Devlyn took Fiona upstairs and was leaning one hip against the bar, studying me with none of the easy bullshit he normally wore like a second cut.
A couple of his brothers were scattered farther down the room, giving us enough distance to pretend they weren’t listening.
They were Bourbon Kings, which meant they were absolutely fucking listening.
Gator waited until I looked at him before he asked, “What the fuck are you doin’?”
There wasn’t any accusation behind it. Not really. He knew me too well for that. What I heard was the question beneath the question.
Why now?
I scrubbed a hand over my beard and looked toward the stairs again. Fiona had only been out of my sight for a minute, maybe two, and some irrational part of me already wanted to go upstairs and put eyes on her.
“She was attacked last night.”
Every trace of humor disappeared from Gator’s face. “What?”
I didn’t give him every detail. I didn’t need to.
Gator understood violence well enough that I didn’t have to paint him a fucking picture.
I told him Fiona closed the shop alone, and Marcus Webb was waiting behind the building.
I explained how I had dealt with the bastard once already after the gas station incident and apparently hadn’t made myself clear enough.
Gator’s jaw clenched harder with every sentence.
“He get far?”
“No.” The word came out rougher than I intended. Fiona’s voice immediately filled in the rest inside my head. “I got there before he could.”
Gator held my gaze for a long moment before his eyes dropped to the Bowie sheath at my side. He didn’t have to ask how the rest of the night ended.
“Webb?”
“Dead.”
“Good.”
That was it.
No lecture. No warning about consequences. No question about whether I’d lost my fucking mind. Gator and me had spent our entire lives surrounded by men who understood there were some lines you didn’t cross unless you were ready for what waited on the other side.
I had given Marcus one chance.
He’d chosen to fuck it away.
Gator pushed away from the bar and came closer, lowering his voice. “Fi okay?”
“She will be.”
The answer tasted like bullshit even though I wanted it to be true. Physically, she was okay. Bruised shoulder. Sore wrist. Nothing that wouldn’t heal.
But I’d felt her shaking against me.
I’d heard her tell me what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.
That wasn’t something a few hours of sleep fixed.
Gator watched me long enough that I knew he heard everything behind my answer. “And that’s why you brought her here?”
“Partly.”
His eyebrow rose.
I let out a breath and glanced upstairs again. “I couldn’t fuckin’ wait anymore.”
Something shifted in his expression.
There it was.
Recognition.
The smug son of a bitch didn’t even have to say it for me to know exactly what he was thinking. I remembered him standing outside that wedding almost a year ago, telling Georgie that I would respect his wishes and wait until Fiona was legal.
And then telling him that when I came for her, not even God would stop me.
At the time, I’d thought my cousin was being dramatic.
Now I was standing in his bar with Fiona upstairs and no intention of taking her back to Virginia.
“Don’t,” I warned.
Gator’s mouth twitched. “Ain’t said shit.”
“You’re about to.”
“Was just thinkin’ how a certain handsome, wise, extremely observant cousin might have predicted this exact shit damn near a year ago.”
“There it is.”
His grin appeared for barely a second before seriousness took it again. “You waited longer than I would’ve.”
“I know.”
That admission cost me more than it should have.
Gator knew it too.
I leaned my forearms on the bar and stared down at the scratched wood.
“Thought I was doing right by her. She was seventeen when I met her. Then eighteen and still in school. She had plans. College. A life in Rosewood. I didn’t want to be some old asshole decidin’ she belonged in Nebraska because I got hit with the fuckin’ curse and couldn’t see straight anymore. ”
“You let her choose.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
I looked at him. “She chose me.”
Gator’s grin came back, broader this time. “Well, no shit.”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed, but I couldn’t quite get there with him. The rage from last night had burned out enough that all the things underneath it had room to breathe, and none of them were fucking funny.
“I should’ve taken her sooner.”
That stopped him.
“I don’t mean against her will. I’m not as stupid as you are.
” I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to find a way to put into words what had been eating through me since Rosewood.
“I kept thinkin’ givin’ her space was protectin’ her.
Lettin’ her stay there. Lettin’ her finish school.
Lettin’ this whole thing happen at her speed.
Then I turn into that fuckin’ parkin’ lot and realize all I really did was make damn sure I was too fuckin’ far away if she ever needed me. ”
Gator’s expression went hard. “That ain’t on you, Rome.”
“Sure as fuck feels like it.”
“You didn’t put that bastard behind the shop.”
“No. But I already knew he was a problem.”
“And you handled him.”
“Not well enough.”
The Bowie rested against my hip, its familiar weight making that statement unnecessary.
Gator reached across the space between us and gripped the back of my neck for a second, the kind of rough affection we’d grown up with because nobody in our family had ever figured out how to say something simple without making it physical.
“You can’t guard somebody every second of every fuckin’ day, cuz.”
“No.” I looked toward the ceiling, knowing Fiona was somewhere above us. “But I can do better than fifteen hundred miles.”
Gator followed my gaze.
When he looked back at me, there was no judgment in his expression. If anything, there was understanding I probably wouldn’t have gotten from anybody else. Gator had crossed lines for Devlyn that would have made more reasonable men question his sanity. I’d given him shit for half of it.
Fuck, I’d understood him better in the last twenty-four hours than I had in years.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked.
I opened my mouth only to be cut off by the sound of his phone ringing.
Gator pulled it from his pocket and frowned at the screen before turning it enough for me to see.
King.
Well fuck.
Gator’s eyes lifted to mine.
I shook my head once.
His mouth slowly curved.
That expression should have worried me. Instead, I found myself almost interested in seeing how big a hole my cousin could dig before King reached through the phone and strangled him.
Gator answered casually. “Ooh-ee, King. Been a while.”
King didn’t bother with hello.
“Let me talk to that motherfucking swamp rat.”
Gator’s eyes brightened immediately.
He turned his head toward the other side of the bar and bellowed, “THORE!”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Somebody in the back yelled, “WHAT?”
The growl that came through Gator’s phone was loud enough that I heard it from several feet away.
“Gator.”
“What?” My cousin looked genuinely offended. “You asked for a swamp rat. Thore practically fuckin’ lives in one.”
I lowered my head because if I laughed, King would somehow hear it and add that to the list of reasons he intended to kill me.
“Where the fuck is he, Gator?”
Gator looked straight at me. “Who?”
My president inhaled slowly.
That was never a good sign.
“You know who I fucking mean. Put Romeo on the goddamn phone.”
“He ain’t here, brother. Man lives with you.”
I stared at my cousin.
Gator stared back.
Not a flicker.
Not a twitch.
Nothing.
The lying bastard could probably have convinced Jesus he’d missed the resurrection because nobody sent him an invitation.
King was not Jesus.
And he wasn’t convinced.
“You want to try that again?”
Gator scratched lazily at his beard. “Not sure what answer you’re lookin’ for, King. Romeo’s your man. Figured you’d know where your own men are.”
My eyebrows went up.
That was bold, even for him.
King went quiet enough that Gator pulled the phone away and checked the screen to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected.
Then my president spoke again. I stood there quiet as a gator sunk beneath blackwater while my president finished explaining the mess Carly had just dropped into his lap.
The woman I loved, the woman I’d known from the first minute I met her was destined to be mine, was Angel’s daughter.
A Silver Shadows brother’s daughter. Banshee’s niece.
Fiona had family tied to my club that she didn’t even know existed.
Gator watched me across the bar without so much as blinking in my direction for King’s benefit. The bastard had already lied through his teeth about me being there, and apparently, he intended to see it through.
King wasn’t stupid enough to believe him.
“Sylvia won’t know Fiona isn’t Steele’s biological daughter,” he continued through the phone. “All she’ll see is Kaitlyn Grace Ward—Steele’s kid. If St. James gets that information, she’ll come for her.”
My gaze drifted toward the stairs before I could stop it. Fiona was up there with Devlyn, probably worrying herself sick over whatever she’d almost told me before we left Virginia, while downstairs I was finding out there was another threat circling her that neither of us had known existed.
Marcus Webb had been easy. All I’d had to do was find him. Kill him. Make sure he could never touch her again.
Sylvia St. James was the kind of problem that kept growing new heads every time somebody cut one off.
King went silent for a second, and when he spoke again, his voice had changed. He wasn’t talking to Gator anymore, even if Gator was technically the only man on the call.
“You hear me, Romeo?”
I didn’t make a fucking sound.
Gator’s mouth twitched.
King continued as if my silence had answered him anyway.
“I’m pissed enough to put you through a goddamn wall, but that can wait.
You hide that girl until I tell you it’s safe to bring her home.
Montclair isn’t gonna be nearly as patient with your ass, and Martha Steiner will probably kill you herself if she finds you before he does.
But neither one of them will ever hurt Fiona. ”
My hand tightened around the edge of the bar.
“St. James will.”
That was the only part I needed.
King knew it too. I could hear it in the way the anger in his voice settled behind something colder and more deliberate.
“I called Sal and made sure he knows what the fuck is happening. He’s got people down there who can help, so fucking use them. Don’t do something stupid. Keep Fiona somewhere Sylvia can’t reach her until I tell you otherwise.”
I stayed exactly where I was, staring at Gator while he stared back at me.
Neither of us broke the lie.
King let the silence stretch just long enough to make it clear he knew exactly what game we were playing.
Then his voice hardened again. “And when you finally bring your Cajun ass home, don’t mistake me protecting Fiona for me forgetting that shit you pulled. Your ass is mine.”
The call ended.
Gator lowered the phone slowly and looked at me.
Before either of us could say anything, Worm spoke from the far end of the bar, where he had apparently been listening to every fucking word while making absolutely no effort to pretend otherwise.
“You know Martha Steiner has that jet.”
I turned toward him.
Worm glanced at the clock behind the bar. “If she was already at the Sons’ clubhouse raising hell this morning, I’d say you’ve got maybe four hours before she figures out where Fiona went and lands here breathing fire.”
Four hours.
My mind started moving before he finished speaking.
Enough time.
Barely.
I looked around the Bourbon Bar, mentally sorting through what I needed, who I needed, and how fast I could make all of it happen without Fiona realizing there was anything more going on than me keeping her somewhere safe.
Gator watched my face too closely.
“What?” he asked.
“Four hours gives me room.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he knew better than to ask the same question twice when I clearly wasn’t ready to answer it.
Then another problem occurred to me.
“Mama needs to know Fiona’s here.”
Gator’s expression changed instantly. “Aw, fuck.”
“And yours.”
“Now why the hell you gotta ruin my mornin’ too?”
“Because if those two find out from someone else I went and did somethin’ a Cajun mama considers her God-given right to be present for—somethin’ that should’ve had ’em in pearls, good shoes, and the front goddamn row without so much as a phone call, Cher—Sylvia St. James ain’t the woman we’ll be prayin’ never finds us. ”
Worm snorted into his drink.
Gator scrubbed a hand down his face, already looking like a man contemplating the wisdom of leaving the country.
I understood the feeling.
Sylvia St. James could send whoever the fuck she wanted. Montclair could roll into Louisiana with the entire Sons of Hell behind him. Granny could land that jet and start swinging before her feet hit Bourbon Street.
None of them scared me half as much as my mama finding out I’d done all this without including her.
Four hours.
I could make four hours work.